Nanette possessed a rare, elemental beauty, the kind that made both men and women do surprisingly stupid things for her attention. Consciously or not, she flirted with almost everyone she met. Melanie saw it happen dozens and dozens of times at Eve and Adam’s and all over the city. But Nanette was also violently possessive of Melanie. She had made threats in the past about hurting herself if Mel were to move out.
The scent of stale smoke greeted them in the kitchen, where dishes and glassware, empty wine bottles, and countless photographs covered every flat surface. Melanie’s faces looked up at her in disappointment from the clutter. A doorway led to a short hallway and their bedroom, guest room, a spacious living room, bathroom, and water closet. Sometimes Melanie felt uneasy about being sandwiched in the middle of a monolithic apartment building, surrounded on all sides by a thousand people and their pets, but at least their building had the advantage of offering many other targets to any would-be burglar. All the same, they had added an extra bar-lock to the door to protect her violin, jewelry, and her massive CD collection.
Constant exposure to classical music constituted a big part of Melanie’s job, of her art, and the fact that Nanette didn’t fully appreciate that was a big reason why they had been fighting so much lately. The current, unsteady truce stipulated that Nan only listened to hip-hop when Melanie wasn’t home. Nanette lacked the sophistication to appreciate the European art music — née “classical”—tradition, though she knew better than to complain about the extraordinary renditions of Bach recorded by the likes of Gertler and Heifetz and Serly. Melanie had long since given up trying to get Nan to appreciate serious music.
Something about the polluted fishbowl of expatriate life helped Melanie form lifelong friendships with people like Nanette, whom she very likely would never have associated with back in Boston. She still loved Nanette in a way, sure, but she also understood that her love was a matter of attraction among opposites. It was a love based on dissonance rather than harmony, with little more than passing, polite interest in each others’ artistic careers. Melanie hadn’t even bothered to invite her to the big Independence Day concert. No point, really.
In just a matter of hours, she would perform in the world premiere of an opera titled The Golden Lotus, by the world-renowned but way-overrated composer Lajos Harkályi. It would be broadcast live on national television and recorded for commercial distribution. If it turned out anything like Harkályi’s other albums, it was guaranteed to sell millions. Not that she would see any of that money.
Nanette rinsed out two korsós, stolen from one bar or another, and poured both of them glasses of flat mineral water and totally unnecessary Unicum nightcaps from the freezer. They ate stale pogácsas; in the morning it would be Melanie’s turn to run out for fresh bread.
There was nothing on TV at that time of night except soft-core porn, so she put on a Bartók album instead and forwarded it to the burlesque Kicsit ázottan. It was a private joke.
Nanette came in and promptly fell asleep on the couch without brushing her teeth. Her cellphone rang from the bedroom; at this hour it was either a jilted former lover or an editor asking her to go shoot a crime scene. Melanie didn’t wake her. Instead, she finished her Unicum and then drank Nanette’s too. When the Bartók ended she listened to Kodály’s Székely fonó until she started to pass out as well. Rather than rousing Nan and dragging her to bed, Melanie let her stay where she was. She neglected to kiss her good-night.
Tomorrow was a big day. It was already tomorrow.
2.
Melanie lingered over a slice of thickly buttered toast and too-weak Meinl coffee until Nanette finally emerged, fully formed for the day, from the bathroom. Her third cigarette of the morning hung from the corner of her pouty lips. Hartmann’s Concerto funèbre trickled from the living room stereo, barely audible in deference to Melanie’s headache. “I’m getting my hair cut,” she announced, fully aware that Nanette wouldn’t believe her.
And she didn’t. In Nanette’s defense, however, Melanie had made many similar threats in the past. For months she had been talking about getting it lopped off, but always backed out at the last minute. This time she really meant it, though. Apart from the occasional decapitation of split ends, which she did herself, she had not had a real haircut since tenth grade, though recently she fantasized about stringing a violin bow with it. She wanted a new look. Plus, it was a complete hassle — an hour to untangle and dry it every day.
Nanette stuck her head into the kitchen and gave Melanie that glare of hers, an aggressive combination of disbelief and unwillingness to brook any dissent whatsoever. She was like that sometimes.
The night they met, the previous summer, a fight had broken out during a birthday party held on a boat docked on the Buda side of Margit Island. Melanie had noticed Nanette around town at Eve and Adam’s and the usual expat hangouts — it was difficult not to — but they had never spoken. At that party, they found themselves at the same table, right next to the dance floor, and they hit it off over innumerable korsós of free beer. Nanette spent most of the evening dancing with an American soldier. A small group of them, on landlocked shore leave, showed up quite uninvited. They grew rowdier as the night progressed, shouting and slam dancing and trying to feel girls up while dancing with them. Nanette played along. She rubbed herself against one of them; they slow danced together for hours to the endless techno beat, and she returned to the table every so often to take a big drink from the beer glass that, unbeknownst to her, Melanie kept refilling from the keg. At some point, late in the evening, Nanette slumped into the chair next to Melanie and picked up a plastic instant camera that had been abandoned on the table. “I fucking hate these things,” she said. “It’s not yours is it?”
“Mine? No.”
“Good. Smile!” She pointed it at Melanie and pressed the shutter. Then she held it out away from herself and took a crooked self-portrait. “Let me get one of me and you,” she said and sat on Melanie’s lap for another shot. “See that guy over there?” she slurred, pointing at a bow-tied Hungarian waiter who was being hassled and pushed around by the soldiers. “I’m gonna go take a picture of his cock. I’ll be right back.”
Nanette staggered across the dance floor, pushed her way into the circle of soldiers, and took the waiter by the arm. They watched in amazement as she led him compliantly into the women’s room. Five minutes later, they emerged again and Nanette waved the camera at Melanie to show her that she’d gotten the photo she wanted. Nanette always got the photo she wanted, so Melanie learned that night. Frequently at someone else’s expense. She sauntered back to the soldier she had been flirting with all night and kissed him on the mouth. He recoiled from Nan’s face and then shoved her violently to the ground. The waiter tried to help her up, but the soldier smashed a half-empty beer glass against the side of his head. Someone screamed. Nan sat on the floor laughing and laughing, with the waiter crumbled next to her. An expat friend of Nan’s took a swing at the soldier, which set off a free-for-all. Bottles flew through the air, tables got overturned, chairs splintered. Techno pulsated around the combatants. Someone dragged the unconscious waiter by his legs to Melanie’s table, leaving a thin trail of blood across the dance floor. She watched in fascination, then grabbed her purse and joined the stampede up the gangplank into the summer night while the fight raged on.