Butterfly Skin (25 page)

Mike would be glad to go, the beach is better every way than the swelter of the city, but in the construction business summer is the hot season in every sense of the word. So Lyubka and Sevka are down there in Turkey, and Mike’s here with me in a club with a name that’s not really important. He hangs his jacket on the back of his chair and straight away I can see the spots under the arms of his light-colored shirt. No deodorant can save you. “No,” he says, “you should never stay in this city in summer.”

I look at you, you’ve turned in three-quarter profile and in the beams of light wandering around the dance floor I can make out a snub nose, rather sweet, and a two-tone bang that falls over your eyes every now and then. Before Igor went away to America to get his MBA, he had a little dog like that, one day he had it clipped, and the poor thing spent two weeks behind the curtain, with the fringe falling over its eyes instead of the hair that had been cut off. What kind was it now? A fox terrier, was it?

Mike is complaining about builders who don’t want to work and clients who set impossible deadlines. He can understand the builders – you can’t put air conditioning into an unfinished building. In that respect my office is far more pleasant. The waves of heat beat against the glass like the waves of the Mediterranean on the cost of Turkey where Lyubka and Sevka are suffering so terribly – if, that is, you can believe what she says on the phone.

Right then, Mike works in the construction business, but I wonder where you work? I used to differentiate between girls, I preferred educated professionals, I used to think that was important. Now that I know a lot more about women than I ever did before, I realize there’s no great difference between a homeless tramp (provided you give her a wash, of course), a secretary and a successful businesswoman with an MBA of her own. Women are differentiated by the texture of her skin, the shape of their nipples and their lips, the density and size of their breasts and how easily the skin comes away from their muscles. Stop, I tell myself, stop.

Lyubka and Sevka are suffering by the sea down in Turkey and on this sweltering Friday evening Mike is sitting on the edge of a dog park and eyeing some girl, like a regular Moscow boy. In hot summer Moscow it’s not that difficult to find yourself some girl, especially on Friday evening, especially if you know how to look. So far he hasn’t noticed you, the fox-terrier girl with the twin-tone bang, red and straw-colored, red and white. Now you’ve turned to face me, little mouth, big eyes, snub nose, top tight across your breasts. Size C, probably. A pity I can’t see the color of your eyes.

The music falls silent for a second and I can hear the noise of the air conditioner vainly struggling to transform the sweltering Moscow air into a pitiful simulacrum of a sea breeze. The sea is too far away, the wind can’t reach this far, maybe that’s for the best, it means it can’t carry the news to Lyubka on her Turkish beach about the way her husband is eyeing the twenty-year-old girls skipping about in a dark night club where the air conditioning can’t handle the sweltering Moscow air.

“I’ll go have a dance,” says Mike, and I nod to him as if to say go on, maybe you’ll pick someone up.

It would be good if you had a girlfriend. Mike likes tall thin blondes, Lyubka used to be one once, but after Sevka was born, first she plumped out, and then she stopped dyeing her hair, saying everyone thought blondes were fools and that interfered with her work. Bearing in mind that she’s a lecturer in some college of the humanities it’s hard to understand what it could interfere with. As if anyone could make a brilliant career there.

It’s not easy for Mike to find a tall thin blonde, even in hot summer Moscow. Even on Friday evening. Tall thin blondes aren’t very fond of men who are over thirty and weigh more than 220 pounds. On the dog park of the dance floor Mike looks like a bewildered bear. He suddenly turns out to be almost a head taller than everyone else, or maybe he’s just bigger. He dances the way they once used to dance at college discos: waving his arms around, stamping up and down on the spot, jerking his head, which many years ago used to be surrounded by long, flailing hippie hair, but now it looks as if a bear has just climbed out of the water and is trying to shake itself dry. Drops of sweat go flying in all directions – I guess that’s not very sexy either. The little hares, doggies and pussycats cringe out of the way, watching Bruin with a mixture of fear and mockery. The way the guy gets it on is a gas, but who the hell is he: what if he turns out to be a gangster and starts a shootout? I used to differentiate between gangsters and regular Moscow boys too. I used to think it was important.

