Just a Monumental Summer: Girl on the train (9 page)

              If I hate something about men, is their timing. I am never in the mood for sex in the morning, but men and their important parts wake up ready. I let Alexandru play with my body while I pretended I was too tired to wake up.
Thank God women can fake orgasms,
I thought moments later.

Alexandru went to the bathroom, and I went back to sleep. He tried to talk with me when he came back, but I pretended I was asleep. I was about to reach my limit of tolerance. I needed to be alone. I wanted Alexandru gone. 

              When I woke up about nine o’clock, I saw he’d left me a note, but I didn’t bother to read it. The opulence of the room still felt overwhelming, while I walked sleepily out onto the balcony. Observing the view and the verdant spacious lawn of this grand estate, I noticed Cristian was outside. I had found out the day before his girlfriend had just broken up with him. She didn’t love him; she was in love with someone else. Calling out to him, I told him to go grab something to eat and join me.

              A few minutes later, he came into the bedroom pushing a small cart laden with a bowl of fruit, a bottle of wine and two glasses. Eyeing the wine suspiciously, I asked him if he could bring me a pitcher of water.
Maybe Cristian is being a devious imp with ulterior motives or he’s just more innocent than he appears.
He and I sat in two of the cushioned chairs and talked. He apparently had a lot of passion for sports, but when I asked him about which teams were better or about the finer points of playing soccer, things I’d heard other men talk about, he was all but clueless. I finally just let him chatter and feigned interest with an occasional nod and an “Uh-huh, really!”

              “You know why I like you?” he said suddenly during the course of the conversation.  “When I told you my name is Cristian, you called me Cristian. I use to tell people my name is Cristian, but they’d call me Cris. They simply decide to change my name, without asking. If I wanted to be called Cris, I would tell them to call me Cris. I think you are a smart girl, because you called me Cristian. That’s why I like you,” he concluded.

I looked at him, trying not to roll my eyes. “My darling, Cristian, I wish I had your problems!" I told him with a condescending smile and a friendly kiss on his mouth. I didn’t mean anything by it, but Cristian seemed surprised by my kiss.

              Thinking it might have been a mistake, I stepped back and turned away from him, eating a juicy peach and totally ignoring him. I’d had enough of him. He curled up in his chair with an enviable dexterity and enjoyed the sun while eating sunflower seeds.

After a while, I heard his voice again, “Can I ask you a question, Mona? Why do good girls fall in love with bad guys?” 

“Because the good girls are assholes in disguise, I guess,” I told him, pretty annoyed and trying to get rid of him.

I went inside and took a look at Alexandru’s note. It said he would pick me up at six to show me my apartment. I had six hours to kill. I started to call some friends. Cristian left me alone. Then I called my mom. She knew about my life and she never disapproved of it; in fact, sometimes I had the feeling she wanted me to live that life. She would tell me not to get married and have children. “The worries will never stop. Even when your children are big, you still worry. Enjoy your life and take advantage of your youth. Time is not your friend. A woman lives only till she is twenty-five. Then, she is just running out time.” Those were the words she fed me from the time I was a little girl. I told her about the Crystal Villa but not about Alin.

She was happy for me but found a way to make me regret I called. “Do you think Alexandru will send his driver with some money or food?” I knew she was worried. It wasn’t greed. She was a poor woman trying to survive in a sick world.

I looked at the clock by the bed. Still plenty of time. I took my bathing suit and my book and asked Cristian if he wanted to join me at the beach and he said he did. He drove.

For a guy, Cristian talked too much and gabbed a long time about his ex. She was a famous athlete, national champion for five hundred meters in speed running. She cheated to win her first big prize in her hometown; she was the second one in the race and knew she wouldn’t be able to finish first. She saw a shortcut, and she took her chance. She made first place.

The girl who finished in second place saw her and tried to tell someone, but nobody would listen. The school principal was there, and the mayor. His ex won the first prize medal. One reporter took a picture with her, and the next day, she got a scholarship to the best university in the country. She never told her story to anyone except Cristian.

