Madam Stella, who was rummaging in a pantry next to the bed, noticed and said: “All of that’s from the garden.” Her hand emerged wrapped around a jar. She set it down next to the butter. “Young man, I require your help,” she said. Reluctantly, Maya let go of Max’s hand and he followed the Madam into the next room, from where they returned with three backless stools, Max’s lips pursed as he fought to keep his above ground. Madam Stella carried two while her dying cigarette bounced between her lips, the smoke wreathing the room.
“I live like this because I want to,” Madam Stella replied smokily to Maya’s bewildered expression. Max bounced onto his chair in exhaustion, his palms on his knees like a worker, resting. “I made ninety-four thousand dollars last year.”
Maya laughed nervously. Even a witch had to brandish her salary if she was a Soviet witch.
“Now, who wants to begin,” Madam Stella said, unscrewing the jar. The room was filled with a sharp smell that made Maya sneeze. She knew the mixture was slimy and gray without seeing it, perhaps because the odor was of the swamp, of seaweed.
“How about you, honey?” Maya said to her son. Max sat on his little stool with concentration, as if he needed to gather strength for the next task.
Madam Stella made a ts-ts-ts noise with her tongue. “Don’t you know that ladies go first?” she said to Maya. Finally disposing of the cigarette that had expired in her mouth, ash tumbling to the floor, she lowered herself heavily to the second of the three stools, which miraculously sustained her, and gallantly directed Maya to the third.
“This way to the gallows?” Maya said, again laughing anxiously.
“Sit, darling, sit,” Madam Stella said impatiently. Though the Madam was endowed with supernatural curative powers, she did not have supernatural levels of patience. “Your son needs to see how the game is played.”
Maya sat down. Immediately, she was assailed by a fantastic weariness. She wished the chair had a back. When the jar of gray slime appeared at her nose, she was surprised to discover that it was neither slime nor gray, but a harder, less viscous black substance that smelled like freshly paved highway, as if it had altered its scent on its journey from table to nose. Perhaps she had altered in sitting down. She tried to shake off foolish thoughts — she was so tired. If she planned to help her son, she had to be alert — she had to figure out how to sleep a full night.
Maya peered into the jar, then at Madam Stella, wondering whether the treatment was contraindicated if you weren’t the one with the problem. She remembered Soviet people who had been helped by a healer but had then taken to this doctoring with indiscriminate zeal, developing new ailments or diminishing the efficacy of earlier treatments. But Maya felt she could not bring this up without reinviting Madam Stella’s impatience and closed her eyes. Soon, she felt two fingers at her temples, each smudged with the gray substance, abrasive as a cat’s tongue. She smelled nicotine and knew Madam Stella’s face was just inches from hers, her voice reaching Maya as if muffled in cotton, the scent of cigarettes mixed with lipstick and breathing.
“Everything’s resting,” the voice was saying. Against Maya’s temples, the tar was like a salt scrub, and Madam Stella’s fingers — again Maya was reminded of a cat, for Madam Stella’s fingertips were as soft as the pads of a paw, only the sharp edge of her fingernails occasionally nicking Maya’s hair. “Everything’s resting,” Madam Stella intoned. The veins under Maya’s temples eased into a washed-out slumber — she saw a road whose markings had been wiped out by a long rain — and the bone under her eyebrows pillowed into soft clay. Maya wanted to open her eyes and check on Max, was he finding this strange or frightening, and she would in just a moment, a moment.
The fingers at her temples worked in repeating circles so that she could imagine them whorling new channels into her brain. The words intoned by Madam Stella were blurring into meaningless sound. Maya shuddered. Her embarrassment at being ministered to had vanished. She was so disarmed, so satisfied by the touch, that she actually felt wetness between her legs. She wasn’t sure when it had started, like looking up to realize the window is slicked up with rain.
Maya remained distantly aware that she was visible to her son, but she couldn’t resist the recollection coming upon her, as if she was being walked into water and was willing to drown. Maya slaps Alex’s belly, as flat as her own. “Hey now,” he says sleepily. “It’s your cooking. Don’t cook so richly. .” “I’ll move it,” she says, sliding her hand down to his penis. He shudders slightly. She squeezes it like an udder. “Ow, Maya. .” She squeezes harder. He grows hard in her hand, like a balloon filling. “Take mercy. .” he says. “Think of our children.” She moves down over him. “No, up here. .” he says unpersuasively. She holds him in her mouth, feels him fill out. He breathes deeply and mutters something. His hands come up on her forearms and he drives her up toward him. Alex is stronger than she is and can make her go where he wants. She wants that. He brings her lips to his and mashes them with his own. Then he notches her up by another foot so that his tongue is on her breasts. She feels the cool, slick trail of his tongue around her nipples. “Revolutions around the track. .” she says. “Rubin is after the gold. .” He yanks her up again. She slams into the headboard. “Ow, ow. .” They dissolve in laughter. “But don’t stop. .” “When they bury me,” he says, “the stone will say, ‘He loved belly buttons above all. .’” “This belly,” she corrects him. “He loved this belly,” he repeats obediently. She continues moving above him — his mouth is on the fleece between her legs. “I am going to tell you a secret,” he whispers, lifting his mouth away. “The girls I’ve been with are all bare, but I prefer it this way.” “Put your mouth back on me,” she says. Her thighs are next, her knees, her shins, her toes. He plucks each toe with his lips. “You can’t take them,” she says. Finally, he lowers her onto himself, his legs underneath her. They rock back and forth. She buries her nose in his hair, then hiccups. They giggle. They talk about something — shelves? They slide up and down a little to make it easier to come — they try to synchronize. As they get closer, they fall away from each other, though they try halfheartedly to hold on. She feels him hit the walls of her like a warm rain. She twitches painfully in an attack of her own. They remain inside each other as Alex goes soft. “You first,” she says. “You first,” he says. “I’m not moving,” they say at the same time. They laugh.
Maya’s underwear was soaked, and she felt a cool bracelet of cum exit and trace a half-moon around her leg. She was being led somewhere — in life, not the dream. Maya felt her arms and legs meet a rough surface, as if she was being laid across the back of an animal. She swam, an anchor on each leg. She sank and sank, and though she was aware she could make a reach for the surface, she did not. She went where she was being summoned, down, down, down.
She dreamed. Her family was at the dinner table with guests, though they weren’t familiar to Maya. She eyed the group from her post behind the cooking island. Where was Alex? Not at the dinner table. Maya checked again — he was not there. As he was not in the bathroom, nor away on some trip. In addition to Eugene, Raisa, and Max, the table held three men and two women. But which man was her husband? She recognized none. How could she be married to a man she couldn’t identify? And why did Eugene and Raisa — Eugene was orating with a glass of wine in his hand — find this so untroubling?