Varian Krylov

by Hurt

  They both startled when she stepped into the room.

  “Dad. Don't say that about David.” Her gentle voice made their embarrassment at being overheard gel to shame. “He doesn't know.”

  “He doesn't know?” His shock sounded painfully like hurt.

  “No,” Sasha said, his voice tight with rage. “And I'm the one who gets to keep pretending like nothing's wrong, every fucking day when he calls me wondering why Vanka won't answer his phone calls.”

  “I'm sorry, Sasha. It wasn't fair, asking you to keep this from him. I'll call him tomorrow. Promise.” She perched on the arm of the chair opposite her brother, and her gentle voice went hard. “Now, listen to me, Sasha. I know you and David are friends. I'm sorry he's not going to be your brother in-law, that the two of you aren't going to get to watch football together every Thanksgiving and drink beers together on the porch every New Years for the rest of our lives. And I know he has his ideas about why we're not together anymore. But get this, once and for all. I hadn't even met Galen when I left David. So you can stop painting me the whore of Babylon, and Galen the evil pimp who turned me out.”

  “You run out with your bags packed in the morning, and where did you spend the night?” Sasha had slipped into Russian.

  “, , . —“

  “And she speaks in exotic tongues, too,” Galen announced his presence from down the hall. Then, when he'd made his way among them and kissed the top of Vanka's head, “what other hidden talents are you keeping from me? Hmmm?”

  “You didn't know Vanka speaks Russian?” Sasha smirked.

  235

  “No.”

  “She does rock climbing and makes films, too.”

  “, Sasha,” Vanka said, quiet but menacing.

  Galen laughed, soft and easy. “I imagine there are lots of things you know about Vanka that I don't. And I'd bet I know a thing or two about her you'd never guess.”

  Sasha's ears turned red.

  “That's a nice way to talk about my sister in front of our father.”

  “I didn't hear him say anything inappropriate, Sasha. That's your dirty mind,” her dad said, his voice stern, but his eyes bright and his smile just in check. Their sibling bickering had cheered him up.

  Her dad and Galen went out the door, and Vanka locked up, still muttering back and forth, in Russian, with Sasha, the way they had since they were little, slipping into their secret twin language, the code given to them by their grandpa, from the cradle until they were fifteen and his third heart attack had put him in his grave.

  “I'll tell you something you don't know about Vanka,” Sasha taunted Galen at the restaurant, his third neat vodka tiltawhirling in his hand, sloshing droplets, now and then, down onto the remains of his steak and mashed potatoes. He hadn't aced the cancer, after all.

  “Let's hear it.” Galen, smiling like a child who's just learned the rules of a game he's been playing all afternoon, leaned in for Sasha's revelation.

  “Vanka is a boy's name.”

  “It is?”

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  “When my mom was pregnant with her, the doctors told them they were having a boy. So they named the baby after Grandpa Ivan. When she came out a girl, they made her Vanka. The diminutive of Ivan.”

  “And they called me Ivan the Terrible until I was seventeen,” Vanka told Galen.

  “Actually, we all still call you that, sweetheart. Just not when you're in earshot,”

  her dad contradicted. He and Vanka smiled at each other, furtively acknowledging that Sasha was warming up to Galen, despite himself.

  * * * *

  “I get the feeling there's something you want to say to me.”

  Vanka's dad smiled, nodded, took a swig of beer. He'd been sitting there, alternately fondling an unripe olive with one hand and putting the beer to his lips with the other, not saying a word, since he'd invited Galen into the garden ten minutes earlier.

  “Have you ever taken care of someone with cancer before?”

  “No.”

  “You know Vanka's mom died of breast cancer.”

  “Yes.”

  “In some ways, chemo is going to make this week seem like the good old days.”

  “You don't have to worry about me running out on her in the middle of all this, Mike.”

  Mike nodded and tipped the bottle back again.

  “Is there something else, Mike?”

  Mike looked at Galen and laughed.

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  “You're a pretty direct guy, aren't you, Galen?”