The fox-terrier girl squeezes her way through toward the bar, but she can’t get to it. She looks round, trying to find someone, I wave to her and point to an empty chair. Naturally, she comes over. “You’re a great dancer,” I say. The fox-terrier girl smiles with her little mouth and says “thank you.” She has a high voice with just a bit of a whine to it, exactly the kind a little puppy ought to have. “What can I get you?” I ask.

You look at the menu, adjusting your two-tone bang. Your skin’s just a little bit dusky, or maybe that’s the lighting, but two glittering silver rings stand out on your ring finger and index finger. You choose a martini with juice. Now that you’re really close I can take a good look at you: a yellow top soaked in sweat, big gray eyes, snub nose. I wonder what kind of noses fox terriers have and, by the way, what your name is. You say “Alice” and I smile in reply as if to say that’s a beautiful, wonderful name. Without waiting to be asked, you start telling me about yourself.

When you speak, it’s not important what it’s about. What’s important is your intonation, which words you put in what order, the way you wrinkle up your little nose, the way you pick up your glass of martini with your dusky fingers. I can see straight away that you’re a good little girl, not some kind of little scrubber, just a good little girl who’s used to obeying her elders. You’re used to obeying, so when I say, an hour and a half and four martinis later,
Let’s go to my place
, you won’t object, you might just ask for my cell phone to call your mom, if you live with your mom. I can spot obedient girls anywhere in any crowd. Stop.

Mike comes back – alone, just as I thought he would. “Listen, you don’t happen to have a blonde friend, the peroxide giraffe type? My friend’s bored and he’d like to have a dance or even just have a drink with someone. Take no notice that he’s such a big brute, in actual fact he’s a regular Moscow boy.” You half get up and start looking round the room for someone. Your dusky stomach shows under your short top, gathered in below the navel by the elastic of your red panties, which creep out half an inch above your tight pants, in the style of this summer.

Mike sits down on a chair, you introduce yourselves. Your hands lie beside each other: Mike’s big hand with the signet ring and massive wedding ring, and your little hand with the cheap silver rings on the dusky fingers. So you work as a secretary and you call yourself a “receptionist,” which sounds a lot better, of course, because you know what everybody thinks about secretaries. They’re wrong to think that, by the way. I would guard a good secretary like the apple of my eye and protect her – not only from my colleagues and partners, but from myself. It’s very hard to find a good secretary. In hot summer Moscow it’s much easier to find a girl who’s prepared to sit at your table and drink a martini – the third glass, by the way – and tell you all about her life.

Outside the heat has probably eased off, but in here the waves of swelter are still slopping about. When I was twenty and a bit it didn’t bother me either although, to be quite honest, there weren’t any clubs like this then. But you like it here, it would be unfair to drag you away so soon.

“Shall we have a dance?” I say.

“Okay.”

Right then, silver shoes, yellow top, already dried out a bit, dusky stomach between the yellow top and red panty elastic, two-tone bang. Right then, a secretary. Immediately after school you tried to get into college, the economics department, and failed both times. But you’re going to keep trying anyway. It’s hard to find a secretary in Moscow who isn’t going to try to get into college to study economics or law, well, good luck anyway. I used to think a good education was important too.

You live with your parents and your elder sister, who happened to get into the law department at college, at the third attempt, in fact, but she graduates next year. At your sister’s age girls in my generation were already getting married and having children, but the new clubbing generation obviously isn’t in such a hurry.

Stop.

It’s as if someone is waking up inside, starting to toss and turn inside my chest; as if he’s getting ready to break through my ribs and come shooting out. But I only came to the club to relax. Like any regular Moscow boy. But all evening a phrase, a glance, some minor detail has kept throwing me back into the danger zone, where there’s nothing but stop, stop, stop. As if you’re walking along an endless corridor, opening new doors all the time – and suddenly you fall through one of the doorways into hell. And until you open it, you don’t know what’s behind it, but when you do open it, it’s too late and you can’t even understand straight away what happened, what it was that Alice said.

Ah yes, she studied in the department of law at Moscow University. Like Alice’s sister. I took the student ID out of her purse, big, short-sighted eyes, she couldn’t see a thing without her glasses, I had to try to find her new ones, take the risk, for that week when… Stop, I tell you, stop.

