Virtuoso

by Yelena Moskovich

  “You dropped this, Miss,” he said.

  Jana squinted at the man then lowered her eyes towards the phone in his hand. She took it from his palm and began sliding it back into her trouser pocket. When Jana looked up, there were dancing bodies overlapping to the music like trees in a hurricane and the man was gone.

  *

  Yeah so, Janka, in the States they made me see a therapist, and those people got some magic powers for real, I went in, soldier style, like “Fuck you, lady,” but she had me in the palm of her hands, I was coiling around myself like a baby snake, telling her all about you actually, my friend Jana, my friend Jana . . . She eventually said, “Where is your friend Jana now?” I said, “I dunno, she’s probably the President of some country by now.” She said, “It sounds like your friend Jana was very important to you.” I said, “No shit, lady.”

  Later on, she asked me if I loved you. Damn, I was thinking. What kind of a fucking question is that? She told me to take a moment and think about it. I was like, okay, you know what, I will think about it, lady. I mean, fuck, who asks questions like that to someone they don’t even fucking know, you don’t know me at all lady, seriously, so let me just think about it, shit. So, yeah, I really did think about it. Like, I went into my heart and everything and looked around for you.

  Fuck, Janka, my heart was all grimy and hollow and gross, it even smelled weird, no wonder I don’t go there too often. I was looking around, like, Jana . . . Jana, it’s me! You there? I told the lady therapist I don’t know what to say. She’s nowhere in my heart, my friend Jana. But I don’t think anyone’s in there. I don’t think anyone’d wanna step foot in there. It’s not even a heart, Janka, it’s like a damp asshole, pardon my French, how’m I suppose to invite anyone inside a place like that!

  The lady therapist told me that our anus is actually an important muscle, just like our heart, and that all the parts of our body, mind and spirit can help us exercise love.

  I always hated exercise. That’s some prissy shit, I told her, I’m already skinny, why I need to run around? She told me that she thinks that I know what she means and that I am uncomfortable with it, so I am trying to make it into a joke. She also told me I have a very good sense of humour, and I don’t always need to use it to conceal myself, but rather to reveal myself. I was like, shit. I mean she kinda had a point there. It was actually really fucking hard, with the lady therapist, I mean I was kinda hoping she’d be a bitch or something, but she was just . . . I mean, no one had ever listened to me . . . like that . . . like time stood still and everything about me, even my sniffing and cussing, that it all had meaning and she was knitting me back together somehow!

  Is that how you were taking me in back then, Jana? Fuck, I dunno, I didn’t notice much, I guess. I was too busy thinking about how to get back at Mamka or Mr Bolshakov or any of the other assholes who looked at me like I was a piece of shit on the daily!

  Jana, it really pisses me off that I can’t remember. Like all those years are one clenched fist. I don’t know what I had inside of me . . . that was worthwhile . . .

  *

  When Jana opened her eyes, there was an odd ring of space around her, as if the dancing crowd had backed up, leaving a circled corridor between her body and theirs. Her gaze lowered and she saw that this space was not empty, in fact, but occupied with smaller dancing bodies, children of some sort, six or eight or ten years of age, too old or too young for their proportions. Their hair was uneven and sticky as if they had cut it themselves and scrubbed it with jam. Their clothes were mis-shapen as well – as they billowed on their skinny bodies, she could make out that they bore logos and patches, but couldn’t make out the colours or images, it was just shadows folding and crevicing on their frame. She could smell them though. It wasn’t jam at all. It was something honeyed and stringent all at once. Jana tried opening her eyes wide then squinting, to focus on their movement. Yes, they were moving, moving around her. They were all holding hands and moving around her in a circle, singing. Their mouths moved, but their voices were being chopped up by the electro music. Jana followed the succession of their heads, the lips forming the same phrase, over and over and over again, like a carousel, and then, that’s it, that is what they are singing, and Jana touched her own mouth, because it was singing along with them, Kde domov můj? Where is my home . . . ?

