milliways_bar | (no subject)

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susannah dean

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Have you ever had a Coke float? It's like a root beer float, only with Coke.

It's pretty good.

There's a beautiful legless black woman pushing fifty in the bar, and her wheelchair is parked at a table with a Coke float in a tall, frosty glass. You can't get Coke in her world, which she considers a serious failing.

Today was an unreasonably hot day for September, and as the ice cream melts into creamy swirls in the cola, there are irregular little crunches of ice embedded in the scoops, which she carves out with a spoon.

Sometimes, life is pretty good to you. Just sometimes. She has a notebook and a medical-supplies catalog with her, on the theory that she is going to spend this time productively, but mostly she is concentrating on her drink right now.

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If nothing else, the Russian astronaut is getting an education in exotic foods. Such as nachos.

And now, apparently, Coke floats.

She'll comment in a moment. Once she works out how to phrase 'what the hell is that'. For the meantime, her attention is firmly on the glass.

Susannah is not unaccustomed to being stared at, although the beverage angle is a new twist. She pages idly through the catalog. Custom-made is nice, but expensive, and people have to measure your ass. Not a great time.

"Um. Excuse me-" oh, what was the English again- "Gospozha? What...what are you drinking?"

Russian? "It's a Coke float," she says. "Ice cream in Coca-cola. Very sweet, very cold."

The accent would suggest that, if not Russian, at least very, very Eastern European.

"Oh."

To her credit, she just looks bemused.

"It's good," she adds, perhaps unnecessarily.

A quick grin.

"I...do not doubt you. But it looks frightening."

"Frightening?" She doesn't get it. "What's so scary?"

"The colours. Very rich."

"Oh, it is that," she agrees. "Especially with real ice cream."

"I'm Susannah." She offers her hand.

She steps forward - a tiny woman, no more than 4'10 - and shakes her hand. Her own, though small, is calloused. It matches the military bearing she still has.

"Esfir Shostakovna."

She's still taller than Susannah; at least, for the last thirty years. But there is less craning of the neck than usual.

"Pleased to meet you."

"Likewise." Beat. "I didn't disturb you, with my question?"

She knows her way around a conversations that involves engines and planes and flying and physics. Other things are occasionally like steping through a minefield.

"No, I'm not doing anything you could be disturbing," she laughs. "Just idling. Getting out of the house."

"Ah." Another one of those quick grins. "I get that."

"Maybe a little adult conversation," she adds. "Most of my company is seventeen years old."

She tilts her head.

"You are teacher? Or, mother?"

She laughs. "Mother."

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