Yelena Moskovich - The Natashas

“Yes ma’am.”

“That’s why I pity you, Béatrice. You are very un-for-tu-nate.”

“I am?”

“Yes, that’s what I just said! See, it’s already kicking in. Your stupidity.”

Béatrice touches her face around the edges and feels for vibrations changing beneath her skin.

“WELL, YOU WANNA KNOW WHAT I SEE? DO YOU? Hold my ankles tighter, Béatrice! WELL? I’m gunna slip, stupid! READY? You holding? READY? My ankles, Béatrice! READY? I’m gunna fall in! READY TO KNOW YOUR FUTURE, BÉATRICE?”

“Tell me,” a woman’s voice says from Béatrice’s childish mouth.

“I see you with ENORMOUS boobs and you’re walking around with your shoulders BACK and you’re swaying LEFT, RIGHT showing off your rack. And you’re jingling a pair of keys. To a house that doesn’t have any windows. It’s a tall, tall tower, actually. You’re inside a tall, tall tower. You’re at the top. You’re not even wearing a shirt or a bra. You’re just sitting there, showing off your big boobies, hoping someone’ll look up. You think you’re sitting by the window and people can see you, but there are no windows, stupid! And you’re jingling your keys for music, ’cause you’re so lonely for someone to see your boobies. You think you’re some sort of PRINCESS . But you’re just a—a—a prin-pin-pes—piz— PIZDA in a tower.

“HA HA HA

HA HA HA

HA HA—”

The girl falls forward and her laughter is quickly stubbed out by the sand. The grains muffle her voice, and soak up the flow of blood from her nose.

César waited on the platform at Gare de l’Est for the TGV 9554 from Stuttgart to come in. Sweaty and chilled by the breeze from the constant flow of people rolling their suitcases left and right, his heart was still racing from the run over. He should have taken the metro, but public transportation makes him anxious when he is on his way to an unfamiliar meeting. In these cases, he prefers to walk, and of course walking, when he’s anxious, always turns into a run.

He looked at the ivory-faced clock with large black roman numerals. He saw two arrows crossing paths at a molecularly slow rate. He concentrated on the arrows, but still had no idea what time it was. He pulled out his cell phone and read the numbers. It was 6:38 and the train was due in at 7:01. He had time.

Since he only had the bare information about this meeting, his brain used the waiting time to review and regroup:

Marcel has a daughter

Correction, Marcel has two daughters

Correction, Marcel has two photos of young girls on his shelves

Side thought, I hope those photos are of his daughters

Continued side thought, Marcel’s not a pervert, is he?

Resolution to side thought, No, Marcel is a nice guy who only keeps photos of young women if they are his daughters

Back on track, Marcel’s daughter needs to be picked up and taken on a walk

Info, She’s coming in from Stuttgart at 7:01

Fact, Stuttgart is in Germany

Side thought, the last time I was in Germany was two years ago

Side thought blossoming into memory: Stefan.

Back in Mexico, when César realised that the feelings he had for his male classmates were not spoken of by others, nor written about in books, nor portrayed in films, nor sung in songs, he was both frightened and mesmerised by his secret. As he grew up, he understood very clearly that there would be serious consequences to any expression of this secret. He had to keep the cover on it tight and remain likeable. On the other hand, the desires he buried deeper and deeper became ever more mysterious and seductive. Once he embraced this inter-frequency existence, he discovered a whole world, hidden from the obvious eye, where men desired men deeply, wholly, desperately, in books, in films, in songs, and all around him. Of course, the trick was that everything had to stay between the lines.

When he moved to Paris, he was shocked by the blatancy of homosexual life. It seemed to him quite vulgar to see a man openly kiss another man on the mouth, in broad daylight. What about all those films he’d watched, where all men could do was eye each other and drink together, with that vigorous, muffled yearning tugging between them? What happened to the magnetic silence, the alluring space between bodies, the unspoken arousal?

In his acting school he kissed his first man, José. Of course he tried to pretend like it wasn’t his first. How embarrassing it would have been for José to find out that César was nearing his mid-twenties and had never touched his lips to another man’s, let alone held a penis in his mouth or swallowed another man’s sperm.

César proceeded to shadow José’s movements, careful not to let it show that he was learning. Every intimate interaction was stalked with the faint terror of being found out to be a virgin. Just when César found himself letting go and getting used to certain intimate acts, José told him that he didn’t think things were really working out between them, but hoped they could still be friends. César had quickly said, Of course, sure, no problem , then spent a week avoiding eye-contact with José and crying in the evenings.

After a while the urge to try it out with someone else grew. That’s when he tried a couple of gay bars, but found himself repulsed by his surroundings, flinching at the touch of other men. So he retreated to a more familiar terrain, between the lines; he signed up on an internet dating site. That’s where he met Stefan.

Stefan lived in Dresden, where he worked in a lab as a researcher. In his profile photos, he had an athletic jaw and considerate eyes, blue as boyhood, over which sat a pair of simple thin-framed glasses, purely functional. When they finally spoke on Skype, César was mesmerised with the way Stefan pressed his full lips together and made his jaw-line flex when he paused to think, and how he would continuously push back his fine blond hair with his palm.

Stefan reminded him of an actor in an old movie, a hero in a Western perhaps. He tried to remember the film’s name or the actor’s name, but could never pinpoint it, and so Stefan’s face lingered in the timeless desert where the land was quiet, handsome, and tearless.

And yet, this beautiful creature was like him. He didn’t go out much, especially not in the gay scene, partly because he had social anxiety (as he explained) and also because he was always working at the lab. The two quickly bonded over their introverted particularities and their strong willingness to invest in the idea of romance.

For months, they continued to chat over Skype, César enchanted with the way Stefan’s cheeks flushed with red patches when he got stuck on a sentence he couldn’t finish, the way his hand opened and closed as he spoke, then pulled back over his hair. Those were the most deeply joyful months of César’s life.

“Blut ist dicker als Wasser,” Stefan would say slowly then wait for César to laugh. César laughed with him, even though he did not understand the reference. Stefan repeated the phrase, in English, “Blood is thicker than water.” He was, of course, referring to his research, not to any particular familial loyalty.

“Biological ties are no better or worse than conditioning when all is said and done. It’s just two different kinds of elastic, if you think about it. Biology is a much thicker elastic, I mean pulling even a centimetre of leeway is a life’s work!”

Stefan pulled gently on his own earlobe. “Evolution,” he said and chuckled.