This Side of Water

by Maureen Pilkington

  Toshy remembered her bio teacher, Babkin, the wise-cracker, who never got off her back. When the class had to make a slit in the paper-thin skin of the frog to remove the heart, Toshy couldn’t do it. The smell of formaldehyde always made her puke. Babkin went home after class but made Toshy stay late to finish. Toshy asked Vadim to remove the heart and pin it down on the Styrofoam and she would label it. The boy loved doing that stuff anyway. Then she asked him to cut out all the rest, the lungs, liver, pancreas, gallbladder, testes and anus, and to wrap them in the paper towel and give them to her. He said it was a lot of fucking dog shit for her to ask of him. Toshy knew instinctively, without a plan or a recipe, that she would be making chewy cookies for Babkin. When Vadim was done dissecting, he put the empty skin sack left of the frog and put it on the tip of his finger, swinging it around saying it looked like a used condom and what was the big deal? Wasn’t Toshy Vazov used to this kind of thing?

  Toshy went into Julian’s bedroom closet and put on one of his white office shirts. On her, it was a short dress. He used to wear these when he came into Stella’s after the job at Chem-Tech Labs, with a jacket, tie, and those shoes that tied-up on the side for bad feet. She kept her Mary Janes with the wedge heel on.

  Toshy went into the kitchen for a splash more. Everything was so quiet in the apartment, it was like walking in snow.

  The box of Wonderful Bird Chocolate Souffles she had brought from Pulkovo International was still sitting on the counter. Beside the souffles, the flash cards were organized by Julian into mini towers. His Nu-salt was in the middle of the towers because he said he couldn’t live without the taste. He said he longed for pink salt, the kind you grind. He would go on and on about salt like it was caviar. How the fake salt, Nu-salt, wasn’t the same, and it was expensive. The first Julian could have bought lots of salt, no problem. She liked the kind at home that looked like rock candy.

  Toshy opened the fridge and saw meat wrapped in white paper. This place was nothing but rich with finds. Even though she had no recipe, she was sure she could turn on the oven and cook the meat with lots of salt and it would taste just like the free samples of beef from the Kuznechny market. She took out the package and sat it on the counter.

  The doorbell rang without quitting.

  Toshy grabbed the pen and pad used for her English lessons and, with the focus of a scientist about to document her findings, went to answer the door.

  Through the peephole, she saw a blonde woman. A gold cross around her neck. Toshy could take as long as she wanted to study her from behind the door! Such a pretty beige suit, and loafers made out of such a nice skin—was it rattlesnake? She looked just like the perfect woman in Julian’s photos, except in person her pinkish-blue eyes were smaller than marbles. Her lips, thin and curling. She looked like she was inhaling and exhaling heavily. Toshy looked out to the sidewalk and saw a silver SUV in the shape of a huge bullet.

  How could Julian walk out on this?

  Toshy smoothed down her lab dress, held her pad at her waist, put the pencil behind her ear. In the back of her mind, somewhere, in that place where she never planned but just let things happen, she saw that she was about to make a new friend. She opened the front door, her heart knocking against her delicate breastbone. She shifted from one leg to the other, careful not to show off her shoes.

  “Privetik!” she said.

  The Amy woman stood there as if she was frozen in doomsday. “I’m looking for Julian Asti.”

  “Oh, ya, come in.”

  “Are you…?”

  The woman stepped in, raising her feet higher than necessary, as if she were wearing astronaut space boots. She maneuvered around as though she didn’t want to wake Julian, but she could not have known he was sleeping.

  Toshy could see the tiny lines from the bottom of Amy’s simple nose to the top of her mouth, as if tiny strings were yanking on her lips. She walked into the kitchen with a look that might find Julian sitting at the table.

  “Are you cleaning the house?” Amy asked Toshy. “In that getup?”

  “No. I’m a scientist,” Toshy said, holding up the pad.

  “Oh my God. Where is my husband?”

  “He’s in the bathroom. Been in there a while. My husband, too,” Toshy said softly in her own language realizing they shared the same misfortune.

