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The first time Sofia lays eyes on Katya Goncharova, she thinks: This girl is running from something.
It is past closing hours in the salon, so the groups that are left are the ones who are in the business. Goncharov's business. Sofia's new boss. She crosses the floor slowly, taking it in: the clinks of the glasses, the shuffling of poker tiles, the cigarette smoke ringing the tables like halos. Someone is still manning the record player; Vera Lynn croons in English about a war that's long won.
When Sofia arrives, Goncharov looks up from his cards. His features are hawklike in the low amber light; his eyes are dark, dangerous pools.
He takes his cigar out of his mouth for long enough to say, “This is my new driver.”
“Sofia,” says Sofia, and takes a seat without waiting for one to be offered.
The announcement causes the stir that she expected it would. Just about every man at the table forgets what hand they're holding. There are other women here, yes, but the men outnumber them three to one, and all of them are on a man’s arm. Husband, boyfriend, fiancé. It's almost funny - how in this sea of ball gowns and silk gloves and mink, she is the one drawing these eyes, in her nondescript dark slacks. Sometimes, Sofia misses Paris. The parts of Paris she frequented, where a woman could waltz naked through the streets and nobody would bat an eyelash.
“How modern,” says an amused voice, and Sofia’s eyes struggle through the smoke to find its owner.
Ahh, she thinks. So this is the wife. Sofia did her research, and the reports didn't lie. Katya Goncharova is as beautiful as they said she would be. She's a Marilyn: clear blue eyes, blonde hair swept perfectly into a high 'do. She sits at Goncharov's right hand but she doesn't cling; she sits tall and proud, her shoulders and neck swanlike in their elegance. Despite the hazy light, there is an occasional flash from her earlobes: the most beautiful pair of diamonds that Sofia has ever seen. And that's something, considering she once knew a girl who had a habit of greeting her wearing nothing but hers.
Katya Michailov. American mother. Unknown father. Russian name. Rumours of a brother, but no sisters. Married to an Italian mafia boss at the tender age of twenty, which puts her at twenty-five now. The Queen of Cups in all her youth and glory.
And then she thinks: This girl is running from something. Because it takes one to know one, and there's something in the way Katya Goncharova holds herself, like the salon is a chess board, that Sofia recognises very well.
"I can see you're the middle of play," she says. "Waiter, please get me a whiskey. I will join the next round."
The night pours itself out slowly. Sofia wins the next round, to establish that she is not to be fucked with. Then she loses a few, because she doesn’t want to make enemies that quickly. She joins the conversation unobtrusively. She lets her presence sink into the room.
"Driver" means a number of things, in this business. In the plainest sense, yes, Sofia will be driving Goncharov around. Sofia is a good driver. She's got a steady hand and she doesn't flinch easy. But Sofia will also be able to offer Goncharov other services. Perhaps once she has driven him to a location, she will get out of the car with him. Perhaps the person he is meeting will not be expecting a short, dark-haired women to pull a pistol out of her pocket and shoot him neatly between the eyes.
When the night has almost drained away, and the table is mostly empty, and Sofia allows herself to meets Katya's eye again. She has felt the golden girl looking at her several times throughout the night, but has kept her waiting.
"You smoke?" says Katya, offering a cigarette across the table.
"Only other people's," says Sofia, and swiftly takes it when she sees Katya prepare to snatch it back.
A slow smile spreads across the golden girl's face. "I can tell you're going to make this place more interesting."
"On the contrary," says Sofia. "I plan on putting my head down and doing my job. I'm very attentive."
Oh, Katya holds her gaze so confidently. Often, the first time they encounter a woman like Sofia, even the girls who are the most flirtatious around men start to fumble and blush. But Sofia is actually having a harder time with Katya; the flashing of the diamonds is distracting, the way they wink at her in the dark.
She wonders if Katya Goncharova has ever kissed a woman.
