Virtuoso

by Yelena Moskovich

  Zorka pulled up a red-lipped grin and stared at Jana.

  “Anyway, now I guess I do a bit of whatever.”

  “Whatever?”

  “I mean Erki has me modelling some for his stuff, and it’s really getting big, so. Janka, it’s fucking nuts. The amount of money I get, just for fuckin wearing some clothes! Talk about the capitalist cow!”

  “Who’s milking who,” Jana mumbled.

  “Ah Janka. Come on.”

  Jana looked up and darted her gaze into Zorka.

  “Congratulations, Zorka, you seem like you figured everything out,” she said numbly.

  “Woah,” Zorka said, “you pissed at me or something?”

  Jana looked into her plastic cup, and then took another sip.

  “How’s your mother?” Jana asked.

  Zorka laughed like a memory of laughing, as Jana went over her face.

  “Don’t look at me like that, Janka, you know I always take it to heart, the way you look at me.”

  “How do you want me to look at you?”

  “Fuck Jana, I’m serious.”

  “Serious about what?”

  “That—that—I get it, it doesn’t take a genius like you to catch on, that you’re pissed at me!”

  Claire burst in, her pink coat on her shoulders, holding Zorka’s stone-coloured bomber jacket, and reaching it over to her, while her other hand held a phone in mid-conversation.

  “Come on, the Uber’s here.”

  Zorka took the coat from Claire.

  “Yeah, I’m coming,” Zorka replied.

  “I’m waiting for you downstairs,” Claire said and put her phone back to her ear.

  Zorka stood there, with her coat in one hand. She bit the inside of her cheek, then let it go.

  “Yeah, shit, I don’t really feel like a club, but we promised we’d stop by to say hi to these friends so . . .”

  “She’s your girlfriend?” Jana asked.

  “Claire? Ha, nah, she’s like my . . . my best friend, I mean sometimes we . . . have some fun, but nah, Claire and I are just . . . like . . . buds, you know.”

  With that she began to put her bomber jacket on, one sleeve at a time, then she looked back up at Jana.

  “Well. Even if you are pissed at me, it’s really nice to see you, Jana . . .”

  Jana swallowed, preparing for a solid phrase, a brick on brick, but when her lips parted, the voice came out as a breeze, a cotton dress, a sun’s ray.

  “. . . you too . . .” Jana replied.

  Zorka lingered her gaze on Jana and Jana watched her with the sense that Zorka was growing taller and taller and she, shrinking back in time.

  Zorka sniffed.

  “So . . .” she said, and began to nod. Then flipped her jacket hood over her head, and took a step towards the doorway, then stopped, putting her hand on the wall. She turned back to Jana, her hood falling off her shaved head, and raised her left hand to her shoulder, her right hand at her gut, closed her eyes and began cringing sounds as she fingered an air guitar.

  “Agnes Dei and the Jans!” Zorka proclaimed.

  She flipped her hood back on, pivoted, and walked out.

  *

  The party noises were slapping against each other, but in the kitchen, it was a solemn display, a modern sort of nature morte, with a stack of white plastic cups, scattered bottle tops belly up, glass bottles with dewy labels, squeezed lime slices in the sink, and Jana leaning her back against the counter, staring at the cabinets in front of her with wide, empty rabbit eyes.

  Jana blinked into the quiet, grabbed her refilled plastic cup, and went back out into the party.

  *

  It seemed like months, years, since Zorka and Claire had left the party. Jana was smoking out the window, with her hand loosely on Aimée’s knee, as Aimée was telling her a funny story about Dr Coste from work, when Erki tapped Jana on the shoulder. She turned around and he passed her his phone. She looked at the open text message.

  “It’s for you,” Erki said.

  Jana read the text stream between Erki and Zorka.

 

 

 

 

 

  < ;) >

 

  < Serve & Obey>

  She scrolled down further.

 

  Come over here.

 

 

 

  There were no more texts after that.

  Jana touched the phone screen and began typing back.

