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The first she hears of the virus is over a phone call with her babushka in St. Petersburg.
“I couldn’t even go to the store today,” her babushka gripes over speakerphone while Alina dices scallions. “They’re asking everyone to stay home until the city is under control. It’s horrible. A woman on the first floor bit her husband and he was rushed to the hospital. Bit. Anya told me it was so deep that she could see the imprint of the woman’s teeth.”
“Anya exaggerates,” Alina sighs, using the blade of the knife to scoop up the diced pieces and deposit them into a small ramekin. “Did you see the bite mark?”
“No, but I didn’t have to—it’s all over the news, vnuchka.”
Alina hums, but the rest of her babushka’s complaining fades into something like static in her ear. It’s not so much that she doesn’t take her grandmother’s concerns seriously, but it’s always something with the woman—she lives in perpetual fear of the apocalypse, hoarding canned goods and newspapers and batteries like they’re going out of style. She has something of the old Soviet panic in her bones. It would be one thing to scoff at it, but Alina also knows what her babushka’s lived through, so instead she just tries to tune it out.
Besides, as long as her babushka’s still healthy, there’s no cause for concern. The woman hardly leaves her apartment anyway and it’s not like the virus is going to make its way over to the States.
The next time she hears about anything to do with the virus rolling across Eastern and Central Europe, it’s during a quick tête-à-tête with the restaurant manager before her shift. It’s nearing the middle of February, so she comes in around three in the afternoon and starts her usual tasks of helping with the deliveries, putting the wines away, restocking the cellar, and prepping the wines for the evening in accordance with the menu outlined by the head chef.
“By the way, if you want to wear a face mask or anything, I put a box in my office,” her manager says, sort of off-handedly like it just occurred to her.
Alina makes a face behind Zoya’s back. “Why would I need a mask?”
“There’s some kind of virus in Europe and apparently someone coming off a flight from Bucharest was diagnosed. We’re going to stock up on hand sanitizer and soap just in case.” She flaps a hand in the air, already on her way to go talk to the back of house staff. “Do or don’t, your call. Wash your hands before serving anyone though.”
That almost makes her roll her eyes. Actually, it does.
Over family meal, a couple of the servers actually don masks, removing them before digging into the bucatini with pork flank confit and black garlic. It makes Alina second guess herself momentarily, hesitating once dinner is over like she might actually go grab a mask from the back. Then the urge passes and she spends the next few minutes updating the serving staff on the day’s wines.
She can worry when she clocks out. It won’t do for her to get in her head tonight, staring the next ten hours down the barrel.
That being said, there is a moment where she finds herself down in the cellar on her phone before the first customers arrive, scouring the news for any mention of a virus. There are a couple articles here and there, but the tone of most journalists isn’t overly concerned. The sense is that one case is an anomaly; the virus is largely prevalent in Eastern Europe, cropping up first in Moldova before spreading outward.
She decides not to worry about it just yet. Babushka is fine. Her job is fine. Alina’s healthy and employed, if not a bit stressed and overworked and hanging on by a thread at this point (she goes to the bathroom twice to redo her bun, ensuring that her hair is perfectly smooth and tight to her scalp), and she’s not going to worry about things that are frankly out of her control. Public health officials can have this one; she has guests to serve.
Her entire evening is consumed with flitting from table to table, making and taking wine orders, and shuttling bottles and by-the-glass pours to each guest. Her vocabulary during her shift is always region-specific, remarks on subtleties and nuances, years and grapes and microclimates. Alina’s voice almost shifts in her role as a sommelier, affected, but also inviting, deeper, trying to infuse a more soothing resonance into her words like the notes of a wine bubbling up as it blossoms on a tongue.
She itches throughout the first hour or so of service, her uniform irritating her skin. Scratchier than usual. She makes a quick complaint to Genya in passing, her hostess friend similarly troubled.
