Varian Krylov

by Hurt

  Looking at her, Khalid's expression turned concerned, but she couldn't speak, couldn't move. She'd fall apart. She flinched away as he touched her, but he just gathered her to him, wrapped her in his smooth heat, holding her close. Vanka's strained stillness shivered, shuddered, a tiny quiver in her belly swelling, swelling, until the convulsions of her sobs shook her whole body, wrapped up in Khalid's embrace.

  Silent, and still except for a slow caress up and down her back, he held her as she gave in to her hurt, gave herself over to his gentle comfort, and then for an agonizing eternity of regret and a desperate urge to break free of his arms and be alone.

  “God, just ignore me. Major PMS, I guess.” Lame.

  “Vanka.”

  Khalid opened his arms and took her hands, studying her face. She hated that, being looked at, her eyes all red and swollen, her face all contorted.

  “Vanka.” His voice was so, so soft. His expression. His touch. Everything about him was like being held. Buoyed. “Vanka. I know I don't know you well. But all day today, you've seemed strange. Sad. Hurt.”

  It was like her jaw was paralyzed. If she opened her mouth, it would start all over again.

  “I would like to be your friend. If there's something upsetting you, you can tell me.”

  185

  She shook her head, tried to smile. For a while he was silent, just looking at her.

  She struggled to reign herself in.

  “Is it your cancer?” he asked, his voice even softer.

  “No, Khalid. Really, I don't know what's wrong with me today.”

  She pulled her hands free, left his bed and started dressing.

  “I wish you would stay,” he said quietly from the bed.

  “It would be wonderful, lounging around here, with you, all day and night, but I have to get home and get some work done. How is it you're free to lounge around all day, by the way?”

  “It is the good fortune of the writer, to not have to be in an office every day.”

  “Is that what you do?”

  “When I'm behaving and getting work done.”

  “What do you write?”

  “Novels. Some shorter fiction, but really, only novels.”

  “And you're published?”

  “Yes,” he said, smiling, his voice soft. “They don't do well here, but in France, better, and very well in Algeria, Morocco. A few other places.

  “What's your last name? I'll have to find something of yours and read it.”

  “Only one has been translated into English, and it's the one I like least.”

  “Maybe that has something to do with why your sales are bad here.”

  “Yes, maybe,” he almost laughed, but it was more like a low sigh.

  “I haven't really tried to read anything in French since college. I'll make the effort, though.”

  186

  “Tu parles français?

  “Seulement un peu, et tres mal.”

  “Je n'ai pas su. Ton accent est mieux que cela de Galen.”

  “Même après son année à Paris?”

  “Oh, absolument. C'est dommage.” Khalid seemed to be teasing her with the promise of laughter, but there was just his smile. “Here.” He slipped from the bed, took a book from the nearby shelf, and handed it to her. But then he pulled it out of her hands, and took it back. “First, let me write something.”

  He found a pen and he bent over his book, scribbling something while she finished dressing. When she opened the cover to read the inscription he said, “Later.

  Read it later,” and pressed the book closed again, his hands on hers.

  “I'm very glad Galen stranded me this morning,” he said when she'd collected her things and was standing on Khalid's porch. “It's an unexpected happiness, knowing you.

  I'm happy you're in our lives, now. Galen's and mine. We both are.”

  He kissed her, embraced her, holding her close for a long while. When he let her go she answered all his tenderness with the best smile she could muster, then turned her back on Khalid and dashed down to her car, dumping everything recklessly into her trunk and scrambling into the driver's seat, slamming the door, clawing at the seatbelt and pulling away as the tears and sobs broke free of her will. Her house was just a few blocks away but when she'd made it around the corner she pulled over because she couldn't see. To drive. Her engine still running, she slumped against the steering wheel and cried. Wept. Wept to lose Khalid and Galen and a kind of life she hadn't even guessed at, until it was too late for her.

