I was so ashamed of our kiddy pain, squeaky, clumsy, Zorka and I prowling for credibility, asking when, when would life hurt in a womanly way, all of it, my ambition and my intellect and – the limbs of me that still, despite what everyone told me without telling me, believed themselves to be touchable, though no one touched me, not even to violate me, no one did (except Zorka, and that’s a very long story and with her, I had no choice but to play it cool, to be a precious stone, hard-faced, restrained).
But still, I hated that part of me, the very small mouth of me, the wanting mouth, despite all reason, wanting to be touched.
I was a child, then I was brainy, then I was on my own. I’m afraid, yes, that I missed something. That’s why I was afraid to kiss you, that you would feel that lack with your tongue, that you would taste it on me. I missed becoming a woman, because I spent too much time asking, when will it begin, when, when, and suddenly I was asking, when will it end, when, when, and I didn’t savour the way life hurt already, I didn’t dare to whimper, but I was screaming the whole time, for life, for life, for life, so suddenly, last night, between my mouth and yours—
*
“Those books, in the living room, they’re all my former wife’s . . .” Aimée began. “What I mean is, I guess I should tell you, just that . . . I used to love someone very much . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to start off like that, I . . . I don’t know where to begin, but . . . suddenly it was the end and I didn’t know what to do with the living I still had left to do . . . without her, so . . . you’re the first person I’ve—”
Aimée pursed her lips together and let them go.
“Me too,” Jana said.
“You too . . . what?” Aimée smiled.
“I’m also . . . a little . . . scared.”
Party time
Olivier hadn’t called Aimée since his messy break-up with Angelo, so when she saw his name on the caller ID she had assumed he was having a relapse and picked up the phone ready to console. To her surprise, his voice was chirpy, joke-spun.
“Come to the party, Aimée!” he heralded.
Aimée was caught off guard, unprepared for her isolation to be challenged.
“I can’t . . . I mean – maybe you should come over or we can get a coffee, it’s been years and I just don’t know these people.”
But Olivier explained that it was at his new boyfriend’s place, and all his friends would be there, and his boyfriend was turning twenty-five and Olivier was turning forty-five this year, and then he started explaining to Aimée that he just wants one person there to be sincere to him.
“I know I’m being insecure about it,” Olivier said. “It would just mean a lot to me, to have you there . . .”
“Is Claire going to be there?”
“No, she’s not. Don’t worry. Plus bring whoever – by the way, wait, are you – that’s it! You totally sound like you’re seeing someone!”
“I’m not – I mean, it’s recent, so—”
“Aimée, I’m so happy for you, chérie, this is exactly what you need! Bring her!”
“I’ll think about it, okay . . . ?”
“Please, please, please, please—”
“I’ll—”
But before Aimée could finish, Olivier was smacking a flutter of kisses into the phone and exhaling a long “Thank you” with a certain gravity that made Aimée think of her thirteenth birthday, the way she filled her mouth with air, and gusted towards the constellation of flame-tipped candles flagged into thin white frosting of the cake placed on the table by her father’s two hands.
*
Olivier had taken the women’s coats and the bottle of red from their hands and said Welcome. He laid the coats on the white-toned bed in the bedroom, which was simply decorated, a sensitive oblong cactus on the floor, next to a lamp, then some bare nails in the white wall, onto which were pinned certain photos of fabric, one grainy blue wool, another a stiff yellow linen.
“So, this is who I’ve been telling you so much about, this is Aimée,” Olivier beamed.
“Hello Aimée,” Erki said in a uniform tone.
Erki was a designer, originally from Estonia. He was one of those whizz kids, a hot new thing who had learned French fluently, spoke Estonian, German and Russian, and a bit of Finnish. He was raised by a single mum who cleaned houses and took young Erki along to help. Erki got into trouble at school. He got caught kissing a boy, then beat another one up with a rock until his face was unrecognisable.
“Stay away from boys,” his mother told him, “and lend me hand.”
She gave him things to sew up and mend. He ironed and washed and folded for her. When there were extra scraps, he made odd things out of them that made his mother laugh.
