This Chance Planet by Elizabeth Bear Page B

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    Ten hours cocktail waitressing in those shoes, getting my ass pinched, and explaining drink specials to assholes when they could have picked the information off the intranet with a flick of their attention, didn’t make my feet hurt any less or do much to improve my attitude. I rode home on a nearly-empty train, wishing I had the money to skin out the two other passengers and the ongoing yammer of the ads.
    It’s not safe to filter out too much reality when you’re traveling alone at night. But the desire is still there.
    No dogs this time.
    The elevator to our flat was out of order again. I finally pulled those shoes off and walked up five flights of gritty piss-smelling stairs barefoot, swearing to myself with every step that if Ilya was passed out drunk on the couch, I was carrying every pair of skinny black jeans and his beloved harness boots out into the courtyard and setting it all on fire. And then I was going to dance around the blaze barefoot, shaking my tangled hair like a maenad. Like a witch.
    This is how women sometimes turn into witches. We come home from work one day too many to discover our partners curled up on the couch like leeches in a nice warm tank, and we decide it’s better to take up with a hut with chicken legs.
    A good chicken-legged hut will never disappoint you.
    But when I got home, there was hot food on the stove, plates on the coffee table, and a foot massage.
    I bet a chicken-legged hut doesn’t give a very good foot massage. And they sure as hell don’t cook. Even lentils and kasha. Still it was good lentils and kasha, with garlic in it. And onions. And I hadn’t been the one to cook it.
    You need to get a magic cauldron for doing the cooking. Maybe a mortar and pestle that flies.
    Ilya washed my foot. Then his fingers dug and rolled in the arch. I whimpered and stretched against him, but when he would have stopped I demanded persistence. He set my heel on the cushion and stood.
    â€œWhere are you going?”
    â€œYou’re crabby for somebody whose man is making such an effort.” He walked into the kitchen. A moment later he was back, bearing icy vodka in a tiny glass. He handed it to me. “Na zdravie.”
    â€œYou’re trying to butter me up,” I complained, but I didn’t refuse the vodka. It was cold and hot at once, icy in the mouth, burning in the throat, warm in the belly.
    â€œWhat is it that you really want?”
    He seated himself again and pressed his thumbs into my arch until I groaned. Patently disinterested, he asked, “Any foreigners tonight?”
    It was not a totally idle question. Foreigners tip better. Also, as anyone could guess from the evidence of his wardrobe, Ilya was obsessed with twentieth-century punk rock, and twentieth-century punk rock flourished in England and America. And there aren’t as many foreigners as there used to be, before the carbon crunch.
    â€œYou’re always playing some game,” I said.
    He kissed the sole of my foot.
    I said, “You never just tell me the truth. You could just tell me the truth.”
    â€œBah,” he said, pressing too hard. “Truth is unscientific. The very idea of Truth is unscientific.”
    â€œYou’re a cynic.” I almost said nihilist , which probably would have been true also, but that word had too much history behind it to just sling around at random.
    â€œIf we accept Truth,” he intoned, “then we believe we know answers. And if we believe we know answers, we stop asking questions. And if we stop asking questions, then all we’re doing is operating on blind faith. And that’s the end of science.”
    â€œIsn’t love a kind a faith?” I asked.
    â€œThen why do you keep asking me so many questions?” He laughed, though, to take the sting out.
    I knew he was right. But I still pulled the pillow out from under my head and put it over my face anyway. What did he