She wonders what Katya Goncharova is hiding from. At any rate, she's doing it in plain sight. Sofia is the kind of girl who can lurk on the edges; she can melt into the shadows, spend months there, refashion herself into something new. But a girl like Katya? No, there is nowhere that she could hide, in a world like this. She is the centerpiece. The mafioso’s perfect wife.
“Have you had this kind of job before?” Katya Goncharova leans in a little.
Sofia lets her eyes trace the contours of her skin. “I’ve had plenty of jobs before, yes.”
“And what went so terribly wrong with them that you ended up here?”
“Oh, nothing. I just heard that you have such beautiful views in this part of the world. I couldn’t resist.”
Katya eyes her easily for another few moments, the smirk light and amused, before shaking her head. “Well, you certainly know how to play poker. You made a killing tonight. If you can do the same for my husband’s pockets, I think you’ll fit right in.”
My husband. The flirtation comes to its official close.
"I'll collect my winnings tomorrow," says Sofia, tipping the waiter and rising from her seat. “Goodnight, ma’am.” She is satisfied with how the night has gone, and more satisfied about the eyes that she feels following her as she heads into the night.
It takes six months for Sofia to feel like she is secure there. They give her an apartment above a launderette (she makes a joke about the phrase "money laundering" usually not being so literal) run by an elderly woman who seems to think she is a student. She has running water and privacy. The boss' boys take a while to warm up to her, but by the third time she's pulled them out of a scrape, the ones who've accepted her have done so, and the others have at least learned that if they fuck with her, they’ll have Goncharov to answer to. On Tuesdays, she buys herself flowers, and she puts them on her windowsill.
So when one of the boys says “Isn’t it time you got a husband?”, it isn't the insult that makes her stomach twist. It's the fact that half of them laugh, and Goncharov doesn't speak up to defend her. No one does.
Sofia excuses herself as soon as she is able to do so without looking weak.
She is at Goncharov's place. This house once belonged to the nobility, who probably did almost exactly the same as what they did, except got their portraits painted for it, and their names written in the history books. The ceilings are high and airy. Sofia lets her knuckles go white against the sink.
True, she's coasted along so far. But the truth is that Sofia turned thirty-one last year. In ten years, she may no longer be able to flirt her way into an establishment. In twenty, her eyesight may start to fail her, and she won't have the same upper body strength as the men, no matter how many weights she lifts in her room at night. She's keenly aware that past a certain age, the women who stay in this business remain in the capacity of wives and mothers.
It takes her longer than it should to realise that she's not alone in the kitchen.
“That was cruel, what Mateo said back there.”
Sofia braces herself. Holds her head high like she's preparing to take a punch. "Nothing they weren't all thinking."
Katya runs her hand along the counter. Then she turns around and presses the small of her back against the counter. She is a picture today: curls, blush, flowing blue dress.
“Andrey is a bachelor," she says simply. She doesn't need to elaborate on her meaning. It's been six months. They know each other.
“Andrey is in love with your husband.”
Katya waves a hand. “Yes, and me too. But would that be such a disappointment for you?”
“No,” Sofia admits. “It wouldn’t.” She tried men once. Like beer and French cheese, they weren’t to her taste.
“It’s not a terrible way to live,” says Katya, her voice softening a little. “You could carry on as you please, in your own rooms. That’s nobody’s business.”
“Is that what you do?”
Katya blinks, and Sofia sees genuine surprise in those American-blue eyes.
“Oh – no. No, that’s not us.”
So Katya Goncharova is faithful to her husband. Loves him, even. Yes, she can hear that in the “us”. Sofia tries to quash her disappointment. There was no evidence otherwise. No girls going in and out who weren’t clearly connected to one of Goncharov’s men. No rumours of an affair of any kind, with the other men.
And yet… Sofia would be lying if she hadn’t thought about it, ever since that first meeting in the bar. Katya, with her hair down. Her gown unbuttoned.