Even if now he was making more than ten times her salary, he still kept his own place simple and spotless.
In Paris, he’d found himself an entourage he called the EB, the Eastern Bloc, who were the romantic cowboys of their countries’ cultural and economic isolation, and put their childhood disparities into fabrics, cuts and fashion statements. In the folds, seams, zippers, leather, those memories became Western fetish of the failed Communist dream.
Erki stood with reserve, his flat reddish-blond hair parted perfectly in the middle, slicked down just past his jaw and tucked neatly behind his ears. In one earlobe was a thick metal ring, and in the other a stud. His bottom lip stuck out from his underbite. His marigold-coloured hoodie was tucked into his high-waisted trousers, looped with a thick leather studded belt, the marigold sleeves overly long, dangling past his hands.
*
“And this is Jana,” Aimée put her hand on Jana’s back, then slid it around her waist.
*
“Ot kuda tih?” Erki asked flatly, in a slightly accented Russian.
“Iz Czeskaya Republika,” Jana answered in Russian. “But I live here now,” she switched back to French.
“Jana speaks six languages,” Aimée added.
Erki nodded and smiled.
“EB linguistics,” he added. “Let’s get you ladies a drink.”
*
After both Aimée and Jana got their plastic cups of red wine, Erki disappeared into the crowd of highly stylised friends, but kept looking over at Jana, sharing an estranged complicity across the room.
As more people squeezed by, Aimée and Jana found themselves in the hallway. Some people were waiting for the bathroom and some were smoking by the window. Aimée slid her hand around Jana’s waist, then drew her closer. Jana leaned over and kissed Aimée below her ear, feeling the thin golden earring touch the top of her lip.
“Thank you for coming here with me.”
*
Jana had gone to the bathroom when the doorbell rang once. Then it rang a succession of four times, as if someone was attempting to puncture the buzzer. Aimée was leaning against the wall in the doorway, sipping her wine, waiting for Jana to come back. She looked around and caught eyes with Olivier who smiled with a widening gratitude at her, a liquored curl to his lip.
The buzzer jabbed three more times.
“I’ll get it!” Aimée shouted into the crowd and went to open the door.
Just as she turned the handle, the door pushed open and the woman almost fell in, catching herself.
She flipped up her head, letting the crown of her lacquered platinum blonde hair catch the light. Her face was tan with soft freckles across her nose. She had purplish lipstick and her furry pale-pink coat was hanging amply open.
She looked up at Aimée and her smile slowly evened out.
“Oh,” Claire said at the door.
*
Claire took another step forward and Aimée took a hesitant one to the right. Behind Claire, another woman gave her a little shove and said, “Come on!” and jabbed Claire to step inside. The woman followed, long-legged in her thick-waisted loose combat trousers with two big pockets at the knees, and an oversized stone-coloured bomber jacket open, showing a skin-tight red mesh turtleneck tucked i
n, and beneath which one could see the folds and seams of her leather patchwork bra that pushed out angularly through the sheer top. Around her neck hung a gold necklace holding up what appeared to be a namesake in the middle, but instead of anyone’s name, the letters simply spelled out: SUCK IT. Her head was shaved, revealing an even dark stubble, her face pale, with dark eyes, dense pupils, jutted eyebrows and lipstick so red it looked neon.
The bathroom door opened and Jana stepped out. Across the crowd of people, she saw the two strokes of eyebrows and the hardened pupils. Both women stood still, clasped in their glance. Then the woman opened her blazing red mouth and yelled out in a rasped-edged voice, “Janinka!”
*
Zorka made her way through the crowd towards Jana, as Claire made her way behind Zorka, as Aimée made her way away from Claire, in a direction that would curve back to Jana.
*
“Jste nezměnili . . . !” Zorka said to Jana. You haven’t changed.
“You know her?” Claire said to Zorka, but Aimée took it as being addressed to her.
“Yes, she’s with me,” Aimée responded.
Zorka looked over at Aimée and gave her a squint. She opened her mouth and began speaking an accented French.
