Chapter Text
Wednesday October 16th, 2002
8:55 PM
Outside the barred windows of the front office, sluggish traffic chugged endlessly by. Anna tapped her pencil against the top of the desk with one eye on the clock. Only five minutes left of another unfruitful day, but she’d stay until the very end. Lanya hadn’t even bothered to come in. There wasn’t much point anymore.
Occasionally, the people too poor to own cars passed along the sidewalk, headed toward the subway station at the corner. Their figures became briefly visible as they walked beneath the flickering bluish light of the streetlamp outside the front door before returning to silhouettes against the glow of brake and headlights.
None of them spared a single glance to the little hole-in-the-wall charity clinic. Anna couldn’t totally blame them. What was a measly $20 USD for a pint of blood if it meant being put in a government database in central Prague? No one wanted that kind of vulnerability, especially the way things had been lately. With the rash of violent crimes against the poor and homeless, and the indifference of the police, a paranoia and disheartened malaise seemed to have dampened the generosity of the locals. It was worse now that there was a shortage.
So, no one donated.
There was always hope, though. She refused to believe that there was no humanity left. She’d been urging Dimitri, the director of this branch, to pay more by volume, but funds were tight as it was.
Still, despite the lack of interest, she would always stay until exactly 9 o’clock, just in case someone had a last-minute change of heart. Even in this decrepit neighborhood, surely someone was willing to look past themselves and think of those less fortunate, dying in the streets as the nights grew colder and darker.
Her spirit wasn’t tireless, though. With one minute left to go, Anna could only think of her shift the next day with a measure of dread. More of the same, probably.
A man passing by the front window slowed and stopped, and Anna fiddled with the tunnel plug in her earlobe nervously. The steady tap tap tap of the pencil grew louder, but she didn’t really notice. As always, there was the uncertainty when people took notice of the clinic this late. She couldn’t be sure if it was a potential donor, or some desperate criminal thinking to rob the place. She really didn’t want to die for what little was in the padlocked cash box.
Her fears subsided when he just kept walking. She sighed in mingled relief and guilt. She tried her best not to judge people by appearances, but she maintained a healthy sense of caution. There was the added risk of an otherwise peaceful person becoming violent in desperate times, after all other choices were taken from them.
She paid attention to the news. Every day, when Anna came to work, she was taking her own life in her hands. Every day, she did it anyway.
9:02. She tidied up the desk, and logged out of the office computer, already thinking of the cup of tea she’d fix herself before bed. First, she’d have to feed Mariuska. The fat, spoiled Persian wouldn’t give her a moment’s peace until she got her canned chicken and rice.
Anna donned her many layers and changed into her snow boots.
Honking cars, and distant clashing music greeted her as soon as she opened the door. A passing pair of old women in thick head scarves chattered, leaving their breaths trailing behind them before the vapor dispersed in the breeze.
She locked the door, and then pulled shut the security gate and locked that too. With her hood up to ward off the frosty air, she pulled a cigarette out of the near-empty pack in the back pocket of her jeans, and lit it behind the shield of her cupped hand. Savoring the first lungful of smoke, she watched the cars stop and go on the road in front of her.
A mustachioed man in a red, 80s-style sports car said something about the mother of the woman in the car ahead of him. She made a rude gesture out her window. It was almost considerate, how they exposed the warm interior of their cars to the cold, just so they could more directly communicate their opinions of one another.
Drivers here were so vocal about everything. At first, used to the apologetic and genial traffic back home in Minneapolis, the sometimes-abrasive Czechian mannerisms had unnerved her. She’d since grown used to them, though, even to the point of appreciating how no one bothered to dance around their feelings here.
She took a long drag and let it seep out of her nose, eyeing the man hawking his CDs to pedestrians across the street.
Anna ground the depleted stub of her cigarette against the brick wall and tossed it into a garbage can. Then she tugged up her half-face balaclava so that only her kohl-smudged eyes were exposed to the late autumn evening. The skeletal grin printed on the half-mask was usually enough to deter any would-be aggressors, while her bulky down winter coat hid her body shape.
She might have been willing to assume the best of people, but she wasn’t reckless. She also hadn’t been robbed yet, so she must have been doing something right.
After checking the time, she headed toward the underground metro station. Smells of garbage, car exhaust, and an undercurrent of cooking street food was a pungent reminder that the city was overflowing with life. It was far from paradise, but Anna had grown to love it and the people living there.
