Page 49 of So Thirsty

“Hello?” Naomi says. “Hello!”

I follow her into the hall. The house is dark, all the candles burned out, the fire snuffed. But my eyes adjust. They adjust pretty fast, and I can see fine. Better than fine.

Naomi squeaks.

“Oh! Oh fuck. Oops. I just kicked it. I kicked his head. I didn’t see it.”

The skeleton man’s body is in the same spot as it was the night before; no one bothered to move it. His head is now rolling across the floor. It makes a bad sound.

Naomi gags. “Oh God.”

“See?” I whisper. “This is why we need to get out of here.”

“Look who is awake.” Ilie comes sauntering down the hall. He wears a silk robe with nothing underneath. “I will make you coffee. It will taste different but still good.”

He’s so casual. He steps over the severed head like it’s a soccer ball in the yard.

I’m shell-shocked.

“Come, loves. It is early. Or late.” He hangs his arms around us and guides us into a big yellow kitchen. There are towels hung over the windows, empty cups in the sink, the wooden goblets left out on the counter. “Sit, sit.”

He gestures to the built-in table and benches in the far corner, a breakfast nook. He takes out a French press. Naomi shoots me a look.

“You probably are thinking, Ilie, we are not thirsty for coffee. I know. But it will be good. I put a little something in it for you. Quench your thirst. We sit, have coffee, we talk. I have feeling you might be”—he pauses, searching for the right word—“confused.”

“I think we’re more than confused,” Naomi says, sliding onto a bench.

Why is she sitting down? Is she really planning on staying for coffee?

She’s either ignoring my signals or not getting them.

“I explain. Drago insists he do it, but he is very serious. Too serious. I tell him, he will make you scared. It is not scary, to live this way. It is good. We are happy.”

“And we are leaving,” I say. “Okay?”

“Okay,” Ilie says, plugging in an electric kettle. “After coffee.”

I look at Naomi, and she shrugs. “Things are what they are. What’s the difference if we stay for coffee?”

“Can’t wait to find out,” I say, stomping over to the table and sitting down next to her. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m not,” she says. “I’m just…I’m thirsty. Aren’t you?”

“No. Not really. No.” There’s an alien tickle in my throat. A weird wriggling. It’s not thirst, not exactly. It’s more like a craving. A bratty insistence.

“I get special coffee for you,” Ilie says. “We don’t put milk in our coffee, you know.”

He winks at us.

“Christ.” I put my head down on the table. Whenever I would wallow about getting older, or occasionally lament the monotony of my life, I would take at least some solace in thinking that my worst mistakes were behind me. That I would never again have to wake up in a stranger’s house with a headache and the most potent strain of regret, wearing last night’s clothes and a heavy crown of shame.

Ilie measures out some coffee grounds for the French press, and I think about the morning after I lost my virginity, in that random guy’s apartment, when he made me coffee and it tasted like possibility. I think about all the mornings after that followed, the taste diluting over time.

Ilie opens the fridge, which is moldy and dirty and mostly empty, and he retrieves a bag of blood, and I wonder, How will the coffee taste this morning?

—

“How is it?” Ilie asks.