  187

  Chapter Six

  It was like being thirteen again. She was obsessed with her tits. She'd be sitting there, reading her magazine, or pouring a glass of juice, or folding the laundry, and on impulse she'd pull up the hem of her top, just to look down at the pale swells of her breasts and the delicate bumps of her pale pink aureole, the brazen arousal of her nipples.

  Of course, when she was thirteen, and fourteen, and still when she was twenty and twenty-five, she'd looked at her breasts with a vague sense of disappointment.

  Almost disapproval. Their size was fine. Full enough to fill a blouse or a bikini out nicely, not so big they'd get in the way of climbing or keep her from running if she had a rare urge. But she'd always felt a painful envy of women with dark, burgundy aureole and nipples. Hers were so pale their color was barely distinguishable from the smooth, milky flesh of her breasts, like they were hiding. Meanwhile, ironically, her nipples had always seemed too big, and perpetually, embarrassingly erect. If it was a hundred degrees in the shade and she was enduring a litany of budget problems on one of Burroughs's films, she'd still be nipping out.

  But now she'd look down at her breasts, the peaks the color of strawberry ice cream, and watch in wonder at how eagerly her aureole crinkled and puffed at the faintest brush of her fingertip, how her pert nipples blushed and stiffened, jutting out as if straining for another touch. She'd lift the cup of her palm underneath to feel the warm weight of the smooth, firm curve against her hand. Pulling her top over her head, she'd wander into the bathroom, then stand there, gazing at her topless reflection, as if she'd just awakened in the body of a stranger, she felt so differently about it, now.

  188

  * * * *

  Plastic. Everything cold and plastic. Plastic leather, plastic sunlight. Plastic smiles and small talk.

  “Vanka Klimov?”

  “Yes.”

  “Looks like it's nice out today,” the turquoise-draped nurse adorned with the plastic rectangle identifying her as Jennifer said.

  “Yeah,” Vanka admitted. Since morning the bruised, close sky had receded and faded to a pale, uniform blue.

  “Pre-donating?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Surgery's on . . . Monday. The twenty-third?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Make a fist around this and squeeze it every ten seconds. Man, that's a good vein,” Jennifer opined as she swabbed the creased crook of her arm.

  “Yeah.”

  The backs of her legs were sticking to the plastic upholstery of the cot pretending to be a leather lounge. And that smell, the reek of industrial cleaner and rubbing alcohol, permeating everything, now competing with Jennifer's perfume.

  “Okay, just squeeze that tight, now. A little prick. And relax your hand.”

  Vanka squeezed the roll of cotton in her fist and felt the needle bite through her skin. A second later her purplish blood snaked around and around the skin-colored 189

  tubing coiled beside her, like grape Kool-Aid through a crazy straw, slowly starting to swell the plastic bladder hanging from the side of the cot.

  “Just give that a squeeze every now and then. It'll keep the blood going.”

  “Okay,” Vanka unclenched and clenched her fist. And forced herself to return the nurse's smile.

  * * * *

  “There is something I must tell you, Galen.” Khalid looked scared. A look Galen had only seen once before, with him. “She didn't tell me this.”
/>
  “What?” Galen asked, really not understanding. Fuck, he was jet lagged.

  “Vanka did not tell me about the surgery.”

  “Seriously, Khalid. What are you talking about?”

  Khalid straightened up and set his jaw. Like he was facing a goddamned firing squad.

  “That morning you left for Chile, after she drove me home, she stayed a while.”

  “Did she?” Galen teased, uneasy, wanting to put a dent in Khalid's armor. What was with him?

  “She was unhappy that morning. At first I thought it was only your leaving. Or possibly what the three of us had done the night before. But all morning and that afternoon she would be fine for a little while, and then she would disappear. And after I saw she had been crying. Something was very wrong, I thought. I tried to have her talk, but she only pretended nothing bothered her.”