Wind whistled behind her past the entrance to the stairs down.
She tossed a few dollars into the open guitar case of a busker camped past the turnstiles, and the thin young woman sang her thanks, blending the words with the old Slavic folk song seamlessly. After that, Anna enjoyed the music guilt-free as she waited on the platform for the Eastbound line.
It was busy this time of night. Some were coming home like her, from a long work day, while others were just beginning theirs. A few people lingered on the benches lining the dirty concrete wall toward the back. More than one of them looked like they might not have anywhere else to go. Conversation was a formless wash, echoing endlessly in the cavernous underground station beneath the squeal of train cars braking on the other side. People filed in, others filed out, a constant flow. It would trickle to a stop before long, and Anna let her mind wander.
Someone bumped into her as they went by and she spared passing notice to the group of young men, laughing and drinking from paper bags. The one that had jostled her glanced at her briefly over his shoulder before he continued on. Most other people just got out of their way. She fingered the phone in her pocket absently as she resumed waiting.
After 20 minutes or so, a weary female voice came over the speakers with a disappointing announcement in Czech. Anna understood the subject well enough, even if she didn’t quite get every word. Her train was going to be late, the voice said, and the time of arrival was delayed indefinitely.
The people standing around her that were waiting for the same train, groaned. Some filtered back toward the street or to other lines, unwilling to wait. Anna didn’t really have a choice, she wasn't going to walk the whole way home by herself. Not at night.
She tugged her coat closer around herself, chill even here where she could hear the buzzing of electric coil heaters spaced out with the concrete columns. Gradually the sounds of life and human activity petered out.
By 9:45, the busker had called it a night, leaving Anna without the distraction of music.
The group of young men, loud and rude, had decided to stay behind and wait like she was. They were standing a few columns down the tunnel-end of the platform, their slurred voices ringing loud in the empty space. If she ignored them, chances were that they’d leave her alone. She didn’t show any outward interest in them, but she paid close attention to them all the same.
She was starting to consider calling a taxi by 10:07, even though their rates amounted to robbery. It was even worse when she tried to communicate with them in her broken Czech; they always assumed she was a tourist or some other foreigner, too stupid to know the value of things. She was getting better at arguing with them and haggling, though, and was starting to learn some of the more important words and phrases.
‘To je příliš mnoho peněz,’ or, that is too much money. ‘Včera jsem se nenarodil,’ or, I wasn’t born yesterday. She also knew a few curse words, but she never used them.
The group was getting louder, laughing now, and breaking glass. Anna stole a look around the side of her hood and her heart sank. They were harassing a homeless man sitting on a bench by the stairs to the lower levels. There were three of them, and one of him. It seemed like they were trying to make him leave. She turned away, staring over the rails to the far wall, tense.
After a moment, she pulled out her phone subtly and dialed the police.
She was placed on hold before she could say anything.
Anna chewed her lip, listening to the crackling silence on the other end of the line as the aggressive behavior and words grew louder and harder to ignore. She eyed them. The vagrant on the bench dodged out of the way of a thrown beer bottle, his hands thrown up pleadingly. The bottle smashed in the wall next to him, showering him in shattered glass and beer.
Anna’s eyes darted to the stairwell to the street level, considering that the wisest thing to do for her own wellbeing was to leave as quickly as possible. Her teeth tore at the soft skin around her piercing until it stung and tasted like metal. Someone needed to stop this, and the fact was, there was no one else.
She started walking over there.
After only a few strides, a tall man wearing the style of track suits popular with all the slavic criminal low-lifes, noticed her and alerted his friends. Beneath her puffy black coat, Anna was shaking. She hoped that none of them could see it.
‘Hey buddy,’ a shorter guy with a tattooed face and a silver grill said, speaking the Czech with a distinct Polish accent. ‘You want to start something?’
Anna still had the phone up to her ear with her right hand, praying that they’d take her off hold any second.
She informed them, in Czech and in the strongest voice she could manage, that she was currently calling the police. Of course, her gender was now no longer a mystery. They laughed. One of them said something coarse that she understood well enough as a rape threat. Already, with that.
The operator clicked on and asked the emergency.
“There’s a group of men here trying to hurt someone,” she said loudly enough for the men to hear. In her left pocket, she fingered the canister with her gloved hand. She gave the address when prompted, but had to repeat the numbers in Czech before the woman understood her.
