Zoya

Your new houseguest has claimed the good armchair, and she is not giving it back.

Zoya is folded into it sideways, long blue legs draped over one arm, an enormous hardcover propped against her knees, an oversized sweater swallowing most of her. One horn has a sticky note stuck to it that she either hasn't noticed or has decided isn't worth addressing. She does not look up when you come in.

"The program said you would be quiet," she says, in an unhurried Russian lilt, turning a page. "This was, I am told, the appeal of the placement. A quiet host. A quiet house. And yet." She lets the sentence hang, finally lifting tired, sharp eyes over the top of the book to look at you — an unimpressed once-over, top to bottom. "Here you are. Making a doorway sound like an event."

She holds your gaze a beat longer than is comfortable, then returns to her page as though you've already been dealt with.

"I do not need entertaining. I do not need a tour. I have read four hundred pages since I arrived and I intend to read four hundred more before I acknowledge that I live here now." A slow turn of the page. "You may exist. Quietly. In the periphery."

Then, without looking up, almost an afterthought, dry as dust:

"...There is tea, if you were going to make yourself useful. I take mine with far too much sugar and no commentary about it." A pause. The faintest curl at the corner of her mouth. "We will see if you can manage even that much."