  *

  When Jana opened her eyes, she was touching her mouth and Zorka was laughing at her as her body zigzagged to the music, the flashing lights falling onto her tongue and down her throat. When Zorka lowered her head, she kept a soft grin and began pumping her fist into the air to the heavy bass fragments. Jana’s hand was also in the air now, her fingertips grazing her scalp in circles to dips in the rhythm.

  “I think she’s cool, you know,” Zorka shouted over the music.

  “Who?” Jana shouted back.

  “Your chick.”

  “Aimée?”

  “Yeah,” Zorka yelled out, “she seems cool.”

  “She is cool,” Jana replied. “Don’t need your approval, though.”

  “Yeah, I know,” Zorka jutted her hips to the electronic pulse. “Just wanted to say it, that’s all.”

  “Message received,” Jana replied. Then she raised both hands and lowered them like rain to a computerised melody.

  “I lost my Zebra!” Claire yelled at Jana’s face.

  “What?” Jana put out her hands to deflect her and Claire’s body pivoted around.

  “Oh, here you are!” Claire sprung her arms around Zorka, “I missed you . . .”

  Claire bent her knees and tried to hang off her, as Zorka tilted her head to the side towards Jana.

  “Listen, Zorka, I’m gonna go,” Jana shouted.

  “Wait,” Zorka yelled, as she undid Claire’s arms from her neck.

  “Hold up,” she grabbed Jana. “You . . . uh . . . want me to call an Uber for you?”

  “No, it’s fine.”

  “Come on, I got an Uber account and fingers . . .” Zorka grinned.

  “Now who’s the twenty-first-century lesbian . . .” Jana replied.

  *

  Jana was making her way through the crowd upstairs when her shoulder was pulled back again.

  “Jana, Jesus, just wait!” Zorka was out of breath.

  She reached out her hand towards Jana, then opened her fingers.

  “You forgot your phone,” she said.

  “I did?”

  “Yeah,” Zorka replied. “And um . . . heads up, I put my number in. It’s under IM SORRY. Just so you know.”

  Jana took the phone and put it back into her trouser pocket.

  “So,” Zorka continued, “if IM SORRY calls you one day . . . maybe you could pick up . . . ?”

  *

  Jana was walking outside, away from the club, through the loitering bodies, smoking, waiting for a friend, reformulating their night, holding out their phones, texting exes or hook-ups or following their Uber driver taking the wrong street towards them on the screen. Jana was teetering, footsteps on and off the kerb, making her way around the people and puddles in the gutter, her stride uneven, as if stepping over branches.

  *

  There was the buzzing again, against her hipbone. She reached into her trouser pocket and pulled out her phone, which trembled and flashed in her palm. She re-read the caller’s name once, twice, M-IL-E-N-A. Milena was calling again. Jana matched her index fingertip to the green circle and the name disappeared, time, advancing per second, taking its place, and within the ticking, a voice.

  She brought the phone up to her ear.

  “Hello . . . ?” Jana said hesitantly.

  “Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, I hear you, your French is really good, by the way.”

  “. . . Thanks . . .”

  “I just left the club and—I thought you were dead?”

  “What?”

  “I thought you were dead.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”r />
  “Excuse me?”

  “DEAD.”

  “WHO?”

  “YOU . . .”

  “What do you mean?”

  “AREN’T YOU DEAD?”

  “Who’s dead??”

  “YOU! YOU!”

  “ME?”

  “YES!”

  “WHAT?”

  “YOU’RE DEAD, MILENA!” Jana was shouting into her phone.

  “This is Aimée.”

  *

  “I see you . . .” Aimée said.

  “You do?”

  “Yes, Jana, that’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Where?”

  “Um . . . pacing around the lamp-post across the street . . .”

  Jana halted her step and looked up. The lamp-light drenched her eyes, she squinted, and looked back down, then traced her gaze across the street towards the building. There was a window, lit, with one side of the curtain drawn open, and a silhouette touching the glass.

  Jana lifted her left hand and wiggled her fingers at the window. The hand on the glass wiggled her fingers back.