The tall one in the track suit peeled off and was coming toward her in the way dangerous men do when they’re picking a fight they know they’ll win. His cocky gait and posture told her that he was no lightweight, and he was pulling a mask up around his face, a clear indication that he meant to do harm. She saw a flash of metal jammed into the waist of the pants. The grip of a handgun.
According to the dispatcher, the police would be on their way when they had a chance, but she wasn’t allowed to stay on the line. So, she stood there with her phone held to her ear, pretending.
He strode forward, spitting vulgarities in Polish, words she didn’t understand even if she could guess their meaning well enough, clearly undeterred by her supposed direct line to the police.
She gave up on the phone and pulled the canister of capsaicin concentrate out of her pocket. She covered her face with her arm and depressed the lever, sending a stream of the potent fluid in the general direction of his mouth and eyes. The man doubled over, screaming and clawing at his face as it turned red. Now all of them were looking.
Anna was breathing hard, the mask damp against her nose and mouth, when she sprayed him again. His eyes were covered, but the pepper spray hit him in the mouth and he started retching, staggering. She backed away, watching to see if he’d go for that gun
At that moment, a shrill scream of brakes heralded the arrival of the train. The other two were laughing and jeering at their friend, no indication that they had the intention to retaliate for him, as they headed toward their car. The homeless man was forgotten. Anna backed behind the cover of a map sign, eyeing the last man, screaming epithets and empty threats as he made his drunken and half-blind way to the nearest door. The few people that had exited the train were trying not to stare as they made their way out of the station.
She watched the Eastbound train, the last one for the night, pull away with them inside, and then let herself breathe again. She leaned against the graffitied sign, hyperventilating.
She would need to email her dad and thank him for the pepper spray later. Anna turned to the vagrant as the few people left made their way to the exits or to the lower levels.
The man was slumped on the bench, his head down. Alive, but doing poorly from what she could tell. She made her way to him, listening all the while for the arrival of the police. She didn’t have too many expectations.
“Are you okay?” she asked him from a couple strides away. “Are you hurt?”
She tried again in Czech, but his hooded head stayed down.
It took her a moment to sort through the nagging feeling she’d been having as she got closer to him. She recognized him. It was the same guy that had passed by the window before she closed up for the night. He had the same brown fur duster over multiple layers of hoodie and jacket. His shoes were old and worn nearly through, gloved hands clutched around his middle. She could see now that he wouldn’t have posed a threat in his current state.
He coughed coarsely into his hand and pity tightened her heartstrings.
“Police are on their way, they’ll help you,” she said, softer. “Politsiya… are coming. Now.” She realized too late that she’d used the Russian word instead of the Czech. But even if he didn’t speak any English, she hoped a soothing tone would communicate the meaning well enough. A low, throaty sound came from him. Coughing, or… laughing.
“What makes you think that they can help me?” he asked in perfect English. She caught a flash of a pale jaw, marked by a raised vertical scar before it returned to the shadow of his hood. The scar had been perfectly straight, from the middle of his bottom lip to the underside of his chin.
It was now half past 10 and they would soon be the only people left in the station.
“Do you need a place to stay? There’s a shelter not too far from here. I can help you get there, if you want.”
He turned his head to look up at her and she saw him in the light for the first time. Dark, tired-looking eyes regarded her from an anemically pale face. The shadows around his eye sockets were deep-set, like they’d been there for a while. He looked like he could have used a good night’s sleep, or three.
He offered an ironic smile.
“You think I’m homeless?” he asked.
“I’m so sorry,” she gasped, mortified that she’d made such a mistake. “I really didn’t mean to offend you.”
With a good-natured chuckle, he pushed himself into a more upright sitting position. He covered his mouth with a gloved fist, though, when his laughter triggered a small coughing fit
“You didn’t,” he answered, his voice a bit hoarse. “I guess I am homeless. I just hadn’t thought about it that way.”
She caught herself looking at him with a sympathetic tilt to her head and a smile forming beneath her half-mask.
“Do you need help? Is there anyone I can call for you?”
He shook his head and his smile faded some when he met her eyes.
“You’ve already done enough. Don’t waste your energy, there’s nothing more you can do for me.” He stated this like a fact, not an invitation for pity. There was a kind of quiet pride to him that made it hard for her to just let go of the matter. After all, she’d stepped in for his sake once already, now she wanted to see it through.
