Virtuoso

by Yelena Moskovich

Night-time, the TV is laughing. Aimée’s brushing her teeth, she spits and looks up at the mirror. Her eyes trace a bulging blue vein down her neck.

  *

  Why did you bring lemons, Miss?

  *

  She got up from the couch and walked unintentionally to the peephole peering through into the empty corridor to the neighbour’s front door, then towards the right to the edge of the wooden stairway.

  At the railing, the thick blue cloud was rolling upwards. She watched it crawl to the top and there it turned and began feeling its mass towards her door.

  *

  “Hello?” her father responded.

  “I’m sorry, Dad,” Aimée said. “I know it’s late . . .”

  “Aimée? Aimée. It’s going to be alright,” he said drowsily. “You’re just having a tough day.”

  She was nodding her head to the phone. Two tears streamed down at the same time.

  “Why don’t you go to sleep and tomorrow it’ll be better.”

  She continued nodding. The tears rolled over her chin and down her neck with a cold consistency. She whisked her hand at her throat and looked at her fingertips, expecting to see a blue liquid. But it was just the smear of a transparent tear.

  “. . . Aimée . . . ?”

  “I’m here.”

  “You can take one and a half of the white ones tonight if you want.”

  “I’m fine, Dad. I have to go . . . I work early tomorrow.”

  “Everything’s going to be alright.”

  There was a pause on both ends, then her father spoke.

  “Goodnight, Aimée,” he said. “I love you.”

  The phrase tilted itself against the moon and fell over the edge.

  *

  Aimée made a decision. She stopped paying attention to the blue cloud, she stopped seeing her friends, and she stopped remembering. That’s how the year passed.

  *

  Where shall I pin it?

  *

  The Monday after the medical trade show at Porte de Versailles, Aimée was walking to work down the wide street, dark suit in hand. Her father had told her he could do it himself, but she insisted, saying the dry cleaners near her work was better. Above Monceau Park, men with pinned ties and Italian socks, pre-teens precociously groomed and styled, signature backpacks, rosy cheeks and runway sneakers, pedalling themselves with one foot on their slick metal scooters to school. Aimée passed the Portuguese Embassy and fished out her ring of keys with the white plastic badge. At the sliding doors of the clinic, she scanned her badge on the black box and walked inside. Youssouf the guard was already poised at his post. She said, “Good morning, Youssouf,” and went to the welcome desk, putting down her purse by the ergonomic footstool below. She reached over and turned on her computer, then went to the sliding closet in the carpeted hallway. She hung up her coat and her father’s suit, took the lab coat off its hanger and fit it over her blouse and buttoned it up. She bent down and took out a pair of heels, took off her loafers and put the heels on, then walked back to the welcome desk.

  “How was your weekend?” she asked Youssouf.

  “Oh, it was fine. Took the kids to the zoo on Saturday. Weather was nice and warm, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes. It was.”

  “How was your weekend, Madame?”

  Saturday had started off promisingly for Aimée, but just as she began motivating herself to go out, it was noon and the day had already begun to sag. She changed back into her house trousers and a worn T-shirt and watched the day pass from the window, telling herself she’d go out tomorrow. When Sunday came, however, she closed the curtains and convinced herself it would rain.

  All day, the sun shone broadly in the cloudless sky.

  *

  Aimée pushed her swivel chair closer to her desk and continued going through the phone messages from the weekend.

  The doctor came in late. His first patient, Mme Mercier, was the type of woman who expressed her annoyance flirtatiously, which Dr Christian Coste cultivated, so no one was too dismayed by the forty-five-minute setback. Aimée organised the incoming lab results and updated two patient files, and made another appointment for poor Mme Blanchard who had another yeast infection.

  At lunch, she logged out of her computer, went to the closet to hang up her lab coat and put on her jacket, and took her father’s suit in her hand.