“It’s fucking crazy,” she said to Aimée, “we grew up together. In Prague. How do you know – what’s your name again?”
“I didn’t tell you the first time. It’s Aimée.”
“Enchantée, Aimée,” Zorka gave a bow and oily smile, then turned to Claire, trying to read her expression.
“What? Is this your ex or something?”
Claire gave Zorka a pinched glare.
“I . . . used to . . . work with . . . her wife . . .” Claire replied warily.
“Wife?” Zorka exclaimed, “you shitting me? For real? Fuck! This is like twenty-first-century-lesbian-level-shit – dykes getting married! Could you have even imagined such a thing back in the day, Janka – Wait, hold on, wait that means – Janka, is this your girlfriend? You a dyke too??”
Aimée’s face flushed, but Jana somehow cooled very quickly and became focused, untouchable.
“Yeah, I am a dyke too, Zorka,” she said in an uninvolved tone.
Zorka flicked Jana on the shoulder, then gave her a meaty thumb’s up.
“Dyke-o-rama!” Zorka grinned at the women, then reached out her long arm and grabbed the bicep of a passing girl with two thick braids woven tightly down her scalp.
The girl turned around, and Zorka gazed at her bare lips and large eyes, the pupils a medallion and muddy-green, through her left nostril a thin golden hoop.
“Hey, you a dyke too?” Zorka blurted out.
“You’ll have to excuse my friend here, she’s got no manners,” Claire said politely as she traced her eyes over the girl’s tight green top.
The girl gave a faint shrug, then turned back and continued making her way through the crowd. At the other end of the room, she looked back again at Zorka, who pursed over a grin at her. The girl gave a toy-smile in return.
*
“Listen, honey, I’m so sorry, I didn’t think Claire would come!” Olivier stammered to Aimée in the hallway. “Honestly, I didn’t know!”
*
Jana could hear Zorka from across the room, surrounded by the crowd, with Erki at her side, telling a story about her Hungarian grandpa and how he used to exclaim Lo’fasz a seggedbe! A horse dick in your ass!
She was streaming in jokes about Catherine the Great and her supposed fetish for horses and how she had a contraption built for her wherein a horse could be lowered down into her.
“Zorka, I could see you as like this dark stallion,” a shorter American guy with a pudgy face and square glasses said.
“With a thick one . . .” Oleg, a tall ghoul-faced Russian in the group added, “just how you like it.”
“Yeah, then you could sit on my dick,” Zorka replied to Oleg. She glanced over at Jana, then quickly brought her eyes back to the group.
*
Whatever the others in Erki’s entourage thought of Zorka, everyone knew that this ragged Czech turned art-piece was his muse. Even Claire could feel that somehow Zorka was becoming sacrosanct, and when the heat of Zorka’s attention was on her, she felt the impulse for rudeness and brevity to protect herself, she even started seeing a friend of Erki’s, Céline, who sometimes brought a dildo or two in her backpack to clubs, just to have them on hand.
One time, the gang was hanging out in Olivier’s living room, early evening, Céline lying on the couch with her head of dark wavy hair in Claire’s lap. Claire stroking Céline’s scalp and glancing over at Zorka. Zorka picking something out of her teeth with her fingernail. Erki with his arm around Olivier, sharing a joint. The chubby American flipping through his Instagram on his phone. Then Oleg started talking about how fucked up it was that if you don’t use one black model in your show, everyone calls you a racist.
“Why don’t they,” Oleg continued, “drive through every village in Russia,” he looked over at Zorka, “. . . and put in one nigger a piece.”
Zorka flicked the gunk off her fingernail.
“I told you not to fucking say shit like that,” Zorka said.
“Baby got a sharp tooth growing . . .” Oleg tried to reach out and finger at Zorka’s cheek, but she whacked his hand away.
There was a moment of silence for someone to switch the conversation, but Oleg jumped in again, fretful at leaving things where they were left.
“You spent way too much time in the U S of A, Zorichka, got you bleeding your panties over every boo-hoo word.”
Zorka tensed up, but Erki reached out his foot and kicked it between the two, at Oleg’s shoulder.