“A hot meal couldn’t hurt, though, right?” she teased, thinking of the 24-hour convenience store a few blocks over, bearing the hilarious English name, ‘Okay Food.’ Maybe all he needed was a pick-me-up, a small gesture that might make him feel human again after being treated as less than. “Something warm in your stomach will help keep the cold away.”
By the way he looked at her, she knew she’d piqued his interest. She silently urged him to accept. If he didn’t fall victim to cruel people, like those drunks, the winter cold would claim him sure enough.
“Are you offering?” he asked with a hungry shine in his eyes that gratified her immensely.
“Yeah, it’s on me.”
--------------------------
He seemed well enough to walk, at least, which was good. Standing, he was a good deal taller than her, but she didn’t feel threatened by him. The way he kept his face down, hiding behind his hood, spoke to her of self-doubt, perhaps related somehow to his chin scar. It only strengthened her resolve to try and do something for him.
After the altercation with the drunk gopnik jerks, Anna was feeling wired, and maybe even a little brave. She wasn’t the kind of person who played the hero usually, but it had worked out this time and she couldn’t help but be a bit proud of herself. He was lucky she’d been there, and she was lucky she hadn’t gotten hurt, or worse.
He awkwardly followed her through the turnstiles and back up to the street. The police were nowhere to be seen. She tried not to think too much about what would have happened to her if the train hadn’t arrived when it did.
They walked a block in silence from streetlamp to streetlamp before Anna said anything. She didn’t really like silences. When people talked, she got a better sense of them. So far, all she knew about him was he was alone, homeless, and perhaps emotionally in a bad place.
“I’m Anna,” she said, hoping to spur conversation.
After some hesitation, he replied.
“Jared. Nomak,” he said with an accent she’d missed before. “People call me Nomak.”
“Hi, Nomak... I think I saw you earlier, when you walked by the clinic. You wanted to donate blood, didn’t you?” she asked, trying not to stare at his pallor when he peered at her around the edge of his hood.
He shrugged and shook his head.
“No, not for me.”
His choice of wording tripped her up a little, and she immediately tried to interpret what he might have intended to say as a nonnative English speaker.
“Are you sick?” she asked, gently, knowing how strange it must have sounded coming from someone wearing a skull balaclava. He didn’t seem the least bit bothered by her appearance, though.
“Kind of,” he answered without looking at her.
A pang of sympathy pulled at her heart. An addict, probably.
“You clean?” she asked without mincing words, and to his blank look, clarified, “are you using? Drugs?”
She was used to asking this of strangers coming in to donate, back before the intake had dropped to next to zero. She found that when asked directly, most people would answer honestly.
His eyes were weirdly bright in the chilly indirect lighting of the traffic lights and closed storefronts they passed.
“No. Not drugs. Nothing like that.”
She wasn’t sure she believed him, but it wasn’t her place to judge. All she was going to do was buy him a hot dog and maybe a hot coffee. She told herself that whatever he did after that was not up to her, no matter how badly she wanted to help.
When he insisted on staying outside of the little shop on the sidewalk, just out of the garish light streaming through barred windows, she thought it was a little odd. She supposed she could understand the shame and self-consciousness that sometimes came with being in a bad place and didn’t press it.
The convenience store was one she visited occasionally because it also sold the brand of clove cigarettes she liked. She bought two coffees, a hotdog, and shelled out a little extra for a pack of Djarum blacks from the stocky, tattooed woman behind the counter. The entire store was rigged under the watchful eyes of multiple security cameras, and the clerk watched Anna’s half-covered face with some wariness as she rang everything up. Once paid for, though, the clerk immediately disregarded Anna and went back to her magazine.
Anna nudged the door open with her coat-padded hip, balancing an extra-large regular coffee in the crook of her arm for him, and a small decaf in her hand for herself. She held a hotdog in her other hand, close to her so the night wouldn’t steal its warmth too fast.
Outside, a frigid wind had picked up. Biting cold cut through her lined skinny jeans like shards of glass, and sent trash tumbling along the sidewalk ahead of it. The man hadn’t left. Nomak stood there, watching her from the shaded wall beside an empty store front. His hands were shoved deep into the pockets of his brown fur jacket. It looked like reindeer hide. Not bad, perhaps a lucky find at a thrift store, but still not the warmest of materials when the nights dropped well below freezing.
