Fall.
There were four. All in a row. Like shots of fermentation on the scratched bar. Each equally infectious. The brain. The heart. The hand. The eyes.
I had just returned from Russia where I never noticed a season. The snow never stopped. I should've gone to Moscow. To Saratov, but I never left the north. I tried to skate, but the fear of falling through the ice never escaped me. I was told it would be okay. That the ice was a foot thick. I was told a lot.
I could never figure out why she wanted me on the ice so bad. She looked more beautiful dancing a silhouette pirouette alone. Her open hand waiting. Waiting to be held, waiting to hold. Skating alone depressed her, but watching her was too exhilarating to stop.
So the time passed. Snow, religion and ballet. Old flags that had meant so much. Abandoned bus stops made of flying concrete along roads cut by vegetation. The Russian tundra. The history I only knew from cartoons. She called me naïve. She called me stupid. She called me careless and I called her Serena.
I never learned the language. I was there three months. Long enough to know why it wouldn't be four but not long enough to want to leave. We shared a cabin. It had four rooms that were all empty except for ours. She said it used to be owned by her grandfather and that he and her grandmother used to come up to the cabin every winter with three other couples, friends, until they all had kids and couldn't afford to spend money in the winter. They'd drink and play cards. Hunt and cook. Fuck till dawn and the light from the snowdrifts got them out of their rooms again. All day breakfasts in nightgowns. Old music and the snapping of bacon, the popping of eggs too good to get dressed for.
They had jobs they left for several weeks because you couldn't lay brick in the snow. The concrete just wouldn't move. Wouldn't spread. Serena spoke of the malleability of these men.
I've never laid brick. Never thought about it much before. But in Russia I thought about it all the time. What it was like for her grandfather and father. Men of two seasons. Working and non. Bricklaying and not. Money and none. My lack of poverty shamed me.
To make up for past hungers and tears at first fallen snows, which I laughingly embraced, Serena ate more now in the winter. Much more. Our memories fought each others'. I wanted to be nostalgic, wanted to talk about how fun it was when a winter storm made the power go out. How my family and I would light candles and play board games. Eat hot dogs cooked over the fire and leave the lights out when the power came back on. I still owned Park Place, but my father owned Boardwalk and neither of us were budging on our asking prices.
She didn't use candles to play board games. Her father would never allow it. Candles weren't any freer than the bread she was eating. Nor was it free now. Or the eggs and cheese and steaks and pasta and chocolate that we indulged in every moment the snow didn't melt away. She had stocked the very last bit of cabinet space with food and wine. She loved sardines and wine. It was disgusting to see her eat that but equally arousing. I've never seen a woman eat so much. Drink so much.
I tried to eat like her, tried to drink like her but couldn't keep up. Consuming what she burned in the snow or on top of me. We could hear the wine in our bellies slosh like waves against New England rocks, wet energy, wet drive, water on beds once dry, before the movements of thighs and tidal waves wet cape and couch.
The floorboards creaked as we wrestled at sunset and cracked as we broke free at dawn. Waking in sweat gone cold, dreams replaced by a naked embrace of warming thighs, by unkempt hair and open mouths breathing the same air.
This went on. So time stopped or was lost, and it wasn't even the winter solstice yet. The shortest day of the year was an evening away.
