T H E OT H E R A N N A
E l li ot t Gi sh
FICTION
T he storm has already started by the time Anna and I head back from
the lake, the snowfall blown in loops and whorls by a snarling wind. We navigate the trail bent almost double, feet skidding over ice hidden beneath shifting clouds of white. Anna’s hand is in mine, mine in hers. The two of us fall through the back door, tangled together and laughing those gasping little laughs that happen when you can’t breathe properly. “You’re pink.” Anna grins down at me. The snow in her black hair beads into water. “You’re not,” I tell her. I feel an icy trickle down the back of my neck, soaking into my sweater. I am reluctant to relinquish her hand. “You’re magenta. You’re burgundy. You’re… you’re blood orange.” “Kate, those are all different colors,” she says. Her faint accent, one of the last traces of her Polish childhood, lends a hardness to her r’s and a softness to her th’s. “Still true.” Taking a step back, I shake myself vigorously, drops of melt scattering and falling to the floor. There is a little puddle there already, spreading slowly from beneath our boots. “Let’s get warm. I’ll grab some wood from the basement.” When I first slept at Anna’s house—which is to say, when I first slept with Anna—I had been delighted to discover the woodstove in her living room. I had never known anyone with a wood stove before; having a stove that burned actual wood instead of a heater seemed like an unimaginable luxury. Now I know that the stove exists because Anna’s landlord is too cheap to fix the central heating, and that wood stoves are an incredible pain in the ass. Still, there is something enchanting about having a real fire in front of you, and something very satisfying about being the person who makes it.
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