Page 57 of Chasing Gold, Catching Her

The bartender made it quickly and placed it in front of her. Alisa picked up the semicircular glass with strawberries hooked over the rim and said cheers to no one in particular. The bartender only raised a finger, and Alisa took a sip.

The cocktail really did taste like strawberries with something else beneath them; vodka, probably… what an irony.

After one cocktail, Alisa ordered another. She liked it, and watched the Canadians win the match while sitting perfectly still, never showing by so much as a look that she had been rooting for the enemy team in this bar.

Then the devil made her pull out her phone. It was nine o’clock in the evening.

And just as she was about to put it away again, she saw a notification from her mother.

Mother: Today is the anniversary of your grandmother’s death, I hope you haven’t forgotten.

Alisa felt a lump rise in her throat, and tears got stuck somewhere between the barrier of her eyes and her brain… and as soon as the next cocktail arrived, she drained half of it in one gulp.

So the bartender by witnessing this despair offered to pour her vodka shots directly and add a few tiny cocktails to them, and why had Alisa agreed so easily? But she had nothing left to lose. She wanted to forget, to turn off the meat grinder of thoughts that was chewing through her soul at that moment.

The anniversary… today…

And how could she have forgotten?

Alisa ran a hand over her forehead, feeling how hot it was and how icy her own fingers were; it seemed that her whole body had turned to ice after reading the message. She felt terribly ill.

Mother: Order pancakes in your America, remember your grandmother with a kind word.

Alisa squeezed her eyes shut as she read the next message and shoved the phone back into the pocket of her sports jacket.

“Do you have any pancakes?” she asked the bartender.

He nodded, and a couple of minutes later he returned with a plate of hot pancakes, round and thick, with butter on top slowly melting and running down their sides. They were American pancakes of course, not the kind her grandmother used to make, not the thin Russian ones, but Alisa was in no state of mind to make those now.

She picked up a fork, broke off a piece of pancake and put it into her mouth.

“For you, Grandma…” she said quietly to herself while chewing. “I hope… I hope you’re doing well there…”

She swallowed nervously.

The subject of death had always frightened Alisa. Ever since childhood she had imagined it as something terrible, only darkness and emptiness forever, nothing else… darkness forever, and because of that she had always avoided the subject as much as she could. But every year, on the anniversary of her grandmother’s death, she returned to that same moment and cried.

Tears rolled down her cheeks from hopelessness, sadness and grief.

She ate all the pancakes and did not even notice how quickly time had passed. The match was already over. Canada had won, taking the cup for itself.

She closed her eyes for only a second, but felt the voices in her head finally dimming into quiet after ten shots and, apparently, five cocktails. Everything in front of her eyes had become blurry. Her body floated as though she were on a ship somewhere in the middle of the ocean.

She hated that feeling.

I think I’ve had enough for today, she told herself.

She paid the bartender and left the bar.

Outside it was incredibly cold, but she decided to walk back to the hotel; according to the map it was somewhere nearby. Hugging herself with both arms, Alisa made her way through the night, feeling the cold ease her head a little.

At the same time she wanted to disappear, but she also wanted to be in someone’s arms, to feel support and love… love…

Her feet dragged her all the way to room 7010.

* * *

When Alisa reached the seventh floor, she did not find room 7010 immediately. The hotel was large, and she had to wander through the dark corridors for a while, which only clouded her head again after the cold walk through the streets.