In a moment of weakness and remorse, she said she wanted to contact the girl and tell her she was sorry, but she didn’t. She traveled across the country and won a lot of prizes. She even went to other neighbor countries like Bulgaria, Slovakia, and Russia. She told him she’d never loved him; she simply started to date him to make another guy, who wasn’t into her, jealous. Same old same old.

“Isn’t that fucked up? It’s like we live in a giant, fucked-up place,” Cristian said sadly.

“Yep.” That’s all I could come up with and my profound reply was followed by a deeper silence.

We decided to go into the water. We jumped on each other’s backs and fought the huge noisy waves. It felt good to be around him as we were playing and jumping around. We came back and noticed someone had stolen my bag. It only had my sunglasses and my clothes and shoes, but it felt like someone had punched me in the stomach.

Cristian looked at me and said: “I told you it’s all fucked up.” 

We went to Dana’s place. I don’t know who I was hoping to see: Alin or Jony. I went back to the beach disappointed — none of them were there.              

We went back to the Crystal Villa, and Cristian started drinking and talking – too much of both. I finally got tired and left him to do his wine guzzling alone. There was nothing else to do but take a shower and go to bed. Later, I woke up to Cristian’s raised voice downstairs. Maria was trying to get him inside the house.

“You are drunk. When did you become an alcoholic, Cristian?” Maria asked him in an unhappy voice.

“I am not an alcoholic; I am an advanced drinker,” he said and he chuckled, amused by his own joke.

“I told you to drink responsibly,” Maria continued.

              “I did. I didn’t spill a drop. Ha!” He followed her outside. He looked up on the balcony and saw me. “I’ve tried everything. I am not good enough…” he said with despair in his eyes. Maria looked up, and I quickly tried to hide.

              I took my book and went downstairs. Alexandru came around six o’clock, and we drove to the employees’ apartment complex. It looked depressing, but I had a feeling I wouldn’t be spending much time there.

              After dinner, we went to Delirium, a famous nightclub in Neptune. I was happy we hadn’t gone to Sky because I didn’t want to meet anyone from the group. The security guards let us get in; of course they knew Alexandru.

              Alexandru told me he was going to buy some drinks, and Cristian took my hand and dragged me to the dance floor as soon as Alexandru was gone. From behind, I felt a guy pushing me into the dancing crowd. The music was inviting, a strange pop music mixed with sexy, dirty, lounge music. I danced between Cristian and the new guy, playing along and letting the new guy touch my body. I liked their hungry looks, which put me in the mood for a little harmless coquettish toying with them.

I approached Cristian and yelled into his ear, “Forget her! She’s a fake. She made second!” Raising my hands in the air, I let Cristian’s hands touch my body. The unknown guy behind me tried to kiss my neck. I looked around in what I hoped seemed a “casual” manner. No trace of Alexandru. This was my moment. It felt like the music slowed down. It was fun to lose myself in the rhythm and to pretend. I was wondering if this was how it felt to be drunk or on drugs. Some kind of a trance was in the air, floating above the entranced crowd. The song seemed to play on without ending.

              I felt warm, and their bodies electrified me as I closed my eyes and enjoyed the moment. When I opened my eyes, I saw a girl approaching us. The new guy saw her coming and touched my hips. To my surprise, she smiled. She joined us and kissed him. I tried to leave but felt her hand stopping me. She faced me and kissed me. Cristian didn’t look surprised.

Another girl approached him, and he started to dance with her. The girl took my head into her hands and kissed me again. She smelled like vanilla. The new guy was behind my back, touching my breast. Then she took my hand and made him kiss me. His kiss was soft, a turnoff for me. I pushed him away. He turned his back to me and kissed her, ignoring me. Deciding I’d had enough, I retreated to the bathroom to check my makeup. My body looked perfect in the mirror. When I returned, Alexandru offered me a cocktail. 

“I just made out with a couple,” I told him laughing, like it was not a big deal. 

