Lara Vapnyar - The Scent of Pine

And then boom —the first beats of music rippled through the air. They felt the vibrations first—through the floor under their feet, through the rickety fence behind their backs—and the next instant the music came, so loud that they couldn’t recognize the words or the tune.

Dena was the first to venture to the middle of the floor. She ran out, dragging two fourteen-year-old girls from her unit with her. Their movements were light and swift. A couple of soldiers stepped forward and joined Dena and the girls. Other counselors and older kids started to move closer to the middle. Lena caught the tall soldier staring at her again. She started to laugh and grabbed Inka’s hand and dragged her to the middle of the floor. Suddenly, though, the song ended, and they had to freeze in the middle of the floor. They felt like idiots. When the next song started, it was very fast. Too fast. Lena didn’t know how to dance to that, but eventually decided to try. She jumped, and rocked, and dunk, and bent down, and threw her hands up, and jumped again still higher. At one point she almost knocked over Sveta Kozlova, who tried to dance as close to the counselors as possible. But Lena didn’t care. It was as if she were drunk.

Then the music stopped and Volodya, the DJ, paused meaningfully and sighed into his mike before announcing the slow dance. Everybody who had been dancing in the middle of the floor filtered back toward the fence, hoping to be asked for a slow dance. Dena was asked before she even made it to her place. Lena tried very hard not to look at the soldiers. She was staring down at her sandals, at her skirt, smoothing folds, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. She didn’t say anything to Inka, but she felt Inka’s presence next to her, her breathing—she was still catching her breath after all the jumps—and her heat. Lena saw a soldier walking across the floor toward her. She could only see his boots, but she knew, she simply knew that he was the tall soldier who’d been staring at her.

“My name is Andrey. Shall we dance?” he said. Lena raised her eyes. Andrey wasn’t looking at Lena. He was looking at Inka. He was asking Inka to dance with him. Inka and not Lena. Inka’s face lit up with a smile as she followed Andrey to the middle of the floor. Lena felt foolish and angry. She suddenly remembered about Danya, the soldier with dark blue eyes, and turned to see if he was still standing alone. He wasn’t there.

Lena spent the whole five minutes of the slow dance awkwardly leaning against the fence, mulling over her bleak dating prospects, because she did believe that camp superstition that claimed that the first dance decided your fate. After the slow dance it was time to take the kids to bed. Most of them were still in place hanging by the fence. But sweaty and red-faced Alesha Pevtcov kept running and dodging and hiding from the counselors. “Alesha!” Inka screamed. Andrey jumped over the fence and a moment later emerged with a squealing and wiggling Alesha squeezed under his arm. He put him down and gave Inka the military salute. It was the perfect fairy-tale moment. A brave knight conquering a three-headed fire-breathing dragon to save a fair-haired maiden. And when Alesha got hyper, he was hardly any easier to conquer than a dragon. So, yes, Inka beamed with gratitude. But she was too fat for a fairy-tale maiden! Inka then took Lena aside and asked her to take the children back. “I need to talk to Andrey, okay? You don’t mind, do you? Really? Thank you! Thank you so much!”

Lena led the kids back to their unit. She could still hear the beat of the music, but the excitement had petered out. She felt tired and a little nauseous, and embarrassed about the way she’d danced.

After the kids were asleep, Lena went to her room and tried to read, then tried to sleep, then ate some candy. She felt like an elderly spinster aunt who always takes care of the children. She listened to the sounds coming from the kids’ bedrooms, hoping that something bad would happen to distract her from thinking about Inka, or maybe that something really bad would happen and Inka would feel guilty for going on a date. Lena thought that she was just as pretty as Inka. Actually, she considered herself much prettier. Inka wasn’t that pretty to begin with. Inka looked like a cow. She fell asleep while trying to imagine her roommate grazing in the meadow with a cowbell around her neck.

Somebody in the café dropped a tray with coffee mugs, breaking Lena’s reverie.

She looked into her own empty mug and wondered if she should’ve bought coffee for Ben as well. Her mother loved to say that every relationship was a journey from a cup of coffee served to you in bed to a coffee mug thrown in your face. Yet, wouldn’t it be really selfish and impolite not to bring him coffee? She stood up and went to the end of the line.

When Lena walked into the room, Ben was fully dressed.

“I thought you’d disappeared,” he said. “I guess that would’ve made me un homme fatal .” He glanced over at the bed and chuckled nervously. He looked as if he was just as insecure about last night as she was. She knew she should’ve reassured him, but she didn’t know how. One more thing that made her a bad lover.

She handed him the cup of coffee and a paper bag with a muffin. He took them from her and was about to kiss her when she said “here” and pulled a few cream containers out of her pocket, and packets with three kinds of sugar: white, brown, and fake. He took the white, poured the contents into his cup, and drank the coffee quickly, standing up. It took them no more than five minutes to pack up their things, check out, and get to the car.

The fog had lifted, but windows were all misty on the inside. Lena picked up a rag from under her seat and wiped hers.

They swerved onto Main Street and drove toward the highway in silence. At the red light Lena reached into her bag, pulled out a tube of Neosporin, and put some over her cut, then put her feet on top of her bag.

Ben’s face was creased. His eyes were puffy. He looked tired and distant. The ride to Boston would take them forty minutes or so. He would drop her off, and they’d say good-bye to each other. She would spend some time at home, trying to do some household chores, then she’d realize that she was too tired and sad to do that, and she’d take a bus to Cambridge and aimlessly wander the streets, thinking about Ben. Some of her memories would be embarrassing and she’d try to banish them; others would be stirring and she’d try to savor them, bringing them up again and again. She would evoke certain things about Ben and feel the immediate shock, the shiver. Physical memories—an amazing thing, if only they didn’t fade so quickly. In a few weeks she would feel nothing. She would be just as sad and empty as before except that now she would be guilty and ashamed as well.

The sign read 95 NORTH PORTLAND AUGUSTA—RIGHT LANE. 95 SOUTH PORTSMOUTH BOSTON—LEFT LANE.

The prospect of going home filled Lena with unbearable dread.

She shifted in her seat and turned to Ben.

“Take me to Maine with you,” she said.

“To Maine?”

“Yes. To your cabin. I don’t have to be in Boston until Monday.”

She didn’t know why she said that. She couldn’t really want to go to Maine with him, did she? Why would she?

She needed to show Ben that she’d been joking. How do you show that you’re just joking? Her mind was blank.

“It’s on the rustic side,” Ben said.

“What?”

“My cabin.”

Here was her chance to laugh and say that she hated everything rustic.

She said: “I love rustic.”

Ben looked away and ran his finger around his lips. She was mortified. In a second he would look at her with a kind patronizing smile as if she were a child and say, “You know I can’t,” or worse yet, “You know we can’t.” And then they would have to spend the next thirty minutes to Boston in dreary silence.