THE UKRAINIAN REFUGEE

        “Don’t do it.”
        The woman turned, half-scared. Her hands were starting to shake under tension, eyes swayed by tears. 

        “Who are you? What do you want?” she said through sobs. 

        “I want to pull you back. Just give me your hand.”

        I took a few steps up the bridge, sure she will let go before I could reach the railing she was hanging from. 

        “Don’t come closer. Please… Just go,” she cried. 

        “Ok, I won’t come closer. Can we talk, though?”

        “Who are you?” she sobbed, looking over the shoulder. 

        “My name’s Teddy.”

        “Alla…”

        “What’s that? Italian?” 

        “Ukrainian,” she said at length. 

        “Shit…” 

        “Please go, Teddy…” she cried, turning to the lake. 

        “Soon as you’re on this side of the railing.”

        “What’s it to you…? What do you care?” she said on a weak voice. 

        “I don’t really care… It’s just… You seem like a nice girl… Ending it like this doesn’t seem like the right way out for you, you know…?”

        “They killed my father,” she cried. “Now my husband…” 

        “Jumping in there won’t bring them back. Just give me your hand… The water’s damn cold.”

        I took a few more steps toward her. 

        “I have noting left to live for,” the woman sobbed. 

        “You’re too young to end it. Besides, you’d have done it by now… Come on, give me your hand.”

        I reached the railing and grabbed her arm. She turned, slowly. Offered her hand and climbed over in sections. 

        “More room to cry on this side, see?”

        She didn’t reply. The girl just hugged me hard, still crying. 

        “Thank you…” she sobbed. “Thank you.”

        “Yeah, no problem,” I smiled. “Come on, you need to walk it off…”

        We strolled down the bridge and into the other side of the park. The night was way too cold for March… The crows soaring overhead there to complete the drab painting. 

        “Where are you from? Kyiv?”

        “Yeah… A suburb of….” she said, wiping tears. 

        “Is your house ok?”

        “I don’t know… I don’t have any relative left there… They killed my husband and father… My mother is still at the boarder… I can’t reach most of my friends…” she cried. 

        “You got split?”

        “Came separately. She didn’t want to leave at first… Then our neighborhood got hit…” 

        “You wanna stay in Romania?”

        “For a while… Till my mother gets here. Then maybe go to France… My sister lives there.”

        “Do you have a place to stay?”

        “Not really…” she sobbed. “Barely found one for my daughter… A friend of a friend took her in, but just for tonight…”

        “How old is she?” 

        “4.”

        “Fuck…”

        “Yeah… But she’s strong… She’s Ukrainian,” the girl smiled through tears. 

        “Yeah, you’re really strong,” I mirrored. 

        I was trying to comfort her, but inside my guts were starting to break. 

        “Do you know anyone in Bucharest?”

        “Just this woman that took my daughter in… Met her today. My friends from Cluj arranged it. I took her there about three hours ago, just before I found out about my husband…”

        “Can't you stay there too?”

        “No, she ain’t got room for the both of us. I’ll just walk till my mother gets here, and till we manage to get a plane… Or a train… Or till we decide what the hell we’re gonna do next…” she sobbed. 

        “Any news about your mom?”

        “Last time we talked she was still trying to get in… But now I don’t know… Threw my phone in the lake… I was really angry…” 

        “Here.”

        I gave her my phone and she called her mother. 

        “She made it in… She’s in a refugee camp near the border,” she said. “She’ll try to get a ride to Bucharest in the morning.”

        “You need a place to wait… Come with me.”

        The woman followed me down the street and into the building. Her crying had subsided by the time we got out of the elevator. 

        “Nice place…”

        “Thanks. Though it’s a shithole right now… I haven’t been here in three weeks… And I was redoing it when… I’ve had to put things on hold. Let’s see what drinks are around here, ok?” 

        She followed me to the kitchen. 

        “What do you mean you put things on hold? And why haven’t you been around your house for the last three weeks…?” she asked, taking a bar stool. 

        I opened the fridge - a bottle of red inside by some fucking miracle… Other than that, the guys threw all the booze out… Or sunk it. 

        “They must have had a party here…” 

        “Who?” she asked. 

        “My friends… The use the apartment for parties when I’m away. It’s close to the park… And there’s a lot of clubs around the lake. They pick up chicks there and they fuck them here,” I said, filling two glasses. 