  “I've been accused of it.”

  “I'm afraid this won't sound very fatherly.”

  “I'm bracing myself.”

  “Since the surgery, you and Vanka haven't . . . been together?”

  “No.”

  “I realize it hasn't been a week, and I know she's in pain.”

  “She isn't ready.”

  “But you are?”

  “You don't need to worry about that, either, Mike.”

  “My daughter, she's always worked hard to be perfect. At everything. I'm sure that includes being a lover. It's going to be hard for her, maybe harder than for most women, to give herself, feeling like she's less.”

  “I know.”

  “I'm afraid you have a long battle, a long wait ahead.”

  “Don't worry, Mike. I can be a very patient man. Persistent, but patient.”

  * * * *

  The day before she started chemo, Brods came over and cut her hair, so short it was just long enough to part and brush it, and only because it was so soft and fine. It was hard to get used to—nothing to tuck behind her ears, no silky strands brushing against her neck. But it had to be easier than going straight from her bob to bald. For a while, when she looked in the mirror she had trouble seeing herself in the reflection's form. Now, above the still-startling shape of her body, the shorn hair left her face so 238

  exposed, her features seemed startlingly prominent, even though she never put makeup on anymore. As if all her life her pale blonde hair had been her dominant feature, sort of veiling her green, Slavic eyes, her nose, with its slight bump below the bridge, her full, wide mouth.

  “You look . . .” Galen came up short. Speechless. Possibly a first. If this shocked him, his reaction to bald was really going to be funny.

  “Stunning?” She prompted. “Fabulous?”

  “Ethereal,” he finally said, his voice a little choked.

  “I figure this way, no one will have to hold my hair back after meals.”

  They had a couple hours before they had to leave for her appointment, and they listened to a CD Galen had brought her. While they sat on the sofa, listening to the deep, sometimes driving ambiance of the music, Galen ran his fingertips over her shorn head, combing his nails over her scalp, his touch immediate, without the heavier lengths of hair between them, the nerves in her scalp going electric.

  “Do you know you have really cute ears?”

  He traced the whorl of one with a faint touch. Then he kissed. One light little kiss, his lips and warm breath flooding her whole body with sudden warmth. His fingers played against the naked nape, driving tingles down her back, and he touched a little kiss to her neck, just under her ear, his nails scratching slowly over her scalp. And then the touch on her ear was wet, soft, and warm, his lips tugging gently at her lobe, his tongue teasing inward, shivers cascading over her, raising goose flesh, tugging at the knot of want low in her belly. Lips, tongue, teeth playing over her neck, under her ear, at her nape, over her throat.

  239

  “Galen. Don't”

  He stopped, except his fingers were still playing over her scalp. Now he sat there, looking into her.

  "Please stop it."

  "Stop what, Vanka?"

  "Stop being my pro bono sex therapist."

  "Your what?" he chuckled.

  "They didn't cut my arms off, you know. I can still get myself off."

  "What's your point?"

  "I don't need a pity fuck."


  "Vanka,” he said, calm and even, “I know you know me better than that. I'm not that charitable. You know by now that when I try to fuck you, it's because my dick's hard.”

  He cupped her face and kissed her cheek, her temple, the corner of her mouth so tenderly she had to choke back a sob.

  “You don't need to be scared, Vanka. I promise.”

  “You can't promise me that, Galen.”

  “All right.” Now he didn't seem to be boring into her with his eyes. Now he looked earnest. Open. “I'm not scared.”

  “Good for you. You should definitely get yourself laid today, then.”

  “Vanka,” he said, his touch, his voice tender.

  “Galen, if you're going to keep after me like a high school junior, I'll take a cab to the appointment.”

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  “All right, Vanka. You're off the hook. I'll just jerk off surreptitiously in the parking structure when we get downtown.”

  He said it lightly, smiling. But he seemed sad, and she felt a weird, anxious sort of guilt. Not for not fucking him. Just that he'd been so kind, so good to her through everything, and she wouldn't even let him try to talk to her. But she couldn't.

