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I smile blandly. “I love purses.”
“You don’t even carry a purse.”
“They won’t let me when I’m working. I might steal other purses and put them in my purse.”
Misha rolls her eyes, burying her nose in her textbook again.
We always sit at the counter so Hakim can harass Alla while she works.
“So … what do you do for fun?”
Alla ignores him.
“Can I get a chocolate shake?” I ask her.
“Misha,” she barks. “Make shake.”
Misha sets her pencil down in the crevice of her open textbook, sliding off her stool. With painstaking precision, she measures the ingredients for my shake into a steel tumbler and begins operating a machine so old and cantankerous that it’s sole intention seems to be to rip off one of her pipe-cleaner arms.
“Don’t you have child labor laws in Russia?” I say to Alla.
“She is not child,” Alla grunts. “She is demon.”
Alla’s English is about on par with the name of the diner—comprehensible, but not exactly elegant. Since my Russian remains gibberish to anyone besides Adrik, I’m not one to judge.
Misha pushes her glasses up her nose, fixing her sister with a calm stare.
“It’s not the medieval era. I’m not a demon just because I bathe every day.”
“I bathe,” Alla retorts.
“Withsoap?” Misha demands.
She looks like a fussy little schoolteacher with her oversized glasses and mousy braids. As far as I can tell, her family consists only of herself and her sister. She’s here all the time because otherwise she’d be alone in whatever tiny apartment they share.
Once Misha has set a postcard-worthy shake in front of me, complete with a snowy peak of whipped cream and one garishly bright maraschino cherry, she scoots her stool a little closer. “Alla says I read too much and it makes me weird.”
“Something made you weird,” I say. “I dunno if it was the books.”
“Do you read fiction?” she asks me.
“Yeah. When I can sit still long enough.”
“What’s your favorite book?”
I consider. “Well … when I was your age, it wasEnder’s Game.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s about a kid, a really smart kid. He’s trained by the military. You’d probably like it,” I laugh. “He’s weird, too.”
Misha nods solemnly. “I’ll look for it at the library.”
The bell over the door jingles as Adrik pushes his way inside. He comes to see me at the lab at least once a day, and often meets me after work so we can ride home together.
Tonight there’s a light dusting of rain on the shoulders of his leather jacket, and tiny droplets glinting in his thick black hair.
“I didn’t realize it was raining,” I say.
