delga | fic: hard liquor. [5/14] (spooks)

hard liquor. (spooks)
Fiona, Adam, Tja; het./fem.
v. interlude

On occasion, in order to earn (read: steal) money, Tja would dance. So when Anouska found her in a Venetian dance hall, she really shouldn’t have been surprised.

(And yet, seeing her there, after so long, who wouldn’t be taken aback? Who, after so long in mourning, would not be made speechless by this sudden reappearance?)

She stays in the shadows, away from the bar and watches as this belle astounds the gaping men in front of her, their mouths hanging low like slavering dogs. Men to Tja come as moths to flame and Anouska thinks the phrase is only a cliché for its truth. (In a time before, Tja had pointed to men and whispered, nebbish¹. Anouska had simply agreed).

She enquires with a waitress and learns that at the moment, Tja is Annetta². She learns, also, that this: Annetta has been in Italy for three months now.

(Anouska has been running. She knows of nothing else now she is alone).

She marks the passing years by the number of scars Tja carries. The woman has a pain threshold higher than anyone Anouska has ever encountered yet the scratches and lines betray her. Tja is strong, resilient (able to hold her own) but she gets caught far too often.

Since Berlin there is now a scratch to her eye; a cut, small - but defiant - above her navel; a cross, carved into her flesh at the base of her spine. (Tja laughs at that last one – monks, bleeding me; cleansing my sins. To think! I could have died at the hands of God! Anouska did not laugh).

Tja, it seems, marks the years by the length of Anouska’s hair but says nothing; simply touches the now shortened dark cut and smiles.

Light. Light and liquor and Anouska’s senses are imbrued with memories.

Annetta comes to the bar, orders tequila. She talks to the waitress. She points to Anouska.

No.

Anouska recedes into shadow, ashamed as the voyeur. ‘Annetta’ smiles. It is not a nice smile. It is almost malicious, slightly amorous. She slaps the bar, the bells on her wrists chiming. Ask not for whom the bell tolls...³

“Tequila!”

“Vatican.”

Anouska is surprised. “Why?”

Tja shrugs. “No god, perhaps, but still… sins, at least.”

One shot, then three, then five, eight, eleven.

I’m going to be sick, she thinks.

Tja, however, is still standing. (Twenty shots. First not to fall wins.) Tja is smiling (still that smile, cold and heartless. There is something bitter there).

The tequila burns as it slides down. Anouska doesn’t stop.

Anouska dare not stop.

(And all the while, she can hear someone laughing. It’s Tja).

(In her mind Fiona sees cluttered hallways and dark, dark stairways. Tja is warm and bright; they kiss.

She cannot remember if the tequila she tastes is hers or Tja’s).

Nothing changes – a mouth against her own, a hand against her breast and pure feminine heat from Tja. She could never be denied her female essence.

(One day, Anouska will say this out loud. And then she’ll regret the thought ever occurring).

Tja is not gentle (never gentle – this is not love - never sweet); she pushes Anouska, holds her hands above her head, draws her teeth in one long, sharp line, down her neck, across her collarbone, up, over the round of her chest and pauses only to bite down through the lace of her bra to her nipple. Anouska cries out, pushing back, threading her fingers through Tja’s hair (now longer, barren with tints of red and blonde at the tips), clutching desperately at her skull.

This is real, she thinks. This is what she has been looking for since Berlin. (Something tangible and solid; something brutal and life like). This is real.

The bells chime as they tumble to the floor; Anouska’s hunger knows no bounds. Tja gasps, Anouska moans and they come together in a blaze of lust and love and anger.

There is a night, years after Tja (years after Damascus), when Fiona is on her back for a very different reason. Adam Carter holds her hand and she squeezes out a life from between her legs. There is no pride in this; simply the acknowledgement that she has succumbed to that which she never wanted to become.

Now Fiona is her mother, trapped in her marriage with nowhere to go.

Papa, she remembers, wept the night her brother was born. He had succumbed to something more powerful than himself and for the first time she had thought to herself, maybe the old man has a heart after all.

Again it comes undone and Anouska has to wonder what it is they do to one another that they can’t coexist.

She finds Tja smoking on the balcony and stands next to her, looking out across the city. She asks her where she’s going. Tja shrugs.

“To church. I suppose.” She sighs heavily, takes a long drag of the cigarette and turns to look at Anouska. “You know, you truly remind me of my mother.”

Fiona weeps, inconsolable.

Watching this delicious destruction, Adam reaches for the bottle of whiskey sitting on the shelf before taking his seat and pouring a drink. He is tired, he supposes, and frustrated too but at this moment in time, he is simply reworking history in his mind.

(Somewhere in the house, their child – their flesh and blood – lies sleeping, unaware of this catastrophe building up around him).

He empties one shot, then a second before pushing the glass aside and sitting back in his seat. What to do now? How to help her? He is confused, not least because Fiona has never been this way and surprisingly, he doesn’t really care.

Only when she raises her head, only when she looks at him (her eyes are bruised and raw, her lips withered, her cheeks pale and emaciated) does he realise why his detachment is familiar. Only when she dries her tears with the heel of her palm does he make a connection with what he’s seen and what he knows. Only when she reaches for the whiskey does he finally begin to disentangle the web of mystique that surrounds his long-time bride.

This is, he supposes, what people call ‘grief’.

end. [5/14]

[1] From the Yiddish, nebekh: one of weak will or timidity
[2] Annetta (Italian) is the Latinate pet form of Anne (derived from Hanna/Channah).
[3] John Donne