“I used a new detergent this week,” Genya groans, scratching over the sleeve of her crisp, ironed white shirt. “I’m never switching products before a shift again, I keep having to duck into the kitchen to pull up my sleeves.”
“Well, I didn’t, so…I don’t know, maybe I’m allergic to garlic or something now. That would be just perfect.”
It’s frustrating. The first hour—the five to six, early reservations for dinner goers looking forward to ballets and theater performances—passes by in a dreamy fugue, sweet like candied strips of grapefruit tossed in sugar and citric acid. In the second hour, everything is sharp and distinct—every scent and flavour and even touch. Being so overwhelmed impedes her job performance on top of just being irritating; she stumbles over describing a particular Pinot Noir from Burgundy because the woman at the table smells just a bit too pungent, like star anise and cloves.
One of the kitchen staff leaves early, complaining of a severe headache. It makes a couple of them grumble, but no one’s really with it enough to make a fuss.
When the eight o’clock reservations arrive, Alina’s head snaps up when something grabs her attention. It’s difficult to say what it is at first; her head pounds worse than ever and her skin’s still tight, itchy, an indescribable ache settling over her.
She kneels behind the bar to put a wet cloth to her eyes. The skin behind her eyelids pulses dim reds and oranges, light spirals in uniform rotation, a bruise that darkens and fades, and then someone calls her name.
“Alina—the customers at table six are ready for you.”
Her vision is blurry and undefined when the cloth is taken off; she blinks several times until Genya materializes in front of her, hair red flames that lick against the darkness. Dark bruises underscore her eyes. The restaurant is always dimly lit to cultivate a sense of exclusivity, of reticence to explain oneself, but Alina knows somehow that those aren’t just pronounced shadows. Genya looks about as off-kilter as she feels.
“You look wretched,” Alina says bluntly.
Her coworker scowls, a million degrees chillier than a couple hours previous. “You don’t look much better. Very tuberculosis chic. Go serve the customers before you pass out.”
The table she’s pointed towards is located in a private corner of the restaurant, obscured by one of the several towering pillars that separate each table along the wall. Alina sees the back of a man, suit jacket layered over broad shoulders. An itch at her neck has her scratch furiously until Genya hisses at her; she has to nearly hold down her hand to keep from scratching, mildly but fleetingly concerned at the protuberance in her neck. Perhaps a bite or a clogged pore.
Vastly more concerning is the ache between her legs. Her legs shake when she walks to the table, acutely aware of the wet gusset of her panties that presses close to her mound whenever she shifts her legs.
On her way over, she passes coquettish women in slip dresses, hair looped and pinned; men like Cupid’s arrows, staring down an endless array of possibilities visible only to them. Alina walks past rows of red velvet loveseats and cloth-lined tables, barely hanging on to a thought. What strange times they’re living in—viruses crossing large swaths of the planet, economies and cultures melding and absorbing into one another.
When she steps up to the table, her eyes alight on the woman facing her. Alina’s face slips mechanically into a gentle smile and she looks to the man sitting opposite his date.
There is something like becoming aware, for the first time, of a visceral, intangible fear. It happens to Alina when the man at the table looks up at her and it is with black, unfathomable eyes. Even the generous candlelight does not put a light behind them. A deep sense of danger awakens in her, an instinct she’s never had before but now that it’s awoken, there’s no way to deny it. The shimmering veil of reality suddenly feels stripped away, not unlike stepping out of a cave for the first time.
The woman seated across from him is almost an indistinct thing, like a sunglint or a solar flare seen directly on. When Alina pulls her eyes off the man, she can see her finally, an elegant, short-haired woman—small mouth, sharp brows, soft, feminine features—and she means her no ill will, no disrespect, but she cannot see her. She sees through her. Her gaze is pulled back to the man, tugged back on a wire even as she might resist.
“Evening,” she manages to say, lips pulled into a wide, but neutral smile, nothing behind her eyes. It’s a miracle she manages even that. “I hope you’re both having a pleasant night so far.”
