She arrived with the vee of her coat showing a thick woollen sweater. It was the first substantial garment that he hadn’t bought her that he’d seen her wearing.
When she took off her coat the sweater was very short – covering half her midriff, and she was naked from it to her boots. She posed again, but not like a model. She put her fists on her bare hips, spread her thighs and thrust her pubes at him.
“Does this look nice? This is what I needed the money for.”
His bile rose again. She’d had another piercing – the lips of her sex. A row of tiny golden rings glittered at him, four to each side. There was a thin gold chain threaded through them, sealing her. A tiny gold padlock dangled between her thighs.
“Here’s the key. There’s just one. It’s yours.”
Stuart had to force himself to come in her mouth.
That night he had no work. He walked the frigid streets, head down into ice-particles that travelled horizontally, until he found her home. There was no answer. He took note of her address, returned to his hotel, made a tiny parcel of the silver key and three one-hundred dollar bills, and mailed it.
It was two months before they called him back to Toronto. The parcel was waiting at the Sheraton’s reception, “Return to sender. Addressee moved. No forwarding address.”
There was no message waiting at the office. The phone didn’t ring at six-forty.
The next morning he scoured the streets between King and Queen, looking for a “place that did piercing, and tattooing”.
He found one just after noon, with dusty windows and curly cardboard displays of digital watches.
“I’m looking for a woman, a customer of yours.”
The gnome with tobacco stains on his moustache said, “Yes?”
“Her name is Virginia. I don’t know her last name. You did some – work.”
“Tattoos or piercing?”
“Piercing.”
“Ears, nose, nips, navel or pussy-lips?”
“Er – nipples, and er – lips.”
“Skinny woman? Big boobs? Red hair?”
“That’s her. Do you have an address? She moved you see, and…”
“Against policy, I don’t have it, anyway.”
Stuart pulled out a fifty.
“I really don’t got it, but I tell you what – she’s coming in for some more work, today, three o’clock. You want to come back?”
“Could I wait?”
“Sure. Come in back. There’s magazines, and I’ll get you some coffee.”
The magazines were all “trade”. The little man brought bitter coffee in a mug with a Canadian Pacific Railways logo. Customers came and were ushered by an enormous fat man into tiny curtained booths. Sometimes needles buzzed, sometimes there was the sharp smell of alcohol and the occasional, “ouch”.
There was more coffee at one and two. It was hot in that room. That – and the antiseptic – and the thought of what was going on in the booths, made Stuart start to feel nauseous. It was a struggle to check his watch. At three the little man came back again and took a seat opposite Stuart.
“She’s late,” Stuart said, mumbling on a thick tongue. “You ain’t been so nice to Miss Virginia, ‘ave you?”
“Huh?”
“Miss Virginia. She made a commitment to you. You dumped her.”
Stuart tried to stand but his knees were jelly. “What do you – you mean?”
“You should get back with her. She’d like that.”
“I – I brought the key.”
“That’s nice. Tell her yourself then.”
“Wha? She’s…?”
The fat man jerked the curtains to a booth open. Virginia was there, standing naked… No, sagging naked. She was hanging from… Stuart’s gorge rose. Virginia had been pierced again, a lot. There were rings through the flesh at the backs of her wrists, and behind her neck, and her ankles and… and they were all on cords – cords that hung down from a framework high against the ceiling.
The fat man pulled on a dangling cord. Virginia’s head lifted. She smiled at Stuart. “Hello Stuart. You’ve come back to me?”
The fat man grunted, “Yes, he’s come back to you, Virginia.”
Stuart toppled off his chair. The gnome produced a pair of tailor’s shears and started to cut up the legs of Stuart’s pants. The fat man jingled a palmful of golden rings. His other hand held a pair of peculiarly shaped pliers.
TAROT by Florence Dugas
translated by Maxim Jakubowski
Noon was gently moving towards two o’clock. As it was already summer time, no one could tell: somewhere in the world it’s always noon.
It was as if the sun had given her a sign and she hadn’t returned to work.
The sound of her heels against the stone of the road and the side pavement is like a clamour of victory. She supplies a rhythm to the city, and her thin, long legs move, map and order its topography, like a defiant army marching ahead under the new found sun, celebrating the coming of spring. It is good to feel the heat spread across her skin, caressing her knees like two warm hands, even moving up between her thighs now no longer under the protection of nylon. The sun almost draws a crown of gold around her head, as if she is a chosen one. From time to time she even swings her head either way to the side, like a racehorse in heat. Saying “yes” and “no” to her invisible mount while her heavy stream of hair undulates across her back. She straightens her back, holding her stomach in and the flow of her hair swims gloriously in motion.
She walks as if leading a victory parade.
“Parade.” The very word echoes studiously across her brain, to the rhythm of her heels, and it amuses her to invent more meanings for it. To parade is more than just walking at random, no mere promenade where you never know where the next step leads. “To parade is to move like God across his garden,” Brisset used to say. It even makes her look a little drunk, dizzy from her newly found freedom. Walking along, parading, as if she were about to become the heroine of some medieval ballad sung by a troubadour below the window of a captive king. All this sun is so unusual. Walking as she does, head high, she can no longer hear Paris surrounding her, just the sound of her heels clicking along; nor can she see the cars and passers-by, just the winged Genie of the Bastille, flying high up there close to Icarus. She is on parade: she’s come out of her shell, the whole world is on offer to her, her steps are conquering space, taking her into a whole new dimension.
The clock on the Gare de Lyon betrays an impossible hour, that even the sun denies.
“The next train to leave? Well, you’ve got the Paris-Vintimille, in ten minutes. Seats? Oh, as many as you want. Non smoking? Isn’t the weather lovely? The sky is so blue. Yes, I understand.”
The railways guy sitting behind the immediate departures window is actually not bad-looking at all.
It’s true, there are few people on the train. In her compartment, just five men: four of them are playing cards while the fifth further down appears to be sleeping already, with just his neck and short greying hair visible from her vantage point.
With all those empty seats available, she chooses to sit on the right hand side, so she can enjoy the sun for the rest of the afternoon.
She feels blandly happy, sunny, watching all the stationary cows outside pass by.
The train does not stop before Valence.
She walks out onto the platform to get some movement into her legs. A two-minute stop. Up there, the sun