“Shh . . . I’m relaxing.”
“Yeah, me too, I’m taking it easy,” he adjusted his trousers. “Just saying, Zorichka’s acting like a dykey Amal Clooney over here, all high class with her human rights—”
Erki smiled at that and the American chuckled into his phone screen.
“When reality is—” Oleg continued. “Now hold on, don’t get pissy, baby, I am too, we both crawled out of the shitty Soviet asshole. And now we’re all mixed in with the fancy ‘Europeans’ and the fancy ‘Americans’ with their good names and good noses and their fresh cheeks—” Oleg leaned over and started poking at the American’s cheeks.
“Aww, you’re so cute, my chubby free-world sweetheart,” Oleg said in a puckered voice.
“Hey, that tickles,” the American squirmed until Oleg took his hand away.
“Sooooo cute especially when they act all proud of themselves for their democratic values and equal rights and their fair-handed politics, saviours of our civilisation – awwww, it just makes me want to squeeze their little soap-smelling asses!” He tried to grab at a bit of the American’s stomach sloping slightly over his waistband.
“Hey, stop it!” the American said, “I do not smell like soap.”
“You totally do . . .” Claire chuckled.
“Don’t worry, I like the soap baby smell,” Oleg continued, “just, can you clarify one thing I don’t understand and maybe it’s cause I didn’t grow up with so many different types of cereal and TV channels and so on, but, like: if you are so afraid of dictatorship, why are you always telling your people what they can and can’t do, what they can and can’t say . . . getting all nervous about keeping things equal all the time . . . ? Like, in America,” Oleg began chuckling, “for every white fag I’d fuck, I’d have to fuck a coloured fag too?”
Céline began to laugh into her cigarette, but her breath cut as Zorka pulled the switchblade from her ankle, and lunged at Oleg, who jumped up to his feet, as Zorka to hers, gripping her hand over the thin metal snake on the handle of the knife, the tip of the blade stopping just in front of Oleg’s crooked nose.
Claire let go of the piece of Céline’s hair between her fingers. Erki sat up. A click snapped from below and everyone looked down. There, near Oleg’s feet, was the American holding up his ph
one.
“Ah shit, that’s such a cool photo!” he said.
“Let me see,” Erki said, reaching out his hand.
“Zorka you look so bad-ass in it! Seriously!” the American continued and passed his phone over.
Erki studied the photo. It was taken from below: Zorka, flexed bicep, intense eyes, holding a knife at someone, the blade hiding his face.
Erki turned to Olivier.
“You know, we could rent a house, trash it a bit, and just shoot photos of Zorka pulling a knife at whoever other models, just like this, this angle.”
Then Erki suddenly stood up.
“Oh shit. It’s perfect, actually.”
“That’s fucking hot,” the American added.
Erki turned to the American and handed him back his phone, then said in a humourless tone, “Send me that photo. Delete it from your phone. You weren’t a dumb-ass and posted it already, were you?”
“No, I just took it. Look, I’m sending it to you now.”
Erki stood up and reached over to Zorka. He touched her wrist gently and held it there as she folded the knife back, unsure if she was being defeated or praised. He kissed her on her cheek, then he fell back down into the crook of Olivier’s armpit, and extended his forearm on Olivier’s thigh.
*
Jana watched Zorka slip off and go into the kitchen.
“I’ll be right back,” she told Aimée.
*
“I wanted to write you,” Zorka said.
She was leaning against the sink, pouring more vodka into her drink.
“Yeah?” Jana said.
“I mean I knew you were in Paris,” Zorka continued. “Your brother told me.”
“Oh.”
“I called your mom and she hung up on me, big surprise. Then I got this friend of mine to snoop up your bro’s number. He wouldn’t pick up, then I texted him to say it’s me and he texted back saying you were in Paris.”
Zorka explained how she had ended up in America, of all places, and that she’d been living in Paris for a couple of years now. She first had a job at a beauty salon, waxing women. She said she liked it a lot. Jana thought it was a demeaning job, but said nothing.
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