The Deal
I call it a deal because it wasn’t a wedding.
Weddings are for people who love each other. We sat across from each other in the lawyer’s office, as two business partners.
I – Clara, a 24-year-old translator from Pazardzhik, with shabby jeans, a cheap bag and a father in resuscitation.
He – Julian Turnev, 65-year-old owner of clinics, laboratories and whatever else you can imagine. A man with a face like old marble – beautiful, but with cracks in which she has layered so much grief that she could almost touch.
My father was dying. A rare nervous illness from which doctors only shrugged or asked for sums that sounded like phone numbers.
Julian was the only one who said:
We can cure him. But it won’t be cheap.
“Not cheap” meant more than anything I’ve ever seen in one piece. The sequel was brief:
I have a proposal. Marry me. All the costs of your father’s treatment are at my expense.
I remember my hands shaking over the table.
“Why me?” I was able to ask.
“Because I need a wife, not a mistress,” he replied calmly. “Someone who is by my side when things get… heavy.”
That’s when I thought it was a disease. His age, his visibly worn body, the slight forgetting in the conversation… Everything was screaming “Alzheimer’s” or something.
I was sitting in front of the blank sheet, and I knew that if I signed, I would get my father out of bed. If I don’t sign, I’ll bury him.
I signed.
The Mansion
Julian’s mansion was about an hour behind Sofia, deep in the mountains. Old, heavy, with wooden paneling and portraits of people looking as if they were about to get off the frames.
The first night he greeted me with a glass of champagne and a strangely calm smile.
“There’s one more little detail,” he said as he showed me around the rooms. “The house is old, the air is humid, full of spores, and God knows what.” You have to take a pill at night to feel good. Personally, I took it for years.
He pulled out a small glass bottle in which bluish tablets swam.
At nine in the evening. Always at nine.
Internally something shrank.
What are those pills?
Vitamins. A little nootropic. For memory. Nothing special.
This “nothing special” scared me the most.
But the next day my father was transferred to one of his clinics. The procedures have begun. I saw him get him out of bed, how he could hold the glass alone again.
And when at nine Julian put the pill in my palm and handed me a glass of water, I swallowed it.