Even the fantasies, though, feel a little distant. Desiring Katya feels a little like desiring... a marble statue. One of those Greek goddesses, she thinks, that they put in museums. She is too beautiful, too grand. Too coveted. When Sofia thinks of sex, she thinks of the girls she had in Paris. Backrooms and bathrooms and basement apartments. Creased makeup; skirts hiked up around their knees; the shudder when she came, the glorious awareness that she was alive.
“Give it some thought,” says Katya. “And I’ll set you and Andrey up for dinner, maybe.”
She turns to leave.
Sofia doesn't know what possesses her to say it. Just that she does, before her good sense and reason can stop her.
“Ma’am,” Sofia calls. “I live above the launderette on the west side of the city. Not far from the factory. Do you know it?"
A small crease appears in Katya's brow. "I do."
“There’s... there's a payphone on the bottom floor of my building. It’s not connected to the mains. In case you ever need to make a call.” A call that you don't want your husband to know about.
For a moment, pure shock crosses Katya’s face. She smothers it quickly, but Sofia saw. Sofia knows she was right. Katya Goncharova is hiding something, and Sofia, instead of turning her suspicions over to Katya's husband, her employer, has just offered her an alliance instead.
“Thank you,” says Katya, when she breaks the silence. Like Sofia has just offered her a cup of coffee. “Now tell me, Sofia. Why did you come to work for my husband?”
It has begun to rain outside; Sofia hears the distant patter against the brickwork.
“He had use for my skills. He was willing to take a chance on me, when not many would.”
“That’s not what I asked,” says Katya. “I didn’t ask why he hired you. I asked why you came here.”
It is Sofia’s turn to pause. Her tongue flits out across her lips, and Katya's eyes catch the motion. Did Sofia wear lipstick today? Yes, dark lipstick. She doesn't wear as much makeup as some women, but she knows what the shaping of her cupid’s bow does for her face. Suddenly, Katya does not seem like such an impenetrable statue after all. There is something passionate in her. Her voice has never taken on that tone before: borderline demanding. Sofia thinks, entirely inappropriately, that she'd like to hear Katya demand some other things of her.
Neither of them have moved, but the space between them seems to ripple and change.
“I ran out of favors,” Sofia says truthfully.
“And in the place that you were before. Did you have someone that you loved?”
“I had many people that I was fond of.”
“Again. That’s not what I asked.”
Sofia says nothing. Her ears suddenly feel hot. She is older than this woman, but all at once, she feels like a child beside her. There’s something quietly humiliating about it, admitting that she has never been in love, standing in the kitchen of a married woman who has - who is. And who almost certainly knows that Sofia desires her. That, were she not the wife of her boss, Sofia would offer to take her out of her mansion and back to her one-bedroom apartment. And when they were seated side-by-side on the couch, Sofia would offer to show her how a woman can make another woman feel good.
The rain outside picks up into a roar.
And yet…
Five years, Sofia thinks. Five years of marriage and no children.
“Be careful, Sofia.” And for once, Sofia does not watch her go.
Four days later, she meets Andrey for dinner. He pays.
You could do worse, the ghost of Sofia's grandmother whispers into her ear, and she knows the old witch is right. He's handsome, he has an income. He truly seems to be in love with both Goncharovs at the same time, which means won’t want anything from her, and it gives him a morose aspect that makes it hard not to sympathise with him, at least a little. He's not violent - or, at least, not violent out of emotion. The violence they enact as part of their jobs is just that: a job. Violence of intent, not jealousy or anger.
Katya selects the date for the wedding. Late spring. The oleanders will be in full bloom, she says, and it will be so beautiful that nobody will give a damn that they're not in love.
It’s a bad summer.
They lose two of their boys. One they find in a gutter, his brains steaming on the asphalt next to him. He was a driver, one who has been with Goncharov for far longer than Sofia, and someone they all thought was beyond repute. The other, they have to deal with themselves. He’s a dealer at the poker tables in one of their clubs, but it turns out that cards aren’t the only things passing through his hands. He begs for mercy at the end. He is nineteen.
