I don’t want him to know he’s hurt my feelings so I leave the hat on and take a selfie. My phone lights up with Nara’s name, but I ignore the call. Instead, we work for another hour and then take a taxi to the apartment Sasha has arranged for me to rent and that the landlord Joni says I can take early. Joni only speaks Russian and Georgian, and so I’ll have to communicate through Sasha, or the other expat tenant Chris, who Sasha says practices bass clarinet all day. The taxi drops us off beside the Terrace Hotel, and we descend the narrow cobblestone street next to the music school, where children are practicing piano scales. We reach the two-storey house and enter through a rusted green metal gate around back. Inside the courtyard is a fruit tree and a staircase to the apartments, two of which Sasha has already tried living in. They didn’t work out because of his allergies to mould, particleboard, detergent, and other yet unidentified sources.
“You’ll have fruit,” he says. “Maybe cherries.”
He carries my suitcase up the stairs, and leaves my luggage on the balcony while he goes up another flight of stairs to get Joni. They come down and Joni says, “gamarjoba” and I pay him the deposit. We take a picture of the electricity meter, and Joni translates through Sasha. There’s a feather pillow and a synthetic one, and I might consider unplugging the water heater to save a few lari on the power bill. I thank Joni using one of the few Georgian words I’ve memorized. “Madlobt,” I say. “Didi madloba.” He leaves us inside the apartment, which is partially built into the side of a hill, the other half a renovated porch.
Sasha gets the Wi-Fi password from Joni’s son in the neighbouring suite, and I open the kitchen cupboards. Inside, there’s a vegetable peeler, one pot, a knife, four spoons of various sizes, and a fork.
“I used the pot to make tea when I stayed here,” Sasha says.
There’s no matches and it looks like it will take forever to boil, but I agree it’s suitable. He enters the Wi-Fi password into my phone, and I open the fridge, which has been humming loudly since we arrived.
“This isn’t the one that was filled with all that meat?” I ask him, remembering Sasha’s anecdote of scrubbing blood out of a fridge his first week in Tbilisi.
“No, that was next door,” he tells me.
It’s cold in the apartment. I open the drawers in the bedroom wardrobe, and they’re filled with packets of insect poison. Sasha notices a square door in the wall, and makes a joke about a dungeon. He opens it, revealing a crawlspace a few square metres in size. He clicks a switch and a red bulb illuminates brick walls.
“I think it’s a good sign, this torture chamber in your apartment,” he says.
Although it’s cool in the apartment, he says he’ll have to ask Joni for a fan; he’s too allergic to stay inside even for a few hours.
“There’s no towels,” I tell him.
“You want me to ask Joni for towels?”
“I don’t know.”
“You come from a family of great artists and poor communicators,” he says. He runs back upstairs. I hear him speaking to Joni in Russian, and then in a few seconds, Sasha comes down alone.
“I told him to get a kettle for you and a fan,” he says.
“Thank you.”
“You should open these windows,” Sasha continues, unlatching the frames. “You could get some plants in here, hang them in the windows.”
“I’m barely going to be here,” I say.
“This place could be really nice,” he says. “I should get going.”
“Are we meeting later?”
“I’ll message you,” he says.
“Okay.”
After he leaves, I unzip my suitcase on the bed and hang my jacket on the hooks by the door, but I leave the rest of my clothes packed. With Sasha gone, the imperfections of the apartment are all the more apparent: the tile flooring of the kitchen is slanted, and all of the cupboards are crooked. In the bathroom, the container of hand soap slides off the sink, which is built on an angle. I pee and flush the toilet, but it takes three tries for the toilet paper to go down. The apartment is dark, and I can hear Joni’s son next door, exiting his suite and entering his bathroom, which has a separate entrance from the balcony. I close the windows Sasha opened but I still hear Joni’s son shitting into the toilet, and then talking on the phone in Georgian. I read in bed but after no more than half an hour Sasha messages me, asking if I want to come over.
“Okay,” I write him. “I just need to change.”
I move to the doorway of the bedroom, where I can’t be seen from the window, and change from shorts into jeans.
“On my way,” I write him.
I leave the apartment, turning the key two times behind me, though the lock is so flimsy the action feels pointless. I descend the stairs and exit the yard, the gate clattering behind and announcing my departure. I start back up the cobblestone street, stepping on the sharp edges of the rocks to keep my balance. I climb up the staircase and follow the landmarks Sasha pointed out on our drive there: the evenly spaced bins of garbage, the brown signpost. I walk along the road at the edge of the trees, passing the tin-clad dome of the church and the line-up of taxis in front of the forest. I walk along a wooden sidewalk where there’s construction, and then the sidewalk ends.
I stand in place as taxis zoom past.
“I don’t know if I just feel tired but I feel like this is stupid,” I text him. “Especially if you’re never staying over.”
“Come?”
“It’s dangerous, there’s no sidewalk,” I write. “I feel like I don’t get the point of this.”
I keep walking, pressing my body against the side of buildings, paint peeling from concrete. The next time I stop it’s to check directions.
“Hi,” Sasha writes. “Are you on your way or not?”
“Yes, but I’m annoyed.”
“Okay,” he says. “Are you still in the mood to come over?”
“It just doesn’t feel equal.”
“I invited you,” he says. “Don’t come if you don’t feel like it.”
“It just feels dumb.”
“I don’t know how to make you feel better,” he says. “I’m really allergic at your place. I have health issues. Maybe if we get a fan it will be better there.”
I stop checking my phone, and focus on walking the strip of sidewalk not blocked by garbage bins or parked cars. I keep my head down to watch for mounds of dog shit. I step over the body of a pale white gecko turned upside down, its tail removed from its torso. I soon reach another construction site, this one completely obscuring the sidewalk.
“Can you please calm yourself down?” my phone reads. “Please?”
I march down the middle of the street, moving to the side only when I hear the cars approaching from behind. When I come to the street that leads to Sasha’s apartment, the sidewalk begins again, and I climb the hill, passing the cemetery and reaching his building. I insert a ten tetri coin into the metal box in the elevator and press the number eight. The elevator jerks to his floor and soon opens to his landing. I press his doorbell and he answers, hugging me at the door.
“I’m glad you came,” he says. I come inside and take off my shoes. “I just feel frustrated,” I say. “I don’t see the point of renting a place if I’m going to be here every night.”
“You need an office,” he says. “And I needed you to have your own place. It’s for me to feel secure and for us to give this another try.”
“So we’re dating again?” I ask. “We’re monogamous?”
“You’re my monogamous girlfriend,” he says. “I love you and no other, but I need you to have your own apartment.”
“Okay,” I agree.
The next morning is the Day of Victory over Fascism. “Everyone else does May 8,” Sasha tells me on the taxi ride to Vake Park. “We do May 9 when the Soviets signed.”