  The dry cleaners was a small shop between a café and a supermarket. The woman recognised her and they exchanged hellos as she prepared her ticket. Just as Aimée moved to hand the suit to the woman, she checked the pockets to make sure they were empty. The left one was flimsy, but the right had a stiff rectangular piece inside. She reached her fingers in and felt the edges. The business card was thick, dark as her father’s jacket, the letters embossed into the paper.

  She angled the card towards the light and read the letters.

  THE BLUE ANGEL

  Bar à vin.

  Rue de Prague

  She flipped the card around and shone it towards the light as well. There, in the empty space was a scribble in blue ink. She tilted the card right and left to read it.

  9pm, it said.

  She put the card in her pocket, handed the suit over to the woman and took the ticket.

  *

  Four evenings in a row she thought about it, as she sat on her couch and watched the TV screen flash. Friday, she had dinner with her father. Her eyes lingered on his knife and fork as he diligently cut his steak and matched the piece with a couple of green bean halves before putting the combination into his mouth.

  Then it was Saturday. The morning felt no different than the night and by the time the afternoon came, she felt the day dripping off its face. She began to clean, to dust, to vacuum, to refold her towels and change the angle of her chairs.

  Her gaze landed on the large white bookshelf. She went down the rows of books, until she got to the last shelf near the floor and stopped at that blue hardcover book, sticking out of its tight spot again.

  She went to her closet, slid her hand into her coat pocket, and pulled out the card.

  The Blue Angel bar

  Aimée walked up the stairs of the Ledru-Rollin métro. At the top, she glanced around for context. At her shoulder, Le Faubourg café, its low-lit terrace half-filled with conversation. Across the street, the big supermarket Monoprix, and diagonally Générale d’Optique, with various pairs of glasses on display. She turned back around and walked towards the square blue P parking sign, continuing on Avenue Ledru-Rollin, away from the collective evening of others, into the dimming street that less and less people occupied.

  She veered left at the Biolam Laboratory and spotted the path. Prague Street.

  The road felt muted. Parked cars. Faint lamp posts. The trees, tall and bare, intervalled along the pavement, reluctant witnesses.

  She eyed the door numbers as she walked, 2, 4, 6 . . . Then she saw it, a couple of doors ahead. The façade was completely black, with two square windows at each side, both painted over in black, and in the centre, the door, as if no door, but there it was, as charcoal as the rest. Above it, the blue symbol glowed neon. An angel.

  Aimée gave the dry black door a push, and it separated from its frame and slid heavily open, revealing two long blue curtains upon a curved railing around the doorway, the hem bunching at the floor. The door shut behind her and she slid her hand through the parting, pulling one side of the curtain open.

  *

  The place was small, both cluttered and somehow spacious. Ahead of her, there was a long counter on the right with four high stools in worn, dark leather, behind which were shelves of bottles of wine, all in dark blue glass. On one of the bar stools, a man in a grey suit was leaning over his glass.

  To the left were small round tables with wooden chairs, all occupied by people, face to face across each table, a glass of dark wine in front of them or in their hand. Their bodies leaning in, nodding, listening, their eyes only on their companion’s in an overcast concentration
, mouths loitering within their voices, speaking as if they had been speaking for so long they were no longer doing the speaking.

  Across the top edge of the wall crawled blue fairy lights, faintly holding onto their colour. As Aimée followed their string, the lights flickered, then settled in their glow.

  In the remaining corner, beyond the soporific clientele and the man leaning at the bar, was a small dance area. The walls of that corner were painted a bright blue, as well as the floorboards, as well as the ceiling. A small glinting disco ball hung self-consciously from a plastic grey wire in the middle, slowly turning in the empty space. Two speakers, also painted an opaque blue, were perched in each corner, filtering a steady stream of melancholic music. Jacques Brel’s voice crooned through an anxious string orchestra, exclaiming with romantic exhaustion.

  The volume of the song was not louder or softer than the bar chatter, all the voices balancing inside each other, moving forward together, a clock’s hand.

