Read Despite the Falling Snow for Free Online

dancing to it, she will start crying. I must talk, she thinks, say something funny or witty or intelligent to this kind-faced young man. Ask him what he does, where he lives, what he thinks, feels, knows. That’s what I am supposed to be doing. He is not what I expected to meet here tonight.
    She opens her mouth to address him, and he leans forward a little, to catch the coming words, but they don’t arrive. The perfect bow of her upper lip remains open for a second, but no words come out. I cannot speak, she realises; I cannot say one word without crying. It must be the drinks. What is in them?
    Her head turns to the bar table, and she sees the second round of glasses sitting there, brimful, their wet bases leaching colour out of the red paper that covers the table. A hand comes into her line of vision, and she sees long fingers and square nails closing around one glass, and raising it up to offer to her.
    “Another? Or have you had enough?”
    Misha is smiling grimly. Beside him, Alexander stands, attentive, polite.
    “I think you know each other?” he offers.
    Misha nods, his eyes, reddened with too much alcohol, still upon Katya.
    “She’s like my kid sister,” he tells Alexander. “Which is why I warn her off men like you.”
    Alexander laughs. “Am I so bad?”
    “You’re too good, my friend. Too good by a long way.”
    Katya takes the glass and downs the drink, while Misha watches her. She is restless, annoyed with Misha for interrupting, for breaking the delicate web of memory and gentleness that she had spun here alone with this young man. Now they will be forced to banter with each other, to laugh at stupid jokes that are funny only when you have drunk enough vodka.
    “How do you both know each other?” Katya asks.
    “We were in the same class at school,” Misha tells her. “I was the handsome, brilliant, popular one, and he wasn’t.”
    “Then why were you friends with him?” Katya’s voice sounds bored with her own question, as though she is now merely going through the motions of frivolous conversation.
    “I took pity on him.”
    “Are you sure it wasn’t the other way around?” Her voice is clipped, with no hint of laughter, and Misha’s eyebrows go up and he smiles to cover his displeasure.
    She looks at Alexander. He is smiling at his friend indulgently, but there is also a hint of distance in his eyes that suggests he too is beginning to find this conversation tedious. Misha glances from one to the other, with a wry smile now, and through the clouds of vodka that have gathered in his head, he sees that neither of them are finding him charming or amusing. He takes a deep breath that neither one can see. Never mind, he thinks, I’ll deal with this later. Now is not the best time. Without another word, he squeezes Alexander’s shoulder, and leans to kiss Katya on the cheek. And then, as suddenly as he joined them, he is gone, and they are left alone again, amongst the crowd.
    Alexander hands her another drink, and she takes it, then winces and coughs at the burning of the pure liquid snaking down her throat, and he rubs the top of her back with his hand to ease her discomfort, and she leans in to him, and lays her head on his shoulder. Almost as soon as he has absorbed the fact that she really is leaning against him, that he can feel her whole body beneath his hand on her back, she straightens up, with an abruptness that surprises him.
    “What is it?”
    She shakes her head. “I hardly know you.”
    He cannot contradict this fact, so he stays silent.
    “I want to go home,” she says.
    “Don’t. Please.” He turns to follow her movement away from the bar, and when she looks at him, his eyes are concerned and alert.
    “Why not, if I am tired?” She looks much stronger now, less fragile. Misha’s interruption has given her time to gather herself together, and he knows that her petulant question is only her way of reasserting herself after the lapse of allowing herself to lean