Sonia Does Not Want To Be Alone#

Sonia left the vial in the back of her refrigerator behind a jar of mustard and half a bottle of white wine she had been meaning to throw out for months.

That did not make it less present.

The knowledge of it sat in the apartment like another person. Every time she opened the fridge she saw the little glass promise tucked in the corner and felt the same nauseating pull. Relief. Defeat. Curiosity. She stopped opening the refrigerator unless she absolutely had to.

Three days later she was back in a privacy cabin with Anna.

Not because she had changed her mind about the vial.

Because she had begun to realize that the vial was not the only answer the city was offering her.

Anna had already removed her mask by the time Sonia entered. She sat with tea and a plate of sliced fruit untouched in front of her, posture still perfect even inside the hidden little room where women were allowed to unfasten themselves enough to eat. Sonia locked the cabin door, set down her bag, and pulled her own mask off with more force than elegance.

Anna noticed at once.

“Bad day?”

Sonia sat.

“Clarifying day.”

Anna waited.

That was one of the things Sonia both loved and hated now. Anna had become very good at waiting in a way that made the other person either speak honestly or hear herself refusing to.

“I don’t want to be alone,” Sonia said.

The words changed the air between them.

Anna did not look surprised. Only gentler.

“No,” she said softly. “I didn’t think you did.”

Sonia let out a short breath.

“That’s infuriating.”

“Probably.”

Outside the cabin, faint through the walls, came the muted life of the café: cups set down, footsteps, a burst of laughter cut short by the closed little world they were sitting in.

Sonia looked at her tea instead of at Anna.

“I’ve spent months telling myself the problem was ideology. Coercion. The city. The clothes. The rules. And it is those things.” She rubbed one thumb against the side of her cup. “But that isn’t the whole problem.”

Anna remained quiet.

“The whole problem,” Sonia said, “is that public life is becoming easier than private life.”

That got a visible reaction. Not triumph. Recognition.

“Go on.”

Sonia almost told her to go to hell for sounding so calm, but the calm was exactly why she had come.

“At work, in the street, on the tram, in shops, everywhere, someone is there. Someone notices. Someone adjusts, helps, anticipates, makes space. It’s the men around us, and I hate how much I notice that.” She glanced up at Anna at last. “Then I come home and it’s just me and the mask in the drawer and the corset on the chair and that ridiculous little vial in the fridge, and the apartment feels…”

She stopped.

Anna did not rescue her from the sentence.

“Empty?” Anna offered after a moment.

“Wrong,” Sonia said. “Too quiet. Like all the scaffolding disappears and I have to hold myself up alone again.”

Anna’s expression softened with painful understanding.

“Yes.”

That yes came from too far inside the life Sonia was trying to understand.

“And before you say it, no, I am not asking whether swallowing your science project would fix it.”

Anna’s mouth curved, just a little.

“I wasn’t going to say that.”

“Liar.”

“A little.”

It almost made Sonia smile.

Almost.

“What I am asking,” she said, “is whether there is any version of this world where the answer isn’t just total surrender to the virus.”

Anna leaned back slightly.

“You mean relationally.”

“I mean as a person. With another person. Without having to drink anything out of a vial because I’m lonely.”

Anna let the words settle before answering.

“Yes,” she said. “There is.”

Sonia felt something inside her ease and tighten at once.

“Then explain it to me like I’m not a tourist in your religion.”

Anna laughed very softly at that, then folded her hands.

“All right. But it isn’t a religion.”

“That sounded exactly like something someone in a religion would say.”

“Sonia.”

“Fine. Go on.”

Anna took a sip of tea.

“The first thing is that you keep treating all of this as if the only options are total autonomy or total external control. That isn’t how it feels from inside a good relationship here.”

“Good according to whom.”

“According to the woman living in it.”

That was fair enough to irritate Sonia.

Anna continued before she could pounce on the phrasing.

“Yes, there is hierarchy. Yes, a Changed man expects obedience. Yes, he may correct, direct, manage, and structure parts of a woman’s life. None of that is trivial. But courtship exists because women still need to know what kind of man they are being asked to trust with all that power.”

Sonia sat very still.

“And what am I meant to be looking for.”

Anna answered without hesitation.

“How he handles power when he doesn’t need to impress you.”

That was the first sentence of the conversation that sounded less like theory and more like something earned.

“Meaning.”

“Watch him with waitresses. Junior staff. Older women. Men beneath him. Men above him. Does he become showy when he can dominate? Does he become sulky when he can’t? Does he remember what makes other people comfortable, or only what flatters him.” Anna touched the table lightly with two fingertips. “Does he notice your body as something he must manage responsibly, or only as something he wants.”

Sonia’s thoughts went to Henry so fast it almost embarrassed her.

Anna saw it.

Of course she saw it.

“There is someone.”

“Possibly.”

“Henry.”

Sonia gave her a look.

“You’re insufferable.”

“You have signed his name three times in conversation this month and acted as if you weren’t.”

That shut Sonia up.

Anna waited just long enough to make her answer.

“Fine. Henry.”

The name sat between them differently once spoken plainly.

Anna’s gaze warmed.

“Tell me.”

Sonia looked away first.

“He keeps appearing.”

“That sounds ominous.”