  “Then we all know what he’s doing. Aren’t these the good things in a relationship?” She walked around and came to the pile of letters. “Well, I see he opened one of them anyway.”

  Toshy was afraid to move from the spot she was standing. She wondered how she could get the chocolates to offer her guest.

  “Who are you? What are you?” Amy asked in a tone too loud for the small apartment.

  “I’m Natasha. I’m a scien—” Was Amy going to cry? “I’m so sorry,” Toshy said, not sure what she was sorry for and moved over to reach for her hand even though touchy wasn’t her thing.

  “Can’t wait to tell my know-it-all mother-in-law about your profession.”

  Amy tore away walking down the short hallway, opened a door that was a closet then slammed it shut. She found the bathroom. “Are you going to hide in your shit forever?” Amy yelled, banging away, her eyes shrinking.

  Toshy stood behind her with the box of chocolates.

  Amy turned around. “What the hell are you doing?”

  Toshy held them out to her, but the woman did not take the offering.

  Julian said Amy was devout. The wife believed in all that mumbo-jumbo. And, Toshy could bet her life that a string of candles somewhere burned for Julian. I took my vows very seriously. In front of God.

  Toshy could not put her confession into English. It was too much, too fast. She started to tell the story of her and Julian in her own language. Amy would not know Russian, only Julian had learned the language, and it was only because he loved her so much. But someone like Amy, with all her feelings, would understand just by the rise and fall of her voice. The melody.

  Julian had the papers from Chapel of the Bells stuffed somewhere around here in case Amy wanted to see them. He said he had to be the one to take care of the legalities, except for his own mail and bills apparently.

  Toshy stepped closer.

  “Get away from me, please,” Amy said, her voice all techno and jumping octaves.

  Still holding the tall box of chocolates in her hand like a chalice, Toshy began: Julian got the VIP table at Stella’s and started to come every night. No matter what act she was performing, he was ringside—near the dance floor with the shower, in the chill-out room, observing her chain dance as if he were under hypnosis. (She brought her chain dance from the old club on the other side of the river from Nevsky Prospect but changed it for Stella’s and the guys here named her “Slinky”). Then Julian took her out one Saturday night, and it was as if he made up his mind right then and there that he was going to marry her. It was fine with Toshy because she had to go back home soon to Inga, and she was broke.

  On the first date Julian took her to the High Life for meat on the Upper East Side. She thought it would have been more elegant, but it was dark and disappointing. She couldn’t see the carp in the tank with the film of green. He talked a lot about birds, especially the condor bird, one that he had been watching—or had been watching him—before he left his wife in New Jersey. These were the details of his life that he found so clever. Like he connected with birds in the sky. He ordered little glasses of scotch and asked her what she was thinking when doing her dance, the one she was known for, “Dirty Neva.”

  “Oh, no thinking. Never thinking. Dancing.” Toshy let her head fall back on the leathery booth and she knew what he was thinking. His hand was under the table moving on her legs like a tarantula. She opened her legs and his finger inched in.

  “Thinking now?” he said, picking up his drink with his free hand.

  She imagined her insides
, swelling like puff pastry around his dark skin. She did not look at Julian’s broad face but pretended the finger inside her belonged to the pretty boy at the souvenir shop on Ostrovsky Square. She rocked in the booth.

  “I make pictures,” she said, waving her hand near her head.

  The waitress came. “Here you go. Who gets black and blue?”

  “That’s yours, sure,” Toshy said.

  Toshy pushed out his hand and could not wait to taste her steak that would have not one bit of red in it.

  As Julian wiped his hand on the napkin, watery red streaks veined out from underneath his t-bone and around the curly parsley while he was saying that it was impossible for the brain not to think. “In fact, that is what makes us human, that is what protects us in life. I think therefore, I am.”

  “Is that so?” Toshy said, gulping the vodka water because of all the ice they used in U.S.

  “Where is wife right now?”

  Julian looked around to the left, then the right. He told her the story quickly in a whisper, one-two-three.

  “So make believe,” she said laughing. New York men always told stories about leaving their wives.

