Košík Vodky

I carried the last bottle across the yard with both hands, careful not to slosh it.

The glass was cold against my palms, wet with condensation from the cellar. Three steps from the back door I stopped and listened. Nothing. Just the hum of the transformer down the road and the distant bark of a dog that had been barking for three days straight. Nobody came to check on it. Nobody came for anything anymore.

I set the bottle in the basket with the others. Seven total. Placed them upright, necks touching, like soldiers standing at attention. My mother’s wicker basket, the one she used to fill with tomatoes and peppers from the garden. Now it held nothing but vodka and the smell of regret.

The sun was going down behind the apartment blocks. Orange light caught the dust hanging in the air, made everything look like an old photograph. I wiped my forehead with my sleeve and sat down on the concrete step. The step was warm. The whole world was warm. It had been warm for three weeks straight, even at night, even when the sky should have been cold enough to freeze your breath.

They said the plant would open again next month.

They said a lot of things.

I counted the bottles again. Seven. That was enough for tonight, maybe not enough for tomorrow, definitely not enough for the day after. But tomorrow was tomorrow’s problem. My father used to say that. He said it every morning before he walked to the bus stop, and every evening when he came home with grease under his nails and nothing in his eyes. Tomorrow is tomorrow’s problem. He said it so often I thought it was a joke. Then he stopped coming home.

I stood up and brushed the dust off my jeans. The basket was heavy. Not heavy like rocks or bricks. Heavy like something that pulls you down from the inside.

I carried it through the gate and onto the street. The pavement was cracked, weeds pushing through like they owned the place. Maybe they did. Nobody was fighting them for it anymore. Mrs. Novak’s roses had died last week. She watered them every morning, stood out in her bathrobe with a watering can, talking to the petals like they were children. Didn’t matter. The heat killed them anyway. She stood there for three days staring at the brown stems before she stopped coming outside.

I turned left at the corner, past the playground with the broken swing. A kid was sitting on the slide, maybe eight years old, maybe nine. He had a stick and he was drawing in the dirt. Circles inside circles inside circles. I didn’t know his name. I didn’t know anyone’s name anymore. People came and went. Mostly went.

“Hey,” I said.

He looked up. His eyes were too big for his face, dark like the bottom of a well.

“You want a drink?”

He shook his head and went back to his circles.

I kept walking.

The bar was three blocks down, in what used to be a bakery. The sign still said “Fresh Bread Daily” in faded yellow letters. Nobody had baked bread there in two years. Now it was just a room with a counter and some chairs and a man named Pavel who poured drinks and didn’t ask questions. Pavel had been a mechanic before the plant closed. He knew how to fix things. But some things you can’t fix with a wrench.

I pushed the door open. The bell above it was broken, so it just made a hollow clacking sound. The room was dark, lit by one bulb that buzzed like a trapped fly. Three men sat at the counter. I recognized two of them: Marek, who used to drive the delivery truck, and old Jozef, who had been a teacher before the school shut down. The third man was younger, maybe thirty, with a shaved head and a tattoo on his neck. I didn’t know him. That meant he was new, or he was passing through. Either way, he was trouble. New people were always trouble.

Pavel looked up from the glass he was wiping. He had a face like a fist, all hard angles and no soft spots.

“Anka,” he said. “You brought the goods.”

I set the basket on the counter. The bottles clinked together, a sound like small bells. “Seven.”

Pavel picked one up, held it to the light. The liquid was clear, almost invisible. He nodded. “Good. Clean.”

“It’s always clean.”

“I know.” He put the bottle down and reached under the counter. Came back with a roll of cash, held together with a rubber band. He counted it out slow, like he wanted me to watch every bill. I watched. That was the deal. I watched him count, and he watched me watch, and we both pretended this was a normal transaction between normal people.

“Two hundred,” he said.

“It was three hundred last week.”

“Last week was last week.”

I stared at him. He stared back. The man with the tattoo turned on his stool and looked at me. His eyes were pale, almost colorless, like water over gravel.

“She’s young,” he said. “How old?”

“None of your business,” I said.

He smiled. It was not a nice smile. “Feisty. I like that.”

“Don’t like anything,” I said. “Just drink your drink and keep your mouth shut.”

Pavel’s hand moved under the counter. I knew he kept a gun there, an old hunting rifle he’d had since before the plant closed. He didn’t point it at me. He didn’t point it at anyone. But he wanted us to know it was there.

“Take the two hundred,” Pavel said. “Or take the bottles home. Your choice.”

I took the two hundred. I folded the bills and put them in my pocket, deep, where I could feel them against my thigh. Money didn’t mean much anymore, but it meant something. It meant I could eat tomorrow. It meant I could buy water from the truck that came on Tuesdays, if it came at all.

“Same time next week,” I said.

“If you have the goods.”

“I’ll have them.”

I turned to leave. The man with the tattoo put his hand on my arm. His grip was light, almost gentle, but it stopped me cold.

“You don’t have to do this,” he said. “There are other ways.”

I looked down at his hand. Then I looked at his face. “Take your hand off me.”

He did. Slow, like he was doing me a favor.

“I’m just saying,” he said. “A girl like you. There are always options.”

“Not for me,” I said. “Not anymore.”

I walked out. The door swung shut behind me, the broken bell clacking once, twice, then silence.

The street was empty. The kid was gone from the playground. The dog had stopped barking. The sun had dropped below the apartment blocks, and the sky was the color of a bruise, purple and yellow and deep, deep blue.

I stood there for a moment, feeling the weight of the cash in my pocket, feeling the emptiness of the basket in my hands. Seven bottles gone. Seven more to find. Somewhere in this dead town, there was always another bottle. There was always another basement, another stash, another person who had traded their future for glass and grain alcohol.

I started walking home.

Behind me, the bar door opened. I didn’t turn around.

“Anka,” the man said. His voice was soft, almost kind. “I know where your father is.”

I stopped.

The world went quiet. Even the air stopped moving.

I turned around.

He was standing in the doorway, the light from inside making a halo around his shaved head. He looked like a saint in a bad painting, something dark and holy and wrong.

“What did you say?”

He smiled that smile again. “I know where he is. And I know what he took with him.”

My hand went to my pocket. The cash was still there. But it felt different now, lighter, like it might blow away if I didn’t hold on tight.

“Tell me,” I said.

He shook his head. “Not here. Not now. Tomorrow. The old train station. Noon.”

“Why should I trust you?”

“You shouldn’t,” he said. “But you will.”

He stepped back inside. The door closed. The bell made its hollow sound.

I stood in the street, alone, the bruise-colored sky pressing down on me like a hand.

Tomorrow was tomorrow’s problem.

But tomorrow was coming anyway.