She listened to his tale of old women married to Russians, and she couldn't help but wonder if the Russian was someone she knew. Oh, the world wasn't that small, but Cat didn't believe in coincidence. It made her look at the decor in a new light, one that was grimy yellow and clouded over. The gaps in her memory threatened to resurface with every blink, and she really didn't want to lose reality while sitting here, amid all these things that would make surfacing more complicated than it normally was. She followed the wave of his hand, and her gaze lit on the blinis.
The world blinked.
Breakfast was гречневая каша. Before the sun rose every morning, and in the bitter cold. Her toes were blue, and the porridge was never warm enough to steam. The shower head grew icicles.
Her return gaze was slow, hard-won and she smiled at him with that same deliberate slowness. He was talking about the party and, luckily, she caught up without needing to ask for clarification. "Oh? Perhaps it was just someone as intelligent as me," she suggested. She already knew it was him in that weight room, and she took the interactions in the dark to be somehow more real. People, she thought, liked each other when recognition was present, even if they didn't like each other at all. Sitting there, draped upon his chair and admiring his cat, she was sure he didn't actually like her.
But, Cat, she was accustomed to being disliked. It was easier than being liked, she found, and she took another swallow of her vodka. "I don't believe in God. You're going to need to find someone with faith. Old men in the sky? They don't impress me much." Eddie would be appalled to hear her say those words, but they wouldn't surprise him. It was hard to have faith, at least for her, because life had been such a crock of shit. "But Bukowski is a well-behaved darling. What have you done to make him bite you?" It was obviously Jack's fault, or so her entertained smile said.
Footing successfully restored, her mossy eyes lit curiously. "Oh? I love hearing about extremely stupid things." She wasn't even exaggerating. She did love hearing about extremely stupid things.