 

 

 

 

  She looked over at Aimée, then back at the phone. Erki was standing above her, observing. The blue bubbles were appearing in rapid succession.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  *

  It was in the doorway of Erki’s apartment, the two women, Jana with her coat on, Aimée with her hand on the door frame, and the conversation couldn’t quite find its form, their eyes went back and forth, between their shoes and their hands and their lips. I’ll see you later though? Jana said. Later? Aimée responded, with a disbelief that felt too expansive for one evening. Yes, later. Can I? The words were turning their heavy bodies, right, left. Later, at my place? Aimée asked, her voice somewhat dulled from the question. Would that be ok, Jana replied, feeling her thumb bend into her palm, her forearm tense, her weight shift, Because I need to go and see this friend, she was explaining again.

  There was a certain relief in the act of going over each other’s words, in the doorway, with no utility, there was nothing more to understand, the information was exchanged and the Uber was waiting downstairs, and they were repeating each other’s words as if they could each grasp something of each other that they could individually keep, because just then, there was an urge to keep something of the other, because disbelief is expansive especially when the day is turning over its edge, and one can feel their whole lifetime in the words they must throw away at the threshold of a door.

  Call me, then, when you’re about to leave, Aimée said and reached up and put her hand on Jana’s jaw and brought her lips towards hers. The hallway bulb flickered, then sparked back on.

  There was Jana, footsteps going down the stairway.

  There was Aimée, fingertips sliding off the handle of a closed door.

  *

  Zorka was waiting at the kerb outside the club with a big red smile. She had her stone-coloured bomber jacket open. Underneath, she was only wearing a leather bra top, which sat flatly over her small chest, with her gold SUCK IT necklace dangling, her bare white stomach prickling in the cold, combat trousers loose at her narrow hips, with the Calvin Klein waistband of her underwear showing, and the sleeves of her red mesh turtleneck tied in a knot on her crotch. Jana began to feel self-conscious about her outfit beneath her long camel-hair coat: the dark-blue trousers neatly ironed, and her cream blouse with the flimsy collar, open one button.

  Zorka took Jana’s hand without a word and pulled her past the queue. She slid her eyes towards the bouncer, he nodded his head, and both women walked in.

  *

  Inside, the thump of the music from the various rooms, to the sides and below, throbbed the air, while people with their big December coats squeezed by: bristled leopard-print hanging open on their biceps like limping furred wings, long military-green coats with hunchback shoulders and stiff, angular lapels jutting up like scales, puffy snow-white jackets with thick hoods giving a double-headed sha
dow, sports caps on top of stringy hair like overgrown beaks, or jumpers of thick yarn with sleeves woven too long, hanging like excess flesh. The small bulbs of light hung on the ornate moulding of the ceiling were a searing yellow, then there were the tubular rays diffusing humidly from the dance floor ahead.

  Zorka led Jana along a red velvet rope, cutting the hallway into two routes, one leading to the cloakroom, and the other towards the main room. After they checked Jana’s coat, she stopped and looked up at Zorka.

  “I hope my outfit’s okay for here.”

  Zorka let out a laugh.

  “Jana, you always look like a bad-ass, even when your clothes are lame.”

  Zorka cracked a smile and nudged her, until Jana gave a smirk back.

  *

  The hallway was lined with mirrors that flashed when the light changed, and seemed to be chewing on the faces they were reflecting.

  There was a constant flow of people trying to get by, and Jana pulled her left shoulder in, trying to avoid getting bumped. As they entered the opening, a large room with a scaffolding of topless angels still clinging to the old walls, the crowded bar to the right, and at the end, the DJ with her chin to her neck, holding her headphones, the light on her face changing – white, yellow, green, blue. Jana felt a liquid splash on her forearm. It was so icy that it stung. She flinched and looked up. A tall girl looked back at her, dark, thinning hair, greasily parted in the centre, sticking to her temples, her long neck pushing out of an oversized sweat-shirt, striped purple and red, at her heart a worn patch of Mickey Mouse’s face.

  Zorka turned around and saw that the girl had spilled some of her drink on Jana.

