Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

“Emmannuelle’s at the hospital.”

“Oh. Yes, I thought she might be…You ready for the concert tonight?”

“Not much to do. Just get up and sing.”

“Glad that it’s not too stressful. I can’t imagine having to stand up in front of all those people. But then again, I guess when you have something special , it’s nice to… share it… no?”

Béatrice smiled slightly. Then frowned slightly. Then straightened out her lips.

“You’re such a… closed-off person, Béatrice, you know? Never mind.”

They stood face to face. Béatrice turned and put the honey-coated spoon she was holding in the sink.

“So, you are going to wear that dress tonight? The new one?” Jean-Luc said.

Béatrice turned on the faucet, picked up the sponge and washed clean her spoon. When she turned around, Jean-Luc was in the same spot, staring straight at her.

“It looks great on you,” he added.

Béatrice felt her cheeks stiffen. She turned back to the sink.

“The dress.”

Béatrice turned the water off and stood with her wrists on the sink’s edge, hands hanging towards the drain. Jean-Luc took a step towards her. The fingers of her still wet hands curled in and her eyes closed. Béatrice wished he would just leave. He shouldn’t have been there. It was Polina who should be standing behind her now, not some man who had attached himself to her sister and hung around all these years, intruding upon her.

“You look… very… very… nice… in it,” Jean-Luc said to Béatrice’s back.

Her fingers gripped the sink tighter. “I know,” she said through her teeth.

Jean-Luc remained where he was and watched Béatrice like a screw turning slowly into wood.

“…Well, maybe I’m making you uncomfortable. I just thought I’d stop by. Anyway, see you tonight then.”

Béatrice opened her eyes.

“Okay. Bye,” she said, without turning around.

“Bye, Miss Monroe …”

Jean-Luc closed the door behind him.

Béatrice snapped around and ran to the door, pulled it open, and stepped outside. Jean-Luc was just closing the gate from the yard on to the street.

“What did you say?” she yelled.

Jean-Luc turned his head, startled. In all the time he had known Béatrice he had never heard her raise her voice, let alone yell. Jean-Luc suddenly felt a bit stirred.

“What did you call me?” Béatrice repeated.

He put his forearm on the top of the gate, and leaned his hip in. He didn’t say anything because he didn’t need to. Life is delicious when you’ve made a beautiful woman yell for the first time.

Béatrice felt her heart speeding up. Her chest rose and fell, rose and fell.

“Don’t call me that,” Béatrice said.

When Jean-Luc was a boy he had an aunt who always showed up at their house with eyes that looked as if she had spent the whole day crying. She’d sit at the kitchen table and his mom would make her a coffee and bring her an ashtray. Normally smoking in the house wasn’t allowed. But when this aunt came around, the rules changed. She had wrinkled eyes (from all that crying), but otherwise a fit body for her age, with exquisite, full breasts. She must have been well aware of this feature, for she always wore blouses which displayed them proudly, and little Jean-Luc would look at them shyly.

This aunt could not shake the habit of giving herself wholly to men who degraded her, physically or emotionally (as Jean-Luc’s mother put it). The ritual was the same. She would come in with those gutter eyes and cradle her coffee and puff one cigarette after another as she recounted each story as if nothing of the sort had ever happened to her before. Then, something would turn, her eyes would dry up, and her lips would stiffen. This was what Jean-Luc perceived to be the revenge phase. Yet it was not quite revenge. It was merely the moment when, from the swampy tragedy of her circumstances, a gulp gave way to a hand, a bone-stiff hand reaching out of the mud. Her breath would quicken, and those beautiful breasts would start bouncing as she called the man in question by every name except his own. From that point, Jean-Luc learned a very valuable lesson: Angry women are so nice to look at.

And now, what luck he had, there was Béatrice, the woman who had never showed him much of any reaction at all, suddenly fuming in the doorway, making those breasts rise and fall and rise and fall. O, blessed be the words that pushed her over the edge!

“Call you what?” Jean-Luc said calmly. The sun had come out.

Béatrice’s chest tightened. Speak, damn it, speak , she said to herself, but nothing came. She closed her eyes.

“Are you okay, Béatrice?” Jean-Luc asked, unable to hide his smile. He was sure she was about to cry. Then he would be able to console her, maybe even give her a hug. Jean-Luc waited patiently, but when Béatrice’s eyes opened, they were completely dry.

“ Miss Marilyn ,” Béatrice pronounced. She realised she had never said this name out loud herself. It sounded so sharp just then, she touched her neck as if she had been cut.

“Hey, I didn’t mean it like…” Jean-Luc’s smile began to deflate.

“Like what …?” she asked.

“Like…” he searched awkwardly for the right words, “Like… the way… everyone else means it… Listen, I didn’t mean to upset you,” he continued, “I just wanted to stop by and… you know… say hi.”

“No,” Béatrice said directly. She thought of the silent, floating shoe.

“Okay, listen. I’ll let you go,” Jean-Luc said. Béatrice continued to glare.

“See ya tonight…” he added meekly and crossed the street before she could respond.

Buh-bye big boy… A voice mists over from a long highway between Dresden and Prague.

Next time bring one of your white roses… Another responds from a room with no windows.

At that very moment, somewhere years back, in Stuttgart, Germany, a ball of saliva lands on the inner thigh of a young girl whose hair is twisted into two thick chestnut braids. It slews down, leaving a moist trail on her pale, pre-teen skin, and drops on to the carpeted hallway. The owner of this saliva, a young man with a simple name, turns around and re-tucks his black, button-down shirt into faded black jeans.

By the time César was back in the city from his audition, the light was already making way for evening. He bought a can of beer from the corner store and put the cold aluminium shell to his swollen nose. The shape of the can and the shape of his nose did not make good partners. César dabbed the dewy can, horizontally, diagonally, base then edge, unable to find a suitable fit. He finally gave in to holding the can under the base of his nose, cradling its weight against the bones in his face.

As he walked, the can rolled slightly and pressed into the bruising. César stopped, pulled his cell phone out of his pocket. No calls. He knew it was too soon for a call. But he could already hear Marcel’s voice: You really reeled it in there, they could not stop talking about you!

César stuffed the phone back into his pocket. As he crossed the street, a woman holding the hand of her son stopped to look at him. César couldn’t help but smile at them. The woman pulled her son to her hip.

When he got home he put the can of beer in the fridge. He looked at his face in the mirror. His under-eyes were puffy and rimmed with red. The sides of his nose were inflated, already yellowing with traces of violet. There was some dried blood on his nostrils and on the cleft above his lip. César’s mother had said that it was that small valley below the nose where God left his fingerprint on each child at birth. Now God’s fingertip had dried blood on it.