They’re not sure which one of them was leafing through Goncharov’s ledgers. Or which one got into the vault.
They’re not sure if these are the only two who’ve turned traitor.
It’s a hot summer, murderously hot. The house is a tinder box. The men abandon their dinner jackets and Sofia strips down as much as she's able without getting certain kinds of looks. It's so bad that even Katya seems rumpled. When they entertain a group of "guests", the perfect hostess arrives a little late, forgets to offer ice. They leave with the promise of returning, but it's hollow. They're hemorrhaging business partners with few new deals secured.
In the bay outside, the sea dries up, and the carcass of a whale appears on the sands, tangled in the reins of a shipping net. It's too hot to hire workers to clear it up, so it decomposes in the heat, and the whole city smells of death.
“Another one out,” says Goncharov. His glass goes down hard on the table. "How many is that now? Four? Five? I don't know what these damn Estonians are offering them that they can't get in their own fucking city." He is doing his King Lear tour of the room, lamenting his dying kingdom. "Ten years ago they would have jumped at rates like that. Nothing has changed here, it's the outside that's changing. It's the clocks. It’s the fucking clocks."
“And I can’t find my diamonds,” Katya scowls.
Another blow: her earrings have gone missing. There are rubies in her ears instead, and they don’t look right. It feels strange to think it, because Sofia once thought of Katya as a girl who could wear anything, anytime she wanted. But the blood red stones categorically do not suit her. They turn her golden hair yellow. They make her usual red lipstick look cheap and crass.
Yes, that’s certainly another reason for the tightness in Goncharov’s lips. Those earrings cost more than he pays Sofia and Andrey together in a year. They were a wedding present from him to his wife. In another age, Sofia thinks, they might have been called a dowry.
“At least the Sandow agreement is secured,” says Sofia, trying to bring something positive to the table.
Goncharov spins. “It is?”
“Yes,” says Andrey. “We’re picking up the stock when he’s out of jail.”
She shoots him a grateful look. It’s working out quite well, this alliance between the two of them. Marriage, she has realised, is a contract like any other. You set your terms. You bring something to the table, as does the other party, and it all goes smoothly. The problems begin when either party becomes unable to provide what they promised. This, like with any other contract, is when it goes sour.
She glances at Katya and Goncharov.
Someone has been making phone calls from the bottom floor of the launderette. She has heard the low voice, and the soft click when they hang up.
Maybe this is why, when Sofia excuses herself to the bathroom, she finds herself pressed up against the wall with a knife against her throat. Up close, she can see how Katya’s makeup is cracking, melting off her face from the heat. There’s a tang of sweat beneath her sweet, floral perfume. Even with the very sharp blade pressing into her throat, it’s more of a turn-on than she’d like to admit.
Sofia doesn’t move. Doesn’t try to get out of the hold. She could, probably. Katya is much taller than her (another attribute she appreciates) but she’s less used to holding someone like this. Sofia, however, knows this confrontation has to happen, so she lets Katya have her way with her. She has to admit that she’s not hating the way Katya is pressed up against her, one thigh flush between Sofia's through her silks.
“I’m not going to tell him.”
Katya’s jaw clenches. “How can I be sure of that?”
“You can’t.”
Narrow eyes scan her. Her brow is furrowed hard in concentration. “You’re not scared. Why aren’t you scared? You don’t think I’ll do it?” The blade pushes in tighter. “You think he’d ever believe you over me? Over his wife? He trusts me completely. You’re just another driver.”
“Which is why I’m not going to tell him,” Sofia snaps. “Which is why I haven’t told him so far. Mary and fucking Joseph, why did you even start using the phone if you were going to get this paranoid about it?”
Katya glares at Sofia for another long second, before her grip on the blade slackens. “I didn’t know it was going to get this bad.” And then, with a slight air of petulance, “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain.”