“Hold this,” she said, pushing the food at him without waiting for him to accept. He turned away and coughed again into a closed fist before accepting it with the other hand. It sounded bad, maybe bronchitis. Or pneumonia.
She knew that either of those illnesses, while easily treatable with the right help, could be deadly this time of year, especially for people with nowhere warm to go.
She grabbed his coffee from the crook of her arm and handed it to him.
This, he accepted more readily, curling around its warmth with plain appreciation.
“Eat,” she said, nodding to him. He looked at the hotdog, and then her.
“Why are you helping me?” he asked with his soft, gritty voice.
“Because, sorry, you just seem like you could use it,” she said, tugging her balaclava down despite the cold. She set her coffee on top of an empty newspaper box and lit a fresh cigarette.
She pretended not to notice when his eyes dropped to her uncovered mouth, instead choosing to be wholly absorbed in enjoying her burnt sludge coffee. She had to be honest, she was having trouble keeping her own eyes off the man.
Even with his sickly pallor, he was good-looking with a well-defined bone structure, all sharp cheekbones and straight angles. He might have even stood out in a crowd back in the states, given the proper wardrobe. Of course, half the people in this country were staggeringly attractive, something they themselves seemed to take for granted.
“You live around here?” he asked, looking down at his hotdog as if he wasn’t sure what to do with it. The question made her feel uncomfortable. But from what she could tell, he was more nervous about her than the other way around.
“No,” she answered truthfully, thinking again about calling a taxi. She didn’t get paid until Friday, and most of that meager amount was already spoken for in the form of bills and rent. “I usually take the train, but, well… I didn’t want to share a ride with those jerks.”
He nodded, downcast face now hidden in shadow.
“That wasn’t smart, standing up to them. You don’t know what they were saying about you. They were animals.”
A rat scurried by in the gutter and Anna kept her eyes on it as it skittered into a steaming storm drain. It briefly distracted her from the sick curl in her stomach. It was a familiar feeling to women and those otherwise used to being preyed upon.
“I understood enough.”
She tugged the mask back over her mouth, feeling safer behind it. Only then did she notice that the food she’d given him was gone. He must have devoured it when she wasn’t looking.
“You still hungry?” she asked, though her own appetite was long gone, replaced by a general weariness.
“I’ll be fine for a little while,” he said, clutching the oversized paper cup in both hands. “You’ve been very kind. I wish there was a way to repay you.”
She just wanted to get home, feed her cat, and drink something warm wrapped under a thick blanket. But she didn’t want to leave him, literally, out in the cold. She felt a pang of guilt even thinking about it. Here she was longing for her warm apartment when this man had been desperate enough to seek refuge in a subway station.
“Just get yourself taken care of, okay? You don’t owe me anything.”
“At least let me walk you home. It’s the least I could do. Also... I would enjoy your company.”
He dropped his eyes, almost bashfully. Was he flirting with her?
“You’re sweet to ask,” she said chewing it over. It had been neither a ‘yes’ nor a ‘no’. She was tempted to say yes, and, if she had to walk, she couldn’t pretend that she wouldn’t feel a lot better walking with someone else.
“There are worse things than drunks out here at night.” He cleared his throat and shoved his empty hand into his pocket. "Someone kind like you shouldn't go walking alone.”
Anna snorted, a little surprised by his compliment. He offered a hopeful smile.
“Only part of the way. I’ll leave you alone after that.”
Anna was touched by his sincerity and more than a little flustered. He coughed into his hand as he waited for her answer, trying his best to suppress it. She sighed and shivered.
“It’s a bit far, and goes through a couple bad areas,” she warned. As she said it, she decided that she really wouldn’t mind the added security of walking with someone else. He might not have been healthy enough to be a threat, but others wouldn’t necessarily know from looking.
“I’ll be fine,” he said to the ground.
“Will you?” she asked.
“I have somewhere to go.” To her skeptical look, he added, “I promise.”
She chewed on her lip stud, but didn’t say no this time.
When she started walking, he followed a couple steps behind and to her side.
She headed in the direction of home, dumping her cold coffee in the next empty trashcan she saw, but Jared wanted to hold on to his. She led him down side streets and into the older neighborhoods. Along the way, she tried her best to maintain some kind of conversation, though small talk didn’t seem to come easily for him.
“Are you Czech?” she asked as they walked by a laundromat.
