*
Amy is not sure how long she has been waiting, but she remains still within her own darkness, as time goes up like an elevator, in a clean, straight line within the immaculate silence inside her.
*
The wall is completely blue, and at the corner of the ceiling, a blue speaker hangs like fruit off the crux.
The girl is unconscious in the blonde woman’s arms. She is holding the girl up, one hand around her waist, and the other beneath her armpit, the girl’s sneakers dragging on the floor.
*
I was a different woman then
Had an apartment near Madeleine . . .
*
The lights begin to flicker and one of Amy’s sneakers tenses, flexing towards the floor, and then the other, both making contact, setting themselves firmly, and pushing upwards through her body.
*
Amy is lifting her head and opening her eyes. She stands on her own two feet and Aimée takes her arms off the girl and steps back. Amy is looking around at the listless clientele sitting in pairs at the tables, then at the bar stools, all empty except for the middle one with the little girl in the oversized pink cap, then at the bar-woman, who is lifting a blue bag of lemons from the counter to wipe beneath it, then setting it back down in its spot.
Amy tilts her head back and shards of light from the disco ball rain into her eyes.
*
“Alright, alright, come on,” the old lady with the velour scrunchie is tapping Amy’s shoulder, “I’ll take you to the metro. It’s prime time for coins.”
Amy turns towards the old woman.
“Oh good, you got a toolbox with you,” the old woman continues, “my amp is coming undone from my cart, you think you can tighten the wires?”
Amy looks down at her other hand, gripping the black toolbox by the handle.
“I can try . . .” Amy says, “but they took most of the tools away at security . . .”
“Did you tell them you make feminist art?”
Amy is shaking her head, and as she does, tears drop from her eyes.
“Hey, easy, what’s the matter? You want to go home? Is that it?”
Amy shakes her head again, pulling her quivering lips into her mouth.
“It’s this music, isn’t it? It’s really fucking too sad in my opinion, they should change it up, though who am I to critique, I’ve been singing the same drippy chansons for God-knows-how-many years . . .”
Amy wipes her cheeks with the side of hand, and then her nose.
“I don’t want to go home,” Amy mumbles, “I just . . . don’t know where to go . . .”
“Well, for starters – to the metro, with me!” the old lady says, pushing the cart with the amp through the long blue curtains.
*
The blue curtains open and the two technicians roll in the empty bed towards the monitor. Once it’s in place, they begin matching the coloured wires to their receptors, then hook the main plug into the floor socket.
Together, they pull the plastic casing off the bed-frame. Around the deep mattress, the panels are a solid beige with a shapely apparatus attached to the left-hand side.
“Hey, what do you think this is for?” the first technician touches the nozzle of the pump-like device.
The other technician shrugs and crouches to adjust the wheel stops at each foot.
The first slides his fingers around the handle and the pump separates from its holder. His hips begin to sway and his hand brings the pump up to his lips. He crosses his other arm over his chest, squeezing his shoulders, pursing his mouth, and closing his eyes.
“Hey, man, cut it out!” the other technician is standing. “This thing’s expensive! Put that down and let’s go.”
The first technician lowers the pump into its socket, tilting his head with glowing concern, gazing at the large V sewn into the top of the bed with thick blue threading. Once the pump is back in its holder, his hand releases the apparatus and comes back up to his mouth. His lips give one kiss to his fingertips and those fingertips release his kiss to the new, vacant bed.
“Allez, Michael, we have to hook up the others!”
Acknowledgements
Зовётся - Жизнь: Irina, Valeriy and Valentin Moskovich. Lev Kantolinsky, and the late Isabella and Alexandra Burle.
Mes amours, mes ami(e)s: Rick Kinner, Kaisa Kinnunen, Vanja Hedberg, Ida Skovmand, Scott Cooper, Nadja Spiegelman, Amélie Rousseau, Rosa Rankin-Gee, Theodore Haber, Nicholas Miloš Mestas, Linda Lämmle, Sophie Gonthier, Ghazaleh Samandari, Ruba Khoury.
Thank you for your support: Katya Duzenko, Annie Prossnitz, Kate Kornberg and Matthieu Vahanian, Olga Tsiporkina, the Divinsky family, Elena Peskovatska, Lauren Elkin, Derek Ryan, Jayne Batzofin, Silke Schroeder, Dr Claire Finney.
This novel was partly written during the course of the following generous residencies, both by chance in Scotland, where the rain is writer’s manna:
To the Bothy Project and Shakespeare & Co. for sending me to Sweeney’s Bothy on the Isle of Eigg in May of 2016, thank you Sylvia Whitman, Adam Biles, Bobby Niven, and Lucy and Eddie Scott on the island.
Thank you to Cove Park, Polly Clark and Julian Forrester, for welcoming me as the International Artist-in-Residence in August of 2016.
An excerpt of Virtuoso was published in Dyke_on Magazine Issue 0, thank you to Annabel Fernandes and the Dyke_on team.
Unending gratitude to my editor, Nick Sheerin, who gave me compassion and freedom, and to the whole Serpent’s Tail team, dear reader, I cannot emphasise enough how much comradery goes into every book, thank you Hannah Westland, Hannah Ross, Pete Dyer, Patrick Taylor, Sarah Chatwin.
To Jane Finigan, my agent, my advocate, my sidekick, thank you.
Lastly, a kindred bow to all those who subvert with a big heart, together, incognito, our cosmic song, our lyrical transgressions.
Thanks for reading!
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Virtuoso Page 21