One More Year: Stories by Sana Krasikov

Author:Sana Krasikov [Krasikov, Sana]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9780385526906
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2008-08-11T16:00:00+00:00

Sitting in the leather armchair and staring at Erin’s diplomas on the brick wall, Anya felt a kind of numbing safety. It was like the safety of being in school, with its promise that everything could be done the one right way.

“Did you bring the signed affidavits?” Erin asked.

Anya pulled them out from a blue plastic folder. There was one from Alexis, attesting that her marriage to Ryan was genuine and that he was a familiar face around the diner. Before Anya had moved out of the apartment and into a room in a beat-up Victorian, she’d had her landlord write a statement confirming that she and Ryan had been “cohabitating.” Erin already had a copy of the police report and a copy of Anya’s order of protection, which she held up now.

“Do you want to go to court and make this permanent?”

“Do I need to?”

“It won’t hurt your case.”

“I don’t know. He thinks I’m going to get the order lifted.”

“And why would he think that?” Erin said. “Have you been talking to him?”

“No.”

“That doesn’t look good, Anya.”

“I know.”

“He’s out of the picture or he’s not.”

Erin separated the original documents from the copies and gave a set back to Anya. “A restraining order means no phone chatting, no Valentine cards, no calling him if you have a leaky toilet…”

“I got it.” Anya put the folder back in her bag and stood up.

“We’ll talk in a couple of weeks, then,” Erin said.

“Yeah.”

The sky was already gray with twilight when Anya descended the narrow stairwell to the street. It got dark so early she hardly ever noticed the arrival of evenings anymore. She thought of walking the block to the diner and calling Ryan for a ride home but then remembered Erin’s warning. It had been ridiculous to think she could speak to Erin openly, to delude herself that Erin was her friend. She had no real friends here, no one to whom she could explain that in the five weeks since the police had ordered Ryan to stay at least three hundred feet away from her, she’d felt his presence more than ever. If she worked on a Wednesday night, she’d hear from Berenice that Ryan had come in on Tuesday. If her shift was over at six, she’d learn that Ryan had walked in for a burger at a quarter to seven. She had even seen his car in the parking lot of the A&P when she’d gone out for groceries. He was out of the picture, all right. He was out of the picture just about every place she went.

And she had to admit that there were moments when she needed him, when she really did. Last Thursday had been one of them. She’d mixed up the entrées of two different tables, then spilled hollandaise sauce on a customer’s pants trying to sort it out. She knew from the look on the man’s face that there would be no tip, but she hadn’t expected a “YOU SUCK” to be scrawled on the credit card slip he’d left behind.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.