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

A laptop. Yes. That means I don’t have to wait until tomorrow to send that email. Emily is right that emailing the ad is the best way to check if it’s Anna behind the scheme. Maybe it will be that easy; I’ll request a visit, and she will come here, and this can all be over. The crime, and the search for her. Maybe she is just waiting for someone to catch her. If it’s Anastasia at all. What if we had both been projecting? Wouldn’t that be the ideal outcome?

I open the computer, which isn’t password-protected because it’s only a step away from being in a recycling bin, and I search Craigslist for “Chinese.” An ad for lessons in exchange for house cleaning comes up almost immediately, like Wang said. I try several other languages too, out of curiosity, but nothing else comes up. They are particularly targeting the Chinese community, for some reason.

In the bar where it lists an automated email address, I copy paste and open another browser window for Gmail, where I create a new address under the name WÉI_WÚ_WÉI, a Chinese term that has several meanings. Roughly translated it means movement without action; less like passiveness and more like Pascal’s theory that “rivers are roads that take us where we want to go.” To me, it has always meant having a little faith.

“Hi,” I start writing in a new email window. “I’m a grad student at UWM. I know fluent Mandarin, and your ad sounds perfect for what I need. I’m about to leave town for the rest of the week, and was hoping you could meet me tomorrow before I leave? Thanks.” I Google translate ‘thank you’ in Mandarin and paste it on the bottom. Then I click send and crash back down on the bed, falling asleep the moment I close my eyes.

I wake up to my phone buzzing repeatedly from my pocket. It’s unclear how much time has passed, but it feels like possibly the middle of the night. Until, that is, I look towards the quilt-covered window and see a strip of sunlight attempting to break in. So maybe not the middle of the night. Early morning? If it is, I don’t know how I’m still so tired. I could sleep another ten hours. My eyes feel glued shut with rubber bands.

“Masha?” asks my dad’s voice. “I tried calling you more than few times. Vco horosho?”

I sit up, wiping the sleep from my eyes. “Sorry. I fell asleep.”

“Where?”

“I ran into Rose, and she gave me her keys. To my old place. I ran into a lot of people actually. I forgot Milwaukee is basically a small town of drunks.” I look around the room, which is empty, then go into the living room to see if anyone is there. No one is. The clock on the oven says eight a.m.

“Did you find something? About Anastasia?” my dad asks. I remember the email and head back to Rose’s room to use her laptop.

“I’m working on a lead,” I say, while Gmail finishes loading. One new email. I clear my throat. “I’d rather not get into it until I know more.” With my heart in my throat, I click to open it. “Okay?”

In the email response, it says “How’s ten?”

I write back that ten works fine, then give Rose’s address. She won’t mind—I hope. Rose has never owned anything of value besides that bass, and she didn’t come home, so most likely she took it with her to whatever house she’d ended up sleeping at. Even her computer is a hand-me-down off-brand laptop that couldn’t have cost more than a couple of hundred dollars new. She still has enough handmade scarves to clothe a small school of children, and judging from the piles of cash and coins littered about, probably has never opened a bank account. There’s a word in Yiddish that perfectly describes her: Luftmensch. It refers to someone who is a bit of a dreamer; accurately translated, it means an “air person.” The problem with Rose is that she has a different dream every other day. She devours things—jobs, plans, identities—and spits them back out so quickly it’s like they never happened. I lost track of how many college programs she’d enrolled in and then dropped out of, how many restaurant aprons and name tags she’s acquired, now haphazardly strewn about the floor. She also never learned how to clean. I have to fight the urge to rearrange and organize her room. But, holding the phone to my ear, I only allow myself to gather all her cash and hide it in a drawer.

“Hello? Maria?”

“Yes, Papa.”

“I said, do you need me to come pick you up?”

“No. I mean, not yet.”

My dad pauses, then asks, in Russian, “What aren’t you telling me?”

There are lots of untranslatable words that describe my dad. Shlimazl: Yiddish for a chronically unlucky person. Or Won, a Korean word for the reluctance on a person’s part to let go of an illusion. The fact that he still thinks either of my or Anna’s lives could be in his control requires more stubbornness and reluctance than I can imagine.

“Trust me, Papa. You don’t want to know.”

“Bozhe moy . ” With a sigh, he hangs up the phone. My screen alerts me to four missed calls from him during the night and a text from Rose: I crashed at a friend’s , her message says—code for she went home with a guy she is casually seeing. At work till 5, help yourself to anything in the fridge .

Relief floods over me; I am starving, and I get very grumpy when I don’t eat. On top of that, I’m still groggy from the long flight. I get up to explore what’s in the kitchen.

Groggy is another fun word, etymologically. It originated in the eighteenth century with a British sailor nicknamed Old Grog, on account of his weatherproof coat, made from a material called “grogram,” a mixture of silk and wool. In 1740 he declared that his sailors start drinking their rum diluted with water; this drink became known as Grog. The feeling experienced when drinking too much of this, they called “groggy.” So really, it originated as another word for drunk, but now people use it more for waking up under the weather or having jetlag. Despite only consuming one vodka-soda last night, then sleeping for nearly eleven hours, I happen to feel all of these things.

Coffee, I think then. Where is the coffee? I ask the kitchen. I dig through Rose’s old pine cabinets and find a bag of Fuel Café beans, grind them up, and pour the grounds into a French press sitting on the counter. If I was Orthodox, like some of David’s family is, I’d have to do my morning prayers now. But I’ve found it more than enough to merely take a moment to breathe and appreciate the morning, the fact that I’ve lived to see another day. Many people went to sleep last night and didn’t wake up. We shouldn’t take these things for granted.

While I wait for water to boil, I check the fridge, my stomach growling in anticipation. But I am disappointed to find that though I am welcome to help myself to anything, all that lives inside the fridge is a jar of Vegenaise and a very old apple. I close the fridge and look through the cupboards again. Not even a box of cereal. Plenty of ketchup packets and Splenda, but no food.

I sigh and settle for the old apple, cutting the bruised parts off. It almost doesn’t even seem worth mumbling through the prayer for food, but I do it anyway. I’ll have to get breakfast after this whole thing is over.

It’s strange, being here. My old house, my old dishes; it’s almost like jumping into a time portal. It even smells the same; like American Spirits and sandalwood incense. I’m surprised to feel no angst, or flashback of any kind. In fact, the feeling of dread that has hung over me since my arrival has begun to dissipate. Maybe it’s because I got some sleep. Or that I may have already found exactly what I was looking for, which means I can go home. Sure, I hope to be wrong. The thought of my sister as a conniving thief makes me sick to my stomach. But it’s better than her going missing, isn’t it? In this neighborhood, there are far worse things that could happen to a person than to be caught stealing. As long as Anastasia is safe and unharmed, I could forgive her this mistake.