Page 50 of Sexting the Pakhan

At eight fifteen, Zoya does not come down.

She’s been eating with the rest of us for two nights now, barely speaking, mostly pushing food around her plate while pretending not to listen whenever Russian cuts through the room. I could have food sent up. I don’t.

I go myself.

Her room is at the far end of the second floor, facing the water. I knock once.

No answer.

I knock again. “Zoya.”

Still nothing.

The door isn’t locked. I open it.

She isn’t in bed. Not in the chair by the window. Not in the bathroom.

For one second, the room empties of sound.

Then I see the balcony door is cracked open.

I cross the room and step outside. She’s sitting on the covered part of the balcony, curled sideways in one of the wide chairs with a blanket around her shoulders and a bottle of wine on the small table beside her. The glass in her hand is half-full. Her hair is down, loose around her face, and she’s wearing the same soft cardigan she had on earlier, buttoned wrong near the middle.

She looks at the sea instead of at me. “The library shut down,” she says.

I stop beside the door.

Her voice is calm in the way voices get when calm is the last thing holding them together.

“Permanently?” I ask.

“That’s what the email says.” She lifts her phone from her lap but doesn’t show me the screen. “The board had been looking for reasons to cut funding. Apparently gunfire is a good one.”

I say nothing because there’s nothing useful to say.

She laughs once, softly and without humor. “Sorry. That was unfair. I know it wasn’t the board’s fault people shot at you.”

“It wasn’t your fault either.”

“I didn’t say it was.”

“No,” I say. “You implied it.”

That gets her to look at me.

Her eyes are wet, but she’s not crying. The difference matters. She’s holding herself very still, the way people do when one wrong movement might make them fall apart.

“I lost my job,” she says. “I lost my apartment too, probably, because I can’t pay rent in the city without that job. I can’t go home, according to you. I can’t tell my mother anything real. Karina keeps texting me every hour like she’s afraid I’ve been murdered between replies.”

She looks down at the glass in her hand. “And the worst part is, I keep thinking I should be grateful because I’m alive.”

I step onto the balcony fully and close the door behind me to keep out the cold draft.

“How much have you had?” I ask.

Her mouth twists. “That’s what you’re starting with?”

“Yes.”