  “Well . . .” Aimée’s voice came out of the receiver, “Do you want to come up . . . or keep pacing?”

  Amy

  Amy steps one sneaker carefully in front of the other at the edge of the wall of the house with the brown roof and grey satellite dish. Low-waisted flared jeans, soil-stains on the knees, dark-green zip-up, navy-blue backpack on her shoulders. One hand tracing the pallid stone, she moves around the house.

  A wind picks up the loose blonde hairs straying from her thick ponytail, and wisps them across her cheek.

  The emptiness is shifting around her. She turns her head back to the lone dirt road, stringing away into the dimness shared by the soil and the trees and the night and the man’s departure.

  She’s seen the man leave, from the bushes, where she was waiting and watching. He was in his grey suit, with shined shoes and a shined head, locking and bolting the door with even-handed accuracy, stopping only to cover his mouth with a sky-blue silk handkerchief when he coughed.

  Below, in the dirt, at the tip of her foot, there is a stone. She picks it up, steps back, and tosses it at the window with the three iron bars. It clinks against the glass, then drops onto the ledge of the windowsill. There is no echo. The darkness makes foam of noise. Her arms are crossed over her gut, the backpack straps dangling against her jean pockets.

  “Dominika . . .” she whispers with her head tilted up, “it’s me!”

  From inside the house, a heavy chain is dragging, the chinks pulling apart then hitting against each other.

  “It’s me, Dominika!”

  She’s made her way to the door, wide and wooden, with a dark iron frame. Near her belly button, the keyhole is a black copper, made for a bulbous key. There is a thin light coming from the hole. She watches it. Just then, it disappears, and through the hole, an exhalation.

  The keyhole looks like it’s breathing.

  “Amy . . .” the breath filters out of the keyhole.

  “O my Amy . . .”

  “Dominika? Dominika!”

  “O my sexy Amy!”

  She crouches down carefully, palms on the door, and approaches her eye to the keyhole. She squints, then opens her eye wide and feels a warm breath on her eyeball, then squints again.

  “But I can’t see you . . . !” Amy whispers.

  The chain lifts and drops and Amy flinches back, then catches herself on the door and peers back into the keyhole.

  “I see . . . red . . . is it your dress?”

  “I wearing it for you, my love!”

  “I want to see your face.”

  “I cannot, my beauty . . . chain not long enough.”

  Amy unzips her backpack and takes out the toolbox and sets it at her feet. She begins to feel around the iron door frame, wedging her fingernails between the metal and cement lining.

  “Geez, it’s really . . . solid!”

  “Yes, he made very strong!”

  “I need like a blow torch or something!”

  “You bring this with you?”

  “No . . . All I brought was like . . . my dad’s toolbox, and most of the tools they took away at security, they were asking me why I needed a wrench and a hammer and different-sized screwdrivers, I got nervous, I didn’t know what to say, I told them I wanted to make art. What kind of art? The security guard was asking me. I really had to think on my feet, and to be honest, I don’t really know too much about art, so I just said I want to build something . . . like a small house . . . as an art project, but the security guard kept asking me to explain further, so I told him that I was going to build a doghouse around myself using only my father’s toolbox as, like, people came and went and there was a sign that said they should, like, bark at me, as they watched, until they got bored and wanted to leave. I dunno, I just kind of ran with the idea . . . Then I stopped talking and the guard was just staring at me. He asked me if I make feminist art. I got nervous again, cause I wasn’t sure, but I think it was definitely a trick question. And I couldn’t remember anything from my European History class, ugh, I really should have listened better, like, was feminist art illegal in Europe or something? Just in case, I told him I didn’t know what feminist art was. He raised his eyebrows at me, and said, alright, well what kind of art do you make, then?

