Not This Christmas [Narrated]

I was uneasy as I followed Katerina through the gate and down the overgrown path toward her apartment. She lived in one of the Victorian houses owned by the university, the kind that had been chopped into awkward units for single faculty. It felt like a place that held on to its ghosts longer than its tenants.

Her unit was on the ground floor. "Three rooms in an L-shape," she’d said. I nodded, as if that meant something. Inside, the main room must have once been the grand parlor: high ceilings, wide windows, and an upturned bicycle mid-disassembly on the dining table.

Not a recent project. Dust on the frame. The chain lay coiled on a folded napkin, as if plated. It felt less like a repair in progress, more like an art installation—Still Life with Derailleur.

I stared.

"It needs a new sprocket," she said, walking past me. "But I have not yet decided which one."

The dining chairs were mismatched. One had a cushion that looked like it used to be a child’s winter coat. The others were bare. The whole room felt thrown together in a hurry and never reconsidered—each object obeying its own private logic.

She caught me looking. “All this furniture—it was already here when I moved in,” she said, with the pleased certainty of someone who believed she'd gotten very lucky.

To the left: an open-plan kitchen. Cheap cabinets. Oversized fridge. I approached it like an archaeologist.

She started opening cupboards, hunting for—anything, really. I joined in. We moved in sync, unintentionally, each reveal confirming the same thing: bare.

"You don’t cook much," I said.

"I don’t cook at all," she replied. "I told you—we have excellent vending machines."

She paused, glanced toward a high shelf.

"I might not actually have any tea."

Eventually, behind an unlabelled jar, I found some dodgy-looking tea bags and filled the kettle.

"Would you like to see the rest of the apartment?" she asked.

It felt like ceremony. And something in her posture made me think: I might be the first person to be shown around—friend, partner, witness. Like crossing a threshold she didn’t know she’d built.

The bedroom was large but hollow. Empty in that way rooms get when their purpose is theoretical. No desk. No drawers. At the far end, a queen-sized bunk bed, built into an alcove. Handmade. Slightly uneven. Proud.

She climbed up to the top level, crouching on the bare platform, her head resting against the ceiling.

"I like to sit up here," she said. "I feel safe... it’s soothing."

I stayed below. "It looks... sturdy."

"Do you want to come up?"

"I’m good down here."

She nodded, smiling.

And then I saw it: the sack.

It was tied to the bedframe and hung like an industrial stocking. Burlap. Bulging.

"What’s that?" I asked.

"What?" she said, eyes passing through it.

"This big sack," I said.

"Oh, you mean my closet."

I paused. "Closet?"

"Yes. In your country, you might say wardrobe."

"I know the word closet," I said. "But that’s... a sack."

She nodded. "My system is simple. I wash the clothes, dry them, and put them in the sack."

To prove it, she untied it and pulled out a crumpled shirt, followed by a pair of crumpled shorts. Both clean. Both devastatingly wrinkled.

I asked if she had an iron.

She blinked. Like I’d asked her if she churned her own butter.

She offered to show me the bathroom. I declined. Suggested the kettle had probably boiled.

She excused herself, said she’d join me in a minute.

I went back to the kitchen. The kettle had boiled, cooled. I restarted it.

While the kettle hissed, I opened the fridge. The light was dim and flickering, like it didn’t really want to be involved. Shelves: empty, aside from a lone takeaway container and a few condiment packets—soy sauce, ketchup, mustard—spread out like a sad buffet.

At the bottom, one drawer. It resisted, then gave, like it knew what I was about to see and couldn’t, in good conscience, let it happen easily.

Inside: a collapsed half-lemon. And something behind it, inside a plastic grocery bag. I leaned in. Whatever it was sat on a polystyrene tray, the cellophane torn. Whatever color it had originally been, it was now green. And blue. With white specks. The mold bloomed into topography—soft craters, ridges, tiny peaks. Furry and unnatural. The texture of something halfway between science and myth.

I wasn’t sure if it was food or folklore.

That’s when she walked in.

She didn’t flinch—just looked at me, calm and unblinking.

"Oh," she said. "You found the cheese."

"Cheese?"

"Yes. From my boss. Last Christmas. I’d believed she didn’t like me, but she gave me such a beautiful cheese selection."

She looked at it, then at me.

"Yes. I know. But—it was kind."

"Katerina... it’s March. You’ve had this cheese rotting in your fridge for three months?"

"Not this Christmas, Robert. Last Christmas."

I placed the cheese back in the drawer. She relaxed.

I poured the tea. No milk. No lemon. Just the gesture of tea. It tasted like patience. Or like staying polite on a sinking ship.

We sat on the sofa. I scanned for conversation. The bookshelves were bare. A handful of Russian prog rock CDs. Nothing I could translate into small talk.

Then I saw the photo.

What looked like an older, mousier version of Katerina. Two children. Two smiling grandparents.

"Your sister and her kids?" I asked.

"Yes," she said. "And these are my parents."

"Nice," I began.

"You’ll be meeting them next month."

"I didn’t know they were visiting Philadelphia."

"They’re not," she said. "They’re visiting my sister. In San Antonio."

"So... how will I meet them?"

"We will go there," she said. "They must meet the man I will marry."

There was a long pause, while it sank in that she wasn’t joking.

I don’t remember what I said after that.

I don’t remember leaving.

I don’t remember getting in the car, or starting the engine.

The next thing I remember was the state line: Delaware.

I was safe.

That night, I sent the email. "Dear Katerina."

I don’t recall what it said. Probably some version of "It’s not you, it’s me."

She never replied.

Years later, I searched her name.

Now teaching in the Midwest. Publishing often.

Probably still building systems.

Still surviving.

I wonder if her closet still hangs in her bedroom, and whether she was ever able to part with the cheese. Or if that was what unsettled me most—not the mess, but the method.

And for those of you who might have missed the first two parts of this story, here they are.