Zhanna Slor - At the End of the World, Turn Left

“Emily, it could be anyone. All those train-hoppers look the same.”

“Train-hoppers? I thought she was just hanging around all those anarchists. She’s doing that now?” Emily asks, eyebrows raised. Then she crosses her arms over her chest, rubbing them for heat. The snow has stopped, but it’s now freezing out, the wind turning from a slight discomfort into a bone-chilling cold—Wisconsin at its best.

“I don’t know for sure. I just heard things,” I shrug, also crossing my arms over my chest, shivering. A few years in the desert and you can completely disregard winter, apparently. How had I lived through so many decades of this cold and then forgotten to pack a real coat? To warm myself, I start hopping on one foot and then the other. I don’t even care how stupid it looks.

“This isn’t on you, Masha,” Emily is saying. “You weren’t here. How could you know?”

Of course it’s not my fault, I think, before a second thought follows: unless maybe it is? “It’s not her.” I reach into my bag and take out the cigarettes I’d hidden there. This one, I light myself. Maybe this was the real reason I’d purchased them at the airport, and I’ve been in denial all day. In case I needed one, not only to barter for information. “It was good to see you, Emily.”

I step around her and start walking as fast as I can throw the snow.

But Emily is nearly as stubborn as I am, and she isn’t letting me get away so quickly. She keeps up with me as I speed-walk all the way down Bremen Street.

“Masha,” she says. “Just stop for a second.”

“I can’t stop, Emily. It’s freezing. And I need to get some sleep. I’m a zombie right now. My brain isn’t working.” Truthfully, it is working overtime, but I don’t want her to know that. Wondering what’s worse—that Anna is possibly a liar and a thief, or that I am also lying. Lying is supposed to be a thing of the past, like all the drugs and sleeping around I’d done during that brief time of flailing around in the abyss of adulthood. Lying is the old Masha. One day in Milwaukee is already turning me into a bad Jew. A bad person .

I will have a lot to make up for next Yom Kippur.

“If that’s Anna—I mean, isn’t that why you’re here? To find her?” Emily asks, catching up again. “You can message the email from the Craigslist ad.”

“If that’s Anna—which it’s not—I would have already thought of that, Emily,” I explain. I walk even faster now, my breath hovering in the air like smoke. I can’t help but miss Israel again, my cozy little apartment, half-hidden behind a Washingtonian tree and a giant Israeli flag, surrounded by neighbors I know and feel like friends. And David. I haven’t been gone twenty-four hours, and his absence is almost like a severed arm. I know if he had been able to come with me, not only would I have already found Anna by now, I would be happier too. I have no way to contact him, either, being that he is off in some random country, doing God knows what, and as usual, I have to wait for him to call me, then drop whatever it is I am doing. He could be in America for all I know. He could even be here, and I would have no direct way of finding that out until I ran into him in the street.

This is pretty unlikely though. What business would Israel have in Milwaukee? Milwaukee certainly wants nothing to do with them . Everyone here thinks of the country as a political pawn, not a place full of interesting and diverse people of all sorts of religious and political leanings. It’s easy to dismiss something when it doesn’t have a face.

“God, when did you get into such good shape?” Emily asks, panting. “I could barely get you to go on a hike with me when we were in school.”

“Running helps with my anxiety,” I explain.

“Yeah, I have yoga for that,” she says, following me as I turn right down Center Street. Its name sure is accurate. Everywhere I go I always end up on this street to get there. “Isn’t that funny? We used to smoke weed and write those silly poems when we got anxious. Well, honestly, I still smoke a lot of weed. But I stopped with all the other stuff.”

“I barely even drink now,” I agree. “That drink you bought me was the first one I’ve had in weeks. Months maybe. I think I’m drunk.”

“Really? You? But you love drinking,” she says, shock apparent all over her face which is pink and stiff from cold. “We used to call you the shot Nazi.”

“You know, it’s just occurring to me how inappropriate that nickname was,” I point out.

Emily pauses, thinks about that. “Yeah I guess you’re right. I only meant that… I don’t know. We’re so… adult now.”

I stop, turning to face her, the snow crashing into my hair and then melting. “I don’t feel so much like an adult today, Emily,” I admit. “Or most days. I feel like someone pretending to know what they’re doing.”

Emily frowns. “That’s basically what an adult is , Masha,” she says, shaking her head. “You think anyone knows what the hell they’re doing?” Then, out of nowhere, she reaches out and hugs me, and I let her. No one ever touches me in Israel, other than David. Now I’m getting hugs all over the place. I must really look like the mess I feel.

Emily lets go, and I feel her head turning. “This is where you were going?”

I follow her gaze to the second level of a large white duplex with a green patio on its side, filled with mismatched chairs, empty wine bottles holding melted candles, and a large glass tube that is likely a bong. Below, an empty storefront that is in the process of becoming an art gallery, the fourth or fifth one in Riverwest. “Yeah, this is me. For tonight anyway.” I head toward Rose’s front door, which is not in front but on the side of the house under some more green awning. Snow is swirling again all around it, making it look like a snow globe.

“Is that a good idea?” Emily asks.

“No, probably not,” I say. “But I don’t have a lot of options. And I’m already here, and it’s really damn cold in this country.” I get the keys out of my coat pocket and find the gold one meant for this door. “Bye, Emily. It was great to see you.”

Emily stands there, watching me, hesitating. “Masha. I have to get something off my chest.”

I exhale deeply, waiting for the other shoe to drop.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “It was wrong of me—of us—to blame you for what happened.”

I stare at her, blinking. It’s not what I was expecting to come out of her mouth. But she’d hit the nail on the head and I’m not about to dispute it. “Okay?” I try to sound indifferent, but my voice betrays how I really feel, which is grateful. This one sentence starts to melt the ice that has formed around my chest when it comes to my past life, my former friends, Riverwest. Maybe one action alone doesn’t define a person after all. Maybe people are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them.

Emily sticks her hands deep into her pockets, her face red all the way down to her neck. “Call me if you need anything. I mean it.” She starts walking away before I can respond, and for the first time since I left, I find myself truly missing my former best friend. I even consider taking her up on her offer to call her, when this is all over.

I turn and let myself into Rose’s apartment. I head straight into her room, which looks like it hasn’t changed at all since I last saw it, only been rearranged. There are hand-woven quilts and tie-dye shirts and those ridiculous posters with one word taking up the whole page. Incense piled into dust, celebrity magazines on the floor, clothes scattered about in an antique trunk and over Rose’s bed. I take a pile of sweaters and move them into the chest, lying down over the tie-dye bedspread in a daze, when my foot hits something hard.