  Galen laughed. Sort of. If he hadn't been so fucking jet lagged he probably wouldn't have laughed. Her guardedness wasn't actually funny.

  190

  “I even asked her if it was the cancer that had her upset. She told me no. Then she left, and after, I found this, under my dining table, near where her bags had been.”

  Galen took the sheet of pale blue paper Khalid held out to him. A medical form, detailing the patient's name, the procedure scheduled, the hospital, the wing, the surgeon's name. Other details.

  “She doesn't know I know?”

  “No.”

  “She doesn't know you know?”

  “No, Galen.”

  “You let me walk away from contract negotiations, you let me get on a plane from fucking Chile, and she doesn't want me to even know this is happening?”

  “Yes, Galen.”

  “Khalid,” Galen sighed, exasperated, “what were you thinking?”

  “Tell me, Galen. Since you left for Chile, you've called her?”

  “Yes.”

  “E-mailed her?”

  “Yes.”

  “And has she answered? Or returned your calls?”

  “No.”

  “You know she's not in the hotel anymore?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know where she lives?”

  “No,” he breathed, the realization just creeping over him.

  191

  “Do you even know her last name?”

  He did. He must. But, no, she'd never . . .

  “I will tell you, Galen, what I was thinking. That Vanka is seriously ill. That even the friends she has known for years don't know she is sick. That she has known you only for a few weeks, That probably she is afraid that a man she has been fucking for a few weeks would not want all the pain and trouble of this illness, and that by disappearing, she saves you the problem of having to end things with her and saves herself the pain of being abandoned.”

  Khalid stepped forward and took Galen's hand. Even with the full weight of his words crashing down on Galen, Khalid's serene smile, the warmth in those luminous eyes comforted, like an embrace.

  “I was thinking, Galen, that you love her. That it would be very bad for you to lose her.”

  * * * *

  "Hi."

  Galen's voice. The last little clump of strength she'd been clinging to melted away. Vanka felt like she was slipping, dropping away in a fatal fall. There was no belay, no harness to catch and save her.

  She didn't want to see him. So she didn't turn from the little window that looked across an alley toward the wall of the adjacent wing of the hospital. She'd tired an hour or so earlier of craning her neck to gaze upward toward the sky, scant shreds of clouds lit from below by the city lights, mottling the heavens black, gray, and muddy rust like an expanse of dark bruise. For the last sixty minutes or so she'd been looking straight 192

  across, toward the rows of little windows just like hers, wondering what ward of the hospital they were part of, and what the people in all the little cells behind those windows were there for. She waited and waited, thinking someone, another patient, would appear in one of those windows. That they'd see each other. That it would be like a moment in a film, laden with semantic and visual poetry. Especially if it was a young woman. A new mother in the maternity ward, standing at the window, holding her newborn baby to her breast. Learning to nurse, to nourish the new life that had just come from her body. But most of the windows were dark, and the few lit up squares were almost all blanked out by shades. She could only make out a few beds with blanket-covered figures and suspended televisions flickering with colorful, jumping images.

  Finally, she forced herself to turn and face him.

  Galen gave her a smile, but looked sad. Almost crushed. When he came toward her and started to put his arms around her, she cringed and drew back without really meaning to. She was too worn out, though, to hide her fear. Galen halted his forward trajectory and gestured his surrender.

  ”What are you doing here?”

  “Vanka,” he said, his voice soft and sad, “why didn't you tell me?”

  “Because,” her voice wavered, “I didn't fucking want you here.”

  “No, I know.” His eyes were reddening and his mouth twitched, like he might cry.

  “How did you even know I was here?”

  “Khalid found this. At his place. After you'd left.”

  193

  Galen handed her a sheet of paper. One of a dozen forms and printouts from Greel's office and the insurance company authorizing and instructing her on preparations for the surgery. She hadn't even noticed it missing.

  “So? What? You tracked me here? For what?”

