Кутузов Илья Александрович: другие произведения.

Boxes Without Topses

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  • Аннотация:
    A New York story
  
  Manhattan Sunset
  Nyda was born in Manhattan. She had a secret goldfish, a schoolbag and red hair shivering the creeps out of anyone who'd dare call oneself sane. Concerning anything else, you name it, she's got used to it long before you could name another anything else.
  She was the first to decorate her bicycle with transparent tyres with optical cables, vivid rose and bright ultraviolet, weaved through. Her first drive through Broadway caused whistling and sharp breaking. Her moms an' dads owned a home design cable channel, spent a lot of time abroad, and knew all species in the designer world. They brought Nyda a Teach Yourself Swahili CD, and Nida started to call her parents Momsy Andadsy.
  Momsy Andadsi never borrowed a word. Things rolled easy about them. Nyda hated or loved to travel with them depending on her predictive mind. Sometimes she was too afraid to develop certain unconditional boredom. Other times just a thought that wherever you go you're going to meet the same good old earth, water, wind, and fire, was enough for Nyda to stay in NY regardless of any other reasoning.
  She would take her favourite position observing the Manhattan sunset with a mojito, diving into meditation for long two hours.
  "Why should I shout in my dreams? There must be a way to know. If I knew why, I should not shout. And why should I go back to one and the same thing, and what is so frightening? Not the loneliness. Not any lack of any kind. Am I afraid of any knowledge or feeling, or do I look for a knowledge or a felling, and then why the fear? I see many dreams, what makes me get into this only one, to remember it so bright?
  The wind took me to the air, flipped me over, and rolled me softly around my room, this very one. I was surrounded by gems and jewels, colourful streams of air, and then I was outside, over the roofs, anxious and afraid to pinch the clouds, and then the sky darkened. The gems were still around, the stars - what a romantic dream! What a flat New Age!
  I wake up, I know I can fly. The sweet weariness of the flight flows through the soul and the body. Am I just afraid to go further? I have never felt air on the skin in a dream. Why should I think of the end of atmosphere in a dream?
  I want some fresher air. Everyone tells me what I already know or what I later find out to be their favourite media clone. Some girls may like it; not me.
  Andadsi are in Kathmandu. Some girls may like it hot; I do. I risk nothing calling that Jim Dorrel, the tyres, the light designer".
  Night and Dawn
  There was that man. Thinking of his kind one may discover that those guys must have given some quality time thinking of death, or maybe life. Some have this smile and others don't. And, knowing such people for a long time, one may collect enough observations to know this smile is more than just a mood though it may come as such.
  Jim Dorrel. Bingo, no one else could have happened there, thinking of it. The fun of it is to distinct a name from the fatalism of the image always ready to pop up from all the papier-mвchй you stick up the brain since the earliest childhood. This is about everyone whose smile is more than a mood though sometimes comes as such. Still, Jimmy was there, not to be replaced. Nyda had had tried replacements. No match. She named it not, she "liked it when" he pulled fingers slowly along her hair.
  Jim was pulling his fingers slowly along and across and all the ways through her hair half an hour after the sunset.
  -The trees, -he said, -they are always fresh. Every liquid moment nature is fresh and ancient. We change our body cells completely every seven years. You are not getting older, Nyda. You stay beautiful. I love touching your legs when we fuck. When we don't. Why, the beauty remains.
  -I saw bulldozers bulldozering the trees near our old house, -said Nyda. Suddenly she wept. She was rubbing her forehead against Jim's shoulder for the last 15 minutes. She was two years older than Jim.
  -Are you going to make those snaps, of my feet and legs, -she asked.
  -Gorgeous, cool, sexy, stylish, what not, why, -inserted Jim and gave her a sharp pinch at her left nipple.
  -And you'll show it to the others, and they will look, -finished Nyda.
  -You don't like it? Or you do, don't you? You do think of it, -whispered Jim.
  -I am older, -she said .
  -Youth and beauty are no synonyms, have you seen old people you can't take the eyes off, and they are in their nineties? People believe in a lot of shit. Free your mind and have a new color every moment. Colors, or name it what not. A touch feels. Don't you like it when I fuck you for hours? I say, I do like it.
  She touched his cheek with her nosetip.
  -Are you a believer?
  -Whatever you may mean, I am.