“Really? Did you like it?” He seemed more curious than surprised. We’d had that talk; he asked me once if I was interested in a threesome. We’d had a threesome with another girl. It was his birthday, so I called a friend of mine and invited her to join us. The girl was my present for him. I told him I would consider it with a guy only if I got to choose the guy. 

“It was fun,” I said, looking at him with amusement.

The evening lasted a few more hours before our troupe made its way out the door and to the cars. Back at the villa, I let Alexandru grab me from behind. I faked a really good orgasm and moaned loud enough to satisfy any man’s ego.

Come, already. Damn, I hate you, Alexandru.

I wasn’t sure how much longer I could keep up the charade. I wished he was Alin.

It’s easy to get used to the good life. You start to enjoy and adapt to the luxury around you. I was at the dictator’s villa for four days, but it felt like forever. The bad taste didn’t bother me anymore. After I woke up, we enjoyed a perfect breakfast on our balcony, watching the indifferent majestic peacocks wandering around. Alexandru drove me to the radio station. He had to meet some people then leave for Constanta, go back to his wife and his work. I was to stay another four days in the villa and then move to the apartment. My rides from the villa were arranged; Relu or Cristian were to help me. 

              When I arrived at the radio station I remembered I’d forgotten to bring George T. his sandwich. “Fuck him and his sandwich,” Alexandru said with disgust. "You are not his slave.” He kissed me good-bye and gave me some money. He told me he would be very busy for the next couple of weeks, which I found relieving.

I was a couple of minutes late to my first day at work, but nobody seemed to care. There was one young guy with George T., drinking coffee in the improvised office, but nobody else in the studio. The show was even late. Another Romanian custom: nobody cared about punctuality. Life was easygoing. George T. didn’t ask about his sandwich, and he never brought the topic up again. My duties included filing some papers and answering calls.

George T. was comfortable with the microphone and seemed to enjoy his job. He was natural, direct, and intriguing – never boring, always arrogant. The station door was always opening and closing, and people were coming and going all the time. There was no reception, no privacy — just one room with a microphone inside. I was bored, and I didn’t know what to do. Suddenly, the door opened, and Ema showed up. Why was I not surprised to see her here? She gave me a defiant look.

“Hey, Ema. I work here now…it’s an internship,” I said hesitantly.

“Poor you!” she said sarcastically. “George T. is an asshole. Nobody can work with him.”

I didn’t say anything.

“You will get to know George T., anyway. I am not denigrating him; it’s simply the truth. He admits he is an asshole, and he takes pride in that,” she said while admiring her perfect manicured nails. She smiled at me again and finally looked me in the eyes. “Look, you will find out anyway. I’m together with George T. It’s complicated. I love him. And I hate him,” she said and seemed relieved.

My mind just exploded. It all made so much sense. “So… he is your secret lover -”

“Yes, he is. The secret lover who is causing me so much pain,” she said sadly and in lowered tone as if she was just thinking the last statement out loud.

That was indeed too much information, especially coming from Her Majesty. Yet, it was obviously true deep pain, and I felt for her. I knew Alin liked her a lot. I knew they might still have some unfinished business together. I knew Jony liked her as well. But in that moment, I discovered I liked her and wanted to be her friend. In that moment, we were both just two girls trapped in the tough men’s world. 

George T. finally acknowledged her and waved his hand through the glass wall. He stopped talking and took his headphones off. He slipped through the door of his DJ booth, and I momentarily heard some commercial or other being played before the door shut with a sharp click, but I never heard the name of the product. “I see you guys have met,” he said approaching then kissed her – with
very warm affection,
I thought – on both cheeks. 

“I met her before. She’s with Alin,” Ema told him.

I almost blushed. It looked like Alin had talked with her, which might’ve explained why she was so friendly, or maybe it was because I worked here. I didn’t really want to know why. I was simply glad she was giving me attention. Even today, I can’t explain why I wanted so badly to be around her, to be her friend. Maybe because she was all I had never been. She had a normal, loving family; she had class and style; she was independent and she was admired. Maybe it was simply because of my previous observation; we were two women in a man’s world. Maybe our shifts in demeanor were brought as much by a kind of feministic camaraderie as anything else.

