delga | fic: hard liquor. [6/14] (spooks)

hard liquor. (spooks)
Fiona, Adam, Tja; het./fem.
vi. myriad miscalculations

Moscow and cold; Jerusalem and heat. Vodka, tequila; daughter, mother; Adam, Tja—

Fiona’s life is built up of a myriad of antitheses.

(No wonder, she thinks. No wonder I’m going insane. I was made this way).

There is tequila on the floor, a body in the bed. A flash of red, the curtains billowing – glass across the room, scattered like seeds on the wind.

(This time it’s Paris; this time it is three years before Damascus).

From the corner of her eye she sees a gun. Somewhere in the room, she knows, is a knife. (Somewhere in the room, she thinks, must be Tja). But what of the body? What of the smell?

The bile builds in her throat as she slowly connects the dots.

Tja comes out of the bathroom behind her, calmly wiping her hands, wiping a blade before coolly reaching back and slotting it with a defiant click, back into its sheath (a rather intricate Japanese hair clip; wonders never cease). She looks at Anouska, says nothing. Goes to the bed, pulls back the sheets, mutters at the corpse before her. She swears, one or two choice words. She is completely unashamed; her skin glows in the aftermath of exultation.

Anouska adds the pieces together then vomits.

She miscalculated; this much she can now admit to herself. She had walked into that bar and assumed the end was nigh.

Only much, much later can she recall the difference, recall that there were two men and not one as she had originally accounted for. By now it is too late; Tja is too far gone. But it makes sense, at the very least, to acknowledge her personal wrong, her misjudgement.

(Seems only fair to lift this single blame away from her lover).

So here they are, guns drawn, lines marked out in the ground. Fiona and her liquor wasted mind, Adam and his anger. She lifts the bottle to her lips, takes a swig – nearly chokes, but doesn’t spit: maintains composure (thank you Tja).

Adam’s eyes meet hers. She does not shy away.

Just drinks.

Demetrius Kalakos. Demitri. Mitya. In essence, he is where the end becomes final. He is, she assumes, the final breath. (He takes the numbers, retracts them to zero).

It is two years before Damascus and she sees him first at a bar (of course) in New York City. He is Greek, of this she is certain, and something pretty to look at but she pays no attention to him, only to the debacle occurring in a booth in the far corner of the bar.

For there is Tja and there is a man. And Tja is with this man, kissing him, touching him, holding him as though she cannot breathe without him. Anouska knows of no action, big or small, that can undo the hurt she feels.

(No action, perhaps, but drinking).

New York City is grease and traffic but she remembers seeing pictures of the flappers when she first left Russia. Looking at the bright colours (the mass of feathers, the low waist and short skirts) she thought she was seeing magic.

Being in New York is different to that, of course. There are no flappers, no mafia dons and, it being the nineties, no sense of mystery or intrigue (She could have been a flapper, she thinks, she and Tja both) especially now as she stands on the street corner, chain-smoking Marlboros. (Fucking Moscow, she thinks. Fucking amateur hour. It’s I’ll make your day and buy me a drink all over again).

This is Tja’s city, she notes, with some small surprise. In Manhattan, Tja becomes smart and sharp - calling out for cabs, keeping busy. She sees Anouska three days after she first arrives (shadowing her lover like a deranged woman) and smiles. “Detka, what is this? You’ve placed a homing device on me?”

(No, thinks Anouska, you are the homing device).

Venice. Tequila. Heat.

(Like blood, sweat and tears).

Tja is screaming.

Wherever they go, whatever the con, Tja receives postcards: cards that she hoards in her hands, cards crinkled and decrepit (with age? with hate? Or with love?), which she sleeps with in the grip of her fists.

“Damascus.”

Fiona laughs. (Hysteria?) Adam waits.

She stops, smiles (a dirty smile, sinister, mildly dangerous. He wonders of the spectre before him). Takes another draught of whiskey - grips the bottle in her fist - doesn’t choke this time around. White knuckles. Sweat. Heat.

“Damascus,” she says, drawing out the sounds in remembrance of the mother tongue. “Damascus was my greatest con. My pièce de resistance. Damascus—” the bottle slams onto the table; she flinches “—was my crown jewel.”

He says nothing, turns the memories over in his mind. Remembers the Citadel, the Minaret. Remembers the long drawn out healing process (no more fists, no more fury). Remembers docility and laughter and the taste of spice on her lips in the dusty desert heat.

(Tries to think, tumbles through - any signs? And signals? What did he miss that first time around that could be traced through to this?)

“I hide it well.” (She reads his mind). She runs her finger over the lip of the bottle, round and round in small, slow circles. Adam finds his attention drawn to these finer points, these sweeter details (the mark beneath her eyes, the cut across her finger); finds himself wondering of Damascus and what she went through. He looks at her face, sees years of weariness and distrust, and almost at once he makes a connection, an epiphany of sorts.

“Tequila.” He smirks. (They are two of a kind in some sordid sense; they are both too good at this play). “You don’t drink tequila, ever, do you? Don’t touch the stuff. Hate it, right?” Leans across the table, knots his fingers together. “That’s what it was yesterday. That was the smell.” Bares his teeth, leans in for the kill (voice cold and low and thick with desire): “San Marco and salt.”

(Pause).

Fiona laughs. A deep, hollow sound that scatters around the room, filling it with distaste and dismay. She laughs for her husband, the spy and her keeper. Laughs for her father, the man and her master. She laughs for her wounds and her hurts and her bruises and the years that passed before Damascus; for Tja, for Anouska and Hanna and Annetta and all the other names she puts to her lover’s face. She laughs and shakes her head. Snarls, “José Cuervo and smoke.”

It’s a bell for the bitter to laugh alone.

Anouska remembers a week in Delphi when Tja stole fifteen square-cut diamonds and then dropped them carelessly into the Mediterranean.

“Jewels not fit for sinners,” she said and left it at that.

Anouska had watched them float away, sparkling and submerging in the crystal blue sea.

(She speaks of sin and God and church as though these are things she knows of. But she steals and she fights and she kills with ease, often and through spite and she leaves rivers of blood in her wake. These are the red seas, thinks Anouska, these that we swim and drown in).

The gun to her temple in Amsterdam, the knife to her wrists in Tel Aviv and the poison in her tumbler under the groaning Moroccan sun. Anouska survives these events, ducks beneath them like an oncoming wave and runs away as fast as she can, never looking back. She never meets these men again but (on occasion) she sees the tabloids - sees their faces and the print - and she hears of death and decimation.

She thinks nothing of the coincidences, wonders little at their occurrence. (The first died in a volley of bullets, the second was stabbed twice in the chest. The last one was found castrated in the middle of the desert, swimming in a spill of cyanide). She is happy, simply, to hold her life in her hands.

The new character (in this chapter) is Tony Gutmann and when Anouska sees his face she feels a dreadful sense of déjà vu. This is something I have seen, she thinks. This is Jerusalem in reverse.

(Tja speaks of karma and repentance; speaks of washing blood clean with water from Lourdes).

This time Anouska is Sharif, and Tony is Anouska, and this is one form of identity crisis that she could do without. So she stays in the city for the rest of the week then kisses Tja once before leaving for New Orleans.

(When she arrives there is a postcard and she feels that she is watched every moment of every day. It says only ya tebya Lyublu¹).

She marks the years by the number of Tja’s scars and she thinks that decades must have drowned in passing because she looks at her lover and sees nothing but lines (the centre of her palms, across her ribs, behind her knees and many, many more). Thinks, maybe Tja is not so invulnerable after all.

end. [6/14]

[1] Russian for ‘I love you’.