Weird. I read this basically two times. And the second time, I didn't remember that much. I recognised the story when going through it, but that's it.
It's enjoyable, not an easy read per sé, but some fierce language. Less a story with plot than a fierce description of "what to love" fully means, in all its ugliiness.
The wife's tears split like hairs. "Clear," the man pronounces again, the woman in uniform is squeezing the wife's forearms. The wife shuts herslef up with her own gasp and peers. The current races through the flesh to the heart and pulls the body up, chest bowing, ribs splintering beneath her skin, and for a moment, the wife thinks she's getting up this time. But the body cinches in and collapses, thump, back down into the millions of rose-colored bristles. Her shoulder blades hit the floor and spread, and the head winces then stops. The mouth inert. From her slack, parted lips, a viscous blue foam is seeping out.
Mr Bolshakov started rubbing himself off, emitting ointments of moans, all the while the springs pushing in and out o my gut till I thought I'd wet myself or shit myself or split my spleen. But he finished off and stood up and finally left the room.
I slid out of that space, then felt it coming, so I pulled the bed cover down and vomited onto the sheet, then closed the comforter over that spot, ha ha.
Then I went back to those army boots and reached into my pocket and got out the matches.
*
Before the police or the school got whiff of it, I ran back to our building and pulled Janka into the bathroom with me and locked the door. She knew I'd done something irreversible. I said hush for a minute. We were squeezed in against the toilet and we waited in silence to hear if there were any footsteps in the hallway. There weren't any, so I unzipped my jeans and plunged my hand in and fished about in my cunt and pulled it out for show. Ta-da, I showed Jana the tight wad of money wrapped in plastic.
Janka said, "He's going to kill you!" I said, "No one can kill me, I'm already an angel!" Then I kissed her. Janka said, "Where are we gonna hide this?" I said, "Where else?" and stuffed that money-roll back into my cunt.
I'll see you later though? Jana said. Later? Aimée responded, with a disbelief that felt too expansive for one evening. Yes later. Can I? The words were turning their heeavy bodies, right, left. Later, at my place? Aimée asked, her voice somewhat dulled from the question. Would that be okay, Jana replied, feeling her thumb bend into her palm, her forearm tense, her weight shift. Because I need to go and see this friend, she was explaining again.
There was a certain relief in the act of going over each other's words, in the doorway, with no utility, there was nothing more to understand, the information was exchanged and the Uber was waiting downstairs, and they were repeating each other's words as if they could each grasp something of each other that they could individually keep, because just then, there was an urge to keep something of the other, because disbelief is expansive especially when the day is turning over its edge, and one can feel their whole lifetime in the words they must throw away at the threshold of a door.