  “What the fuck,” she snorted at the girl.

  The girl raised one shoulder and shrugged.

  Zorka leered towards the girl and flicked her collarbone. The girl stumbled and spilled some of her own drink on her sweatshirt.

  Zorka took Jana’s hand again and pulled her deeper into the crowd.

  *

  When they got to the bar, Zorka squeezed herself between two boys, then leaned back towards Jana and shouted over the music.

  “What do you wanna drink?”

  “Whatever you’re having,” Jana replied.

  Zorka’s grin grew.

  When their drinks arrived, they were a fizzy copper colour. Jana took a sip, it tasted like a sparked metal and pine needles, as if it had to come from a plant which only grew beneath the snow.

  “What is this?” Jana asked.

  “Yeah, it’s gross, sorry,” Zorka said, “but it makes you feel good.”

  They moved towards the wall with a small ledge at shoulder-height, placed their drinks there and leaned back.

  “It was in her tits,” Zorka said, with her eyes in her drink. “Mamka, I mean.”

  “Like cancer?”

  “Yeah.” Zorka lifted her gaze over the sea of heads and balled up her mouth. “Yeah,” she repeated, and let her lips go loose.

  “I had no idea, Zorka, I’m really sorry . . .”

  “No one knew till the end, when it was too late you know. She was hiding it and stuff. And the funny thing is, it all went down when I had come back to visit – after all my years away. Man, when I left that house, I seriously thought I’d never see Mamka again, but my uncle Gejza convinced me to come. He said something like, all was forgiven. He bought me my ticket. Didn’t catch on to why he was being so generous until I saw Mamka in the flesh. She wouldn’t go to the doctor, and was not so thrilled to see my face either. She kept slapping me away, saying no, no, no, no, no. Then she got really sick. We got her to the hospital like dragging a cat into water. Uncle Gejza (who’s usually a total softie on all accounts) put his foot down on this one. Mamka was so frail, a boneless chicken, but she still threw a fit, wouldn’t let the doctors touch her – remember her fits?”

  “I remember. She threw the best fits,” Jana said solemnly.

  “Yeah,” Zorka exhaled, “no one topped Mamka’s cuckoo.” Zorka crinkled her nose. “Yeah. Fuck. I hated that looney bitch. I hated her so much and I hated my papka for dying early, for leaving me with her, and I hated myself, cause she was in me, her genes, her foulness, kept wondering, when I’d go nuts like Mamka . . .”

  “You’re not going to go nuts like her, Zorka. You’re just on fire, you know.”

  Jana was suddenly at the end of her drink, she slurped the remains with her straw. She was feeling the wall between her thoughts and articulation thaw and become one flowing gesture.

  “You’re a fallen angel with her wings burning off . . .” Jana continued.

  Zorka began to laugh.

  “There we go, Janka’s coming back!”

  “I was always here. You’re the one who fell off the edge of the earth, remember. And you never even asked me, by the way.”

  “Asked you what?”

  “If I wanted to come with you.”

  “You kidding? Come with me where?”

  “To wherever, wherever you were going, I don’t know, you could’ve asked me!”

  “I was going nowhere, Janka! You were the one going somewhere . . .”

  Jana felt her eyes fluttering and the music pulsing in her throat. She thought of the kitchen table legs, and her father’s razor, and the roll of money and the Vltava and Vilèm and stacks of books, and fur on fire, and three droplets of blood.

  “You were my future, Zorka,” she mumbled.

  Zorka put her hands on Jana’s shoulders.

  Jana’s eyes began to close as she shrugged.

  “It was a long time ago . . .”

  She continued to watch the memories in her mind, the colours of their jumpers, her mamka’s scream, the bruises on Zorka’s skin, the sky as it moved like secrets above them.

  Jana began to squeeze her eyes until spots of light burst into a hollowing darkness in her pupils.

  The snowfall. Her tongue. Two fingers spread apart. The top of her head a sleek black, her pitch eyes and her fuzzy way of laughing and her knuckles against Jana’s sternum—

  Zorka was shaking Jana’s shoulders. “Don’t get sleepy on me.”