  The bartender, a tall, dark-skinned woman in her thirties, with a tightly curled afro and a thin nose, held a yielding surveillance over the crowd. She glanced over at Aimée and tilted her head.

  *

  Aimée made her way to the bar and sat down on the leather stool. She looked down at her watch. 8.51pm.

  *

  “Vous desirez?” the bartender asked as if giving condolences. What would you like?

  Aimée looked at the row of identical bottles, then said, “Red wine, please.”

  The bartender pulled a corked bottle off the shelf, uncorked it, and poured Aimée a glass. She took the glass, but her head drifted to the right, towards the figure sitting beside her.

  The man in the grey suit lifted his glass and nodded at Aimée.

  *

  The song was ending, and another one taking its place, the soft repetition of piano chords, then the voice of Françoise Hardy, sing-speaking in crestfallen heartache.

  “It’s nice music here . . .” the man said in broken English.

  Aimée wasn’t sure if he was speaking to her or to his glass.

  “You like sad music?” the man continued.

  Aimée looked over at him and squinted.

  “I do,” the man replied to his own question.

  He tilted his head up towards Aimée.

  “Do you know about loneliness?” he asked.

  *

  The music changed again. There was a heavy chord of an organ, then a man’s voice pushed fiercely through the reverb. He sang a couple of lines, then cut himself off, whispering abruptly, “Je t’aime!” The organ squeezed and expanded.

  “This is beautiful song,” the man said, turning back to his glass.

  “It’s Léo Ferré,” the bartender inserted as she wiped the counter again.

  “Leyo Feray,” the man repeated as he looked deep into the remaining wine pooled at the bottom. “I try to remember.”

  Je t’aime! the singer shouted out again into the mournful music.

  The man took another sip, then began to cough. As Aimée turned towards him, he reached inside his jacket, and pulled out a sky-blue silk handkerchief and drew it towards his face.

  The string of lights began to flicker again. The curtains shook as if the door on the other side had been opened.

  Aimée looked down at her watch. 9pm.

  The stool to her right was empty and the bartender was wiping its place clean.

  The bloodstream

  The Zentiva representative was younger than Jana had thought it likely for such a company to send to an important sales meeting. He looked not long out of university, her brother’s age just before she had left Prague. The rep shook the Frenchman’s hand, trying to squeeze it and smile at the same time. He thanked him for the thoughtful exchange at dinner, but before he could finish his own phrase, he added that he did not want to insist, but he felt it was important to underline that Zentiva delivers high-quality, cost-effective pharmaceuticals for the international markets, all their generic medicines have tested extremely well in relation to the original branded drug in the bioequivalence clinical studies, the active ingredient releasing into the bloodstream at almost the identical speed and quantity as the brandname medicine. Jana translated for the client as the Zentiva rep interrupted her, adding that they are the guaranteed ideal supplier of choice, then stumbling over a couple more statistics about their respiratory and central nervous system pharmaceuticals.

  The client listened to Jana, then shook both of their hands and told them he had a generous amount of information to consider.

  *

  As the French client walked towards the main street to get a taxi, Jana shook hands with the Zentiva rep and told him she thought the meeting went well. The rep exhaled in relief and shook her hand again with gusto.

  As she walked away, she imagined him on the plane tomorrow morning, back to Prague. She saw him fumbling with his seat belt and trying to close his tray. She saw his knees, awkward in the dry suit fabric, lean right, left, trying to find their place in the allotted aeroplane seat space. She saw the back of his ears, oddly clean, the habit he inherited from his grandmother of rubbing the corner of the towel there after he washed. She saw his head turned towards the window, watching the clouds squeeze from one form to another, like slow-beating hearts, and sitting there, trying not to wrinkle his business suit, watching the sky, the smile on his face, so unprotected, extempore.

  *

  Have you seen my hair gel?

  *

  Jana kept on walking. It was, no doubt, one of the sloppiest pitches she had ever interpreted and she was near certain his offer would not be considered any further.

  *

  Her shoulder hit the man’s.