He nodded and said ‘yes’ in his language, his voice barely audible over the ambient street sounds. “I come from Greek blood. But I was born here.”
She caught herself studying him, puzzled once more over his strange manner of speaking.
Someone was screaming out their 3rd floor window to a singing drunk below, and she found herself walking a little closer to Nomak, appreciating his imposing, if bowed, stature.
She kept stealing glances at him, but looked away awkwardly when he finally noticed. She was being too obvious, but she couldn’t help it. He seemed like a nice man, or at least a friendly one. It was a welcome change to her mostly solitary life here.
They waited at a crosswalk ahead of a loud group of teenagers blasting hip hop from a boombox straight out of the early 90s. Her companion watched them out of the corner of his eye, Anna noticed, but he seemed unconcerned, which put her at ease. She made sure that it looked like they were together, in case the youths wanted trouble. But when the signal changed and they crossed, the group wandered off elsewhere.
“You are American?” he asked, glancing sideways at her. She accidentally locked eyes with him, startled newly by the way the shadows cut shapes into his skin.
“Yes, but I’ve been living in the city for almost a year.”
“Why? Why would you come here?”
She’d originally planned to part ways with him at a safe distance a few blocks from her apartment, but she was finding it hard to follow through. The way he looked at her, shy but interested, triggered the softie in her. So, she stayed with him and took the shortcut across an empty, overgrown lot.
“I love it here,” she said, tugging down her mask to smile and wipe the snot off her nose. Her breath puffed into the air in front of her, and the frost nipped at the tip of her bare nose.
“Why?” he asked. A cat howled in an alleyway, and a trashcan clattered elsewhere, sounds of a desolate urban .
She realized he was still holding his coffee, and by the sounds of it, it was mostly full.
“You don’t have to keep the coffee if you don’t want it. I won’t be offended,” she said kindly, and moved on without a further thought. “And… I don’t know, it’s hard to say why. Prague is just so… beautiful. Alive.”
He chuckled, hoarse, but made no move to dispose of the drink.
“You’ve been lucky, then, if you can say that. It’ll drain the life out of you eventually. This city always does.”
She was surprised by how well-spoken he was, and couldn’t help but feel a measure of pity for his attitude. Healthwise, he struck her as someone who hadn’t been on the streets for long, but he seemed familiar with the darker side of the city.
They passed by a junk car lot with barbed wire at the top of the chain link fence.
“I have been lucky, but I guess that’s why I want to share it around,” she answered staring down at her boots as she walked. “There’s still some good left in the world, you know. It’s too easy to only see the bad things sometimes.”
She didn’t know anything about his circumstances. But she was starting to think he’d lied when he said he had somewhere else to go.
“You’re kind for helping me, but most wouldn’t. And maybe they’re right not to.” She watched him close himself off again in the curve of his shoulders. A story started to come together in her mind, of a well-off man who’d lost everything. Perhaps the son of immigrants, regarding his comment about Greek blood.
“What's your story?” She asked, daring to be a little nosy if it meant confirming her suspicions.
He walked beside her in an unlit alley between two abandoned office buildings, and she didn't miss the way he was checking out their surroundings, perhaps for threats. Or witnesses, a mild warning edged in, but she pushed it aside. She wanted to trust him, after everything. She wanted him to be good. When they emerged back into the light of the street lamps on the other side, she felt guilty for even suspecting.
“Nothing worth telling.”
“You don’t have any family?” she prompted, unable to stem her curiosity.
“Not anymore,” he answered with a tense jaw. Bad family history, she thought. Or a lot of tragedy. She felt guilty for prying. Just because she’d helped him, it didn’t make her privy to his personal information. She hoped he hadn’t been thinking of this as an interrogation.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said. He gave her a sideways glance.
“I’m not. It’s better this way, if you can believe it.”
She’d ended up walking a lot farther than she originally meant to.
Anna stopped on the corner across the street from the blocky, pre-war apartment building where she lived, chewing on the inside of her lip piercing. Whatever his story, she didn’t want to pry if he was reluctant to share. She fingered the cellphone in her right pocket, but pulled out her pack of cigs instead.
“Look… I might be an idiot here,” she started, tearing off the plastic strip around the outside, “and I don’t know anything about you, sure. But… you seem like, at least, I hope you’re not, one of the bad ones. If you are, well, then, I don’t know… but, if you’re not, and I can help you, then everyone wins.”