Only the woman answers her, engendering nothing but warmth from Alina; the man leaves her cold, however, his gaze still inscrutable. Their server had only just taken their order, so of course their entrée and appetizers wouldn’t be ready for another little while, but Alina listens as the woman—Luda, she introduces herself—rattles off what they’ve ordered: grilled octopus with chickpeas, chorizo, and salsa verde to start, and the duck magret with spelt, aprium, and caulinis for herself. For her date, the same starter but with the caramelle with guinea fowl confit to follow.
Alina ponders the selection for but a moment before she makes a couple recommendations. “The octopus really favors a crisp red—a Baga or a Beaujolais typically. I would similarly tend towards a red wine from France, particularly Bordeaux or Burgundy. If you’re looking at any of the single pours or any particular bottle—”
“Price isn’t a consideration.” The first words he’s spoken since Alina approached their table and they come sharp, carrying a resonance she could only aspire to infuse in her voice.
She crinkles her eyes into the smile, hoping that makes it seem more genuine. “Of course, understood. In that case, my personal recommendation would be for you two to split a 2009 Chateau Langoa-Barton from Saint-Julien, which has a particular cedar quality to it—a lot of lively acidity, fine grained tannins, and all around a very balanced wine. The earthen undertones should complement the char on the octopus and the fattier duck.”
“You don’t think a Cabernet Franc would pair better with guinea fowl?”
The question is tossed her way with a lightness to it, a quick catch-and-play. “The guinea fowl is a bit gamier than duck, so it would do well with either. The Langoa-Barton has a particularly svelte finish and a gorgeous bouquet of blackberry, bilberry, and cedar, which is why it would do nicely with either meat.”
“Oh, I think that sounds lovely,” Luda gushes, reaching a hand across the table to thread her fingers through her date’s. There’s an odd twinge in Alina’s belly, but she ignores it, focusing steadfastly on Luda’s smile. “Don’t you think, Aleksander?”
His smile is tight. “If that’s your professional opinion—” his eyes glance down at the nametag gracing her breast before flicking back up, “—Alina.”
He says her name like a promise.
When Alina retreats to the cellar, she grabs the Langoa-Barton and pauses for a moment. Swallows.
Alina briefly entertains the thought of not returning with the wine, maybe just skipping out on tonight’s service altogether. Her stomach grumbles like she hasn’t eaten a meal in weeks though, so she sneaks into the back for just long enough to scoop a bite out of the sendbacks lingering off to the side. Atypical for her. The sous chef catches her mid-bite and throws her a sympathetic look. With the momentary respite, Alina sees that several of the cooks look similarly out of sorts, disheveled and weary.
“If you’re coming down with something, better go grab a mask,” one of the cooks that still looks fine advises her.
She stares at him when he passes her by with a hot skillet, silent. She thinks he must have said something, but his words disintegrate into animal sounds. Yapping, snapping teeth. When she steps back out onto the floor, her little cart in tow, the pressure around the base of her neck is intense, discomfort radiating in waves down her back.
Get through service, just get through service. The cart rattles as she pushes it, catching onto the end of a carpet and making her stumble. She catches herself against a customer’s table and feels her heart ice over. The blonde woman sitting at her table gives her a disgruntled look and Alina can only apologize, wheeling the cart a little quicker towards Luda and Aleksander’s table.
He’s looking over his shoulder at her as she approaches, gaze unwavering. He doesn’t blink.
Usually opening a bottle of wine in front of her clients is seamless, a quick screw and uncork done with a light flourish, something to stay imprinted in their minds throughout their meal. With the weight of the man’s eyes on her, Alina barely manages not to let the bottle slip through her fingers. Perspiration out of control; she feels a bead of sweat build and trickle down the back of her neck and prays silently that it won’t be noticed.