  “It’s true, so help me God.”

  “Then why did big shot chemist stay, if he was so unhappy?”

  “I stayed for our son.”

  “Oh, and he was lucky boy ’cause you stayed?”

  “See, you do think.”

  “No, I don’t booster. Thinking doesn’t protect me.”

  Toshy dipped her steak fries in Julian’s puddle of Worcestershire while he continued to talk about all the years with Amy.

  Toshy closed her eyes and could see the McMansion with a glitzy chandelier hanging like an indoor planet when you walked in the front door. She saw the sloppy EZ chair where Julian sat in front of the TV. A hyper, silky-haired dog ran around in the backyard. She saw a garage with a nice cement floor as clean as a living room. She saw the dark-haired boy tearing out of the driveway in a fun car. And there was Julian, on his deck next to a grill that you turned on with a switch, staring at the condor bird hovering over him in the perfect sky.

  That night after dinner, they went back to the apartment near Avenue A, which Toshy shared with some of the club’s staff, and Julian was the one who wanted her to do weird things to him. “Experiments,” he called them, to see how much he could endure. “I’m in the field,” he announced as he sat on her bed with the flimsy spread that was nothing like what he was used to. He kind of rolled on the bed sweetly, a nice man having a nice time, as if he had been begrudged happiness his whole life but now had a smidgen of contentment.

  He put his thumbs under her eyes and said they both had the circles. Apparently, this bound them together somehow. He told her that the skin around the eyelids—periorbital skin—is the thinnest on the body. “When the blood passes through the large veins, the skin looks bluish.”

  “I’m Russian. I just look like a bird.”

  “A painted bird,” he said.

  Again, so clever.

  Julian never said much about Amy after that night at the High Life, as if she were long dead. Toshy assumed that Julian’s wife was just as miserable as he. That she wanted the divorce. She had no idea that Amy had no idea. How could Amy have no idea? Didn’t she smell him when he came home?

  Toshy told Amy in her own language, a sound which stopped and started like a noisy car, that she had been advised by the Vegas wedding site to wear a rented dress with no sleeves because it was so hot there. The organs in her body might get burned through her translucency, and this is how she began to think hanging around with Julian Asti.

  They honeymooned at Paris Las Vegas. The hotel gave them cookies and milk in the wedding package. “I mean are we kiddies?” she asked Amy as an aside in English.

  But then Julian came to Russia for a visit—it took him forever to get cleared—and even there he acted like he knew everything, speaking the language, doing shots, teaching her about her own city! He knew everything there was to know about the cathedrals, the Fontanka River, the Griboedov Canal—and shouldn’t they be doing chemical tests on the waters? Then he got sick in his heart. He had to fly back home for American care, and, every minute Toshy stayed in St. Petersburg without him, he said his heart got weaker.

  “I don’t want to hear your gibberish,” Amy said.

  “That is how we got married,” Toshy managed to switch back to English quite easily.

  “Married? That’s impossible. He’s already married. There are laws here.”

  “Well, I hope we didn’t break the law,” Toshy said with her stage face.

  “Were you an abused child or something? Where in God’s name did he find you?”

  “I told you. Stella’s. But I’m so glad to be back home, working at Fish Fatale. They have a beautiful crowd. You can dance over the tables. They have levels.”

  This observation made Toshy stand more erect. She could bend her back any which way.

  “You think I want to be with him now? Julian-the-Great? That’s what he called himself when he was walking around St. Petersburg. Ordering cognac everywhere. And that sweating. He bought a mini of the Bronze Horseman. Look. It’s in his bedroom.”

  Amy came at her and Toshy braced herself for a slap. Amy took the palm of her hand and pressed it on Toshy’s mouth. Just like Vadim and Georgy pressing their stinky palms so hard she wondered if her teeth would go. Fat Georgy had pinned her ankles down, then Vadim had done the same for his friend. While Vadim poked her, he’d asked if she thought his lab work was free of wages.

  “I don’t want to hear anymore and I don’t want to even touch you.” Amy ran and put her hand under running water. She shook them dry as she ran out.

