My Sister, My Love - Joyce Carol Oates

(Please don't sneer: these casual words in Vassily's exotic English yet reverberate in the murky air of this squalid room on Pitts Street, New Brunswick, more than thirteen years later. Sure I know Vassily didn't mean it, not for a nanosecond, and yet! for those of us so rarely praised, even insincerity can touch the heart.)