        “That’s disgusting!” she said with the shadow of a laugh. 

        “I’m not gonna disagree… To Ukraine,” I said, taking the first sips of poison in what felt like ages. 

        She mirrored. 

        “That’s good. What’s that… Tuscany?”

        “Yeah…” 

        “Nice stuff. You haven’t answered me, though… What happened to you?” she asked again. 

        Last thing I wanted to do was talk about what happened with someone that was just about to off themselves from totally different reasons… A fucking war. 

        “It began in the summer. I was walking my dog in the park, not a fucking care in the world… That’s where I met this woman. She’s 46… And married. But it didn’t matter. We started going out… Soon enough I was in love with her. Like I never was before… Like I never thought I could be in love with somebody. She’s really gorgeous. And smart… She’s the best woman I’ve ever seen. Never thought one like her could even exist… I was starting to think we could have a real shot… To last together. But three weeks ago I saw her at the park… Walking her dog… An old guy with his fucking dog next to her. They weren’t touching our something… Just talking and walking… Still, it broke me. Came home, swallowed a bottle of Scotch and some pills. I didn’t want to kill myself, just fall asleep and forget about it… Woke up in the hospital eight hours later. I didn’t come home because she lives around… Didn’t want to see her… Especially couldn’t risk seeing her with that shit…” 

        I tried to avoid her stare as much as I could, though her eyes were sewed to me the whole time I was talking. 

        “You overreacted!” she replied. 

        “Some people say that…” I said, taking another sip of wine. 

        “That’s the truth. A walk means nothing! You should have talked about it… She would have explained the situation…”

        “She did. Said that shit was some neighbor…”

        “Then what the hell more do you want? Why don’t you believe her?”

        “Why are you on her side?” I smiled. “It wasn’t her that pulled you back on the safe side of that railing…”

        “Yeah, I know… But I’m on her side because she didn’t do anything wrong. And because I want you to be happy… exactly because you pulled me back!” she mirrored. “By the way you talk about her… You seem truly in love with her. And also, you don’t seem like the kind of guy that wants a relationship… Still, it’s obvious you want to be with this woman. Means you really love her… And you shouldn’t lose someone you love,” she said, tears starting to win her eyes again. 

        “I’ll see what I can do about it…”

        “You should go after her,” she said, trying to quench her crying. 

        “I’ll try… And you should stop thinking about ending it. I almost died that night… Never meant to, but I almost did. Life’s the last thing you should give up on. You gotta keep fighting till you make it out… One more round… Till you’re out.”

        “What’s that? Rocky IV?” she smiled. 

        “Fuck… You’re smart! You know movies…” I couldn’t hide my admiration. 

        “Movie’s famous in Ukraine… We hate Russians,” she smiled once more. 

        “Don’t kick the habit,” I mirrored. “Here, most young people don’t know shit…”

        “Yeah… Got some friends ‘round the country… They’re pretty stupid.”

        “You sure speak way better English than any Romanian I’ve met.”

        “Movies and music,” she replied. 

        She stood up and began pacing around… The terrace door was half-open. She went outside for a second, then ambled back inside. I was leaning on the counter, sipping Italian and thinking how strong the woman had to be to still stay sane after everything that happened to her in the last weeks. 

        “I’ll go set a bed for when you’ll want to crash… Make yourself at home.”

        I walked into the first bedroom. It was full of empty bottles, used condoms and cigarette butts. I knew that would have to be mine for the night… Luckily, the other bedroom was untouched by any dirty deeds. I opened the windows and walked back into the living room. The girl walk right up the second I entered the room. 

“I found this near the TV… Wanna watch it?” she smiled, holding up a Top Gun Blu-ray.

        The morning sun was starting to bleed through the curtains. I stood up with a dry mouth. 

        “What time is it?” she asked. 

        “7.”

        “Fuck… I need to pick my kid up…” 

        She took her body off mine with shaky knees. The girl reached for the last drops of wine and began picking up her clothes. 

        “Want some coffee?”

        “No, thank you… I really have to run… I should have been there at 6!” she smiled. 

        Minutes later, we were biting lips in front of the door. 

        “Thanks for the night. And thanks for not letting me fuck my life up,” she said through the kiss. 

        “Anytime.”

        “If we don’t see each other again… I hope you get that blonde, gorgeous milf back,” she smiled. 

        The woman threw one last kiss and walked out the door.