  Toshy followed. “You should be with him. I’m flying home pronto.”

  Amy pushed the bathroom door in and saw Julian on the floor. “Oh my God.”

  “No, he always sleeps like this. The drink is too much for him and his pills and the Viagra. No good mix.”

  Amy was down on the floor next to Julian, her two fingers pressing the inside of his heavy wrist. She put her mouth on his and blew hard. She banged on his chest as if she was trying to make a dent. Toshy wasn’t sure when Amy took off her blazer; she didn’t remember seeing her do it.

  Amy yelled something about 911, but she was already dialing her cell phone with the elegant silver case.

  The paramedics, the cops. Amy was still pounding.

  Here they are, Toshy thought. Polizmeisters like the ones that hung out in the lot behind the Fatale, pretending they were there to arrest. And the big Sergei-type last week that wanted her bad, pleading for dildo dance off the menu. “I don’t work the parking lot,” she said and how perfect.

  “She killed my husband! That little pig!”

  “You are nothing like the picture!”

  Toshy still had the box of chocolates in her hand. “I must go in there and see him.” She walked in a performed trance, one that she had done many times.

  She went into the bathroom, the floor too small for everyone on it and kneeled next to Julian. Amy was screaming for her to get out, for the cops to take her away.

  Poor Julian wearing a death mask. Toshy smelled formaldehyde that rose off his body like a spirit. She felt the thick rise and twisting burn of the scraps in her stomach. The unstoppable vomit pushed out of her mouth and splattered on Julian’s belly. The box of candy fell, and the Wonderful Bird Chocolate Souffles hit and rolled on top of Julian’s privates.

  The cops were soothing here in the U.S. and their peacefulness floated over to Toshy and put a sheath of calm around her. One took out an old-fashioned hankie from his pocket and gave it to Toshy to wipe her mouth.

  “You okay there?” he asked, escorting her out of the bathroom. “How did this happen?”

  “He was good man to me. A papa.”
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br />   Toshy walked further into the living room. The cops followed her, and she knew they were checking her out. She felt a swing come on; her ass was like a little ball on a chain. “You know,” Toshy said. “I wanted him to take the air of the Azov Sea. They say it cures you. He had affection in his heart.”

  She could hear Amy yelling the most disgusting things! About her! Toshy would never be her friend now.

  “Follow me,” she said to the cops. “I ask you. Please.”

  She turned and went straight to the pile, and off to the side was the photo of Julian and Amy that she had planned on mailing on the way to the airport.

  “I think he was afraid of her.”

  Toshy handed the cops the photo, turned it over, and showed them the note in Julian’s block letters that began, Dear Amy, I know you want to kill me…

  “Julian figured she might try a trick like this. She’s a nurse and they know how to fool with meds. He gave her everything, then rented this dump for himself. He is a very smart man and comes from a beautiful home.”

  The boss of the two took the photo with Julian’s letters on the back.

  “He really suffered,” Toshy said, her hand over her mouth with the smell of puke.

  “Let’s get at this,” the other said.

  “I have to go home to my Inga. I’m going to the airport, but I will be happy to help before I go.”

  As the cops walked to the bathroom, the paramedics were putting Julian’s body on the gurney. With a cop on each side of Amy, they walked her out. Her feet were not even on the ground.

  Toshy went into the kitchen and gathered up some things in a bag she pulled from the closet. There was so much vodka left! And the good meat! She was not a waster. She put a few bottles in the bag with the meat to cushion them, the noise of the others moved further away.

  Alone, creating again in her mind, she could see a long red chain hanging from the ceiling at the new club on the west side of the Fontanka Canal. More festive than Fatale. At this club they pretended it was a New Year’s Eve every night of the week! She grabbed the chain and stood facing the audience in her T-back and furry pasties, giving them all a bird’s-eye view. She had a noisemaker horn in her mouth. A sparkly top hat, the front tipped forward. Like Julian said the first time he saw her, she was as fair as the wings of a moth. And, they will all want her as much as he did.