Summer.
Summers in New England are moody. Temperamental. Like an undisciplined child. Crying and crazy one day, quiet and calm the next. With a gloom in between, never knowing what might come next. Sun or rain. Heat or cold. Bringing overcast skies and humid unbreathable air.
The bugs come out when the porch lights turn on so that the light over the garage casts shadows on the basketball hoop of racing dots. It's no place for Russians I've been told.
We met in a subway station waiting for a train that never wanted to show up. She was furious and spoke to me like it was my fault. I let her get angry with me because her face was red and her breasts flexed with each curse she spoke in Russian. She said Russia's trains were a hundred times more reliable and how they had lost the Cold War she'll never know. Said I was weak like this country. Asked if I could carry lumber. Carry steel. Carry heavy snow as high as a silo. I listened and looked, her breasts moving in waves and I wanted to reach for them and calm the storm. But she soon calmed herself as the train finally arrived and when we boarded she sat down next to me.
At first she apologized. But I assured her there was no reason to, that she was right. I couldn't move snow as high as a silo, though I was certain I could handle the lumber and steel. She laughed and revealed white teeth, one front tooth overlapping its twin. I wanted to lick it. To floss it. She responded to my attention by smiling with her mouth closed.
I introduced myself as Patrick and she said it fit my face, said I looked like someone with parents named after saints and brothers named after relatives. I told her she was right and asked her name. She said it was Serena after her aunt and I said we already had one thing in common.
Her hair was as straight as church spires and glossy as the marble inside. I said her hair was the darkest black I'd ever seen and she said she knew. Said it was the only heirloom she had of her mother. Her hands were her grandmother's and eyes, her father's. Her nose, no one knew. It was narrow and small, yet both her parents had noses that reached everything before their bodies did. I said it was a fine nose even if bastardly. She laughed again, not hiding the crooked tooth or her father's green eyes.
Our stops were several apart and I was running late for work. She said she had nothing to do all day so she would pass the day at the park. Walking around ponds called lakes and sidewalks called trails. I was jealous and offered to take her to lunch. Perhaps bring her lunch in the park. But she said lunch was hours and hours away like lunch was nothing at all, like she didn't watch the clock for, count the minutes for, spin in a chair with eyes closed and dream for. The halfway point of a meaningless day at a meaningless job. I said I'd bring her favorite food. She said they didn't sell it in the States. I said I'd bring her twice as much of something else. She declined again but said she'd be at the same stop the next day and again the day after that.
So the next day and day after that Serena and I rode the train together before she disappeared for the day and I sat in an office at a desk and stared at a calendar that didn't turn.
Each day for a month we rode the train together in the morning. She spoke of Russia and animals and food. Her three favorite things. She had two dogs growing up though her father never claimed them. They had to sleep in the shed and during winter months she would sneak food and old blankets out to them. She would stay all night out there if she were allowed, but once it got dark it was too cold and her mom would make her come in. Each morning she would go back out there before school to make sure they had survived the night, which they did for eleven years. Survived till she was sixteen and the gray one named Slava died. Just four days later the brown one named Mischa followed.
I listened to her stories with such interest that I would almost miss my stop and she would have to remind me to get off. I took it personally that she remembered my stop so well, remembered to make sure I got off. And that I was only allowed to be with her for those ten minutes, that she had no desire for more, that every lunch and dinner offer was turned down. My doubt grew so much that I stopped asking.
Late summer. Late sun and haze changed that. Just before the autumn turn she showed up at my stop one night. The days were still long enough and the clocks had not yet changed. The sun was still out when I would descend into the tunnels. But this time the light would come with me. Serena was waiting on the platform in a yellow dress with red flowers and brown embroidery that tied like a corset in the back. She stunned me and when she spoke I could say nothing back. All my research about Russia disappeared. My list of conversations vanished. She said she wanted to go home with me.
That night we tore the room apart. We broke vases and frames of people I hadn't spoken to in months. Left each other red and breathless to leave each other red and breathless again. I had never smelled something so fragrant as that which filled my nostrils from between her legs and under her arms and neck. Like roses and onions and cinnamon, wet as melting snow, as flexing as a dictator. Her ass molded and moved like life and I grabbed and held on for my own. Slipping through sweat and sanity as she screamed with a tongue that spoke more than sucked till I grabbed her hair and she moaned and filled her mouth with more. I didn't know if I was coming I didn't know anything at all. I knew pale tits with red nipples that swayed and splashed against skin so I grabbed and pulled and she grabbed and pulled till scabs and scars were meant to form. Meant to remember and mold. And the next morning when the sun bounced off the windows across the alley to the broken glass on my floor I remembered with my dick lost in her pubic hair and her face hidden in my neck.
Hours later she woke. Before she put her clothes on she told me she was going back to Russia. She was going back to her parent's cabin to watch it for the winter. She said she wanted me to come, said she needed me there. Then she put her clothes on and wrote the number to the cabin on my wrist with a red sharpie. Told me to call it the following weekend. That'd she'd be there stocking the cellar. That all I needed to bring was myself. And she kissed my neck and left.
I left the place a mess till I spoke to her again. Broken glass, paintings with holes, lamps with no shades and clothes laid torn on the ground, popped off buttons under the bed. She left her bra and I slept with it like a blanket. Smelling it as I dreamed at night of a land too large to locate and wilderness too wild to yield. And her. Her and her and her.
She picked up on the fourth ring. Spoke in Russian. Then in English. Told me to arrive before winter. Told me to stay till spring.