Sofia’s lip quirks. Heavens above, is she genuinely Catholic? Sofia thought she just played one in church. “Technically I didn’t say anything about Him.”
Katya’s eyes roll. She finally removes the knife. “Always have to be the smartest one in the room, don’t you?”
“Yes,” Sofia confirms. “Do you have a light?”
And just like that, they are back to normal. Katya’s lighter is a lovely thing: silver, bejewelled with a pattern in the shape of orchids. Her hands, too, are lovely things. The snap of her long fingers as she conjures a flame from nothing. God, thinks Sofia, as she leans in for it. Fuck.
“I don’t know how you can smoke when it’s this hot.”
"I don't know how you can't." Sofia gestures to where they both came from. "When I go to Hell, the devil will send me back into that room, except sober."
Katya grins. Then, it fades. “It will be better. In a few months.”
Sofia exhales. She is not the kind of person to lie to her friends so that they feel better. She knows that this summer is burning out their pretensions, their niceties. Many of them have ugly things lurking beneath those waters, that are being pushed to the surface.
“If you need to get out,” she finds herself saying. “If now is the time… I can help with that.”
“I thought you ran out of favors.”
Sofia shrugs. “I still have hands. And keys to a good number of cars. I can’t fix you up with a new life in another country, but if you need someone to drive you there…”
She doesn’t think it’s a particularly grand offer, but Katya looks stricken. “Why would do that?” she asks. “Why would you offer to do that for me?”
Now it is Sofia’s turn to blink in surprise.
“I haven’t been kind to you,” Katya continues. “I haven’t done anything particularly special for you. Why would you – give up your whole life to help me like that? Surely it can’t just be because you want to fuck me.”
And, if Sofia is honest, she has not given much thought to it before. Why is she so willing to help this woman, who she barely knows? This woman who exists in parallel to her so frequently, but so rarely in tandem? Is it because she’s attracted to her? No, that doesn’t make sense, because she knows that this story she is offering to write doesn’t end up with them lying together lovingly in a marriage bed. And she certainly doesn’t expect anything from Katya for her help; Christ, no.
As she thinks, several reasons come to the forefront of her mind.
Because you’re a woman in this business, and I know how hard it is. I know how you have to sharpen yourself into a weapon, always be on edge. I know how many barriers you keep up every day.
Because you are something so gorgeous and enormous, and letting you fall would be like standing by and watching an art gallery burn.
But what she ends up saying is, “Because sometimes you just seem so lonely.”
If Katya looked stricken before, she is thunderstruck now.
“You’re mistaken. I never want for company.”
Sofia carefully takes the cigarette from her mouth and moves it towards Katya’s. At first, she flinches back, but then she stills. She lets Sofia place it gently between her lips. She lets Sofia’s fingers linger.
“Neither do I,” says Sofia. “And yet I’m lonely every day.”
There’s something that Sofia has been trying to find, her whole life, ever since she was born. First she tried to find it in her family, then in God. Then she looked for it (briefly) in men, and (not so briefly) in women. She thinks she came close to finding it once between the thighs of a dancer in the dressing room of a concert hall in Milan. But she didn’t, so she had sold her hands for violence yet again.
Now, almost thirty-two, sleeping in an apartment in Naples beside a person she likes a reasonable amount but no more, with the carcass of a dead god rotting on the shore beyond her window. Now, Sofia has accepted that there is simply something she is craving, some kind of connection, that she is never going to find.
Maybe she’s delusional.
Maybe she’s projecting.
Probably, she is going to get herself killed if she doesn’t stop pulling on this thread.
Katya isn’t saying much of anything. She just stares at Sofia with an expression that can only be described as despair, the cigarette hanging low on her lip. Sofia understands that it must be dreadful. Katya is a world-class illusionist, but she's finally found the one person who can see past her veil. Sofia wonders if Katya is going to stab her. She wonders whar Katya would do if she kissed her.
“We’re taking awfully long in the bathroom, Mrs Goncharova,” she says, and it breaks the spell. Katya snaps away. They go back to their husbands in Hell.