  “God. Maybe I should,” she said weakly.

  “Should what?” He looked tentatively hopeful.

  “Call a cab. Get another home nurse. This isn't fair to you.”

  “Vanka.” He kissed her forehead, kissed her cheek. Sighed. “I want you. I miss kissing you, touching you. I miss the way you look at me when I'm inside you. But you don't owe me anything. I'm here because I want to be. So don't ever feel guilty. Just don't ask me to pretend not to want you, when I do.”

  * * * *

  "You're losing weight." Galen dipped a finger into her waistband, pulling it away from her belly to measure the gap.

  "Oh, you noticed?” she teased, playing at modeling her svelte new figure. “It's the Joy of Chemo diet."

  "You've hardly been eating."

  She shrugged.

  "Well," he gave her a mischievous grin, "we'll have to do something about that."

  "What? You don't like my gangly, adolescent boy look?"

  241

  He cast a vulpine look over her and grinned. He put his mouth by her ear, his warm breath stirring her hair, tickling. “Would you like to know what your adolescent boy look makes me want to do to you?”

  Heat flamed over her face and her belly knotted.

  “I'm tired of being inside. Let's go for a walk.”

  “All right.” He didn't sound mad. “Let me make a call, first.”

  Not long after they got back, her doorbell rang. Galen answered the door, and she listened, expecting to hear the familiar voice of some friend or another. But after a short conversation, she heard the door close, and Galen returned alone.

  "Hmmm. Either you're driving my friends away, or you've just had a mysterious rendezvous right on my doorstep."

  "It was just a delivery."

  "Let's see."

  He walked over, hands behind his back, boyish grin bending his lips. He knelt down on the floor on the other side of the coffee table from her, plunked a baggie plump with sage green buds down, and after a quick glance to read her reaction, pulled a small square of white paper from the tiny cardboard packet in his other hand and ran a crease down the center.

  "That's who that was? Your connection?"

  "Yep."

  "And now you're gonna get high?"

  "Nope. You are."

  "Me?"

  242

  "And when you're done smoking the joint I'm about to expertly roll for you, I'm going to cook. Something amazing. And you're going to eat."

  "Right. Pot. The anti phen-fen. OK."

  In the midst of rolling a bud between his thumb and forefinger, breaking it up, and dropping it in a neat line along the crease in the paper, he stopped and looked up at her.

  "Have you smoked before?"

  "Yeah."

  "Recently?"

  "Not very. It's been a year or so. I was never much of a pot smoker. I'm more of a vodka tonic girl. As you know."

  "It just occurred to me, if it makes you cough, it'll hurt you."

  Indeed. She'd only sneezed once since the surgery, and she'd been terrified for long hours after that she'd sneeze again. It had felt like being clawed open by a bulldozer.

  "I'll take conservative hits."

  "All right."

  He finished rolling and lit it up for her, and the reek of pot rolled up on her. She took a tiny, tentative drag, barely drawing it in, tasting it, feeling the burn fill her mouth, her throat, begin to curl into her lungs, threatening to choke her. She fought the convulsive impulse trying to squeeze her chest. She held it, then let go slowly, willing her body to be soft, her lungs to let go easy. No cough.

  "Smoke it with me. It's the only one of my meds I can share."

  243

  "Oh? You haven't noticed me dipping into the morphine?"

  They passed the joint back and forth. It reminded her of getting stoned in college with her first boyfriend. Number one. That was funny, now. She almost laughed, but instinctively sobered herself even before she thought to be afraid of the pain. Galen saw her smile, though, and he smiled, too, stoned too. His eyes red. He looked fragile. Like he'd been crying. But it was just the pot.

  They put out the joint when they'd smoked half. She was more thirsty than hungry, her mouth dry, her tongue feeling thick, oversized in her mouth, but he started rummaging in her fridge and cupboards and soon he had two skillets and a pot going, and he was bringing her little plates of things to nibble on as they were ready: braised green beans and shallots, teriyaki salmon, curried rice.

