The year 1995
The lights were turned off, and a drunk DJ in the corner was playing some unrecognizable music. She was walking down the stairs in a short skirt and ten-centimeter-high heels, looking at each step carefully as if she wanted to check every one of them. She had drunk vodka for the first time. The high heels didn’t stop her from dancing all night. At 4 a.m., he would take a taxi to come and wish her a Happy New Year. They had told her he was waiting for her.
Everyone had already gone down; it was time for the after-party. Only the most persistent was left to drink the remaining vodka and juice. There was no more beer since midnight.
He was waiting in a suit, a little disheveled, which was unusual for him. He was standing outside, apart from the crowd, with his hands in his pockets, looking at her. She approached him and stroked his hair. He pulled her towards him and kissed her.
“I’ve drunk too much. It’s best that I go home.”… she was turning the thought over in her head, at the same time listening to him stop the first taxi…
Her ears were ringing. Not from the vodka, but from the idea that he was finally hers… Him. Blond. Light-haired. Just as she described “her type” of man. Young. Actually – younger. But her restless spirit and willingness to do everything she imagined at the moment didn’t count the years…
They got into the taxi. He took her hand and said, “Let’s go to my place!”… She was quiet. She wasn’t even cold. She was just quiet, enjoying the finished story, the end that was approaching… and then she would see what would happen to him. Probably nothing. The only important thing is that she achieved what she wanted.
The city smelled of gunpowder. Firecrackers could still be heard somewhere. The taxi stopped. He took her hand. She started shaking from the cold… She hit the taxi door too hard. He wouldn’t let go of her hand… They climbed to the first floor. The apartment was cold. It was almost five in the morning.
He closed the door. He kissed her neck, shoulders, stomach… They took their clothes off quickly and snuggled under the blanket even faster.
The next thing she remembered was a woman’s voice from the other side of the door saying, “It’s long past noon. Lunch is on the table.” She pulled the blanket over her head and wrapped her legs around his. They were warm. Legs. And shoulders. And breasts. They fell asleep embraced. Lunch had gotten cold… her mother had gone somewhere.
She walked down the stairs from the first floor. The taxi was waiting. She drove to where her sneakers, jeans, sweater, Coca-Cola Light, and friends she grew up with were waiting for her… They didn’t hear from each other anymore. That New Year’s didn’t have a rerun. She didn’t want it to. The circle was (not) closed.
The year 2017
She looked at someone’s Facebook photo with her dog. It was five in the morning; she was lying in a hotel bed in the center of Paris. She had no idea who that someone was. Someone who likes dogs, probably.
It was Sunday at home. She was walking her dog… waiting for someone else to call. That someone else didn’t have time to call. He usually made his schedule solely based on his own needs. He only called her when he needed a psychologist or a feeling of having emotions towards someone. Somehow, it was easier for him to sit with her, have a drink, tell her all about the big project he was burdened with at the company where he’s been working for years, all the while telling her how much he loves her and how he doesn’t know what to do with himself… She tried to convince him to go to a real psychologist because today, she thought, it’s not embarrassing, and he was an enlightened intellectual who needed a compass… No, no. She doesn’t want to be his compass; she wants to be a girl. Just a girl who will play, tease, sing children’s songs, kiss, sleep without pajamas, drive aimlessly, walk, wander without a plan, suddenly leave on a trip, … not lead intense conversations and plan trips months in advance… and interpret other people’s troubled emotions. She wanted to skip that day…
Sunday. He was standing in the room, not paying much attention to her. She was looking at him out of the corner of her eye. As if she would melt and disappear if she looked him straight in the eye… As if she was going down the same steps from twenty years ago, in the same heels, going outside because she knew he was waiting… Her heart was beating stronger and stronger. And he was just there. His hair wasn’t disheveled. He didn’t grab her hand. They didn’t kiss. She didn’t even open the bottle of Honey Jack Daniels he brought her… He was just there… but her steps, even though she was barefoot, were as if she was back in those same heels. Impatient. Desire spread in the air… Her ears were ringing like twenty years ago. He wasn’t blond. Nor blue-eyed. Nor even “her type” of man… Although she had long since given up on those Aryan types…
Instead of, as twenty-two years ago, her petting his hair and him grabbing her hand, she soon decided just to let him sit down. In her head, she stumbled down the steps, barefoot, fully awake… but not completely sober. The taxi didn’t wait. There was no nightlife…
This time, she didn’t want to close the circle. She wanted that Sunday to have an encore… like any good Sunday has… it doesn’t matter if it’s New Year’s. For her, it was new. Twenty-two years later… and completely new and without the desire to close the circle… With a memory in her head and her heart in her hand… She went to sleep. Counting (New) years… with a smile. And as if that was the only thing that mattered…