She wears a crimson dress to the cocktail party.
This is how you wear red, she is saying, with her sleek black hair and her kohl-rimmed eyes and the bare skin of her neck.
Katya stares at her all night. Sofia basks in it. Sofia bathes in it. Gets drunk off of it: the intoxication of being desired.
Katya is the one who saves them. When it finally happens. When it escalates, with no warning, from Tensions building to War has been declared. They shoot them out of the house, chase them down to the docks. It’s just the two of them; they lost the others somewhere when the house went up, they can only hope they made it out. They’re running blind and Sofia, for all her talents, does not know how to drive a fucking speedboat. Katya is hit – blood on her arm, blood in her hair – but she jumps to the wheel.
It’s dark and they’re being chased and they can’t see and they can’t stop and they can’t see.
Sofia fires her gun until there’s nothing left.
And then it’s up to Katya.
And Katya does it. Katya saves them, losing the men on their tail, marooning them in the reeds. They stagger onto the shore, crawl up the bank, in the mud. They’re so far out of the city, the only light they have to guide them is the moon.
When they finally make it onto level grass, Sofia realises she is crying.
It’s the closest she’s ever come to death. She’s been scared of it every day of her life, but she had never felt that. That wasn’t fear at all, it was a different emotion entirely. It was like every nerve in her body was on fire. Is that what the people she’s killed felt, before she pulled the trigger? Is that what she’s dealt out to others, for years and years?
There is a touch on her shoulder.
Katya wears no jewels. They’ve been disappearing all over the place. Her ruby earrings now too, and her pearl choker. She’s almost naked, her satin dress a painting of blood and dirt, torn to shreds from the chase and the branches.
Sofia reaches out blindly. She thought that this kind of trauma made people shy away from touch, but right now she needs it, like she’s never needed anything in her life. The autumn air is freezing but Katya comes warm into her arms. Katya, who isn’t a marble statue or a painting or any of that – she’s a woman, a human girl, with her face into buried into Sofia’s neck. She squeezes Sofia, squeezes tight, and Sofia squeezes back. Her hands are lost in Katya’s hair, wrapped around her torso. She loses balance, falls back on her heels, and Katya comes with her, straddling her, still clinging.
Maybe we can just stay like this forever, Sofia thinks. Maybe they could just lie down on the riverbank in each other’s arms, and not get up. Let the cold take them. It would be the kindest death she’d ever been a part of.
But then Katya lets go. Katya pushes herself to her feet.
“There’s… a safe house not far from here. We can make it if we keep going.”
For the first time ever, Sofia hears her accent slip. Her real voice makes an appearance, just for a second.
Sofia, still kneeling in the mud, gazes up at her in a silent plea. We don’t have to go there. We don’t have to go back.
“It’s not that simple.” Katya scrubs a hand across her face, smearing herself with filth. “No – please. Please don’t do that. If you ask me like that again, I won’t be able to…”
And then a curious thing happens: she crumples. The last of her walls comes down. Suddenly, she’s not the femme fatale, she’s not the golden girl, she’s not Goncharov’s ice queen. She’s a girl who married a mafia boss when she was barely out of her teens. Who’s in over her head from multiple directions. Who’s still bleeding from a bullet scrape and who almost died tonight.
And she just saved your life, whispers a voice in Sofia’s ear. Be fucking grateful.
“It’s okay,” says Sofia, standing up. “I’m sorry. I won’t ask again.”
The answer doesn’t make Katya happy.
They walk to the safehouse in silence. Sofia knows that Katya is hoping her husband will be there – and on a practical level, so does Sofia. Goncharov being alive, at this point, is the best option for all of them. The same is true for Andrey. She genuinely does not want to see them die. But she does not want to die beside them, either. And she does not want to spend the rest of her life tethered to them. Sofia’s desires swirl nauseatingly inside of her, all of them huge and terrible, liquors that were not meant to be mixed.