When she pours the glass into the decanter, she lightly spins it in order to coat the glass innards, removing as much as possible any lingering extraneous tasting notes. The first glass is always discarded. The rest of the bottle spills into the decanter from the opposite side to give a bit more aeration.
Aleksander hands her his glass rather than letting her take it directly from the table. It would make her frown, but instead she takes the proffered glass and pours enough for him to swirl and smell, all the while holding her gaze. It feels intimate. Alina’s eyes dart to his date, who doesn’t seem to notice. Her own head throbs.
“Perfect,” he pronounces. Unblinking.
A chair scratches across the floor a few tables away, breaking her from his gaze. Alina watches as a guest sprints out of the restaurant, wrenching the tie away from his neck like it’s choking him. One of her colleagues follows him out, a concerned shout falling from his lips and then the door slams shut.
“Let me know if you need anything else from me,” Alina says, already backing away, drawing the cart along with her. Aleksander’s eyes follow her until the pillar makes it impossible for him to do so.
She hopes they never need her again.
Even the feeling of her fingernails is almost too much and her teeth hurt like she needs to brush them. Looking out into the restaurant is somewhat like bobbing in the middle of the ocean, briefly surfacing before being submerged again; crouching behind the bar again, Alina holds a chilled bottle of Riesling from Kremstal against her forehead. It does no good.
The dining room is steadily emptying out, dinners cut short and staff lethargic on their feet. In the back of her mind, Alina can hardly believe how quickly it all set in—clearly the government must have missed a case, someone must have gotten off a flight from Europe yesterday or the day before. Some reason that it’s passing from person to person in the restaurant seemingly at once. Alina wonders how long it’s lain dormant in her.
She stumbles down the hall, portraits glowing with an unearthly light. If she stares too long, they seem to pulse with a living aura. There’s a staff washroom past the kitchen, back where the manager’s office is located, but Alina pushes open the door to the customer’s washroom, almost tripping over her heels as she stumbles over to the sink.
The bathroom mirror shimmers with her reflection when she steps in front of it. Her knees wobble, hands sweaty where they grip the edge of the marble trough sink. Sophstone. They recently had the bathroom renovated, so she stares up at the mirror facing her, illuminated from the back, and stares at the baby hairs matted against her skin now. Her breath comes heavy.
Even the soap carries a scent that radiates up her nose, sterile and clean. Pine needles in a snow-laden forest. Icicles that drip from the roof of a house. Her mind slips in and out of images, only grasping onto reality when she bites her lip and the flicker of pain brings her back to the sink dripping water into the slanted bowl.
The center of the world de-centering itself. Her hands shake where they hold the sink.
She doesn’t look up when the door opens at first, anticipating that someone looking to use the restroom might walk in at some point. It’s only when she hears the click of the lock that her head snaps up, wincing at how heavy her head feels until she sees him loitering by the door. Hands in his dress pant pockets.
There’s a moment before terror sinks in where they hold eye contact in the mirror. The door frames Aleksander like it was built to sit around his shoulders and it lets her understand him for a moment as a person before he’s a threat. He looks similarly unhinged, the way Alina has been feeling all night, there’s something jutting up from under his skin and puppeteering him—if Alina knew him better, she would think she could see a spark of confusion in his eyes, but it blinks out of existence before she’s able to be certain.
The terror follows when he steps towards her, hands out of his pockets when he advances so she can see the faint tremor there. Alina whirls around, stumbling farther into the bathroom and into one of the stalls, blocked by his hand when she tries to slam the door shut. It’s a fight she never even comes close to winning, her yelp abruptly cut off by a hand that clamps over her mouth the second he gets the door open.
The look in his eyes is uncivilized, menacing. It’s hunger burned down to its most basic element. She pants in panic-quick breaths behind his palm, eyes wild when they look up at him.
“Need you to—” he swallows, breath ragged when he inhales, “—don’t know. What did you do to me?”
