“Running helps with my anxiety,” I explain.
“Yeah, I have yoga for that,” she says, following me as I turn right down Center Street. Its name sure is accurate. Everywhere I go I always end up on this street to get there. “Isn’t that funny? We used to smoke weed and write those silly poems when we got anxious. Well, honestly, I still smoke a lot of weed. But I stopped with all the other stuff.”
“I barely even drink now,” I agree. “That drink you bought me was the first one I’ve had in weeks. Months maybe. I think I’m drunk.”
“Really? You? But you love drinking,” she says, shock apparent all over her face which is pink and stiff from cold. “We used to call you the shot Nazi.”
“You know, it’s just occurring to me how inappropriate that nickname was,” I point out.
Emily pauses, thinks about that. “Yeah I guess you’re right. I only meant that… I don’t know. We’re so… adult now.”
I stop, turning to face her, the snow crashing into my hair and then melting. “I don’t feel so much like an adult today, Emily,” I admit. “Or most days. I feel like someone pretending to know what they’re doing.”
Emily frowns. “That’s basically what an adult is, Masha,” she says, shaking her head. “You think anyone knows what the hell they’re doing?” Then, out of nowhere, she reaches out and hugs me, and I let her. No one ever touches me in Israel, other than David. Now I’m getting hugs all over the place. I must really look like the mess I feel.
Emily lets go, and I feel her head turning. “This is where you were going?”
I follow her gaze to the second level of a large white duplex with a green patio on its side, filled with mismatched chairs, empty wine bottles holding melted candles, and a large glass tube that is likely a bong. Below, an empty storefront that is in the process of becoming an art gallery, the fourth or fifth one in Riverwest. “Yeah, this is me. For tonight anyway.” I head toward Rose’s front door, which is not in front but on the side of the house under some more green awning. Snow is swirling again all around it, making it look like a snow globe.
“Is that a good idea?” Emily asks.
“No, probably not,” I say. “But I don’t have a lot of options. And I’m already here, and it’s really damn cold in this country.” I get the keys out of my coat pocket and find the gold one meant for this door. “Bye, Emily. It was great to see you.”
Emily stands there, watching me, hesitating. “Masha. I have to get something off my chest.”
I exhale deeply, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “It was wrong of me—of us—to blame you for what happened.”
I stare at her, blinking. It’s not what I was expecting to come out of her mouth. But she’d hit the nail on the head and I’m not about to dispute it. “Okay?” I try to sound indifferent, but my voice betrays how I really feel, which is grateful. This one sentence starts to melt the ice that has formed around my chest when it comes to my past life, my former friends, Riverwest. Maybe one action alone doesn’t define a person after all. Maybe people are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them.
Emily sticks her hands deep into her pockets, her face red all the way down to her neck. “Call me if you need anything. I mean it.” She starts walking away before I can respond, and for the first time since I left, I find myself truly missing my former best friend. I even consider taking her up on her offer to call her, when this is all over.
I turn and let myself into Rose’s apartment. I head straight into her room, which looks like it hasn’t changed at all since I last saw it, only been rearranged. There are hand-woven quilts and tie-dye shirts and those ridiculous posters with one word taking up the whole page. Incense piled into dust, celebrity magazines on the floor, clothes scattered about in an antique trunk and over Rose’s bed. I take a pile of sweaters and move them into the chest, lying down over the tie-dye bedspread in a daze, when my foot hits something hard.
A laptop. Yes. That means I don’t have to wait until tomorrow to send that email. Emily is right that emailing the ad is the best way to check if it’s Anna behind the scheme. Maybe it will be that easy; I’ll request a visit, and she will come here, and this can all be over. The crime, and the search for her. Maybe she is just waiting for someone to catch her. If it’s Anastasia at all. What if we had both been projecting? Wouldn’t that be the ideal outcome?
I open the computer, which isn’t password-protected because it’s only a step away from being in a recycling bin, and I search Craigslist for “Chinese.” An ad for lessons in exchange for house cleaning comes up almost immediately, like Wang said. I try several other languages too, out of curiosity, but nothing else comes up. They are particularly targeting the Chinese community, for some reason.
In the bar where it lists an automated email address, I copy paste and open another browser window for Gmail, where I create a new address under the name WÉI_WÚ_WÉI, a Chinese term that has several meanings. Roughly translated it means movement without action; less like passiveness and more like Pascal’s theory that “rivers are roads that take us where we want to go.” To me, it has always meant having a little faith.
“Hi,” I start writing in a new email window. “I’m a grad student at UWM. I know fluent Mandarin, and your ad sounds perfect for what I need. I’m about to leave town for the rest of the week, and was hoping you could meet me tomorrow before I leave? Thanks.” I Google translate ‘thank you’ in Mandarin and paste it on the bottom. Then I click send and crash back down on the bed, falling asleep the moment I close my eyes.
MASHA
________________
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I wake up to my phone buzzing repeatedly from my pocket. It’s unclear how much time has passed, but it feels like possibly the middle of the night. Until, that is, I look towards the quilt-covered window and see a strip of sunlight attempting to break in. So maybe not the middle of the night. Early morning? If it is, I don’t know how I’m still so tired. I could sleep another ten hours. My eyes feel glued shut with rubber bands.
“Masha?” asks my dad’s voice. “I tried calling you more than few times. Vco horosho?”
I sit up, wiping the sleep from my eyes. “Sorry. I fell asleep.”
“Where?”
“I ran into Rose, and she gave me her keys. To my old place. I ran into a lot of people actually. I forgot Milwaukee is basically a small town of drunks.” I look around the room, which is empty, then go into the living room to see if anyone is there. No one is. The clock on the oven says eight a.m.
“Did you find something? About Anastasia?” my dad asks. I remember the email and head back to Rose’s room to use her laptop.
“I’m working on a lead,” I say, while Gmail finishes loading. One new email. I clear my throat. “I’d rather not get into it until I know more.” With my heart in my throat, I click to open it. “Okay?”
In the email response, it says “How’s ten?”
I write back that ten works fine, then give Rose’s address. She won’t mind—I hope. Rose has never owned anything of value besides that bass, and she didn’t come home, so most likely she took it with her to whatever house she’d ended up sleeping at. Even her computer is a hand-me-down off-brand laptop that couldn’t have cost more than a couple of hundred dollars new. She still has enough handmade scarves to clothe a small school of children, and judging from the piles of cash and coins littered about, probably has never opened a bank account. There’s a word in Yiddish that perfectly describes her: Luftmensch. It refers to someone who is a bit of a dreamer; accurately translated, it means an “air person.” The problem with Rose is that she has a different dream every other day. She devours things—jobs, plans, identities—and spits them back out so quickly it’s like they never happened. I lost track of how many college programs she’d enrolled in and then dropped out of, how many restaurant aprons and name tags she’s acquired, now haphazardly strewn about the floor. She also never learned how to clean. I have to fight the urge to rearrange and organize her room. But, holding the phone to my ear, I only allow myself to gather all her cash and hide it in a drawer.