Vlad drank fast. He sat in the medieval beer-hall chair with the carved initials—saying it made him feel like a lord. A chilling wind rattled through the uninsulated gaps in the wooden walls, so I pulled out and turned on the space heaters I had brought up when I was conferring with contractors about winterizing the place.
“This is my dream,” Vlad said. “Somewhere like this—not my home, somewhere else that was mine—where I could get away and write. Spend forty-eight hours in a fever—stay up all night, banging it out.”
That had been the intention, I told him. But when we realized, idiotically, as we were professors, how expensive college was, even for a double-income household, I knew that if we didn’t want to cripple Sid’s chances with debt, we needed a greater income stream. We got the most money from long-term renters—people who stayed for a month or longer—and there were summers when we didn’t even get a week up here. Then Sid had gone to law school at NYU, a perfect fortune even with loans, aid, and a small scholarship, and spent a miserable summer interning in a corporate office before she decided she simply couldn’t work in that environment, that she had to do something meaningful. Working for a nonprofit with her debt would have been utter drudgery—we ran the numbers together and we were shocked—and, well, I wanted to see her both happy and making a difference, of course I did. She wasn’t being selfish or lazy—and what else was my life for if not helping my one child do good for this world? As for winterizing the house—the expense could not be justified. I was so busy during the school year it would be nearly impossible for me to spend significant enough time up here, it would require so much work—the township didn’t even plow the road when it snowed.
I told him things were different now, though. That I was making plans—that I wanted to make it accessible all year-round, that I planned on using it quite a bit more in the future.
“Because of John?” He had drunk most of his cocktail but was still cogent. Having never drugged anyone before, I wasn’t sure how long a shift might take. I looked at his glass and saw the sugar, and what I presumed was the crushed pill, settled at the bottom beneath the ice. My heart seemed to beat faster with each sip he took. “Can I mix you another?” I asked.
“You’re bad,” he said, and then, again in his accent, “Vell vhy not.” I forcefully stirred up the sediment, but made it much weaker this time, worried about the interaction between too much alcohol and the medication. My hands were sweating, my stomach was twisted up. Vlad noted I had barely touched my drink, and while I had planned to take tiny sips, keeping myself alert, his encouragement was all I needed to drain most of the glass. A quiet settled on us then, an awareness that we were alone together.
“What town is this?” he asked. I told him a false name—the words coming out of my mouth before I considered them.
“Never heard of it.” He checked his phone. “Cynthia said the babysitter arrived.” Then he frowned and pawed at the screen. “Is there no reception here?”
“Cell service is bad,” I said. “But you could hook up to the Wi-Fi.”
He put his phone back in his jacket pocket. “What do I need it for.”
I handed him his refreshed drink, we clinked glasses, and he took a long sip. We had the obligatory talk about how rare it was, these days, to not be reachable. He said how when he was in the Peace Corps he would have these transformative moments, camping by a small village, when he would become aware that there was no one in the world who knew where he was, and no way for them to find out. These were the only times he felt the burden of ambition lift from his chest, understanding himself to be an animal among animals, a miraculous, meaningless life-form that had grown from the earth only to be absorbed back into it. I said I had nothing as glamorous to offer, but there were times in the past when Sid was at school and John was away, and I would go for a long drive to another town, or take the train a few stops north and sit in some establishment I would normally never frequent, simply to be somewhere nobody would expect. But I was so safe, I told him, even when I would tell myself to try to get lost, I wouldn’t let myself stray too far from what I knew. I wasn’t an explorer at heart. I was a woman who had been taught to protect her body above all else, and a writer. I lived the small writer’s life—chained to my desk, my couch, my bookcase, my thoughts.
“I need to read your books,” Vladimir said. “Cynthia loves them.” His speech was not yet slurred, but his head began to move up and down in a slow, rhythmic motion.
I said he absolutely did not. They were failures, I said, I would be mortified. I spoke too quickly, though, and with too much force. I didn’t think Vlad had read the books, but for him to admit he hadn’t so casually underlined how little he considered me. His wife clearly thought about me a good deal more. Which made sense, as I was, in some ways, her competition. I remember, at the height of my obsession with David, trailing his wife after she left her office building. I followed her as she stopped by the grocery store, then the laundry to pick up dry cleaning, drove through a McDonald’s for some illicit treat, picked up her daughter, and then drove home, where from a distance I watched her pull into their attached garage. I remember how enraged and pathetic and excited I felt, to see her shadowy figure moving behind the blinds, thinking about her touching the mug that David drank coffee from, or fluffing the pillow his darling head had crushed.
Vlad tried to rise and then immediately sat down. “Head rush,” he said. I told him to stay sitting, ran the tap until the water was clear, and poured him a glass. He drank it all, I refilled it, he drank another, and then shifted in his chair, composing himself. I felt remiss. This had been a mistake. I should confess to him, make him hate me, sever this relationship completely.
“I have them on my bedside table,” he said.
“What?”
“Your books. I want to read them but I’m working my way through all these—” He paused and closed his eyes tightly, trying to gather his thoughts, to find the words that were escaping him. He reached for his water glass and I leaped up to refill it. I didn’t like what I was seeing, I didn’t like watching him battle with a slipping awareness.
I tried to keep my voice playful, masking any concern. “As long as you’re looking at my name last thing before you turn out the light.”
“That and your foxy author’s photo.”
My mouth froze into a kind of sideways open oval shape, and my eyes, I’m sure, looked stunned, like I was caught in a lie. Once more I wondered—had my scheme been unnecessary? Would he have come to me without…？ No. It was the drug, I thought. He was a flirt, that I knew. And more than drunk, I assured myself. He didn’t truly mean it.
“Well, youth,” I said, trying to recover, though I was sure I was panting audible breaths.
“Nah,” he said. And he pursed his lips in the flabby, flappy aspect of the severely inebriated.
I rolled, fluttered my eyes and shook my head all at once in what I imagined to be an extremely unflattering gesture. I was hit with a severe craving for a cigarette. Vlad looked at me with dopey, wavering intent.