“It is ominous. He’s there when I need doors opened, files carried, chairs moved, books reached, logistics solved. He reads my signing faster than most men at work, and properly, not like he’s waiting for speech to rescue it. He doesn’t make a performance of helping. He just…” She made a helpless motion with one hand. “Fits himself into the gap before I have to ask.”

Anna listened with maddening patience.

“How does he treat other women?”

“The same way, more or less. Respectfully. Not flirtatiously. He doesn’t get theatrical about it.”

“And men.”

“Well. Even when they’re idiots.”

“Junior staff.”

“He’s careful with them.”

“Staff in service roles.”

Sonia thought of Henry thanking a cleaner for retrieving a dropped folder instead of letting her hover awkwardly until he noticed. Thought of him holding a lift door for two interns and stepping back so they entered first without comment.

“Also well.”

Anna nodded once, as if ticking something off an invisible list.

“Good.”

“Good?” Sonia echoed. “That’s all?”

“No.” Anna’s mouth softened. “Not all. How does he make you feel.”

That was the question Sonia had been trying to avoid by turning Henry into a case study.

“Supported,” she said after a moment.

Anna said nothing.

“Seen,” Sonia added, quieter now.

Still Anna waited.

Sonia looked down at her hands.

“Managed, a little,” she admitted. “And I don’t know whether that alarms me or…” She stopped.

“Or relieves you.”

Sonia met her eyes.

“Yes.”

There was no point pretending otherwise in here.

Anna spoke carefully.

“Then what you are looking at is not only politics or social pressure. It is temperament. Need. Desire. All the things you have spent a long time sorting into acceptable and unacceptable categories.”

Sonia gave a small, humorless laugh.

“You make it sound very tidy.”

“It isn’t tidy.” Anna’s voice dropped. “It only becomes clearer when you stop lying to yourself about what feels good.”

That one hurt because it was aimed well.

“And if what feels good is the sort of thing feminist mothers warn their daughters about from birth?”

Anna’s gaze held hers.

“Then perhaps feminist mothers are capable of being wrong about some daughters.”

Sonia sat with that.

Not because it convinced her.

Because it did not bounce off.

“All right,” she said at last. “Suppose I entertained this. Not the vial. Henry.”

Anna nodded, serious again.

“Then move slowly and pay attention.”

“To what.”

“Whether he makes space for your refusal.”

That surprised Sonia.

“A Changed man.”

“A good one, yes.” Anna leaned forward slightly. “Hierarchy here does not mean courtship begins with seizure. He should guide. Invite. Signal. Give you room to move toward him. If he crowds you too fast, if he wants obedience before trust, if he enjoys your uncertainty for its own sake, that matters.”

Sonia thought about Henry again. The way he helped. The way he watched. The way he never quite pressed.

“And correction.”

Anna did not pretend not to understand the jump.

“What about it.”

“You made it sound…” Sonia searched for a word that did not sound adolescent. “Structured.”

“It should be.”

“And humiliating.”

Anna’s face colored faintly, but she did not look away.

“Often.”

“You say that so calmly.”

“Because panic would not make it less true.”

Sonia hated how much she loved that answer.

Anna went on, gentler now.

“Correction is one of the places where trust matters most. Outside observers imagine only punishment because that is the cleanest accusation. Inside a good relationship it is more specific than that. He should know what he is correcting, why, and what he wants from you after. Not simply obedience. Understanding. Realignment. If it becomes venting, if it becomes spectacle for its own sake, that is bad character, not good guardianship.”

Sonia held her cup in both hands and let the heat sink into her palms.

“You really do believe in this.”

“Yes.”

“Even the humiliating parts.”

Anna’s expression did something subtle then, more intimate than a blush and harder to look at directly.

“Especially the parts that work,” she said.

Silence followed that.

Not awkward silence.

The kind that comes when both people know too much about what the other has just confessed.

Sonia broke it first because she had to.

“I am not promising anything.”

“I know.”

“I am not swallowing the vial.”

“I know.”

“I may still decide the whole system is obscene and Henry can stay in finance where he belongs.”

That won her a laugh.

“Also possible.”

Sonia exhaled.

“But I am going to watch him differently.”

Anna nodded.

“That sounds wise.”

“Don’t sound so pleased.”

“I’m your friend. I’m allowed to be pleased when you stop pretending not to want things.”

That could have sparked a fight on another day. Today it only left Sonia tired and oddly lighter.

When they left the cabin, they remasked in their separate practiced ways. Sonia’s was still less elegant. Anna’s was fluid now. Outside, the café folded them back into public femininity, porcelain and gloves and careful posture.

On the walk home Sonia stopped at a shoe shop, then at the chemist, then outside GAIA’s darkened windows without entirely meaning to. Her reflection in the glass looked composed, proper, nearly serene from a distance.

Somewhere behind that reflection sat the vial in her refrigerator.

Somewhere ahead of it stood Henry in corridor doorways and bookshops and lifts, making room.

At home she took off her shoes, peeled off the gloves, and finally removed the mask.

Coming home, Sonia gets rid of her shoes and mask.

The apartment was quiet again.

Still quiet.

But now the quiet contained a shape she had been avoiding naming. Not abstract loneliness. Specific lack. No one to move the chair. No one to watch the line of her body and adjust the world around it. No one to receive the habits she had spent months learning.

She stood in front of the mirror for a long moment with the mask in one hand.

Then she set it down gently and thought of Henry.

Not as a theory.

Not as a symbol.

As a man she was going to allow herself to notice on purpose.