“I was thinking if you want to get lunch together, we can go to Dana’s place or my place. George T. doesn’t want to be seen in public with younger girls. He keeps it very professional.” She was talking like he wasn’t there.

George T. seemed to be used to her behavior and didn’t answer. Suddenly, Ema looked at me and said, “Don’t fall in love with an older guy! Much older! I mean really old. They will rip your heart out and eat it in front of you, leaving you wandering around like a ghost.” 

Adrian, some guy who worked in there as well, saved the moment; he’d just entered the room.

“I am done at two,” I said to Ema. “Where shall we meet?” I asked her, happy she’d invited me. 

“I’ll be at the beach. I will come and pick you up.” She kissed George T. on the cheek, and then she did the same to Adrian and left.

When we met later, she drove us to her parents’ home. I had never seen a house scream money, without exhibiting luxury, but hers did. It was the only one with an additional floor. At least three families could have easily lived in that house. It looked like a normal house but with additional space, rooms, and features added over the years.  Her parents were old and simple looking like country people; actually they were older than I’d expected. Ema ran upstairs to change, and I entered the kitchen to ask her mother if I could help. She politely refused.

It didn’t take long before I began to feel awkward just watching Ema’s mom bustling about. The phone rang, and I took advantage of the distraction and retreated into an adjoining room where Ema’s father was sitting in a broad comfortable-looking chair reading a magazine and smoking a pipe. He looked up from his publication and greeted me with a friendly smile.  I heard Ema’s mom talking on the phone with someone, arguing and raising her voice. I sat down on a small sofa; Ema’s father tried to keep me company. He was dressed in a workman’s large marine overall. His hands were dirty, with short nails. When Ema ran down the stairs, her father disappeared, relieved.

Before lunch, Ema and I told her mother I was Alin’s girlfriend. Her mother looked at me coldly and didn’t answer while she pretended to be setting the table. Then Ema told her that I worked with George T.

“Did you see him today?” she asked Ema with a demanding, angry look, while putting her hands on her hips.

“Yes, I stopped at the station,” Ema admitted.

Her mother raised her voice. “I told you not to go there anymore. I understand you love him, but do you really have to follow him like a dog? Don’t you have any pride?”

Ema didn’t mind I was there, and she didn’t mind her mother either.

Her father re-entered the room. He wore a dark-blue sweater with black pants this time. His hands were clean, but the nails were still dirty. Ema and her mother stopped talking and looked at each other in a secretive way. He went to the kitchen, and Ema told me in a low voice her dad didn’t know about George T.

Her father came back with a milk bottle filled with transparent gold alcohol. He took a shot glass, poured in some of the oily liquid, drank it in one sip, and exclaimed with a very distorted face: “Damn, this disgusting stuff can kill a horse. I hate it! Do you want one?” We both quickly refused, looking scared at each other, and laughed. There was no way we would touch homemade schnapps, and he knew it.

We ate meatballs soup with crème fraiche, stuffed zucchini and bell peppers and fresh-baked bread. 

After lunch, Ema showed me the house. They were renting a part of the house to seasonal tourists, making good money. Ema’s room was huge, and her closet was enviable. She told me she got to keep some clothes after her fashion shows. She was pretending it all was normal for her, but I knew she was trying to impress me. How else can a bitch impress another bitch, if not by showing off her clothes and her shoes? She spoke about George T., telling me she was doomed from the moment he had his first show at the resort.  “I had no chance. It’s not fair.” She sighed.

It seems he was her first love. The issue was not his age. His refusal to finally admit they were a couple was tough on her. She complained about the new young girls, coming to the resort “specifically to fuck him.” She was fully aware of it; she accepted him having other affairs, and she hated herself for doing that.

I tried to say something nice. “Ema, don’t get me wrong. He is not so young anymore, and he’s not Johnny Depp as well.”

She wasn’t offended. She looked sad and told me, “Just wait. The bastard gets everyone in his net, sooner or later.”

