She leaned over the table and poured some wine into Tesla’s cup.
‘Just a little. There you go.’
Tesla picked up the cup, staring at the burgundy liquid inside it with his features crumpled into an odd twisting of dread, fascination, fear and excitement. He raised the cup to his lips, but then hesitated and shot a wary glance into Margaret’s eyes.
‘Not a single person, right? Ever?’
‘Cross my heart, Tesla. Nobody will ever know.’
He closed his eyes, put the edge of the glass to his lips and tipped it back. He pulled a little wine into his mouth and sloshed it around for a few seconds before swallowing it. He then cocked his head to the side, looking slightly confused and perhaps a tad regretful about what he had just done.
‘It … it tasted a bit like fire in my mouth,’ he said. ‘And now it’s making my belly warm.’
Margaret let out a giggle.
‘That’s what it does, silly!’
Tesla’s eyes widened.
‘Oh! And now the warm feeling is spreading all around my body!’
Margaret laughed.
‘You want some more?’
‘Y-, yes! Yes please!’
She poured him more wine, and this time he had no compunction about grabbing the glass and sucking the liquid out with enthusiastic delight, quickly draining it to the last drop.
‘Wow!’ he exclaimed after a minute or two of calm silence. ‘I feel even warmer now! This is … this is nice! I think I feel more happy than I did before. And … and I’m not so worried about so many things. This is what alcohol does to people?’
‘Yes! It’s not some terrible, life-wrecking poison like the General is making it out to be. I mean, it can be, you see, so he’s not entirely wrong. It can be a bad thing if you’re not responsible about it. It’s one of those substances you can easily abuse. But you’re lucky, see, because you’ve got me here looking out for you … and I’m afraid I’m gonna have to say no more now.’
Tesla frowned and looked immensely disappointed.
‘But, but I only had such a little bit. It’s not doing anything bad to me! Come on Margaret, can’t I please have just a little more?’
Margaret’s expression hardened.
‘Sorry sweetie, but I meant it when I said just a taste. You’re only a kid, so you shouldn’t be having any more than a sip. This stuff only starts hitting you properly after half an hour or so. And because of that, if you don’t know what you’re doing it’s easy to get in over your head real quick.’
Tesla’s shoulders slumped, and his face took on a deflated look.
‘Okay,’ he sighed. ‘You do know best, Margaret. Thank you at least for the taste. I’m glad I did that.’
The hardness melted from Margaret’s face.
‘I’m glad you did too.’
It was time now to steer the conversation in the direction she needed it to go.
‘Look out the window, Tesla. The sky is so pretty, ain’t it?’
‘There are a lot of stars starting to come out, yes. It’s quite beautiful.’
‘You know one of my hobbies back home is astronomy. Do you know much about astronomy?’
‘A little, but we only study it in detail in higher grades at school.’
‘I could teach you a lot about the stars in the sky, Tesla. I could show you all the constellations and tell you about the planets and our galaxy … but not from this room. We’d need to be outside, where I could see the whole sky. Oh, how I ache to be outside on a starry night like this! It really kills me to be stuck inside when there’s such a pretty, starry sky out there.’
‘Well, I … I could ask the General if I could take you outside to look at the stars for a while.’
‘You could? Really? That would be amazing! And like I said, I could teach you so much.’
‘All right, I will go now!’ he declared, emboldened by the alcohol flowing freely through his young veins.
‘No, no!’ Margaret said, looking suddenly alarmed. ‘You can’t go to him now! He’ll smell the wine on you! You can’t let him see you again until tomorrow, when the alcohol is out of your system. Besides, I’m beat now. I wanna go to sleep real soon, so I guess you can just tell your friends there’s no need to warm up a bath for me. But yeah, how about tomorrow you ask the General if you and I can go for a lil’ stroll around the city and look at the night sky? It’ll be perfect too; tonight there’s almost no moon, and tomorrow the moon will be gone completely, so we’ll be able to see all of the stars in all their glory.’
Tesla stood up to leave.
‘I will ask him first thing in the morning. Good night, Margaret.’
He gathered the dirty plates and the now-empty bottle of wine and walked toward the door. When he reached it, however, he stopped and turned around, fixing an intense stare into Margaret’s eyes.
‘Thank you for being my friend, Margaret. Words cannot describe how much your friendship means to me. I … um, that’s all. Thank you.’
Looking suddenly embarrassed at what he’d said, he hurried out of the room.
When Margaret heard the lock click in the door, she flopped down on the bed and beamed a broad, toothy grin up at the ceiling. Tesla’s confession of how much their friendship meant to him was quickly forgotten; all she could think about was just how perfectly everything was falling into place.
‘One more night in this hellhole,’ she whispered to the empty room. ‘One more goddamned night, and then I’m gone.’
58
MARGARET
Margaret awoke to the sound of knocking on her door, and an uppercut of panic cracked her jaw with stunning force as she realised that it was not Tesla’s telltale knock, but someone else’s. Fast fear froze her blood and paralysed her muscles with its glacial breath, howling gale-like through her body.
Oh God, oh my God, he knows! He’s found out somehow!
