Later on, she asked me if I loved you. Damn, I was thinking. What kind of a fucking question is that? She told me to take a moment and think about it. I was like, okay, you know what, I will think about it, lady. I mean, fuck, who asks questions like that to someone they don’t even fucking know, you don’t know me at all lady, seriously, so let me just think about it, shit. So, yeah, I really did think about it. Like, I went into my heart and everything and looked around for you.
Fuck, Janka, my heart was all grimy and hollow and gross, it even smelled weird, no wonder I don’t go there too often. I was looking around, like, Jana… Jana, it’s me! You there? I told the lady therapist I don’t know what to say. She’s nowhere in my heart, my friend Jana. But I don’t think anyone’s in there. I don’t think anyone’d wanna step foot in there. It’s not even a heart, Janka, it’s like a damp asshole, pardon my French, how’m I suppose to invite anyone inside a place like that!
The lady therapist told me that our anus is actually an important muscle, just like our heart, and that all the parts of our body, mind and spirit can help us exercise love.
I always hated exercise. That’s some prissy shit, I told her, I’m already skinny, why I need to run around? She told me that she thinks that I know what she means and that I am uncomfortable with it, so I am trying to make it into a joke. She also told me I have a very good sense of humour, and I don’t always need to use it to conceal myself, but rather to reveal myself. I was like, shit. I mean she kinda had a point there. It was actually really fucking hard, with the lady therapist, I mean I was kinda hoping she’d be a bitch or something, but she was just… I mean, no one had ever listened to me… like that… like time stood still and everything about me, even my sniffing and cussing, that it all had meaning and she was knitting me back together somehow!
Is that how you were taking me in back then, Jana? Fuck, I dunno, I didn’t notice much, I guess. I was too busy thinking about how to get back at Mamka or Mr Bolshakov or any of the other assholes who looked at me like I was a piece of shit on the daily!
Jana, it really pisses me off that I can’t remember. Like all those years are one clenched fist. I don’t know what I had inside of me… that was worthwhile…
When Jana opened her eyes, there was an odd ring of space around her, as if the dancing crowd had backed up, leaving a circled corridor between her body and theirs. Her gaze lowered and she saw that this space was not empty, in fact, but occupied with smaller dancing bodies, children of some sort, six or eight or ten years of age, too old or too young for their proportions. Their hair was uneven and sticky as if they had cut it themselves and scrubbed it with jam. Their clothes were mis-shapen as well – as they billowed on their skinny bodies, she could make out that they bore logos and patches, but couldn’t make out the colours or images, it was just shadows folding and crevicing on their frame. She could smell them though. It wasn’t jam at all. It was something honeyed and stringent all at once. Jana tried opening her eyes wide then squinting, to focus on their movement. Yes, they were moving, moving around her. They were all holding hands and moving around her in a circle, singing. Their mouths moved, but their voices were being chopped up by the electro music. Jana followed the succession of their heads, the lips forming the same phrase, over and over and over again, like a carousel, and then, that’s it, that is what they are singing, and Jana touched her own mouth, because it was singing along with them, Kde domov můj? Where is my home…?
When Jana opened her eyes, she was touching her mouth and Zorka was laughing at her as her body zigzagged to the music, the flashing lights falling onto her tongue and down her throat. When Zorka lowered her head, she kept a soft grin and began pumping her fist into the air to the heavy bass fragments. Jana’s hand was also in the air now, her fingertips grazing her scalp in circles to dips in the rhythm.
“I think she’s cool, you know,” Zorka shouted over the music.
“Who?” Jana shouted back.
“Your chick.”
“Aimée?”
“Yeah,” Zorka yelled out, “she seems cool.”
“She is cool,” Jana replied. “Don’t need your approval, though.”
“Yeah, I know,” Zorka jutted her hips to the electronic pulse. “Just wanted to say it, that’s all.”
“Message received,” Jana replied. Then she raised both hands and lowered them like rain to a computerised melody.
“I lost my Zebra!” Claire yelled at Jana’s face.
“What?” Jana put out her hands to deflect her and Claire’s body pivoted around.
“Oh, here you are!” Claire sprung her arms around Zorka, “I missed you…”
Claire bent her knees and tried to hang off her, as Zorka tilted her head to the side towards Jana.
“Listen, Zorka, I’m gonna go,” Jana shouted.
“Wait,” Zorka yelled, as she undid Claire’s arms from her neck.
“Hold up,” she grabbed Jana. “You… uh… want me to call an Uber for you?”
“No, it’s fine.”
“Come on, I got an Uber account and fingers…” Zorka grinned.
“Now who’s the twenty-first-century lesbian…” Jana replied.
Jana was making her way through the crowd upstairs when her shoulder was pulled back again.
“Jana, Jesus, just wait!” Zorka was out of breath.
She reached out her hand towards Jana, then opened her fingers.
“You forgot your phone,” she said.
“I did?”
“Yeah,” Zorka replied. “And um… heads up, I put my number in. It’s under IM SORRY. Just so you know.”
Jana took the phone and put it back into her trouser pocket.
“So,” Zorka continued, “if IM SORRY calls you one day… maybe you could pick up…?”
Jana was walking outside, away from the club, through the loitering bodies, smoking, waiting for a friend, reformulating their night, holding out their phones, texting exes or hook-ups or following their Uber driver taking the wrong street towards them on the screen. Jana was teetering, footsteps on and off the kerb, making her way around the people and puddles in the gutter, her stride uneven, as if stepping over branches.
There was the buzzing again, against her hipbone. She reached into her trouser pocket and pulled out her phone, which trembled and flashed in her palm. She re-read the caller’s name once, twice, M-IL-E-N-A. Milena was calling again. Jana matched her index fingertip to the green circle and the name disappeared, time, advancing per second, taking its place, and within the ticking, a voice.
She brought the phone up to her ear.
“Hello…?” Jana said hesitantly.
“Hello? Hello? Can you hear me?”
“Yes, I hear you, your French is really good, by the way.”
“…Thanks…”
“I just left the club and—I thought you were dead?”
“What?”
“I thought you were dead.”
“Who?”
“You.”
“Excuse me?”
“DEAD.”
“WHO?”
“YOU…”
“What do you mean?”
“AREN’T YOU DEAD?”
“Who’s dead??”
“YOU! YOU!”