  A believer, wow, that should be genuine but too New Age again.
  Two blocks away a kid woke up by the side of his mom. She knew it was going to be another morning, he knew it too.
  - I am dead - said Jim. He jumped slightly up his pillow and rushed back.
  - I am dead - said Nyda, lifting her head a bit and letting it drop.
   - I am dead - he said with a different expression.
  - I am dead - she said letting rolling her head sideways over the pillow.
  - I am more dead - he said.
  - As dead as you could be - she said - are you not going to get to your posh designer office?
  - I hate the office - he said, - they are all fucking nuts.
  - You are not supposed to fuck nuts - Nyda moved her hips to catch Jim's legs - I mean, I won't stand you saying this when I am near.
  - Why am I saying I'm dead every morning - he said.
  - 'Cause you're alive.
  - But you go and I'm dead.
  - That's why you need to see more people at the office.
  - I'd rather marry you - he said.
  - I'm dead - she said.
  No Office for the Day
  -One gets tired, -said Jim. He hanged up the phone. -As the art director I do have the right to see what inspires me. Maybe not all the time, I'm a compromising survivor, but as for today, today it's you.
  -Sex, -said Jim, -but that's like zebras. Strip, strip.
  -Freckles, -he said a cigarette later, hovering his palm over her neck, -I love them. Lose my head over them.
  -I do not know, all those guys I've tried, they are all like Martians, totally alien, I felt like I do not belong, it's not like that with you, -said Nyda lazily, -why?
  -Oh, you just do not suspect how many Martians are here. Between us. I know few from Jupiter, but three or five guys from Betelgeuse, and a chick from Alpha Centaura. A lesbian apartment on the 17th: two babes from Venus, and their company, mostly from Titan or Neptune. They live on the temperature gradient. Kinda walk half of their bodies in the sun, half in shadows.
  Nyda laughed.
  -And the exquisite breed, one in a billion, but you can meet them - traveled through not one black hole to get here. Think what they know about the time linearity after all those long delays making short cuts, -saying this, Jim licked her ear.
  -Could you change the situation back there with your wife, -asked Nyda after the next hot hour when Jim was watching her mouth lines floating as she got hotter until she came. After she came, she rolled up like a cat and asked the question.
  -Yeah, oh my, you bet I could, but of course, -said Jim. He paused and added, -I didn't want to.
  -I don't think I could change it, right? -sighed Nyda. -Whatever. You are too deep in the New Age. This style is over, just because it's been here too long. No woman can stand this.
  Nyda rubbed her body against Jim's. He felt her legs over his hips again.
  -I loved so much seeing friends with her, I hated so much to go back home. She would teach me manners; remember every wrong word I said. What she thought wrong, of course, -smiled Jim raising the brows. -Not a single notice of what I did OK, like she took her corporate life a bit too private.
  - Get real. You think I've never heard a married guy before? I love when you say it. C'mon.
  -Well, with you I can feel a girl coming not using a millimeter of the dick, but sometimes when sakura is so tender I cannot stop Fuji appearing high in the sky, and why should I. I want it. Only holding your legs high apart is like this, but no, it ain't really so...
  Jim stopped as if he had suddenly heard himself too close.
  Nyda whispered, "Hold'em", and stretched her legs high apart. They were hours over the afternoon.
  Nyda tripped to the fridge for more beers. On her way back she stopped to watch Jim browsing an art magazine. He turned a page upside down; this way and that, and it seemed to her he'd not look at any picture as it was.
  -You say, they mistake youth for beauty, money for beauty, glamour for beauty. Do you believe there's no one capable of conceiving beauty as such, why are you so sour about those others, Jimmy boy? Are you like the only one?
  -They do, oh they do, -said Jim looking through the page across the window light. -Since you know what am I talking about, I am no more alone. But I haven't met too many of my kind, -he said, throwing the magazine on the floor.
  -Strictly for... lemurs. Great work though, all the techniques, the concepts, all the effort. Itching your brand new kitchen. You live in their dreams. Can you dream their lives?
  -Knock it off, -she said, -I dream of a beer. When I want itching I call you. Can you brand me one?
  -I build us a starship, said Jim, taking a gulp. -To go wherever you dream.
  -Like I said, hopeless New Age, -she answered ironically. -What is right out there?
