Yelena Moskovich - Virtuoso

“This is beautiful song,” the man said, turning back to his glass.

“It’s Léo Ferré,” the bartender inserted as she wiped the counter again.

“Leyo Feray,” the man repeated as he looked deep into the remaining wine pooled at the bottom. “I try to remember.”

Je t’aime! the singer shouted out again into the mournful music.

The man took another sip, then began to cough. As Aimée turned towards him, he reached inside his jacket, and pulled out a sky-blue silk handkerchief and drew it towards his face.

The string of lights began to flicker again. The curtains shook as if the door on the other side had been opened.

Aimée looked down at her watch. 9pm.

The stool to her right was empty and the bartender was wiping its place clean.

The Zentiva representative was younger than Jana had thought it likely for such a company to send to an important sales meeting. He looked not long out of university, her brother’s age just before she had left Prague. The rep shook the Frenchman’s hand, trying to squeeze it and smile at the same time. He thanked him for the thoughtful exchange at dinner, but before he could finish his own phrase, he added that he did not want to insist, but he felt it was important to underline that Zentiva delivers high-quality, cost-effective pharmaceuticals for the international markets, all their generic medicines have tested extremely well in relation to the original branded drug in the bioequivalence clinical studies, the active ingredient releasing into the bloodstream at almost the identical speed and quantity as the brandname medicine. Jana translated for the client as the Zentiva rep interrupted her, adding that they are the guaranteed ideal supplier of choice, then stumbling over a couple more statistics about their respiratory and central nervous system pharmaceuticals.

The client listened to Jana, then shook both of their hands and told them he had a generous amount of information to consider.

As the French client walked towards the main street to get a taxi, Jana shook hands with the Zentiva rep and told him she thought the meeting went well. The rep exhaled in relief and shook her hand again with gusto.

As she walked away, she imagined him on the plane tomorrow morning, back to Prague. She saw him fumbling with his seat belt and trying to close his tray. She saw his knees, awkward in the dry suit fabric, lean right, left, trying to find their place in the allotted aeroplane seat space. She saw the back of his ears, oddly clean, the habit he inherited from his grandmother of rubbing the corner of the towel there after he washed. She saw his head turned towards the window, watching the clouds squeeze from one form to another, like slow-beating hearts, and sitting there, trying not to wrinkle his business suit, watching the sky, the smile on his face, so unprotected, extempore.

Have you seen my hair gel?

Jana kept on walking. It was, no doubt, one of the sloppiest pitches she had ever interpreted and she was near certain his offer would not be considered any further.

Her shoulder hit the man’s.

“ Promiňte ,” the man said in a sloppy-toned Czech. Beg your pardon. As he stumbled off, the top of his eggish head caught the moonlight.

Jana caught her balance and looked up. Above her, the salient blue light shone from the electric angel.

Her hand was pushing at the black wall, which parted and became a door. Inside, the blue curtains were being drawn open and Jana’s legs were moving her forwards towards the bar, where she was now sitting on a stool. She glanced to her left. The blonde woman was looking down at her watch.

“It’s 9pm,” the woman was saying to her wrist.

The doctor that’s speaking at the Global Plastics round table, that’s my father…

“…He has a way of thinking about limbs,” Aimée was speaking to her watch at the bar, “like there is no barrier between our bodies and medical supplies, like there is no physical movement we cannot find a way to simulate.”

The bartender set a glass of wine down in front of Jana and she reached for it, parting her fingers and sliding the stem into their crux.

“I don’t want to simulate my body anymore…” Aimée continued.

“Do we know each other?” Jana asked the woman.

The lights began to flicker again. Aimée straightened up and looked over at the woman sitting next to her, lingering on her face.

“I was hoping we did,” Aimée replied.

“Aimée de Saint-Pé,” the woman pronounced for Jana. “Would you like to dance with me?”

They made their way to the dance area, their bodies somehow delayed from their stride. The disco ball turned gradually above their heads and the melancholic music played on, voices yearning, beckoning, regretting… It played through their thoughts like an itching of memories.

Jana looked at the blue walls around her, then at the blonde woman at her side. She realised that she had no idea how to dance to such a slow, languorous song. Her shoulders began to sway as she studied the woman. Aimée’s eyes were closed and her torso twining to the verses.

… N39…

The lights snowed down onto the tops of their heads.

Jana’s hands lifted and settled on the woman’s waist. She stepped in closer to her. Aimée reached around her as well. Jana could feel her blouse wrinkling beneath her gliding palms as she went up her back, then settled upon her bare nape, each finger closing in a bit of heat. The woman’s hips were grazing against Jana’s, and her breasts leaning into her own, until the two women were face to face, their breath mixing together.

The song began melting into another one, in which the strings creaked and the quivering voice of Jeanne Moreau sang an ode to the troubled sky.

The music moved them together and they let their eyes float within each other as if down a river.

The taxi drove past the Madeleine métro stop, taking a slight left up Rue Tronchet.

“Right up here,” Aimée said and the taxi slowed to the kerb in front of her building.

The two women stepped out and the taxi drove away.

Inside the building, Jana walked behind the woman, hand on the wooden railing of the stairway.

The woman turned around and smiled into the darkness, reaching her finger down to the lapel of Jana’s coat.

Liné

The key clicked and Aimée pushed the door open. The light switch flicked, she was undoing her coat, and Jana, glancing around, her fingers untying her own coat belt, her eyes gazing at the powder-coloured couch, pitch-black oval coffee table, TV screen, rug, picture frame, and then settling on the large white bookshelf, each row full of books, a stuffed mouth.

“You like to read,” Jana said, approaching the shelf.

“Those aren’t my books,” the woman answered and reached out to her, taking hold of her wrist.

“Come here…” she said as she pulled Jana back into her own body.

Aimée’s hand was hooked into Jana’s as she was leading her down a hallway.

The forest sweats its leaves and the stems of flowers break and moisten at the fissure.

In the bedroom, the bed made, the curtains drawn, only the half-open door lets in a cut of light.

“Are you afraid,” Aimée whispered, “to kiss me?”