The pharmacy doorway goes very cold.
“Lena.”
“I—” My mouth is dry. “I didn’t—I wasn’t thinking, I just… Nadia, I’ve been so?—”
“How long have you been using it?”
Since Moscow. Since I called her.
“Since the beginning.” The words come out like a confession.
“Lena.” Her voice is so careful it’s terrifying. “That is literally the first rule. In every film. In every?—”
“I know.” My throat is tight. “I know, I know, I?—”
“You need to get off this call right now and you need to?—”
Something moves in my peripheral vision.
I stop breathing.
Fuck.
The street that was empty isn’t empty anymore.
Two men are at the far end, moving with the specific quality of people who are not going anywhere, who are not on their way to something, who are simplypositioned.
Dark clothes.
Hands loose at their sides.
One of them is looking at a phone but not at the phone, the way you look at something when you need to look like you’re not looking.
Then I see the third one.
Closer.
Between me and the bakery, leaning against the wall of the building across the street like he grew there.
They were already here.
They’ve been here.
“Nadia—” My voice comes out wrong. Thin.
“What? What’s happening?”
I can’t answer.
My throat has sealed itself.
There are three of them that I can see and my brain has developed a catastrophic blockage somewhere in the middle, and I am standing in a pharmacy doorway in Vienna in a jacket that isn’t warm enough and my legs will not work.
“Lena. LENA. What is happening right now?—”
One of the men at the far end looks up from his non-phone.
Looks directly at me.
