Page 14 of Vasily the Nail

I’m alone.

For hours. With nothing but my thoughts.

And that’s a place where I don’t like to be.

The dining table is in direct view of the front door. More accurately, the entire common area of the apartment is in clear view of the front door. It only dawns on me as I sit there staring at the door that I’ve never been anywhere that doesn’t have a proper foyer. This feels like a hotel room. Or a set from a TV show.

I can’t do this for two weeks.

I can’t do this for the rest of my life.

I stare at that door, lost in thought, as I fuss with the cross on my necklace, a nervous habit.

Someone’s going to be delivering groceries. At some point, that door is going to open. Whoever shows up, would they be prepared for me if I attacked? There are knives in the kitchen, a whole block of them. If Vasily wasn’t concerned about my having access to them, he may not be concerned enough to hide his guns, either. I’m betting there’s one in his room, probably in arm’s reach of the bed.

I couldn’t shoot someone, but I could pull a gun on them.

Then what? I don’t know where I am. I don’t have a phone. I can’t go to the cops; they’re probably on the take, and I’d be implicating Tony, too. It’s Sunday, so I wouldn’t be able to use a library computer — I’m not even sure how that works since I don’t have a card or any ID — to get onto social media to reach out to any of my friends.

What would be the point in trying to escape? What would I do? Where would I go? If someone let me borrow my phone, it would be to have Tony or one of my friends pick me up, but I think that would put me in a loop. I know Tony was upset that Vasily decided yesterday wasn’t enough to settle the debt, but if he really couldn’t come up with that $150,000, he’d have to give me right back.

I can’t believe he sold me for $150,000.

I’d have to run away. Abandon everything, including my school and my friends. Vanish. I’m sure there’s a bus station in town, but I don’t have any money. And Tony would still get in trouble and be on the hook for that money.

I don’t know how much I care about that.

I pace over to the balcony. We’re four floors up, too high for me to escape that way anyway, but most of the buildings are lower. I have a good view of this part of the city.

Across the street is a Starbucks that people are rushing in and out of, but around the corner from that appears to be a local cafe where people are chilling at tables out on the sidewalk. I see both a drugstore and a chain grocery store. A park with meager amenities, but there’s a little playground, a running track, and a couple barebones athletic fields. They’re busy, soccer being played on both, with a bunch of kids in uniform and adults on the sidelines. Must be organized sports, although it’s February. I always thought soccer was a summer sport.

Next to the park is a church, which gives me an almost-idea. My church in Phoenix gives sanctuary to people sometimes, either because they’ve lost their homes to natural disaster or they’re diaspora. The church I’m looking at, though, I’m doubtful does that. It’s small, and it looks like it used to be a restaurant. The only reason I can tell it’s a church is the changeable letter sign too far away for me to read and the full parking lot.

Church is in service.

I don’t know that I’ve ever missed church. If I can’t go on Sunday, I go to an evening service.

I clutch my cross again.

The cross is rough under my thumb. Diamond studded. My father gave it to me for my Confirmation, the last gift of any consequence he gave me before his death. He’d already been given a terminal diagnosis and went all out.

It’s white gold with ten half carat diamonds and a two-carat diamond in the center. The fact that my brother just sold me to the Bratva for two weeks over $150,000 is obscene when I’m wearing this. Why would he need to borrow such a paltry sum, and how was he unable to repay it in another way?

In his final days, my father was delirious much of the time. Most of what he said didn’t make sense, and he apologized repeatedly but never explained what he was sorry about. He also told me so many times that he wanted me to be happy. He even told me he hoped I found happiness in my necklace. I thought he meant in God and the church, which have always brought me more joy than just about anything else, especially when I can integrate my love of theatre with it.

I’m missing worship now, when I need it the most, and I fear that what happened yesterday has shaken me in an irreparable way as I consider if my father meant something else.

It would gut me to lose my necklace. But I could pawn it for a lot of money.

Enough to get a bus ticket to anywhere but Arizona and start a new life somewhere. I’ve never thought about how much money it takes to do things, but I think I could get enough that I would have time to figure something out wherever I land.

Enough to get a morning-after pill, too.

I’ve bought one before — for Camilla. She’d only met her husband twice before they married. He’s . . . not terrible, which is the best any of us can ask for, but she still isn’t ready for a baby, and her family forced her to go off birth control. I bought her that morning-after pill, then started giving her my birth control. It wasn’t like I thought I’d need it.

I don’t have a rosary on me, so I rub my fingers over my cross as I begin running through all the prayers I’d be saying after the confession I thought I’d have today, as well as throwing on all the protection ones that didn’t help me the way I wanted them to yesterday. But now there’s a new real fear.

Pregnancy.

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