  * * * *

  Four o'clock. Why did she always wake up then, give or take ten minutes?

  The bed was empty. Galen's side cold, the covers bunched up near the middle.

  Through the aperture of the bedroom door the dark hallway flickered in cool blues and grays jumping from the living room. She never did that when she had insomnia—turn on the projector and watch something. She always just stayed in bed, mentally storyboarding ideas for projects she'd never raise the budget for. Or remembering.

  She slid out of bed. In the last week it had gotten warmer. In just her panties and T-shirt, she was comfortable. She shuffled down the hall. Galen was splayed out on the couch, chin balanced on his palm, the cool light reflected from the wall flickering over his face. He didn't notice her approach, he was so intent on the images on the wall, and she was so intent on him, watching, she didn't even glance to see what he had playing.

  244

  She just slinked over and curled up beside him on the couch. He kissed the crown of her head, then went on watching. Her face went hot and her core went cold when she saw. Her and Khalid.

  “I haven't watched it since . . .”

  “Do you want me to turn it off?”

  “No.”

  Her whole, perfect body swung back and forth in the frame of the camera held out unsteadily at arm's length, Khalid's mouth on her throat, his hands sliding up her belly, her ribs, cupping her breasts, one already scarred. A visceral reaction, a phantom pleasure tingled through her missing breasts as she watched Khalid tongue and bite her nipple.

  “The DVD was just there, with the others. I didn't mean to get into your private things.”

  A tightness caught her belly. Galen sounded hurt.

  ”It's OK.”

  “This was the day I left?”

  “Yes.”

  A long silence.

  “Galen. I didn't ask you.”

  “No.”

  “Because you're . . . because of the celebrity thing, I thought you wouldn't want to. Because if the video got out . . .”

  “You thought I wouldn't trust you.”

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  “I don't know. I just figured you have to be careful about things like that.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn't plan on asking Khalid. It just oc
curred to me, in the middle of things.”

  “And he said 'yes.'”

  “Yeah.”

  “I'm glad,” he told her, turning to her, smiling with obvious effort. “I'm glad you have that.”

  “Do you wish it was you?”

  “A little. Yes.”

  “I'm sorry I didn't ask you.”

  “It's all right,” Galen answered, still sad sounding. “It's good that Khalid did that for you.” In a different voice he added, “The two of you together. You're beautiful.”

  “Were.”

  * * * *

  A soft tapping at the door. Galen opened, and there was Khalid, stripped to the waist, sleek torso gleaming in the late-morning sun.

  “You ran over? In this heat?”

  Khalid answered with a small smile, gave the usual platonic kisses in greeting, and slipped into the cool shade of the house. The scent of him, the lingering sense of his lips on his skin had Galen taut. Nervous. He stayed at the open front door for a few seconds, letting the Santa Anas and the sun's heat burn off some of his need.

  “Is she still asleep?” Khalid asked in a soft voice.

  “Yeah. She had a bad night.”

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  “And you?”

  “Pretty bad, too, I guess.”Galen wondered if he looked as wrecked as he felt.

  “Sit down. Let me make you breakfast.”

  Smiling that Khalid knew without asking that he hadn't eaten anything in the hours he'd been up, Galen sank down in the armchair he always seemed to choose when he couldn't cuddle up to Vanka on the sofa. Maybe lack of sleep, or maybe the poignancy of the whole situation with Vanka had him emotional this morning, and everything Khalid did touched him—that he made coffee even though he wouldn't drink any himself, that he quietly found everything he needed and cooked the meal without even needing to ask Galen what he'd want.

  They ate in the backyard, where they could talk without worrying about waking Vanka, then came in and did the washing up together. Back inside, shoulder to shoulder at the sink, Galen was aware of Khalid's scent again, the nakedness of Khalid's sinewy back. His lightly muscled chest and abs were unsettling, and his want was nagging him painfully. But nothing would happen, here. He actually sighed out loud, relieved, when the doorbell rang.