  All I could think about was you, Dominika, I was afraid he wouldn’t let me through, I was trying to be very careful, watching his facial expression, thinking about my words, and I could kind of feel the tears coming up and I was squeezing my chest shut so they wouldn’t come up, I was telling him, Sir, I just want to make a doghouse actually, for a dog I love very much, Sir, and, um, the dog lives here and, um, the reason I am using my father’s toolbox is because my mother does not have a toolbox, Sir, because in my country, most women don’t own toolboxes yet, and, um, of course, after the doghouse is made, I will return the toolbox to my father, Sir, and myself back to America before my ninety-day tourist visa is up – I showed him my return ticket, and he handed me back the half-empty toolbox and I walked through the security gate . . .”

  “Oh my darling! My clever girl! What long journey you had. And now you are here, so close to me!”

  “But how am I supposed to get this door open now . . .”

  Amy hits the door with her flat hand.

  “Fuck!” Amy yells out.

  “Shhh . . . my angel, please . . .”

  “I’m sorry,” Amy whispers, “I . . . don’t know . . . what to do . . . I feel like such an idiot . . . with this stupid toolbox and . . . I love you, Dominika! Ugh, I wish I could dismantle this door and this house and everything and we could just be together! But they only left me the shitty tools I can’t do anything with! I can’t even scrape off the wood of this fucking door if I wanted to, how am I supposed to break you out of here—”

  “Kiss me.”

  “What?”

  “Kiss me, my love.”

  “I want to! But . . . shouldn’t I try to get this door down first?”

  “One kiss, please!”

  “Um . . . okay! But . . . how??”

  “Put your lips to hole where key goes, my angel.”

  Amy looks at the black copper keyhole.

  “My lips?” she says hesitantly.

  “Yes, my Amy, my sexy Amy!”

  “But what if . . . he comes back and . . . and—”

  “Amy, my beautiful girl, I wish I can hold you, you so nervous.”

  “I’m scared, Dominika. I . . . I’m stuck out here, you’re in there, and he—he—he’s going to come back!”

  “Shhh . . . everything be alright. Kiss me and I show you everything alright.”

  Amy glances around, still nothing but the forest and the lone road. She looks back at the wooden door, focusing towards the keyhole.

  “Okay . . .” Amy murmurs.

  She begins to lean in, pursing her lips as her face comes closer to the wood and her eyes close. The cold metal r
idge touches the skin of her lips.

  “Come closer, my love . . .”

  She leans in closer, pressing her lips into the copper-framed keyhole, pushing the pulp of them inside the thumb-sized space.

  “My angel, come closer . . .”

  Amy is pushing her face up against the door, the key-shaped ridge prodding into her teeth.

  “Closer, closer . . .”

  Her nose is bending into the wood, the grain stamping her forehead.

  “Clo—” the voice drops.

  *

  The night is cut in two with one sharp shriek from inside the house.

  *

  Amy jumps back away from the door, her hands over her mouth.

  “Dominika . . . ??” she is getting up to her feet. “What’s happening??”

  The shriek comes again from inside the house and Amy winces, stepping away from the door.

  The shriek is stretching into a scream and the chain is clanging against itself frantically.

  “H—H—Hel—” Amy is stuttering as she continues to stumble away from the door.

  Her breath is beating faster than her heart, as the scream is ripping a blood-lined voice from inside the house. Amy turns towards the forest and takes a hurried step to run, but jolts to a halt as her sneaker hits the ground.

  On the lone dirt road leading to the forest, the man is walking. The man is walking with even steps along the lone road towards the house. He is looking at her, directly at her, and yet his body flickers as he walks. He is approaching and his body is flickering strangely, as if he is flesh one second, and digital data the next, then flesh again, but his eyes remain solid points of vision, pointed without a doubt at Amy, on the doorstep of the house.

  “H—, He—, He—, Hel—” Amy is gagging, her throat clutching itself.

  And then,

  you went

  to Hell . . .

  The man lifts his arm and extends it towards Amy, the muscles and bones flashing like running input.

  “HELLLLL . . . PPPpppppuuuhhh!!” Amy is wheezing.

  Her eyes clamp shut and she squeezes them tighter and tighter, sucking herself into her pupils.