  “Promiňte,” the man said in a sloppy-toned Czech. Beg your pardon. As he stumbled off, the top of his eggish head caught the moonlight.

  Jana caught her balance and looked up. Above her, the salient blue light shone from the electric angel.

  *

  Her hand was pushing at the black wall, which parted and became a door. Inside, the blue curtains were being drawn open and Jana’s legs were moving her forwards towards the bar, where she was now sitting on a stool. She glanced to her left. The blonde woman was looking down at her watch.

  “It’s 9pm,” the woman was saying to her wrist.

  *

  The doctor that’s speaking at the Global Plastics round table, that’s my father . . .

  *

  “. . . He has a way of thinking about limbs,” Aimée was speaking to her watch at the bar, “like there is no barrier between our bodies and medical supplies, like there is no physical movement we cannot find a way to simulate.”

  The bartender set a glass of wine down in front of Jana and she reached for it, parting her fingers and sliding the stem into their crux.

  “I don’t want to simulate my body anymore . . .” Aimée continued.

  *

  “Do we know each other?” Jana asked the woman.

  The lights began to flicker again. Aimée straightened up and looked over at the woman sitting next to her, lingering on her face.

  “I was hoping we did,” Aimée replied.

  *

  “Aimée de Saint-Pé,” the woman pronounced for Jana. “Would you like to dance with me?”

  *

  They made their way to the dance area, their bodies somehow delayed from their stride. The disco ball turned gradually above their heads and the melancholic music played on, voices yearning, beckoning, regretting . . . It played through their thoughts like an itching of memories.

  Jana looked at the blue walls around her, then at the blonde woman at her side. She realised that she had no idea how to dance to such a slow, languorous song. Her shoulders began to sway as she studied the woman. Aimée’s eyes were closed and her torso twining to the verses.

  *

  . . . N39 . . .

  *

  The lights snowed down onto the tops of their heads.

  Ja
na’s hands lifted and settled on the woman’s waist. She stepped in closer to her. Aimée reached around her as well. Jana could feel her blouse wrinkling beneath her gliding palms as she went up her back, then settled upon her bare nape, each finger closing in a bit of heat. The woman’s hips were grazing against Jana’s, and her breasts leaning into her own, until the two women were face to face, their breath mixing together.

  The song began melting into another one, in which the strings creaked and the quivering voice of Jeanne Moreau sang an ode to the troubled sky.

  The music moved them together and they let their eyes float within each other as if down a river.

  *

  The taxi drove past the Madeleine métro stop, taking a slight left up Rue Tronchet.

  “Right up here,” Aimée said and the taxi slowed to the kerb in front of her building.

  The two women stepped out and the taxi drove away.

  Inside the building, Jana walked behind the woman, hand on the wooden railing of the stairway.

  The woman turned around and smiled into the darkness, reaching her finger down to the lapel of Jana’s coat.

  *

  Liné

  *

  The key clicked and Aimée pushed the door open. The light switch flicked, she was undoing her coat, and Jana, glancing around, her fingers untying her own coat belt, her eyes gazing at the powder-coloured couch, pitch-black oval coffee table, TV screen, rug, picture frame, and then settling on the large white bookshelf, each row full of books, a stuffed mouth.

  “You like to read,” Jana said, approaching the shelf.

  “Those aren’t my books,” the woman answered and reached out to her, taking hold of her wrist.

  “Come here . . .” she said as she pulled Jana back into her own body.

  *

  Aimée’s hand was hooked into Jana’s as she was leading her down a hallway.

  *

  The forest sweats its leaves and the stems of flowers break and moisten at the fissure.

  *

  In the bedroom, the bed made, the curtains drawn, only the half-open door lets in a cut of light.

  *

  “Are you afraid,” Aimée whispered, “to kiss me?”

  Jana was reaching up to take hold of the woman’s face, leaving the woman’s question unanswered, covering it up with her movement, she tilted her head into the darkness until she felt her lips touch the woman’s.