I reflexively laughed: “Ema, I admit it, I loved his voice, but then I met him. No way will he ever get me in his net,” I said, trying to hide my disgust.

Ema was serious. “Mona, don’t fall in love with him. Don’t make that mistake. He is an expert in manipulation. I am not telling you because I am with him. I am telling you because he is a bastard. Did you know he is a Gypsy?”

I was shocked to hear her saying that. There are a lot of Gypsy people in Romania. The Gypsies I knew were lazy and dirty, refusing to work. Their children begged on the streets instead of going to school. They were swindlers and con artists.  Romanians are extremely judgmental people—not particularly racist, but judgmental. I was always surprised by the pompous pride the Romanians felt regarding their heritage. Romanians always claimed they had the best athletes, they had the most beautiful women, Bucuresti used to be the little Paris between the wars, we invented the airplane, and the famous inventor Tesla was actually Romanian.  Most of them were myths, of course.

I didn’t know George T. was a Gypsy. Frankly, I didn’t give a damn about him. But she cared a lot, and I wanted to be her friend. And friends love and hate the same people together. Somehow, I stupidly ended up promising her I would never fall in love with him. 

She told me about her job. Working as a model was not such a big deal. She would have to go to parties and entertain “fat pigs.” It was a boring job, and it destroyed her hair. The job required traveling a lot. She enjoyed it at the beginning, but now she’d had enough. I asked her why she didn’t quit, and she told me she was planning to open her own business. The job could help her gain some influential connections, and the money was not bad. She didn’t know what yet, but probably something in the fashion industry.

She didn’t tell me anything about Alin, and I didn’t dare ask her. I didn’t want to lose her. I just got her attention.

We talked a lot, mostly about her, about her life. She didn’t ask me about mine. Was it because she didn’t care? Or was she just too obsessed with her life? 

I asked her about Jony.

“He is a good friend. He drinks too much but, lucky bastard, but you will never see him drunk and losing control,” Ema said with a touch of envy.

I tried to find out more. “I see him with different girls.”

“Yep. Never twice with the same girl. That’s our Jony.”

“Jony doesn’t sound like a Romanian name.” I said

She laughed.

“Of course, his name is Ion.” I joined her, laughing hard. Ion, was not a flattering name. It was mostly used in the countryside, a typical peasant name.

“Yep. Jony sounds more appropriate for a band name.” Ema laughed.

I didn’t want her to suspect anything, so I changed the topic. “What about Teo?”

“He needs to grow up. He wastes money though he is the oldest. He should be the most responsible one.”

“Who is the most responsible one?” I asked.

“I guess Alin.” She sounded proud. “Vladi is ok, but it’s Geta who keeps track of every step he does. She is constantly there, and he confides in and listens to her. She loves him, but she is bossy with him.”

I was happy to find out more. “It seems Alin is not the typical bad-boy rock star.”

“Crazy, isn’t it? The whole band relies on him. He writes the songs; he manages the group. He is a good guy, Mona. He deserves the best.” I heard some melancholy in her voice. Or regrets?

Outside, the weather cooled off. She asked if I lived in the employees’ apartments, and I said yes. I didn’t want to show off and tell her about Ceausescu’s place. For some reason, I knew nothing I could do or say would impress her. She asked what plans I had, and I told her I needed to get in touch with Alin. She didn’t know I hadn’t seen him for days. She looked at her watch and told me we could go to his place and surprise the group with our visit.

She offered some of her clothes to change into. We refreshed our makeup and drove to the band’s place. It was located at the south end of the beach facing the shore. They were all gathered in the living room/kitchen. I couldn’t see Vladi and Geta. I saw Alin. He hugged me and gave me a kiss on the lips. We all hugged. 

“How did you guys meet? This place is small,” Jony said.

“I met Mona at the radio station. I went to see George T. After work, we went to my place. We ate and hung out, and here we are,” Ema responded.

“Which work?” Teo asked me. He was eating a hot dog placed between two thick slices of white bread.

Ema looked at me, surprised. “She’s working at the station, with George T. You didn’t know?”