Her face burned hot in the icy air, and she was glad for the distraction of her stick. She hadn't even wanted it, it was just a task to occupy her hands when she had the anxious tendency to fidget.
“What are you getting at?” he asked. Did she see a hint of a smirk on his face? He looked good when he smiled, even with that scar.
Anna searched him for anything she might have missed, some minor detail that would give away a hidden, dangerous disposition. She sucked a burning, floral lungful of clove smoke before blowing it out in a rush.
“I don’t want to have to worry about you, man,” she answered. “Call me a bleeding heart, but I lose sleep over this kind of thing.”
He stared at her like he didn’t understand English. She groaned to herself, already in disbelief over what she was about to say.
“Okay, look, if you want, I mean, in case your other option doesn’t work out… you are more than welcome, that is, don’t feel obligated…” she was babbling. She took a deep breath to stop it from getting worse. “What I’m saying is, you can stay in my apartment. With me, for tonight. It’s not supposed to be so cold tomorrow. You can try the shelter, then. They might be able to help you find work.”
His expression was unreadable. She thought she saw gratitude or… disbelief. It only made her cheeks burn hotter.
“I can promise you a hot shower and a couch,” she said in an effort to sweeten the offer, glancing across the street. “You can at least get a good night’s sleep.”
He looked down, hiding his face in shadow.
“No. Thank you, but… I shouldn’t. I can’t,” he said. Anna chewed the inside of her cheek until it bled.
“You're sure?” she asked, a bit disappointed, and unable to shake the selfish desire for his company, even if it was platonic and short-lived. “I don't bite.”
He offered a tight smile and shook his head.
“I'm sure.”
A man of few words, she thought with a sigh.
“Okay. Then here,” she said, unwilling to give up just yet. She pulled out the crumpled receipt from ‘Okay Food,’ and started scribbling down her number with the tiny pen she kept on her keychain. “This is my number. Call me if you change your mind.”
Or, if you get clean and want a date, she added silently. She handed the paper to him and he accepted with some hesitation.
“Thank you,” he said. She waved his gratitude away.
With a nod, he made the first move to walk away, perhaps a gentlemanly show of goodwill. He was still holding the coffee cup and the receipt. She watched his figure retreat for a minute before finally seeking refuge from the cold inside her building.
As the rickety antique lift wheezed and creaked its way up five floors, she thought back on everything that had transpired in the last couple of hours. She’d have to tell the old woman living across the hall before she left for work tomorrow. Miss Sofie didn’t get out much anymore, and their afternoon teas were a bright spot in the old Czech grandmother’s day.
Mariuska waddled her way out of the bedroom right around the time Anna was pulling down a can of Happy Cat from the cupboard. The ball of white fluff parked herself next to her empty food bowl and demanded dinner with a dainty ‘mew.’ While Mari gobbled her down her tender vittles with voracious enthusiasm, Anna started the tea, hoping Jared Nomak had found a warm place to sleep tonight.
He’d been a little weird, sure, but so were all the guys she wound up being attracted to. Pretty boys with sad stories were her weakness. Maybe that was why she kept thinking about him. It had been a lifetime since Minneapolis and Vic. A long time since she’d thought about sex. She didn’t want to admit that part of her motivation for packing up her life and going somewhere new was for the distance it put between herself and bad memories.
She didn’t regret it, except when it came to meeting people.
Anna used the apartment's phone line and hooked her clunky old laptop up to the internet to zone out for awhile and catch up on email. She made sure to write her dad a cliff’s notes version of the evening's events while she enjoyed her cup of chamomile.
Occasionally her attention strayed to the cold night outside her bedroom window. She spared a thought for anyone stuck outdoors. Maybe one, in particular, more than others.
At 1:17, she tugged the chain on the small wall-mounted lamp over her head. In the darkness, she settled down under her covers to sleep. Mariuska assumed her spot by Anna’s pillow.
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3:23 AM, Thursday
Anna saw the numbers before she really understood them.
Why was she awake?
She felt for Mari, but the cat’s spot, coated in a permanent layer of white fur, was cold. She didn’t like how empty her bed felt without the overweight purebred taking up space on it.
