Page 13 of Vasily the Nail

Her nostrils flare.

“I not call you fat. But not want for you ten pounds beef if vegetarian.” Not that I wouldn’t be able to get through ten pounds on my own in a couple of weeks, but I don’t want her starving, either.

“No, nothing like that. Oh, but I’m allergic to apples and strawberries. Kiwi, too.”

“Itchy allergic or throat allergic?”

At that, she chuckles, although the sound is far more anxious than it was when my cock was buried inside her. “Very much throat allergic. EpiPen, trip to the emergency room, all that.”

“Then no apples, strawberries, kiwis. If more, you call there.” I point out the intercom next to our door. I think the other units have them to talk to anyone needing to get buzzed into the building, but ours only goes to security. “You tell Igor, he tell me.”

Her eyes shift between the door and me and then down to my pocket, at the obvious rectangular imprint there. “Can’t I call you directly?”

“You, no phone,ovechka.”

She looks around as though to call me out, but we don’t have a landline here. I don’t know that we ever have. Too easily tracked. “Well, you could get me one.”

“Have nice day,ovechka.”

Analiese

Have nice day.

This coming from my captor.

Who’s acting like I’m just his roommate.

Who he fucks.

Against my will.

I don’t understand what’s happening. I don’t understand why I’m here or what he’s trying to do. I don’t understand what last night was or how he could so calmly sit there and eat an entire pizza—an entire pizza— in front of the woman he just raped.

In front of her brother.

And then teach her how to use his coffee maker in the morning.

Here in his little kitchen in his small apartment in a dingy industrial park on the outskirts of Flagstaff, I start to hyperventilate. At least I understood what was happening yesterday. Vasily’s been kind to me, but I’m no fool; this is what men do. They’re nice to you until you feel safe, and then you let your guard down and they attack.

They also withhold critical information from you. The sobbing abates. but the tears continue to stream down my cheeks while I scan the fridge for something to stress-eat, and it dawns on me that one critical problem here is I don’t know how to cook. My mom died when I was little, and it was her jobto teach me. Everyone along the way has said my mother-in-law will one day teach me so I shouldn’t worry about it, but here I am. I attempt to scramble eggs and end up with burnt goop stuck to a pan. I attempt to fry an egg and end up with burnt, two-toned goop stuck to a second frying pan.

I find white bread. I’ve never had white bread before, and there’s not even a toaster or butter at room temperature for me to spread on it, but I find a tub that’s labeled spreadable butter in the fridge and give that a whirl.

It’s . . . okay. It tastes reasonably like butter. But this bread? I don’t get it. It’s wet or something. Gooey. Fluffy like bread but then cakey.

I wander aimlessly— on aching, bowed legs, everything south of my waist sore in a way that’s mild but inescapable— around the apartment for a while, poking into the cupboards and looking under the beds and in his closets. The place is small, the furniture cheap, the window shades probably the ones that came with the apartment.

The carpet needs to be replaced. Same with the Formica countertops. And everything is tidy, I’ll give him credit there, but there’s this sense of out-of-date touching everything.

Oh, and there’s a nice bookshelf, plenty of options. Some ancient, leatherbound classics, some modern mass market. A great selection.

If you read Russian.

TV? No remote. I find a single button on it that takes me to the main screen so I can see all his streaming services and the programs he’s been watching recently. Half of them are inEnglish, which feels like I’ve stumbled on his dirty secret — aha! He watches Law & Order like a normal person— but surprise, there’s no way for me to navigate to anything. A single down button would get me to something in Russian, which I could at least amuse myself with by guessing at what’s going on, but no.

So that’s a bust. And I keep having these ideas like I could study for the test I have on Thursday or I could practice lines for my audition next week, but I don’t have my computer.

I think about attempting to cook something for real, to find a recipe and follow it and see what happens. I scamper over to the kitchen, remembering a book on one of the shelves. It’s there, and it’s definitely a cook book, and it’s one hundred percent in Russian.

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