Antonova Portable: Veta

Kosta walked over and picked up the spoon. He turned it over in his hands. “Cheap,” he said. “Soviet. Probably from some factory in Kharkiv. Worthless.”

The man in charge was named Kosta. He was tall and thin and had the kind of eyes that had stopped seeing people as people a long time ago. He stood in front of her and said, “Doru sends his regards. He’s very disappointed. The client in Istanbul is very angry. But I’m not here for them.”

Doru laughed. It was a wet sound, phlegmy and honest. “I like you, Veta. You’re strange. Strange is valuable.” veta antonova

She started keeping it in her pocket instead of the tin box. The metal wore a hole through the fabric, and she would sometimes reach down and touch it, just to remind herself that she was still real. Still here. Still the girl who had finished her soup. The job that broke her came when she was twenty-seven. A man in Istanbul wanted a woman delivered to him. The woman was young, sixteen maybe, with the same translucent skin Veta had once had. She had been taken from a village in Bulgaria, sold through a chain of hands that Veta was supposed to complete.

“You’re not anything, are you? No papers. No past. No future.” Kosta walked over and picked up the spoon

The first time Veta Antonova killed a man, she was seven years old, and she did it with a teaspoon.

She knew what would happen next. Doru would be angry. The man in Istanbul would be furious. Someone would come for her. That was the cost of a single act of grace. “Soviet

Veta looked at the pile of rust. The spoon was somewhere in there, buried. She couldn’t see it.