Alina tries to protest, but her words are muffled behind his palm and she can only shriek when he wrenches her out of the bathroom stall and pulls her back in front of the sink. Her frightened eyes stare back at her in the mirror, body small and dwarfed by Aleksander’s form behind her, even the hand on her mouth easily encasing the lower half of her face.
“What did you fucking do?” he repeats, giving her a little shake. “It’s so…’s so hot.”
She wants to plead with him, wants to say something, anything, like, Sir, it’s just a virus going around, I didn’t do anything, but his hand still covers her face and his eyes are dark and heady. Manic. A frenetic energy seems to emanate from him and she swears his scent spikes, thickening like sap dripping down the rough side of a tree, bergamot, acid rain, the lingering notes of a candle snuffed out in its final moments.
“I can’t do anything except—” he drags his tongue up the side of her face, making her eyes widen, “—fuck, fuck, no—stop fucking whining—I’ll be able to stop if you just calm the fuck down—”
He doesn’t stop.
He rends her shirt down the middle, buttons popping and scattering across the tiled floor. The nametag clatters somewhere on the floor. Her struggle inadvertently helps him, pushes her skirt up around her hips until Aleksander gets a good handle on it and pulls it up the rest of the way. Tights are no issue. They disintegrate in his hand when he tears them off her legs, tossing the scraps to the side. He indulges himself when she’s just in her underwear though, takes his time running his fingers over where her wetness has saturated the middle.
“Knew I smelt something,” he breathes, a little laugh on his tongue. “Pussy so close to my face. It’s not me—not me—not me—it’s you, it has to be you, there’s no other reason—”
Alina never realized that she was only ever one day away from total annihilation.
When his cock slides between her labia, so slick that he misses her opening several times before he makes a concentrated effort to guide himself into her, it’s the most significant thing in the world. Her whole universe narrows down to the way he splits her open. A litany of sounds pour out of her mouth, each one incomprehensible, reverent, broken like light through a prism.
The force of his hips snapping forward drives her hips into the edge of the sink; she knows she’ll have a livid bruise across her pelvic bone tomorrow morning, a groove dug deep into her skin from the sharp jut of the ledge. Her breasts bounce with every thrust, perky, fleshy jounces that draw his big hands up to them.
His hand over her mouth never wavers. Every time his fingers dig in, she feels her jaw click and there’s a little, scared part of her that thinks Aleksander is going to really hurt her. It makes her whimper behind his hand, eyes watering.
“I can’t—who the fuck even are you?” He sounds torn, ruined, throat scorched to the ends of the Earth, but he pounds into her tightness like it’s the only place he wants to be. “Making me fuck you while my date’s still sitting at the table. You did this— you fucking did this.”
He’s like a dog with a bone and she’s the gnawed, marrow-sucked bone. Strung up, hung out to dry. Wetness loud in her ears, slicker than she’s ever been for a fuck, and it distantly rings as something wrong, something viscerally wrong with her body.
“Cunt’s so wet,” Aleksander groans, ducking his head into her neck. “Dripping. Hurts. Fuck, fuck, it’s not fucking fair.”
It’s not fair for her either, but it’s not her hand over her mouth. It’s not her wedging a thick cock between some girl’s thighs and pushing it in all brutishly, pounding into her pussy until it’s sore and used. He even whispers that he’s going to come in, won’t even give her the decency of coming on her back or on the floor.
His teeth graze the skin there, her shirt torn open so wide that he doesn’t even have to nudge the fabric out of the way. The blunt glide of his teeth over her shoulder makes her flinch, suddenly frantic, desperate to get away. Every instinct in her is saying, Move, go, now, get him off. Her nails rip at the skin of his hand, trying to tear it off her mouth with all her might, but he only lets go long enough to give her cheek a little smack before she can even suck in the air to scream. His hand clamps down again.
