Kriana: переводы

→She leans her back against the chair. The coffee gurgles and drips into the pot behind her.

→Her gaze shifts softly and I feel as if she’s mourning me, or my feelings in some private way.

→My stomach tightens and I get this horrid feeling in the center of my throat.

→“You need to know, Izabel,” she looks at me intently so that I’ll meet her gaze, “that Victor is risking a lot…no, he’s risking everything by helping you. And even though he left tonight and doesn’t intend to come back for you, what he’s already done where you’re concerned, though I have no idea what that might be, it could have already sealed his fate.”

→I stay as far away from the topic of the two of them as I can.

→“No, doll,” she says. “If that’s what he told you, it was probably just to get you to stop talking. (Well, she’s right about that much, I know.) He would never tell anyone else anything too personal about his life, especially his family. Not even me. I don’t even know if he has a family.”

→Samantha shakes her head, smiling and maybe even finding what I told her a little amusing. But she’s not gloating about it.

→“But what about his family?” I ask. “He told me he had a sister and that he killed his father and something about his mother being in…Budapest, I think?”

→“Well, I know he loves his coffee black.” She smiles. “He loves Thai food and he won’t touch tuna fish with someone else’s tongue. He prefers a good beer over a fine wine, but only the best beer, preferably German.” She sits down at the table with me and props the side of her face in one hand, looking thoughtful. “To tell you the truth, Victor would rather go all the way to Germany for a beer than to drink the beer here.” She waves her hand at me once, removing it from her cheek. “He’s a very particular man.”

→She pours the water in the back of the coffee maker while allowing the different conversations she’s had with Victor to materialize.

→“What kinds of things?”

→“I suppose it’s OK to tell you that he’s been the way he is pretty much all his life.” She scoops a few tablespoons of coffee into the filter and shuts the top of the coffee maker. “But I really only know the things he’s told me. Nothing more than that.”

→I sit down at the kitchen table while she gets the coffee ready at the counter where the coffee pot sits next to an old giant microwave.

→I believe her mostly because if Victor trusted her enough to leave me alone with her then that’s enough for me.

→“I swear it’s perfectly poison-free,” she jokes as I follow her out the door and into the hall.

→She stands up and I put my hand in hers and accept.

→She smiles over at me in a short glance and reaches out her hand. “Let’s talk about it over a cup of coffee.”

→I sit upright, dropping my legs over the side of the bed to sit like her. I rest my hands within my lap.

→True, but she’s smiling and really seems kind of itching to talk to me, regardless. It may not turn out to be much, but something is better than nothing, I suppose.

→“Well, I’m guessing you know what he does for a living already, so you can probably imagine that I’m sworn to a certain amount of secrecy that if I break could get me in a lot of trouble.”