It ends when she figures out where the diamonds went.
It comes to Sofia in the night, when she lies beside her husband in the safehouse, thinking of Katya wearing nothing but moonlight and honesty. It’s not a question of who would have access to Goncharov’s wife’s bedroom. It’s a question of who would take the jewels, and just the jewels.
Hiding in plain sight, she thinks, and jerks awake, a knot in her throat.
The knot is still there the next day, when she finds herself outside Katya’s bedroom. The men are out, scoping out the area, trying to decide where they go from here.
A dowry, she had thought, when she first saw the earrings. That’s one thing the movies always get right: diamonds are a girl’s best friend. Yes, when a woman runs away, she always takes the jewels. Not because she's a magpie who’s insatiably drawn to shiny things, but because they're assets that she can use to bargain for her life. She takes them to slip into the pocket of the truck driver who smuggles her across the boarder. To flash at the officer who thinks she has a resemblance to the woman on the missing posters. Because what else can a woman rely on? She has no bank accounts; no property; no stocks and shares.
No children, Sofia reminds herself. No weakness on that front. Smart girl.
She thinks of Katya plucking the pearls off her choker, one by one. Yes, Katya has made her arrangements, all while protesting so loudly, about her missing gems.
When Katya opens the bedroom door, her hair is damp. She tugs at the slick ends with a towel. They’ve found spare clothes; she wears jeans and a loose sweater and no lipstick. Something in Sofia’s face must give away that she knows, she’s worked it out, because Sofia isn’t expecting Katya to grab her wrists like that, to pull her inside and shut the door so quickly it is a blur. Katya lets go of Sofia’s wrists only to take her face in her hands, cupping her cheeks. At some point she manoeuvres them around so that her own back is against the door, and Sofia is pulled flush against her.
“Stay with me,” Katya whispers. “I don’t just want you to drive me out of here, Sofia. That was what I was trying to tell you, last night. I want you to stay with me, and see this thing through. And when I leave, I want us to go together.”
Liar, screams Sofia’s brain. She’s a traitor. She’s just saying this because you found out. She’ll stab you in the back the first chance she gets. She’ll leave you to rot on the roadside.
Liar liar liar liar LIAR—
When Sofia tries to pull out of her grip, Katya kisses her.
It’s messy. Desperation. Teeth.
Sofia hates her for it – and then hates herself for longing for this moment so much that she is so disappointed, that it’s like this. Finally, she extracts herself, and gets a gun in her hand to stop Katya from doing it her again. Katya is doing a very good job of making herself resemble a wounded woodland animal.
“I saved your life, back in the boat.”
Sofia sighs. Puts down the gun.
“I think I’m in love with you,” says Sofia. “Did you know that?”
Katya clutches her forearm with her opposite hand. She usually carries her height so well, but now, she looks like an awkward schoolgirl who hasn’t gotten used to her growth spurt.
“I’ve… suspected.”
“I’ve never been in love with anyone before.”
“I know.”
“It’s kind of awful.”
“I know.”
“Who have you been calling? Who have you been working with?”
Now, a little of Katya Goncharova comes back into her look. “I’m not going to answer that. Do you think I’m an idiot?”
And as she stares at this woman, this woman that she loves, Sofia realises that she is not going to turn her in. She is not going to tell Goncharov that his wife may be a traitor. She is not going to run away herself, either.
This is it, Sofia realises. This is it, for her. For her, it manifests as: She’ll take what she can get. Good or bad, honest or dishonest, holy or unholy. Katya is her ship, and Sofia is going down with it, just as Andrey is going down with Goncharov. Shoreline is no longer an option for them.
This is what it means.
“Can I kiss you properly?” she asks.
Katya’s eyes light up in surprise. “Yes,” she breathes, and Sofia steals it from her mouth.
This time, it is better.
From somewhere in the house, Katya has found perfume. Her magician girl, thinks Sofia. Her illusionist. Yes. She will take what she can get.