This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks

for?”
    His nose wrinkled like she was a smell he couldn’t place. “You need to show your boarding pass at the register.”
    â€œI wasn’t going to buy anything,” she said. Then she looked from the full cart to his face, which was almost angry, and thought of all the floors she’d known that could actually swallow people up. Lake Inari in September or June. The Karasjoki river in November or April. The northern marshes that would drink you feet first in any season. The sea surrounding them now, the
shifting ice, the slits of black water. The floor of the cruise ship liquor store had not been one of them.
    â€œYou need the boarding pass to buy my tax-free allowance. Of course. You planned on buying up two people’s allowances. Save hundreds of markka. I’m sorry. I’ll run and get the pass.”
    â€œIt’s back in the cabin?”
    â€œOn the bench, I think.”
    â€œI’ll get it. Watch the cart,” he said, and he was gone.
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    Once the liquor was stowed in the cabin, roped onto two separate hand trolleys and wedged under the benches, Jukka took her by the hand and led her back to the shopping mezzanine, into the cosmetics store. “Pick something out,” he said. “Anything you want.”
    â€œI don’t wear makeup. Or perfume.”
    Jukka insisted and Ursula circled the glowing counters, calculating how much Jukka’s guilt could cost him. At the back of the store there was a tiny basket filled with clearance tubes of lipstick, lichen reds and bruise purples. She picked the brightest and dropped it into Jukka’s palm. It cost eight markka.
    â€œYou don’t really want this,” he said.
    â€œSure I do.”
    â€œI really am glad you came. I wanted you to come. I want you to have a good time. It wasn’t just the duty-free stuff.”
    â€œPlease, just buy it and we can go back to the cabin.”
    Jukka paid and explained that the restaurants on board were expensive, that they should load up on duty-free snack foods. In the cabin they sat on the floor and ate handfuls of potato chips and cheese curls, bars of chocolate clotted with nuts and dried fruit. Jukka took the clear plastic cups out of the bathroom and filled one with vodka and orange juice, the other with straight vodka. He raised his cup and toasted cheers. They ate and drank until they felt ill and then Jukka kissed her. He tasted like the rubbery buttons of salmiakki —black licorice crusted with salt. Ursula decided she didn’t mind.
    They were both drunk when Jukka decided he wanted to check out the dance clubs. They left the cabin and Ursula ran her fingers along the wall as they walked. She imagined she could
feel the enormous ship rocking, the cradled heaving of the Bay of Tallinn. The clubs, one floor down from the shopping mezzanine, were all playing the same EuroPop. Jukka kept drinking from a flask in his pocket, and Ursula kept closing her eyes to steady herself. When the strobe lights flickered she held her stomach. Jukka grabbed her wrist and listed, let his weight drag them onto the dance floor. He rested his arms on her shoulders and pressed his forehead down onto hers. Ursula told herself to make it to the end of the song, then, when Jukka pulled her closer, to make it to the end of one more. The songs all sounded the same, bright and thumping, and she lost track of how long they’d been there before she told Jukka she needed some air.
    â€œI’m sorry,” she said, when Jukka frowned. “I’m not feeling very well.” She towed him out of the club, tripping through the plush carpet of the hallway. The glass doors to the deck strained against the wind, and Jukka had to help her shoulder them open. There were couples leaning against the railing, huddling together against the cold. Ursula walked past them toward the bow of the boat, the empty viewing area full of white observation chairs and sea spray. It was a