Page 17 of The Immortalists

“If you don’t come back, Simon, I’ll have to put off graduate school,” Varya says, her voice wavering. “Someone needs to stay with Ma. And I don’t understand why it always has to be me.”

Sometimes, he comes upon Klara with the cord wrapped around her wrist, pleading for one of them to understand.

“They’re your family,” she tells Simon afterward. “You have to talk to them eventually.”

Not now, Simon thinks. Not yet. If he speaks to them, their voices will reach into the warm, blissful ocean in which he’s been floating and yank him—gasping, dripping wet—onto dry land.

One Monday afternoon in July, he returns from Academy to find Klara sitting on her mattress, playing with silk scarves. Taped to the window frame behind her is a picture of Gertie’s mother, a curious woman whose diminutive size and fierce gaze has always made Simon uncomfortable. She reminds him of witches from fairy tales, not because there is anything sinister about her but because she seems to be neither child nor adult, woman or man: she’s something between.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Shouldn’t you be at work?”

“I’m quitting.”

“You’re quitting,” says Simon, slowly. “Why?”

“Because I hate it.” Klara packs one of the scarves down into her left fist. When she pulls it out the other end, it’s turned from black to yellow. “Obviously.”

“Well, you need to get another job. I can’t make rent on my own.”

“I’m aware of that. And I will. Why do you think I’m practicing?” She waves a scarf at Simon.

“Don’t be ridiculous.”

“Screw you.” She grabs both of her scarves and stuffs them in the black box. “You think you’re the only one who’s entitled to do what you want? You’re fucking the whole city. You’re stripping and dancing ballet, and I haven’t said a thing. If anyone has the right to discourage me, Simon, it isn’t you.”

“I’m making money, aren’t I? I’m holding up my end of the bargain.”

“You Castro gays.” Klara sticks a finger at him. “You don’t think of anyone but yourselves.”

“What?” he says, stung; Klara never speaks to him this way.

“Think about it, Simon—how sexist the Castro is! I mean, where are the women? Where are the lesbians?”

“What’s it to you? You’re a lesbian now?”

“No,” says Klara, and when she shakes her head, she looks almost sad. “I’m not a lesbian. But I’m not a gay guy, either. I’m not even a straight one. So where do I fit in here?”

When their eyes meet, Simon looks away. “How am I supposed to know?”

“How am I? At least, if I start my own show, I can say that I tried.”

“Your own show?”

“Yes,” Klara snaps. “My own show. I don’t expect you to understand, Simon. I don’t expect you to worry about anything but yourself.”

“You’re the one who convinced me to come here! Did you really think they’d let us go without a fight? You thought they’d just let us stay?”

Klara’s jaw is tight. “I wasn’t thinking about those things.”

“Then what the hell were you thinking about?”

Klara’s cheeks have turned a sunburnt coral that only Daniel usually provokes, but she keeps quiet, as if indulging Simon. It’s not like her to censor herself. It certainly isn’t like her to avoid eye contact, which she does now, latching her black box with more focus than the task requires. Simon thinks of their conversation on the rooftop in May. We could go to San Francisco, she said, as if the idea only just occurred to her, as if she didn’t know exactly what she was doing.

“That’s the problem,” Simon says. “You never think. You know exactly how to get into something and you know how to bring me with you, but you never think about what the consequences will be—or maybe you think about them and you just don’t care, not until it’s too late. And now you’re blaming me? If you feel so bad, why don’t you go back?”

Klara stands and strides into the kitchen. The sink is full of so many unwashed dishes that they’ve begun to stack more across the counter. She turns the water on and grabs a sponge and scrubs.

“I know why,” Simon says, following her. “Because it would mean that Daniel was right. It would mean you have no plans—that you can’t make a life for yourself, away from them. It would mean you’ve failed.”