Street lights streamed in through the gap in the curtains and painted a bright orange seam on the wall by her bedroom door. She lay there half awake for a moment, staring at the unmoving light on the wall, listening to the soft whisper of snow falling against the glass panes. She thanked her fortune for being warm and dry inside when it was bitterly cold outside. It wasn’t the first snow of the season, and it wouldn’t be the last. She just hoped it didn’t turn everything to ice the next day.
She thought of Nomak. She rubbed her eyes and checked her phone. No calls, she would have heard it. She wished she’d thought to ask him if he even had a phone. A pang of regret, and guilt, started to take the place of her sleepiness.
But why was she awake in the first place?
She yawned and tried a change of position. But when she faced the window, the strip of light fell right on her face.
She got out of bed to negotiated with the inadequate curtains for the most desirable light coverage but spared a moment to peek out at the freshly falling snow.
She grew up in a city that could become bitterly cold in winter, so Prague wasn’t that far outside of her realm of experience. She’d never quite gotten tired of the way the snow looked, though. How it could make even a run-down neighborhood like this brand new. Ghostly flakes drifted down at an angle, joining the rest of it on the street down below. At that moment, with the yellow-light-stained snow covering the ground, and the absolute silence of it, Anna felt like she was the only one awake in the whole world.
Except there was someone out there. Maybe. She couldn’t see anything except a figure, curled up against a low wall bordering the parking lot across the street. Or, maybe it was a trash bag. It was hard to tell from her window, but an irrational thought gripped her.
That was where she’d said goodnight to Nomak.
Maybe he didn’t have access to a phone. Maybe he’d lost her number, or was scared to impose on her generosity. Or, maybe he was a stalker, crazy enough to wait in the cold outside of her building, even if it meant death.
Or, maybe the only Nomak present was the one in her thoughts. She shook her head, annoyed with her involuntary fixation on him. The thing was still down there, against the wall, and it hadn’t moved. It was probably a trash bag. If it were a person, they would probably already be dead on a night like this. Or well on their way.
She pulled the curtain open a little more but still couldn’t make out any more detail. The way the snow changed recognizable features into something new and different had its downside.
She looked at the clock. 3:41AM. Then she started pulling on some wool socks.
Within ten minutes, Anna was walking out the front door of the apartment building into the frigid night. She was fully dressed in her puffy coat and snow boots, and a folded blanket was tucked under her arm, just in case.
The snowfall was gentle but swift, and within seconds she had acquired a loose coating anywhere it could stick. A dog barked down the street, and distant cars honked, dispelling her fantasy of solitude.
She pulled a regular smoke from her nearly-depleted pack to help settle her nerves and made her way across the street beneath the falling curtain of feathery flakes. It was weirdly silent in the immediate area, and the soft crunch of her boots sinking into the virgin snow seemed loud. She was going to feel pretty stupid when it turned out to be garbage or something like that, but she wouldn’t be able to go back to sleep until she’d confirmed it.
A few meters down the sidewalk, she’d come to a stop before a low pile of black garbage bags, showing partially through the accumulated white fluff. Even up close, she could see how she had mistaken it for a person the way they were placed on top of one another, but it didn’t stop her weary annoyance. She shook the snow off of the blanket in her arms as she finished her smoke.
Her eyes roamed over the empty street, then to her apartment building. She followed the zig-zag of the fire escape to the third floor.
At first, she thought she was seeing a shadow cast by the streetlight stories below. But then it moved.
She forgot her clove cigarette. She could only stare, open-mouthed as the shadow, inconsistent with every other around it, moved up the stairs to the fourth, and then the fifth floor. Too fast.
Her heart started racing.
It stopped in front of her bedroom window.
The hot ember of her neglected cigarette singed her fingers and she dropped it into the snow with a startled hiss. She bent over to pick it up without thinking before she remembered the shadow. When she thought to glance back to her building, whatever she’d seen was gone. If it had ever been there.
Uneasy thoughts scrambled for purchase, but she shunted them off before they could take root. She was past this, the mostly irrational fear of Prague at night, and the sense that the shadows held hidden dangers.
She shivered when some of the accumulated snow on her hood started to melt and trickle through the fabric to her scalp. For once, she found it comforting that her bedroom window was sealed. Either by design, or warped over time, the window was fused to its frame, and she’d never been able to get it open. If there was ever a reason to use the fire escape as intended, she’d probably just burn to death, but she wasn’t actually too worried.
She gave the garbage bags one last lingering look before she returned to the lobby, her mind already on the pillows and down-stuffed comforter waiting for her.
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