Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

One night, a new girl keeps swirling on his lap. He’s sitting outside the bar. She’s trying to straddle him. “Yer fuckin up the view,” he says, pushing the girl away. She takes off her shirt. She’s topless and it’s winter, but she doesn’t feel the cold. She wants his attention. Manny just wants to look at the sky for a bit, alone. Watch the colours change. She keeps coming back. Manny keeps pushing her away. Until she doesn’t stand up again. She’s lying topless in the street, with her legs bent behind her.

Manny continues to sit there, watches the sky turn orange then blue then violet and takes swigs from the bottle. Then he stands up and leaves. The girl doesn’t move.

PARIS

Manny ends up in Paris. How? Not important. Same old thing. It’s springtime. He’s walking around alone. If he sees an ant, he picks it up on his finger and walks around with it crawling on his hand for a while. Then he carefully sets it down, back on its path.

Manny’s got a thing about ants. He doesn’t like it when people step on them. All insects in general, but especially ants. As a boy, he’d be screaming, “NO SE SUBA A LAS HORMIGAS!!” with his eyes almost popping out of that thin face as his mama’s man stomped on the ant routes and laughed at the crying boy.

Fast forward. Manny’s twenty-nine, and still has the same face as a teenager. He’s sticking around Paris now. Why? Simple. He likes the skyline. But the problem is he can’t stay out of trouble. In and out of police stations. Every time they have to let him go. “Ain’t got nuthin on me, man, I’m as free as da fuckin birds all up in dat sky.”

Back to the script: four girls have gone missing with same MO. Now a fifth’s been found. Again, Manny’s picked up by the French authorities. They are just itching to catch him for something. He’s obviously “up to no good” anyway, obviously “better off the streets”, obviously “safer for everyone if he’s locked away”. But proof, they need proof. Four girls. Now five.

Manny, did you do it?

Tell me.

My beautiful psycho. All alone in this world. No one believes you’ve got a right to live. Except for me, Manny. I do. I’ve never been happier since I met you.

César read over his notes. They felt like a pile of intimate love letters. Things he shared with Manny that no one else would know. It was true, no one else would or could know.

The actual information he received from his agent to prepare for the audition was quite sparse.

Manny is Latino (let’s just say a criminal, the writer probably thought). Manny is complicated (let’s just say psycho, the director simplified). Manny’s charged with doing dark things to five young women (Oh, I know a good special effects make-up artist! the assistant most likely added). All the viewers want to see a guilty Manny, a beastly Manny, a punished Manny. But did Manny actually do those things?

(You’ll have to wait thirteen episodes to find out).

As César got into bed that night, he went over his mantra for tomorrow’s audition.

Word that makes Manny feel in charge: Bitch

Word that makes Manny nostalgic: Honda

Word that pushes Manny over the edge: Hormiga

Bitch, Honda, Hormiga

Bitch, Honda, Hormiga

César pulled the blanket up to his ear and curled tightly into it. In the darkness, he quietly repeated the mantra with his softly closing lips. He felt that Manny was in bed with him, holding him tightly, whispering lightly into his still-boyish ear.

Bitch, Honda, Hormiga

César smiled gently. Just as he drifted away, he whispered out loud: “ Te quiero, Manny…”

At that moment, he felt a distinct wind blow into his ear canal and a man’s gritty voice whisper back, “ Te quiero, César. ”

Béatrice sang to herself in a half-voice because it was so late. She was in bed, trying to understand her day. She had woken up with a strange urge to cough, then when she did, out had come a name. In the afternoon, she had gone looking for a dress for her concert and ended up in a stark boutique with a woman who listened to the radio between stations. There, she had found her dress. There, she had tried it on. There, she had looked exactly how she had always wanted to look. Then, there was the woman, the name. There she was, Polina . Polina . The name, like the face, ran through Béatrice’s thoughts. Do-bee-do-bee doo…

A shard of moonlight lay on her cheek. The rest of the room was a landscape of bulbous shadows. As she hummed, most of the sound remained in her throat. Only the faintest breath from the movement of the syllables escaped, and seemed to form shapes in the dimness around her. Polina’s face returned to her. One eye, tilted and almost Persian. Eyelashes dark and stiff.

Polina was watching her.

Béatrice closed her eyes and felt quite strange in her body, as if she had gone to bed without undressing. She slid her hand beneath the covers and felt the warm skin of her stomach. She turned her head towards the window. She saw the bare branches in the night air. A wind blew and shook them. As they swayed, she thought she saw a shadow move across them.

Pogulyaem?

There was a knock on her door. The knob turned and let in a slice of light. A bare leg stepped in. For a moment, the figure did not advance. Béatrice waited.

“Bee…?” her sister’s voice came. “Bee…”

“What’s wrong?” Béatrice said.

“Bee… I can’t sleep.” Emmanuelle said like a kitten.

When Emmanuelle was a child, she went through a spell of bad dreams, which little by little discouraged her from the whole activity of sleep. She would sit in bed, her eyes gluey with fatigue, clenching her fists to stay awake. At the time, her parents had tried many things. Bedtime stories, night-lights, warm milk, change in routine, a safety blanket. Their father would sit in a chair at her bedside as her protector, you can sleep now, honey, I’m here . But he always fell asleep first and Emmanuelle would be left in the dark, clutching her blanket, staring at the silhouette-lump in the chair her father had become.

Emmanuelle’s dream was always the same. A man dressed all in black with a black woollen mask climbs into Emmanuelle and Béatrice’s shared room. Béatrice is not in her bed, because her bed is neatly made. As the man makes his way to Emmanuelle, she wakes up instantly at the disturbance of his footsteps. Emmanuelle immediately looks over at the door, ready to scream. Just as she is about to call out, the woollen man covers Emmanuelle’s mouth with his leather-gloved hand. The man lifts Emmanuelle out of the bed with one easy gesture and pulls her so tightly against his stiff chest that she can barely twist, let alone try to get free. Just as the woollen man is about to take Emmanuelle away through the window, her father and her mother both walk through the door into the room. They look blurrily at her. Emmanuelle tries to call out to them, but her mouth is shut tightly by the man’s hand. All she can do is snort through her nose repeatedly. Her parents’ vision sharpens and they take notice of their daughter in distress. Her father and her mother both begin to raise their hands up slowly. Their muscles appear to still be asleep. As their hands rise, so do Emmanuelle’s eyes. She follows her parents’ hands with utmost devotion.

When her father’s and her mother’s hands reach the level of their ears, they come to a stop. Emmanuelle holds her breath. She locks her eyes on their white hands which seem to be floating in the darkness. They begin to rock, dipping slowly to one side, then to the other. Emmanuelle stares and stares as if trying to decipher a foreign symbol, but then she realises. Her father and her mother are not telling the man to stop, they are waving her goodbye .