  -N'yowk, -said Jim, -full of N'yowk Martians. Half of'em came here, the other half thinkin' o' gettin' as far from here as possible.
  -And which half d'ya belong to, Jimmy prince? -said Nyda.
  -Guess, I been' born here, -he said, depicting Paul Simon's manner. -But whenever you go people would look at ya sayin' wow. Dis a-worm a-come from da Big Apple. Yack.
  -You are not proud, eh?
  -Look, the naked truth is everyone wants to get into a New York story. I don't believe anyone who dares to deny this. We did it, -said Jim, clapped his hands and made a giveaway gesture.
  -Not all of our stories are so sticky licky, Jimmy boy, some of'em maybe, but on the scale? They are well thought of...
  - ...to provoke envy, -Jim said rather sharply.
  -Please, spare me from the cynicism. We do use quantities of chocolate fudge. Now, what's so bad in chocolate?
  -I do not want to live in anyone's dream! -shouted Jim. -I am all after my own! I dream of you every fucking night I go out to meet the Martians! And they are happy! Or seem like ones who are! Why, I say, why am I not like them? Why do they laugh, why do they enjoy the world like I once could, and why am I not feeling anything like it anymore? And those who hate us, they too may want their own ways!
  -A lot of people envy you, baby, -she said, -they talk, they say "Oh, Jim? Never doing anything he doesn't like? That's the coolest", this is what they say about you. Are you to envy their lives? Come on, baby, who is going to die your death? Live your life for you?
  -Oh, that, -he stressed, -that. A lot of people feel secure when others live like them. Now, you have us showing everyone else that our way is a: different, b: happy. They have all the reasons to feel like losing their own illusions and get bloody mad at us...
  - Paranoiac baby you are, my beautiful flower. -Nyda patted his hair, like of a little boy. -They must know that there is a real opportunity for the better; anyway, how old are you?
  -Last week they gave me 30. 30, in the eyes of a beholder, who does not know that I'm 39...
  -Can you behold this for me? -asked Nyda, showing him the buttocks. He whispered something right into her vagina, and suddenly she came like a tornado.
  -Words, aren't they pure magic? -said she, laughing loud, -what did you just say?
  She looked at him. A tear was running across his cheek. She licked it up, and whispered in her .
  -Salt goes all the way. He sobbed for a minute, and then said, -You know what I learned in Africa: ukependa usependa ni mamoya kwango, m'toto.
  -Meaning?
  -Whether you understand me or not, I do not care, baby. Perfect for love, isn't it?
  -But the case is that I do, -said Nyda. -Isn't this just more perfect?
  They fell asleep through the traffic roar. Nyda was dreaming that she was a green dragon, and Jim saw a helicopter traversing above their balcony. A man came down on a rope ladder, and said, "Hi guys, I am Abraham Kowalski, I've bought this house an hour ago from Fritz Gershteyn and sold it half an hour ago to Yana Katzenelenbogen. Would you fly to the Moon with me just for the weekend, I hate fishing alone, because... you know, I've made a fortune on that, and I want to buy you the tickets".
  In the morning Jim said:
  - There is a nice school, the Jerusalem Art academy, or something. People say they start with 2X2 = 5, and though they do not like it when it is 6 or 37, still this is something very different. You will see, it does not matter where you learn once you start really apply to the creative process.
  - You think I want to go to an art school? -said Nyda.
  - I think you could try one for a change.
  There. He had said the c-word.
  
  The Longing
  A week away from that visit, after some reasoning over the flashbacks, one April morning Nyda packed up her usual bag of nonsense, got herself an intercontinental, and landed in Israel. She went straight to the Jerusalem Academy of arts and applied for the visual design department.
  On the day of her test, some time after she had finished, she found herself discussing the non-linear perspective in photography with an Andrew with noticeable Eastern European accent who started with telling her that he had had just seen her in the audience under a funny angle. Her head got slightly withed. Apparently he too was applying for visual design. Or so he was saying, and saying took him to offering an elaborated discussion at his place in an immigrant hotel.