“Don’t make me hurt you, don’t, don’t—I’m trying,” he pants in her ear. “I can’t be gentle if you struggle—I’m sor—” He cuts himself off before he can say the word. Alina doesn’t think he means it anyway.
The air is so hot it’s near suffocating. Her whole back is slick with sweat, the white shirt she dons—once crisp, ironed to perfection—is now saturated with it, sticking to her back and rumpled beyond fixing. There’s a commotion coming from outside the bathroom—someone bangs on the door, forceful like there’s something decidedly wrong—but Aleksander ignores it. Alina is beyond it.
At one point she blinks and when her eyes reopen, she’s stretched across the sink. Brought down to her elbows. Big, menacing thing behind her driving into her again and again, and Alina is passed words. The living creature rising out of her speaks through her mouth, mumbles out, “Do it, do it, do it, do it.”
Voiced plosives. A tear down the middle of her soul, pieced again around the man locked into her now. The fog falls just long enough for Alina to realize that Aleksander can’t move anymore, that his hips stop abruptly when he tries to pull back.
“What is that?” she whispers fearfully. Aleksander grunts, doesn’t know either. She can feel it in the pit of her, a pressure blooming from the inside out and an accompanying pain. It hurts when he tries to move, makes her grunt and gurgle.
“‘S, ahh, it’s—ahh—” in the mirror, she can see him struggle for words, eyes wild.
Words evaporate into thin air. A big hand centered on her belly makes her tremble. Someone hammers on the door, desperate to get in, and the voice outside is loud, aggressive, but distinctly incoherent. Whatever’s going on out there, maybe she’s safer in here.
“Wha’s—” She squints into the mirror, noticing something on her shoulder, the tender part that curves up into her neck, “what’s that?”
His hand sweeps her hair back, eyes settling on the raised patch of flesh as well. He almost drools on it, white teeth glinting in the mirror and his eyes flick back up to hers for just a second before she knows what he’s going to do. The certainty of it bleeds dark blood. Aleksander laves his tongue over his bottom lip and leans in, sets his teeth into the skin and snarls into it.
She’s emptied out into the world when his teeth clamp down. When they break the skin. The door rattles on its hinges and Alina is not who she was even an hour ago, eyes staring unblinkingly at the mirror.
It’s only later, when she’s swaddled in his suit jacket and carried out the front door, the restaurant long since emptied out, tables upturned and chairs strewn across the carpeted floor, that she comes back to herself. Like an eon passes. Days later when she awakens, sequestered away in his bedroom with the blackout curtains drawn and Aleksander at her back, huffing down her neck, like she’s been run over by a truck. Only when she sees herself, eyes red, hair in a disarray, neck a bloodied, bruised, scarred—she looks in the bathroom mirror and hiccups at the sight, the confusion and horror passing over her like a ghost— mess, that she learns.
Aleksander turns the television on for them to watch when the fever passes. Even he seems rattled, face ashen and taut. Alina wonders what date this was for him and Luda, maybe if it was an anniversary; she wonders if there’s a drawer filled with her things somewhere in his apartment. She doesn’t root around to find out.
The city feels like the desiccated remains of the one she fell in love with when she moved here all those years ago. Sirens blare perpetually as ambulances and firetrucks race by at all hours of the day, belting against the apartment wall. Until that stops too. Until everyone in the city, it seems, is infected. On the news, the infected toll rises, the city emptying out when unaffected survivors pack their few belongings into rental cars and leave before the sickness sets in.
She calls her babushka that same day, hand trembling as the phone rings. Only when her babushka answers does Alina relax, letting out a breath that almost has her keel over.
“Vnuchka, you don’t worry about me—I’m just fine. I hope you’ve been staying home; you should take some time off work.”
Alina bites her lip. Her gaze flips over to Aleksander, watching the way he stares at her with lizard-cold eyes. Tracking her every move.
“Yeah, yeah, I will,” she whispers. “I promise.”