The door to Alla’s four-story building was ajar, so Sergey walked up the staircase without buzzing her. The homey smells of cooking intensified and grew more complex with each flight of steep stone stairs. Sergey was able to make out onions frying in fat, boiling cabbage, garlic, a rich meat dish. By the time he reached the top floor, Alla’s floor, his stomach was growling, and Sergey realized he hadn’t eaten anything since this morning’s dry cornflakes.
The doorbell made a short, angry buzz. Too short, or too low, because he could hear only silence behind the door. Sergey’s defiant energy left him, and in its place came dread and embarrassment. He stood with his index finger suspended over the worn white buzzer, unable to press it again. He had a memory of standing just like he stood now, useless and ridiculous, in front of a woman’s door back in Russia, his hands busy with a dripping bouquet and a carton with cake as he pressed the doorbell with his shoulder. He felt naked without the cake and the bouquet and wished he had something to offer other than the four twenty-dollar bills in his pocket. He was about to turn and leave when he heard approaching steps and the door opened.
The hall was dim, and it took Sergey’s eyes a moment to adjust, before he was able to make out the form and face of the woman. She was stocky, with a red, wrinkled neck, blotchy face, and smudges of mascara in deep creases around her eyes. Her short hair, dyed black and highlighted with dandelion yellow, was gathered into a bristly ponytail. “Hello, I’m Alla,” she said, extending her hand for a shake.
As he stepped toward her, Sergey felt woozy, almost panicky, with disappointment. It was hot in the apartment, with a thick smell of cooking, and his head started to ache again. “Nice to meet you,” he mumbled, taking her damp, puffy hand in his.
“I’m not dressed yet,” Alla said, and began untying the flowery apron she wore over a purple T-shirt and blue track-suit pants. “I just need to turn the stove off. You, Sergey, go into the bedroom, relax, take your jacket off.” When Sergey was already heading down the hallway, she asked him to take off his shoes. “This is Masha’s apartment, not mine. She has carpet everywhere.”
Sergey made a stop in the bathroom, where he combed his hair and tried to pee. His head was starting to pound. Maybe he could tell Alla that he had a headache and leave, but then he thought how ridiculous this excuse would sound. He opened the medicine cabinet and found a container of Tylenol behind a disarray of near-empty nail polish bottles. He swallowed two pills, washed them down with water from the faucet, wiped his chin with his hands, wiped his hands against his pants, and trudged to the bedroom.
Alla was already there, crouched in front of the closet, looking for something on the bottom shelf. “Sit down, make yourself at home,” she said to Sergey. He took his jacket off, wondering if his armpits stank, and sat on the edge of the bed. The carpet in the room was unusually dark, a color called, as Sergey knew, Smashed blueberry. He tried to cheer himself up by thinking of a better name but couldn’t come up with anything other than Blood turning blue. The room was cluttered with dark polished chests, some adorned with crystal vases, others with large framed photographs of a bosomy blonde without a neck. Masha, Sergey guessed. Masha liked to be photographed in restaurants, hugging a sickly-looking bald man and raising a champagne glass in her hand.
“We can take care of the money now,” Alla said, having emerged from the closet with some bright, crumpled clothes spilling over her arms. Sergey saw a red bra, a pink tag still attached to it on a thread.
“That’d be seventy-five dollars. I always say, Money first.”
Sergey felt a fleeting relief. This was the part of the procedure that he didn’t doubt he could perform. He reached into a pocket of his jeans and took out his four slightly crumpled twenties.
Alla put the clothes onto the bed, took the money, and counted it. Then she sighed and looked at Sergey. “I don’t think I have any small bills to give you your five bucks back.”
“That’s all right,” Sergey said.
She nodded and put the money into a drawer.
“Do you like rock music?” Alla asked next. He said that he didn’t mind it.
“I’ll put something on for you while I’m changing.” She pressed buttons on a battered stereo system, picked up her clothes, and disappeared into the bathroom.
Sergey was prepared to be hit with heavy metal or hard rock, but he heard instead, after a scratchy silence, the intro to “Heartbreak Hotel.” His feet were tapping against the carpet when he heard the toilet flush, and suddenly he became aware that Alla was just a few steps away from him, changing. He imagined her fastening her brand-new bra and then bending over the sink to apply fresh mascara. Lenka put her mascara on while bending over the sink in only panties and a bra. But he didn’t want to think about Lenka now. Lenka was far away, and getting farther every day. Alla was right here. Sergey shifted on the bed, stirred by the certainty of what was about to happen.
But when Alla finally emerged from the bathroom, wearing silver sandals, a black miniskirt, and a dark-red shimmering blouse, it seemed too soon to Sergey. Her lips were thickly smeared with plum lipstick and contoured with a darker shade of plum. She looked heavy, uncomfortable, and aggressive. Sergey’s head began to throb harder, as if it were gathering the strength to fight off two Tylenols.
Alla asked him something, but he couldn’t hear her over the music.
“What do you want?” she repeated, trying to outshout Elvis.
Sergey didn’t know what to say. The truth was that he wanted it any possible way, but not now and not with Alla.
“I personally prefer blow jobs,” Alla said. “Quick, easy, and no mess afterward. Do you want a blow job?” Sergey nodded, thinking that the blow job had two obvious advantages: he wouldn’t have to do anything, and he wouldn’t have to see a lot of Alla while she was at it.
But instead of approaching him, Alla stepped back into the narrow space between the bed and the chest of drawers and snapped her fingers to the intro to “One Night with You.” When Elvis began singing, she started dancing. Her thin, short legs looked wobbly as her high heels sank into the carpet. Her hips swayed back and forth and her head bobbed. She occasionally would turn away from Sergey, doing something to her blouse. He noticed that each time she turned back to him she had undone one more button. Her breasts weren’t large, not even filling the cups of her new red bra, but the straps were fastened too tight, so that the material cut deep into the flabby yellow flesh of her stomach and shoulders. The color of dead chicken, Sergey thought, as Alla stepped closer and closer to him. He wondered if it would be rude to shut his eyes, then shut them anyway, just as Alla knelt before him on the carpet.
Sergey wasn’t sure how much time — filled with rough sensations, waves of Alla’s sharply sour smell, images of huge human teeth closing around him, and the pounding music — passed before Alla finally let him go and moved her head away. Could have been five minutes or fifty. “What’s wrong?” she asked Sergey, out of breath. “Are you feeling okay?” Her face was sweaty and red, with lipstick smudges on her chin. She massaged her jaw and moved her stiffened neck left and right.
Sergey’s whole body felt long and empty, drained of energy, incapable of anything except producing a headache, which was now throbbing even harder.
“I better go,” Sergey said, zipping up his pants.
“Maybe you need to rest a little?”