  Jana opened her eyes.

  “Come on, let’s get you another drink,” Zorka was smiling like a flashlight in the forest.

  *

  Zorka was reaching back from the bar with two shots of blue liquid. She handed one to Jana.

  “What’s this?” Jana asked.

  “Tastes like piss, feels like bliss,” Zorka said and picked up her own shot glass, clinked with Jana and both women shot the liquid down their throats. Jana shook her head and squeezed her eyes as the liquid went down. When she opened them, Zorka was handing her the new glass filled with sizzling copper liquid.

  Behind them, people were pushing their way to the bar. Right over Jana’s shoulder, an arm ploughed through, on top of the hand an odd tattoo, blue and red, of Spiderman reaching his arm out to spray his web. When Jana turned around, she saw a girl with short-cropped hair, wearing baggy blue and white overalls, one of the straps undone and hanging, at her gut a small, embroidered image of Bugs Bunny pushing a thumb’s up forwards.

  Jana made eye contact with the girl, who took her glare as a sign and pulled her bottom lip down, revealing another tattoo, on her inner lip – block letters sewn into the rose-coloured flesh, spelling out J A N A.

  The girl let go of her lip and it rolled back up. Zorka pulled at Jana.

  “Come on.”

  They went downstairs and made their way through the dance floor, Zorka pulling Jana forwards, trying to get to a woman with her head back, her neck open and catching the light, in a tight white T-shirt, with one of her pierced nipples jutting against the fabric. The woman lowered her head, her gelled blonde hair shining like a helmet, caught eyes with Jana and smiled.

  “Hey you,” Claire said.

  She reached out and touched Jana’s jawline as if she couldn’t quite make out where it was, then leaned in and kissed her sweetly on each corner of her mouth.


  “It’s sooo good to see you . . . !” she drawled.

  Jana stepped back and turned to Zorka.

  “I thought it was just us.”

  “Nah, chill, don’t worry,” Zorka yelled out in Czech, “she’s high off her ass, you won’t even notice she’s here.”

  Claire closed her eyes and flopped her head back and began writhing her body in between the strangers around her. Zorka started moving her shoulder angrily to the music, while glancing over at Jana. Jana wasn’t sure how to start dancing to this techno beat, she thought about whether she should move her hips, or just bob her head a bit, but when she looked down at her body, she realised she was already dancing, like a muscular helix.

  “You got sexy, Jana!” Zorka shouted at her.

  *

  Jana could feel her phone buzzing in her pocket. She took it out and tried to focus on the screen, squinting as she read the name on her caller ID, Milena. Her fingers fumbled over the button to silence the call, then she put the phone back into her pocket.

  Some bodies next to her started raising their hands, thrusting their fingers as if pinching the electronics in the music. The bass was getting heavier, and the synthetic rhythms prickled through the room. Jana started to feel like she was a digital tree growing branches. When she looked back at Zorka, she was kissing Claire, both of them grinding into each other, Claire trying to rub herself into Zorka’s baggy trousers.

  “Hey!” Jana shouted at Zorka. “Be honest, are you out there, jumping all the girls like a horny doe in the woods or what?”

  But Zorka didn’t hear her, she continued grinding into Claire.

  “Hey!” Jana shouted again, pulling on Zorka’s bicep. Zorka took her face off Claire’s and looked over.

  “What’s up?” she said.

  “I’m not a frigid bitch, by the way,” Jana said.

  “Yeah, I know,” Zorka nodded, “I get you.”

  Just as Jana was forming her lips to reply, Claire popped up between them, twisting over to Zorka.

  “Hi Zebra! Why’d you leave?”

  *

  Zorka let herself be pulled away by Claire. She gave Jana a sloppy shrug, then stuck out her pelvis and began jutting it on Claire’s body.

  As Jana turned away from them, she felt a hand on her shoulder. The man’s balding head was flashing in the lights, as the rest of his body stood awkwardly within his suit. He held out a phone in his palm.