Moscow
Lennie Roeber-Tsiongas
The Actress is resting her hand on the edge of the sink. She doesn’t care about the water and congealed vegetables and flakes of rot at her fingertips. She takes the same hand, now slick with sink shit, and moves a string of blonde behind her ear. She’s talking to a 35-year-old boy. Sometimes – when the Actress isn’t looking – he sits in the living room eating Chic-fil-A with holy fervor, sucking the salt and MSG from under his fingernails, and then smelling them. He and the actress are probably dating, or on the verge of dating, or thinking about what dating would do for their loneliness. It’s good to have someone. People who have someone are always saying. God knows you save on rent. People who have someone are always talking about their purchases as ‘investments.’
The Actress is starting a book club, and she doesn’t care if you join. The Actress is wearing a blazer with shoulder pads and a matching skirt that falls above two shapely knees. The fabric strains at her waist, and I think about later in her room when she’s undressing by herself or with company, revealing a pink strip of skin where the wool dug in. She’s picked Norwegian Wood for the first book club because it’s long and dense and likely to go unfinished. The Actress is drinking a martini with a chunk of lemon; made for her by 35. She wants another. He balances his phone on a beer can, measuring the gin into a bottle cap and trying to keep her attention over the din in the room. She looks bored, but she doesn’t care to meet new people. There are only so many kinds and she’s met them all. They ask what do you do, and where are you from, and anything I might have seen? When she introduces herself, they say, what a funny last name. The Actress doesn’t trust Ancestry.com with the inside of her cheek. She’s Welsh and Finnish, and she already knows the year her mother’s mother entered the country. 1926. There are only 32 other people with the same last name as her in the Continental United States. One of them is an account manager in Detroit with two kids and a dog called Lumpkin. She found his Facebook and thought about messaging to find out if they were related, but then she didn’t because what would that information give her that she didn’t already have? Two and a half extra nieces.
The Actress grew up in Moscow, Idaho, right off Highway 95. She dated two boys in high school; one she called Boss, the other Spit. Boss was the one she lost it to, but she always found him slightly pathetic. He’d call her baby in this squeaky voice, and she hated when he placed his hand on her lower back to guide her around, like he was corralling cattle. She spent most of high school draped under Boss’s arm and fighting off a yeast infection that he made sure kept returning. On weekends she’d go to parties at the Sigma Chi house, which is where she met Spit, so-named because he liked when she did just that, open-mouthed and waiting. He’d drive them out of town. They’d park under a water tower and drink shooters, and she’d tell him about going South, about getting out of Moscow, and the idea was so luminous it didn’t even feel cliche. At first, she didn’t tell Boss because she was afraid of how he’d react. She was afraid he’d cry, and she’d have nothing to say to him. She’d rest a hand (she’d have to) on his heaving, pathetic shoulder, and the humiliation of the event would cast its lengthy shadow along the whole road of her life, and she’d never make it anywhere. She was afraid she’d marry Boss out of pity. In a twist of disappointment – that she pretended felt like relief – they both stopped calling her. She went South after all; shame is stronger where it’s hot and sticky, and California is cool in the evenings.
35 goes to tap his phone so he can read and decide whether to shake or stir. The phone tilts too far and the beer can clatters off the counter in a spray. The Actress opens miscellaneous drawers until she finds a towel, and she hands it to him but doesn’t kneel. She looks out the window and takes a sip of unfinished martini. She misses Moscow, but thinking about it makes her feel the same way she feels when she sees a three-legged dog. All bite, no bark. Going back is out of the question. If she burns out, which she won’t, she’d rather move to Tempe, or Little Rock, or Needles. What a funny idea to wind up in Needles, where it’s too hot to step outside, gas is almost eight dollars a gallon, and everyone is trying to leave as quickly as possible. The Actress would never wind up in Needles, because she hasn’t lost it yet. She doesn’t have to worry about her looks, or changing her name for search engine optimization. She doesn’t have to worry about winding up married to a man like Boss. She doesn’t have to worry about the cudgel of monogamy, or owing herself to anyone, or rubbing his back in concentric circles until the palm of her hand is numb and tingling against the cotton. She thinks about her maybe-uncle in Detroit, how he’s squandering their shared name, or maybe he knows something she doesn’t. 35 is done scrubbing, and he grins at her with exertion-reddened cheeks. She could have him, but then again, maybe that was where everything would go wrong. At first, just a little less lonely, a little less rent. Then one day you wake up to a lawn that’s green and groomed and empty. The dog has to shit, and it’s your job to let him.
Lennie Roeber-Tsiongas is a writer currently based in Los Angeles, CA. Her short fiction has been published in Vernacular Journal, and her nonfiction – book review and editorial – has been published in Hobart Pulp and Currant Jam Magazine. You can find more of her work at vignetta.substack.com.