  A day before that he met a German lady reporter staying at another hotel, where he waited in the room service. She asked him whether he ever had Germany visited. He had, and she was interested what a Russian born Jew could say about visiting Germany. He meddled, remembering the trees, houses, streets, air, trains, meadows, and answered, "I understood what the Germans meant when they called Russians swines". "Oh no", she said, "Is this your Jewish part?" He asked her had she ever visited Russia, just to compare two villages disregarding the foam of the politically correct, to dig the lifestyle. He also said that on behalf of his Russian part he was a Tiel Uelenspiegel fan club veteran. The lady had pale skin with tempting dots, brown eyes, and her name was Isobel. A Lufthansa took her into the night before the test. The spirit of Isobel's red hair was now standing in front of him saying her name was Nyda.
  Nyda and Andrew took a bus from the centre to Bayit Vagan; after a few virtuous gags in the hills the bus took them to a tall dull Shalom hotel. Andrew agitatedly told her that the place was full of mostly three kinds of monsters. Those included fresh Eritrean, declassed and outcast homeless Israeli North African families and culturally shocked Russian immies.
  They went up in a dusty elevator to the floor 6 and entered the scent of freshly fried meat, baby goo and boo, and grown-ups' maraboo smaraboo produced by two rows of bodily women sitting along the corridor having a sweet fume smokie talkie.
  They came through being looked upon by the ladies. A rush of wind passed along the corridor, the hanging clothes flew up and down.
  Nyda entered a messy room with undone bed, narrow table with a mirror, a window looking at the hilltops and valleys, red roofs, blue sky and two concrete untidy walls to frame the view.
  Andrew said he was hungry and asked Nyda to join him. He opened a small fridge, took out a suspiciously looking pack of corn beef, asked Nyda again, and took control of a pan, a plate, a fork and an egg.
  In the kitchen, one for the whole floor, surrounded by the smells, they discussed the origins of the word habibi. A few kids were repeating this word, pointing at Nyda and Andrew, laughing happily. Nyda felt enthusiastic over the word, went on repeating it again and again, making kids laugh louder.
  Watching her anklets raising in a gentle motion, Andrew felt his heart offbeat. He burned the corn beef and eggs almost into ashes, and they went back to the room.
  Nyda helped herself to a plastic of yoghurt, took off her shirt, leaving a bare back nipple masking band.
  He could feel her scent through his burned out steak stench. Her nose moved slightly when she spoke.
  Andrew drew out diagrams and schemas showing the perspective flows, points of natural focus, and curves of distraction. They talked about the ways of seeing and registering pure light. Her eyes blinked. His heart continued missing beats.
  Flawless skin between gently moving bones and joints.
  Every other second his sobriety was dissolving into her smell. One inaccurate movement and she would notice, cover herself, get mad at him and shout. Anything could give him away. He mastered only to ask her why she came there, on that she eagerly said that she had become sick of New York. He nodded.
  After an hour and a half of talking geometry Nyda put on her shirt and went to the bus-stop. Andrew went with her to see her off. "What is your last name", said Nyda. He said, "Well, I would rather stay this way". She asked, eyes funnily sharp on his face, "Are you in the royalty?" He suddenly jerked off a movement, and said in a low voice, "Actually, yes".
  Nyda snorted.
  Her bus came in a few minutes, she did not make it to the academy, saw many other men and women, said this and that, and flew away to JFK.
  On her return Nyda was overheard saying the rest of the world lives in obsolete dreams. Andadsi Momsy sent her to the Ivy League.
  No wonder she met a lot of people who would eagerly concur about the purposelessness of the exterior search as well as a lot of those less eager on this one. That there's always a behind under a behind, that nothing is something, that we control our destiny, and that our destiny, be it life or death, there's just the time to fill. Her perceptions shifted rapidly, and there is no justification for saying she never found what she wanted.
  Andrew saw many other men and women who sometimes made highbrows at hearing his last name. He was a descendant of a second cousin to the Great Duke of Russia, the cousin also not without a part in Russian history, and he was brought up in a concrete jungle school in an Eastern European industrial town. The kids there turned knives on him sometimes for his name, other times for a nameless fun. They robbed, fucked and drugged each other since eleven or twelve years old, dust in summer, sloppy dirty snow in winter on their ugly shoes. At school they petted the girls, some of whom would not mind the thrill. Their class lady there was frequently reported of being noticed burning out the eyes of her colleagues' photographs. The colleagues were equally deep in the same kind of voodoo and too made occasional plain fun of Andrew's ancestry. His Jewish mom taught him staying stern. Andrew never changed his last name.
  Nyda was his first chance to breathe it out.
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