The Fallout by Tamar Cohen

going to have to go.”
    Sasha’s inability to hold onto a cleaner for longer than a few months was a running joke. Over the years Hannah had known her she’d had cleaners who stole her underwear, cleaners who made passes at her husband and one cleaner who, when caught red-handed trying on one of Sasha’s favorite dresses, looked puzzled at the furor, insisting “but I have alvays done zis.” Sometimes Hannah wondered whether Sasha exaggerated the stories for comic effect. A couple of times, having met and liked the pale-faced girls with their dyed blond ponytails, their tight stone-washed jeans and the shiny slippers they swapped for their towering platforms at the door, Hannah had found herself querying whether they could really have committed whatever infringement Sasha was accusing them of, and worrying about how they’d make ends meet without Sasha and Dan’s house to clean two days a week.
    â€œLast week she reached up to pull a Monopoly board down from the shelf in September’s room and the corner poked her in the eye. She reeled around the room screeching ‘I blind! I blind!’”
    Sasha did an imitation of the poor, afflicted Katia, staggering around with her hands clapped to her face, and Hannah giggled in spite of herself. But the smile died on her face as she watched Sasha collapse suddenly onto a dove-grey velvet chaise longue, shoulders sagging, face staved in by grief.
    Sitting down next to her friend, she put her arms around her frighteningly thin frame, feeling how the breath was being pulled out from a place deep inside her like handkerchiefs from a magician’s hat.
    â€œHow could he, Han? How could he do this to me? I feel I’m going crazy. I lie awake at night and it’s like I’ve swallowed acid or something and it’s burning through me, eating me alive. Oh, you wouldn’t understand, but I lie there and everything hurts so much and I can’t think of any way to get the pain to stop except to take a fucking ax and smash it all to bits—Dan, me, this home we built together, my stupid hurting heart, all of it, just smash it all to pieces.”
    Hannah gazed at her. Did Sasha really think she had the monopoly on hurting hearts?
    â€œYou’re bound to feel like this, Sasha. It’s horrible, what’s happened to you. But you know you have to stay strong, for September’s sake. You’re all she has right now.”
    â€œI know, but it’s so unfair, Hannah. How does it work out like this? How does he get to do all this damage and just move on to the next woman as if I didn’t count for anything, as if I was no one? After all the things he said to me, all the promises he made. How does that happen?”
    Hannah shook her head.
    â€œI don’t know, Sash.”
    Suddenly Sasha’s delicate-featured face contorted, skin stretched out like pizza dough over sharp cheekbones, mouth twisting horribly at the corners.
    â€œHe won’t get away with it. He thinks he will, but he won’t.”
    Her voice was harsh, almost inhuman, and Hannah had to stop herself from recoiling.
    â€œI’m going to see a lawyer.” Sasha was nodding to herself, as if she’d forgotten Hannah was even there. “I’m going to get that bastard.”
    â€œDon’t you think, for September’s sake, you should hold your fire awhile? Far better to try to sort things out amicably...”
    â€œAmicably? Really? While he’s fucking some underage bimbo? I don’t think so. Do you reckon he’s thinking about what’s best for September?”
    Hannah shook her head. Glancing down, she noticed her friend had scraped the skin off from around her thumb and was digging a sharp fingernail deep into the exposed, raw flesh. Hannah watched transfixed as a bead of blood ballooned out from around the nail before dropping, squat and fat, onto the pale fabric of the chaise longue.

Lucie, age