Have you seen my hair gel?
Jana kept on walking. It was, no doubt, one of the sloppiest pitches she had ever interpreted and she was near certain his offer would not be considered any further.
Her shoulder hit the man’s.
“Promiňte,” the man said in a sloppy-toned Czech. Beg your pardon. As he stumbled off, the top of his eggish head caught the moonlight.
Jana caught her balance and looked up. Above her, the salient blue light shone from the electric angel.
Her hand was pushing at the black wall, which parted and became a door. Inside, the blue curtains were being drawn open and Jana’s legs were moving her forwards towards the bar, where she was now sitting on a stool. She glanced to her left. The blonde woman was looking down at her watch.
“It’s 9pm,” the woman was saying to her wrist.
The doctor that’s speaking at the Global Plastics round table, that’s my father…
“…He has a way of thinking about limbs,” Aimée was speaking to her watch at the bar, “like there is no barrier between our bodies and medical supplies, like there is no physical movement we cannot find a way to simulate.”
The bartender set a glass of wine down in front of Jana and she reached for it, parting her fingers and sliding the stem into their crux.
“I don’t want to simulate my body anymore…” Aimée continued.
“Do we know each other?” Jana asked the woman.
The lights began to flicker again. Aimée straightened up and looked over at the woman sitting next to her, lingering on her face.
“I was hoping we did,” Aimée replied.
“Aimée de Saint-Pé,” the woman pronounced for Jana. “Would you like to dance with me?”
They made their way to the dance area, their bodies somehow delayed from their stride. The disco ball turned gradually above their heads and the melancholic music played on, voices yearning, beckoning, regretting… It played through their thoughts like an itching of memories.
Jana looked at the blue walls around her, then at the blonde woman at her side. She realised that she had no idea how to dance to such a slow, languorous song. Her shoulders began to sway as she studied the woman. Aimée’s eyes were closed and her torso twining to the verses.
… N39…
The lights snowed down onto the tops of their heads.
Jana’s hands lifted and settled on the woman’s waist. She stepped in closer to her. Aimée reached around her as well. Jana could feel her blouse wrinkling beneath her gliding palms as she went up her back, then settled upon her bare nape, each finger closing in a bit of heat. The woman’s hips were grazing against Jana’s, and her breasts leaning into her own, until the two women were face to face, their breath mixing together.
The song began melting into another one, in which the strings creaked and the quivering voice of Jeanne Moreau sang an ode to the troubled sky.
The music moved them together and they let their eyes float within each other as if down a river.
The taxi drove past the Madeleine métro stop, taking a slight left up Rue Tronchet.
“Right up here,” Aimée said and the taxi slowed to the kerb in front of her building.
The two women stepped out and the taxi drove away.
Inside the building, Jana walked behind the woman, hand on the wooden railing of the stairway.
The woman turned around and smiled into the darkness, reaching her finger down to the lapel of Jana’s coat.
Liné
The key clicked and Aimée pushed the door open. The light switch flicked, she was undoing her coat, and Jana, glancing around, her fingers untying her own coat belt, her eyes gazing at the powder-coloured couch, pitch-black oval coffee table, TV screen, rug, picture frame, and then settling on the large white bookshelf, each row full of books, a stuffed mouth.
“You like to read,” Jana said, approaching the shelf.
“Those aren’t my books,” the woman answered and reached out to her, taking hold of her wrist.
“Come here…” she said as she pulled Jana back into her own body.
Aimée’s hand was hooked into Jana’s as she was leading her down a hallway.
The forest sweats its leaves and the stems of flowers break and moisten at the fissure.
In the bedroom, the bed made, the curtains drawn, only the half-open door lets in a cut of light.
“Are you afraid,” Aimée whispered, “to kiss me?”
Jana was reaching up to take hold of the woman’s face, leaving the woman’s question unanswered, covering it up with her movement, she tilted her head into the darkness until she felt her lips touch the woman’s.
The woman opened her mouth and grabbed at Jana’s breath.
The woman’s hand was on Jana’s stomach, wedging under the waist of her trousers, her fingers unclasping them and pulling the zipper down. Her hand was working beneath, reaching into Jana’s underwear, then inside, to where her middle finger pushed into the soft flesh, rolling her fingertip around the ballpoint, and smiling at her, and whispering, “Does that feel good?”
Jana moaned with her mouth closed and the woman slid her index finger down along her slit towards the opening, circling the place within Jana where she could, at any moment, go deeper.
The woman was lowering herself to the floor, pulling Jana’s trousers down, then her underwear, ringed at her ankles. She reached one arm around her legs, and grasped her thigh, the fingers of her other hand opening up the slit, then she lowered her warm tongue inside the folds. Jana’s knees softened, but the woman clutched the flesh of her thigh as she pushed her face into Jana’s wetness, letting her tongue rub down from the top of her slit towards her opening.
Jana held onto the woman from above, squeezing her shoulders.
Aimée stretched the muscle of her tongue, inserting the tip into Jana’s opening and licking the rim as Jana gripped her shoulders tighter.
Jana was reaching down towards Aimée’s face, pulling her up now and kissing her, her fingers running through the woman’s mouth, Aimée’s tongue weaving through Jana’s fingers.
Aimée was on top of Jana on the bed, her flexed hand in between Jana’s legs, sliding her fingers into Jana as her thumb circled the outside.
“Come for me…”
Aimée’s knuckles were rimming the opening with each jut, and Jana swerving into her clutch.
“Come for me, come for me, come for me!”
The blue vapour seeped from the large white bookshelf, gathering itself into a cloud and moving down the dim hallway towards the opened door of the bedroom.