Impuls

Aster

And take half your paycheck, Charlie laughs.

Clark smiles.

Emily counts her steps.

* * *

Believes: magic has already happened once, so why shouldn't it happen again; yes, she has forbidden it, renounced it, cursed it; but who knows, maybe at least one more time a miracle will happen…?

So every day she walks in circles around the damn hospital, afraid to go inside; every time she leans her forehead against the cold glass in the coffee shop; and every three days she buys the cheapest coffee – just to sit there for a few hours, at the end of which another airplane of hope takes off.

Sometimes she buys a newspaper with job ads – and pokes around like a blind kitten, calling, asking; rejection, rejection, rejection. It is as if she has been blacklisted, branded, cut out of life; it is as if she has become invisible again, and her foil reflecting the light has grown into her skin; and Emily does not have the courage to go to work in another direction, even if the coffee shop on her street corner has an opening for a waitress.

She doesn't know how to do otherwise.

It gets harder every day; the money she has left runs out too quickly, and she begins to live on four pounds a day; half of which is coffee, the rest for travel and some food.

Soon she will go to zero, run out, cease to exist. The twentieth, the day of the rent payment, is approaching; there is less and less money on the card – three hundred pounds she will certainly not scrape together.

In the evening, Emily turns off the lights in the apartment, pulls out a bottle of whiskey she's been saving for a rainy day, and lies on her bed, leaning her head back. She tries to convince herself that everything will be okay, but it doesn't work; Clark still looms before her eyes.

I wouldn't leave anyway.

The whiskey is bitter and nasty, bringing nothing but nausea and a burning sensation in her stomach; she can't and can't drink; and all the romantic clich'es of getting drunk and calling someone she needs turn out to be just beautiful shimmers in a color movie.

Half an hour later, the phone rings deafeningly, and the mother declares in a shrill, high-pitched, vowel-pulling voice:

– It's because you're not married! If you had a rich, strong, strong man by your side, you wouldn't get fired!

– What is the connection? – Emily asks aloofly.

– You would have someone to support you! Someone to help you! Gave you money! Wouldn't have had to pay your rent! And I told you," said Mrs. Johnson, indignantly, "I told you, I told you, medicine, sunshine, is not your thing; it's not a girl's thing. It's where you want men who can take care of other people and not just themselves!

Emily chuckles as Clark, in her head, dances off toward the exit, adjusting his long, toe-length, gray beard.

– Listen, darling. Come on, listen to us. Come to us, you're welcome. Give up London, it's all grayness and disappointment; you don't need it, a city with nothing. Where did you say you lived on Triti? How do you live there? There's nothing there but mud and rain, and it's warm and dry here. You go help…

– Mama.

– What about Mom? – The cup bangs on the saucer. – Mama's the only one who cares about you. Daddy doesn't care, does he? All day long in his newspapers. It's no use. Even in the garden I manage by myself.

– Mother.

– If only you'd been patient and stayed with David…

Emily shudders.

– I have to go. I'll call you later. When… when things get better.

She definitely needs to get some air.

* * *

When you meet an angel – on the subway, in a bakery, in a coffee shop – the constellations do not fall down; the enamel of the sky does not crack; there is no tickle in your chest; and the cold London wind does not tremble under its huge open wings.

Only a voice ringing with crystal:

– Miss Johnson, have you decided to freeze to death?

And the clock frightenedly freezes, stumbling on the edge of the division.

– Your lips are already blue.

When you meet an angel, you hardly notice the difference: a passerby with an umbrella, a woman with a child, Clark in a black long coat.

– I… I just…

Angel has dark purple lipstick on his lips, a long, almost floor-length cape, his eyes always clinging to everything; and on the embankment of the Regent's Canal, the wind flutters his hair, and the unfamiliar silence. The Art House of Illustrations, a three-story museum standing by the water itself, burns with yellow lights.

It smells of salt and hot dogs and craft beer; Emily wraps her scarf around herself, pulls back her coat with its buttons crooked, and fears to meet Clark's gaze.

What is she doing in one of the poorest and dullest neighborhoods in London…?

Clark stops next to Emily and leans on the parapet – heavy and stone, with carved iron inlays in the shape of steam engines; he smokes, filling everything around him with the sharp menthol; and Emily sinks in a cloud of strong smoke, feeling her coat saturated with smell again.

Clark's cigarettes.

The neurosurgeon smokes so beautifully that Emily involuntarily admires her thin fingers around the cigarette, which shows a thin purple rim of lipstick on the filter; a wide, heavy ring with a black stone reflects the darkening sky. With her other hand she holds a large, almost half-liter glass. Faintly visible steam is coming from a tiny hole in the lid.

– Have you been drinking?

Clark asks it as simply as if he were talking about the weather, and Emily is embarrassed by such directness: