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I take a swig, the liquor colder than ice, burning all the way down my throat like it will freeze me from the inside out. I swallow more, hoping it will numb everything I don’t want to feel.
“Gimmie that.” Ilsa takes the bottle partly to stop me drinking more, and partly so she can drink a few swallows.
We’re sitting on her couch, each of us sprawling back against an opposite arm, our legs meeting in the middle. I’ve kicked off my shoes—the arch of my foot rests against the curve of her calf.
“I can’t believe you left school,” Ilsa says.
“Don’t rub it in.”
“You regret it?”
“I don’t believe in regret.”
“Still the same old Sabrina, then.”
I sit forward to grab the bottle, inverting it and letting the vodka run down my throat in three long swallows, wiping my mouth on the back of my arm. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“Oh? What’s different?”
“Well,” I take another pull. “I speak Russian now. So it’s gonna be a lot harder for you to talk shit without me noticing.”
Ilsa smiles without showing any teeth, just a sideways quirk of her mouth. Ilsa is what in the olden days would have been called a “handsome woman.” She’s all bold lines, dramatic eyebrows, the bone structure of a queen. When she’s angry, she’s fucking terrifying. When she smiles at you, you feel like she’s bestowing a favor. It’s hard to make her laugh, really laugh. When she does, it’s loud and satisfying.
“Anything I have to say, I’d say to your face.”
“I know.”
There’s a long pause. I lean my head back against the armrest of the couch, listening to the rush of cars on the street below the window. The vodka is doing its work. I’m not happy—actually I’m still fucking miserable. But that misery seems separate and contained, like a dark cloud in the center of the room. I can skirt around its edges instead of standing right in the middle of it.
My body hardly seems to belong to me. I look at my hands on my lap and they’re someone else’s hands. What they’ve done, what they will do, has nothing to do with me.
I don’t have to care about everything so much. I don’t have to feel. Nobody else seems to. I can be numb and cold and cruel like the rest of the world.
“Were you happy to see me here?” I say to Ilsa, still looking up at the ceiling.
She’s silent for a moment. Then she admits, “Yeah. I did miss you. More than I thought I would.”
“What did you miss?”
She lets out a soft, amused sound. “You want me to compliment you?”
“I need it.”
She lifts my foot and holds it in her lap, squeezing it with pleasant pressure.
“I missed how I can always tell what you’re thinking. What you’re feeling. You’re easy to know—easy to understand.”
“You mean I’m simple and obvious?” I laugh.
She presses the heel of her hand against the arch of my foot, twisting like a mortar and pestle, sending a wave of relaxation all the way up my leg.
“You’re genuine.”
“No need for the lasso of truth.”
She rubs the ball of my foot with both thumbs, smiling that crooked smile.
“You always made me feel like Wonder Woman. Like I could do anything.”