But I can see you’re a considerate girl, you ask: “Are you feeling okay?” No, little Alice, I’m feeling monstrously not okay, but in your place I wouldn’t try to find out anymore about it.

“It’s stuffy in this club of yours,” I say, which happens to be true, by the way, and we go back to the table.

Right then, she’s a little puppy dog. She’ll be a puppy even in the old age that she still has to live to see. Her bang will be gray, her skin will dry out, but maybe she’ll keep the way she walks and the way she laughs. How much more does anyone need, really?

An hour and three martinis later I make eyes at Mike to let him know it’s time for us to move out, and Mike also gets up, with a sigh, and says he’ll go and dance for a while, although it looks like it’s obviously not his evening in this club tonight. Alice says in her shrill voice that she was glad to meet him and Mike gives a confidential nod in my direction and says: “You watch yourself with him, he’s a real psycho.”

Stop, fuck it, stop! I can feel myself starting to turn red. You could blow your cover like that, stop, tell yourself to stop, and smile like this, the way people smile at a tired old joke that has nothing to do with reality.

* * *

An air-conditioned island. Genuine coolness. Silk sheets, a bottle of champagne beside the bed. Little post-pubescent fox terriers are into stuff like that.

Modern female fashion keeps no secrets. You even know the color of the panties in advance, the only surprise in store for you is the angel tattooed on her left shoulder. “That’s my guardian angel,” Alice says, and starts kissing me, sucking my tongue into her little mouth. Pausing to catch her breath, she explains that she doesn’t like fingers
down there
, she likes it with the tongue, her breasts shouldn’t be squeezed too hard, but her nipples are a genuine erotic zone, and she can hardly ever come without having her clitoris fondled, so I shouldn’t be offended if she helps herself out at some point.

The new clubbing generation. Girls who know their own bodies the way the girls of my generation knew the discography of Pink Floyd. Life is too short, why waste half the night on exploration? Better tell him up front, so he knows exactly what to do, because in hot summer Moscow it’s so hard to find a man who understands you without words.

Night, but the heat’s as bad as ever. You find the smell of your own sweat disgusting. The waves of sweltering heat pound against the window panes, maybe you should take a trip to the sea? Take the fox-terrier girl Alice with you, stay in some small hotel, screw in the evenings and in the afternoons lie on the beach, dripping with sweat, just like you are now, as if you hadn’t taken a shower. Alice the fox-terrier girl obviously sweats a lot in general, that must be the way the way the glands are arranged under her dusky skin (stop), or maybe she always gives it everything she’s got, no matter what she’s doing.

There was a time when I really liked all these sexual acrobatics and I differentiated between my partners according to their flexibility and inventiveness. I used to think that was important. But just recently I find I prefer the banal missionary position. If all we’re doing is having sex then, at the end of the day, that’s pretty boring. Stop. Stop.

Right then, we’ve already been moving in perfect synchronization for a long time already, Alice’s red and light-yellow braids of hair have become completely tangled together on the pillow. As always, I don’t come for a long time, lots of women actually like that. Then Alice starts howling like a dog, and in response I start feeling cold. I ought to get up and turn the air conditioning down, but Alice clings on tight with all four paws, lying on her back with her big eyes closed and her little snub nose wrinkled up. Suddenly her entire body shudders, look at that, we managed it without stimulating the clitoris, we carry on.

I used to think it was very important for the girl to come at the same time as me. Then it was explained to me that a skillful partner could simulate orgasm so well that even she couldn’t tell the difference. Yes, sex is an artificial thing, too, like the coolness in this bedroom. There’s too much falsehood in it. Stop.

The obedient little girl Alice, the fox-terrier girl, a puppy to old age. She keeps going, she can’t stop, although she’s gasping for breath and she’s soaking wet, so that any moment now she’ll slip across the silk sheets straight onto the floor, onto the shaggy carpet, there now, I knew it. She doesn’t even open her eyes, trembling all over.

The little girl Alice whimpers as she lies on the floor, a dusky little body on the light-colored carpet. She twitches spasmodically, especially if I wave my hand through the air. Like an electric shock. Stop. Like the shock of a sudden blow. Stop.