Yelena Moskovich - Virtuoso

“I make their pussy look like a blind eye. They never see, what do they see, they see nothing.”

Since the French Girl was completely waxed already, compliments of the job, and they had already done Zorka, and Kimberley said, “No way,” and Rico had no hair cause he was Filipino, Paul volunteered Ben.

“Oh come on, Paul, I ain’t gonna get waxed!”

“Sure you are. Zorka needs to practise.”

“But I don’t want to walk around with legs like a girl for a month – no ’fence Rico.”

“It’ll be good for you, Ben. You too stuck on appearances anyways.”

“You kiddin me? They gonna beat the shit outta me—”

“Ain’t no one gonna touch you. If you think hair on your legs makes you a man, then you can draw the hair back on,” and he threw Ben a black sharpie.

Ben walked around with smooth hairless legs and hairless armpits for all of that warm autumn, and something in him changed. He started coding programs just for fun, then getting curious about people who were different from him, then he crashed an MIT party where he met a girl to whom he explained that his hairlessness was a sacrifice to his sister getting her aesthetician’s licence.

“That’s partly endearing,” the girl said, “and partly super-weird.”

But something about his easy way of listening and his dark, bowing eyes kept the girl there.

“So you wanna tell me your name?” Bennie said with a smile.

“Nidhi.”

“That’s cool. I like that name. My name’s Bennie. Or Ben. However you wanna say it. Nidhi, what is that like Indian?”

“Yeah…” the girl said. Then, after a pause, she said, “You don’t go to MIT do you?”

“What makes you say that?” Bennie replied.

Nidhi let out a laugh.

“Just your manner of speaking, Bennie, that’s all.”

“Yeah, I know, right. I’m actually doin a double, MIT/Harvard, because I couldn’t decide so I thought why not, you know. It’s like at a buffet when you end up putting a chicken drumstick and a slice of meatloaf on your plate cause you can’t decide, and it looks weird, but it’s not too bad actually.”

By winter, Bennie and Nidhi were dating and Zorka got her aesthetician’s licence and started waxing at the European Wax Center, where it was considered a point of expertise for the woman who was waxing you to have an accent. Part of the European touch.

At times, Rico and Zorka mumbled to each other with clunky Russian accents like Boris and Natasha from the Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoon, the tall female spy with sharp eyebrows and a tight smile, and the shorter agent with two evil moustache wisps. Other times, Rico read her poetry from his classes. Zorka kept saying “I don’t get it” to all the poems, except Anne Sexton. She got that. She wrote intrepidly about all the things “no one wanna see” as Zorka put it, like menstruating, masturbating, wanting to die, addictions, incest, cheating, begging…

All My Pretty Ones

Anne Sexton lived and wrote in Massachusetts, Newton, Lowell, Boston. Some of her poems could be a walking tour. One that would lead nowhere, but gave you firm instructions. Like “45 Mercy Street”, up and down Beacon Hill, Back Bay, Charles River…

Anne Sexton got home. She poured herself a glass of vodka. She put an arm into one sleeve, then the other, of her mother’s heavy, bristled fur coat, she slid them off her fingers, one by one, her rings, she went into the garage. She locked the door. She got into her car and started the engine, then closed her eyes and leaned back.

Ghosts…

Rico took Zorka to Anne’s grave at the Forest Hills Cemetery in Jamaica Plain.

My Friend, My Friend

The Fury of Abandonment

The Fury of Earth

The Fury of Sunrises

The Fury of Sunsets

Rico spent every Christmas with his family in Houston. That year he invited Zorka to come down with him, and so they got into his midnight-blue Toyota Corolla, and began their road trip southwest, down past Hartford, New Haven, Krispy Kreme, Wendy’s, the 95 to the 78, around New York, the 476, past Hershey, past Harrisburg, then on the border Zorka rolled down her window and yelled out “PEACE OUT NEW JERSEY” and Rico honked twice.

They continued down through Maryland, the long 81 down into Virginia, through the George Washington and Jefferson National Forests. Zorka took a small invisible hat off her head and said with a bow, “Khello Mr Presidents, how you do…” and Rico burst out laughing.

Past Roanoke, Blacksburg, Firestone Complete Auto Care, LaQuinta Inn, Kingsport, “What up, Tennessee,” Rico saluted, “the gays are comin,” at which Zorka began to sing the new song she made up as their talisman for driving through the South: “gay as fuck, wish us luck…”

Knoxville, down the 75, around the corner of the Chattahoochee National Forest, through the tip of Georgia, then onto the 59 into Alabama. Rico was tapping on the steering wheel. Then he reached over and turned the radio up and Zorka began to swivel in her seat, singing along to the lyrics with a thick pronunciation while rolling her window down.

Misssssssyyyyyyyy!” Zorka yelled out into the passing field. In the distance, a cow responded “mooo.”

They stopped for the night at a Super 8 motel, the coral exterior with the yellow sign holding the dilated orange-red 8 popping out of the wood. The woman with the name tag “Candice” gave both Rico and Zorka a long look, then slid the paperwork over and handed them the key.

“Enjoy your stay,” she said, uninterested in her own sentence.

They parked their car and went up the stairs, past the ice and snack machines, to the second-level rooms, 5B.

In the room the carpet was the colour of mashed potatoes and the two twin beds had a quilted comforter with square patterns in mauve and turquoise. On the wall was a watercolour painting of a bouquet of flowers and another of a large seashell.

They drank a couple of beers then turned on some music and Zorka danced around while Rico read. They talked about what Rico wanted to do after he graduated. He said he wanted to go to grad school. And to Paris.

“You wana go to Paris, Zorka?”

“Yeah, sure, Rico. Maybe French Girl can take us. Zhe parl an pu fransay, vou savey .”

“You got a good accent…”

“Shut up.”

“Ha, well no less discreet than your accent in English.”

“Yeah, this shit suck big time. Wish I just have no accent and speak like you.”

“No way, Zorka. It totally works for you.”

“Cause I know how to verk it…” Zorka dipped down, touched her toes and rolled back up.

They woke up in the middle of the night to yelling in 5A.

“I fucking knew it…!” a man hit his palm on the wall, right above Rico’s bedside lamp.

“You don’t know nothing,” the woman yelled back. “You too busy with your goddamn self to know something…” The woman began to over-enunciate her words. “You an embarrassment, William don’t want to see you, he tell me he don’t want to see his Daddy no more, you got him getting knocked round in school cause of you and he just a kid… comin home with a black eye, got his nose bleedin!”

“Oh I’m a embarrassment? Who the fuck you think pay all your bills?”

“Fuck you, that shit’s called child support and it’s for Willie to get his notebooks and shit for school you asshole, it’s for him to get his fuckin Hepatitis B shot!”