  Galen's jaw flexed. He stood there, staring at her, clenching his fists at his sides, Finally, he asked, “Why are you doing this, Vanka?”

  “What?”

  “Why are you having this operation? They got all the cancer when they did the lumpectomy, right?”

  “It's prophylactic.”

  “Because you're at risk. Genetically. The cancer could come back.”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And I'm more than a fucking pair of tits.”

  “Do you think that's how I see you? A pair of tits?”

  “Pretty much.” She choked on those words.

  “Just a fuck.”

  “Yes.”

  “And that's what I've been to you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I don't believe you.” His voice had gone soft again. “If the last few weeks were just some fun for you, cutting loose after your relationship, going a little crazy before 194

  having to face this, I'll understand. I'll even feel guilty for making you go through this, seeing me, explaining all this to me.”

  Looking at him hurt too much. She looked down at the floor. Big squares of beige and black vinyl, glossy with wax. His feet came into frame, his shoes huge looking next to her bare feet. He touched her shoulder.

  “We haven't known each other very long. So maybe this will sound dumb. But since we met, I've been happier--actually waking up excited about the day, about tomorrow, about the coming week—for the first time in a lot of years. That's why I'm here.”

  She made herself straight. Strong. She faced him, and forced herself to go on facing him, even when her voice pitched and reeled, even when the tears she was trying to keep back rolled down her cheeks.

  “I thought it would be just sex. And I thought that would be good, you know? For the first time. But obviously it was more than that. I think even the first night it was more than that, for me, but I pretended to myself it wasn't. And I knew this was coming. I thought I'd milk every day for all the pleasure, all the new things I'd never get another chance to experience. And now, maybe I'm sorry, because it hurts so much to walk away from you. And I'm sorry, Galen, that I let you think we. . . . But, please. Please understand. It's bad enough, what's going to happen to me. I can't have you around, reminding me how much I'm really giving up.”

  She let him pull her to him; it was easier than letting him watch her face twist up with sobs. And now th
at she was huddled against him, she let him stroke her hair, let him put his arm around her and hold her.

  195

  “You're not being fair, Vanka. You don't know what you're giving up, where I'm concerned. You assume I won't want you.”

  “Don't, Galen. God, please don't.”

  “I know you're scared. I know it's hard. But please, Vanka. Please let me be here for you.”

  "Don't you want to talk me out of it?

  “Do you want me to talk you out of it?”

  “No.”

  "You've made your decision. I'm sure you didn't make it easily. I didn't come here to tell you you're right or you're wrong. I just came to be your friend."

  "You don't think I'm crazy?"

  "It's a lot to give up. Your whole, perfect body. This part of you that gives you pleasure. If you have a baby, you'll never nurse it. Men who might have been your lovers won't want you. But none of that matters as much as you do. Your life is worth more. Maybe even some feeling of hope, of security is worth more. And the feeling that you have some control. Over your body. Your fate."

  "I think so," she said, smiling and crying hard. "I think so."

  * * * *

  He found her in a dim room, her head turned away from the door to the hallway and the old woman in the first bed and the curtain dividing them, toward the small window that seemed to mock the room's depressing fluorescent light with enough sunshine to remind the inhabitants that there was light and air outside, but letting none of it come to them. She looked sad and gray-yellow, like everything in the room.

  196

  He didn't say “hi.” He only smiled at her, took her hand—the one without the IV—

  caressed her cheek, and finally, bent and kissed her forehead. It felt cool and surreally smooth against his lips. She turned her eyes up to him. That was her only acknowledgment of his presence.

  He took the chair from beneath the mocking window and set it beside her. Now he could hold her hand and stroke her hair. It almost seemed like she flinched when he first touched her, brushing his fingertip over her brow, into her soft hair. Then she seemed to stiffen, and stayed cold and hard, like enduring his touch was a real trial. But finally, finally, after long minutes of tender touches, she softened and warmed to his hand.