Spring.
Spring brought the first long days. Brought black women with large hats celebrating Christ's death or re-birth, depending on the day. They held palms tied into crosses and extras falling from their purses. Palms imported from Florida. A whole farm dedicated to Easter. And spring brought the four women standing before me.
Races represented only by colors, women represented only by spread legs and heavy chests.
None of them were anything like Serena. They were weak, frail, and lifeless. They stared at floors and corners, picking at their hair and scabs. Biting their lips and nails. Nothing to say, nothing to hear. But I couldn't have Serena so they had to do.
I tried not to think about her, about her Friday night religion. It was Friday again, but not a "God" could be heard. The four spoke differently and the yellow one I could hardly understand. Same with the brown. The black and white sounded un-educated and I was beginning to think perhaps I understood Russian after all. They were from the south and east and north and west. From countries and capitols I had forgotten existed since before Russia. Since before Serena.
Since returning there was nothing to really think about. Since returning I enjoyed the sun and fragrance of the soil and the pollen that made others cough and cry. Inhaled it all to breathe out Serena's ballet. And it worked so well I nearly forgot her name. I needed to forget her name because I was realizing I was wrong about all of it. I needed her as much as she needed me. Maybe more. I was all ego trying to build an id. I slowly stopped returning phone calls to friends. Waited by the mailbox for post cards. Stayed awake so I wouldn't miss a call from the future that never came.
I didn't care much for company. I worked. I watched the breeze of the trees through a window I couldn't open. I watched faces of co-workers react to phone calls, the flickers of computer screens bouncing off designer glasses. Salad bars and coffee bars. Carb free and sugar free. English spoken by women too silent to shit. To grab would hurt. To spread would slice. But time is time and black holes must occur.
So I searched for winter. In bars and bookstores. In restaurants and races. Horses with numbers and more women in hats. At clubs, and in bodies in tight clothes and in Sprite called vodka and juice called wine. Mints called meals and dishes called desserts. But always unfulfilled. I wanted to feast on pussy but the spring girls were always shaved. Nothing but bone to grab onto. Dick touching teeth never tonsil. And never coming or caring. Fucking spread legs with eyes closed, the heat never warm as snow.
And I continued to search and drink and eat. The air condition spinning the meter to bring back the season. But no matter the temperature, Russia was not in any of the new woman I fucked. And it wasn't in the four women before me.
Choose me, they bent and beckoned.
And I had them spin. And I had them stretch. And I ordered another bottle of wine. I drank from the neck till I felt snow on my breath and when I opened my eyes I chose the black woman—she at least had a full patch of hair. I told her to say not a single word. I told her I would fuck her from behind and that she had to share the bottle of wine. She said whatever I wanted and I said not to talk anymore.
She took my hand and led me to a room with a door that creaked like a train. Tearing tapestries hung from the walls and the windows were covered in dust and dirt and blocked out the streetlights except where handprints had made clear a path. The yellow lights were dim and the red chandelier glass created rubies over the black woman's chest. Dozens of red nipples and I tried to suck each one. Her skin tasted like anise and her breath was as thick as fog. So I drank the wine and she drank the wine and I poured it over her tits to taste again. But I could taste the anise through the wine and I wanted anise no more so I bent her over the bed and ran my hands through her pubic hair.
It scraped like splinters and I thought about the winter before. About summer, fall, winter and spring. North, south, east and west. Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. And Serena praying at the fire. I'm sorry, God, I'm sorry. Then I entered the prostitute's pussy and flashed back to my last moments in Russia:
She spins and sways with ballerina appeal, never slipping or stopping, the same silhouette I fell in love with the first day she ever made fun of me for not wanting to go on the ice. One motion into another and another after that. The melting beads of snow and ice reflect the falling sun like the beads of sweat off her brow. Her hair is in a ponytail as always, trying to catch up to her as she flies over the ice like liquid. Her eyes are closed at times and I wonder what she sees. Is it she and I among the frozen land forever? Is it she and I laying with our heads in each other's necks running out of air but not wanting to move and wake the other? Or was it moving to breathe and waking the other to reality. Waking them to show that it couldn't last forever. That at some point the snow would melt and the grass would breathe and the trees would bloom again. Awakened by late rains and early suns, by the air of a million miles away.
When she opens her eyes she sees me standing on the ice, just a few feet away. She smiles through glossy eyes and stretches out her weakening hand. I look at it and at her. Look past her to the barn and the horizon far beyond. Then to her red nose, sore from wiping the snot away with her coat sleeve. I skate to her, forgetting about the ice below, and take her hand in mine.
She asks me if I was packed and I say yes. She says we'll leave in the morning and I say okay. She says she'll love me always and I say I know you will.
"In early adolescence I believed that if I watched Christie Brinkley surface in the pool in Vacation enough, I'd finally catch a glimpse of her breasts. I never got to see them outside of my imagination, and years later, when trying to watch the movie with my parents on school break, the whole scene was scratchy and distorted. I acted shocked and took out the tape, remembering my childhood debauchery. And as I was talking about what we should watch instead, that old sexual guilt came racing back. Such guilt disappears when I write. My name is Tyke Johnson and I live in Los Angeles."