Sisterhood Everlasting - Ann Brashares [37]
She tried to lie low, not to alert her friends, because they might tell Eric—the Tall Mexican in the Suit, as they referred to him—and he would worry about her descending immediately into homelessness. But she discovered as it got later and colder that though this group talked up sleeping outside, most of them seemed to get absorbed into nearby churches and shelters long before dawn. In the darkest hours it got very quiet.
She was nearly asleep when she felt something nearby. She opened her eyes and saw nothing, so she closed them again. A few more minutes passed and her breathing evened out. And then suddenly there was a shadow over her face and she felt her pack pulled from under her head.
There was one benefit to having a body so charged with agony and adrenaline. She got her hands on her pack almost instantaneously and yanked it back.
Her eyes took a little longer to adjust. It was a man with a knit hat and a beard.
“Get off my pack,” she growled at him.
“I’ve got a knife,” he said menacingly.
She pulled on her pack even harder. She didn’t care if he had a knife. Let him have a knife. Let him kill her with his knife. That would be fine, but he wasn’t taking her stuff.
She was up on her feet, towering. She was taller than he was and a lot angrier. She’d given nearly everything she had to the people in this park, but she’d done it on her own terms. She wouldn’t do it on his.
With more strength than she knew she possessed she wrenched the pack out of his hands. He came at her, trying to tackle her, but she was balanced and strong. She clutched her pack in one arm and with the other punched him as hard as she could in the jaw. It hurt her hand, but it hurt his jaw too, she knew. In surprise he put his hand to his face and she punched him again in the ear.
If he had a knife, she never saw it. He turned and walked away. He seemed to know she was crazier than he was. She was tempted to follow him and hit him again. He might have been a felon or a junkie, but he had more to live for than she did.
“Fuck off,” she spat at him.
Her hand hurt. She hugged her pack. She didn’t want to give anything away anymore.
Lena and Kostos sat on the couch that night. First they were sitting up on opposite ends, then they turned to each other, she cross-legged. His nice shoes came off, and eventually, as it got late, they each leaned back, symmetrically resting on pillows propped against the arms of the couch, their knees bent and feet not quite touching. The conversation flowed and stopped and started as it would, a third thing in the room, not quite controlled by either of them, but mostly benevolent.
She began to doze off, and when she woke she realized she’d stretched out her legs and he’d taken her large feet on his lap. They were not her best part.
“Do you have any idea how much that letter meant?” she found herself asking him. It must have tied in with a dream she’d been having. She wondered why she said it, unguarded as it was, and not connected to anything. But why not say it? What was there to hold on to anymore? This was her hallucination and she could say what she wanted in it.
He held her feet. He was puzzled. “What letter?”
What letter. Was there any other letter? God, how small her life had become. It was probably one of five he had written that week. She took a breath. “The letter you wrote to me after Valia died.”
He nodded. “I loved her like she was my own grandmother. I walk up this street and I miss her every time.”
“She loved you too. You know that. She was so proud of you. She felt like everybody abandoned this place. We all made homes in other places, and you, the hero of Oia, always came back.”
He shrugged and shook his head. There was almost no blaming with him. “Everybody leaves here. Except the tourists. The Germans. They stay.”
She smiled. It was probably a smile. “I couldn’t understand my own feelings about Valia until I read your letter, and