Four Seasons for Serena

Chapter 1. Fall.

There were four of them. All in a row. Like shots of fermentation on the scratched bar. Each one different but equally able to infect. The brain. The heart. The hand.

I had just returned from Russia where I never noticed a season. The snow never stopped. I should’ve gone to Moscow. To Saratov, but I never left the north. I tried to skate, but she did so on frozen lakes and the fear of going through ice never escaped me. A G.I. Joe PSA haunting me in the country the G.I.s were created to defeat. I was told it would be okay. That the ice was a foot thick. I was told a lot.

I could never figure out why she wanted me on the ice so bad. She looked more beautiful dancing a silhouette pirouette alone than my bending ankles could ever create. Her hand always open. Waiting to hold something. I joked it should be a snowball. She didn’t laugh. Skating alone depressed her, but watching her was just too exhilarating to join her.

So the time passed. Snow, religion and ballet. Old flags that had meant so much. Abandoned bus stops made of flying concrete along roads cut by vegetation. The Russian tundra. In it the history I only knew from cartoons. She called me naïve. She called me stupid. She called me careless, but I called her Serena alone because I could say nothing to refute.

I never learned the language. I was there three months. Long enough to know why it wouldn’t be four but not long enough to want to leave. We shared a cabin. It had four rooms that were all empty except for ours. She said it used to be owned by her grandfather and that he and her grandmother used come up to the cabin every winter with three other couples they were friends with until they had kids and they couldn’t afford to spend money in the winter. They’d drink and play cards. Hunt and cook. Have wonderful sex that filled each room till dawn and the light from the snowdrifts awoke them again. Breakfasts that lasted all day because staying in nightgowns, listening to old music and the snapping of bacon, the popping of eggs, were just to good to get dressed for. They had jobs they left for several weeks because you couldn’t lay brick in the snow. The concrete just wouldn’t move. Wouldn’t spread. Malleable was a word I learned from listening of such times.

I’ve never laid brick. Never thought about it much but during that time I couldn’t stop thinking about it. What it must have been like for her grandfather and father. When growing up there were four seasons. For her there were two. Working and non. Bricklaying and not. Money and none. My father worked in an office. The climate had no effect. The train may have sounded louder, older with every creak of cold, but the office still had lights, still had fuel, and at home we still had food.

To make up for it, Serena ate more in the winter. Much more. Did so to forget about how she used to starve. How she used to cry at first fallen snow where as I smiled and laughed and ran outside to bear witness. Our memories fought each other throughout my time with her. I wanted to be nostalgic, wanted to talk about how fun it was when a winter storm made the power go out. How my family and I would light candles and play board games. Ate hot dogs cooked over the fire and left the lights out when the power came back on. I still owned park place, but my father owned boardwalk and neither of us were budging on our asking price.

She didn’t use candles to play board games. Her father would never allow it. Candles weren’t any freer than the bread she was eating. Nor was it free now. Or the eggs and cheese and steaks and pasta and chocolate that we indulged in every moment the snow didn’t melt away. She had stocked the very last bit of cabinet space with food and wine. She loved sardines and wine. It was disgusting to see her eat it but equally arousing. I’ve never seen a woman eat so much. Drink so much. And every ounce of weight she gained went to her tits and her ass where it was toned and firmed walking through the feet of snow. When she spun and flew on the ice she had just shoveled clean. I tried to eat like her, tried to drink like her but could never keep up. Consuming what she burned every time the door was open to the cold or closed and on top of me. We could hear the wine in our bellies slosh like waves against new England rocks, creating just as much energy, just as much drive, just as much water on beds once dry before the sexual movements of thighs and tidal waves saturated the entire cape and couch.

The floorboards creaked as we wrestled at sunset and cracked as we broke free at dawn. Waking in sweat gone cold and dreams replaced by a naked embrace of warming thighs by un-kept hair and open mouths breathing the same air.

This went on and on so that time seemed to have stopped and it wasn’t even the winter solstice yet. The shortest day of the year was still an evening away.

Chapter 2. Summer.

Summers in New England are moody. Temperamental. Like an undisciplined child. Crying and crazy one day, quiet and calm the next. With a gloom in between, never knowing what might come next. Sun or rain. Heat or cold. Bringing overcast skies and humid un-breathable air till she acts up again.

The bugs come out when the porch lights turn on so that the light over the garage casts shadows on the basketball hoop of racing infecting dots. It’s no place for Russians I've been told.

We met in a subway station waiting for a train that never wanted to show up. She was furious and spoke to me as if it were my fault. But I let her get angry with me because her face was red and her breasts flexed with each curse she spoke in Russian. She said Russia’s trains were a hundred times more reliable and how they had lost the cold war she’ll never know. Said I was weak like this country. Asked if I could carry lumber. Carry steel. Carry snow the height of a silo. I listened and looked, her breasts moving in waves and I wanted to reach for them and calm the storm. But she soon calmed herself as the train finally arrived and when we boarded she sat down next to me.

At first she apologized. But I assured her she had no reason to for she was right, I couldn’t move snow the height of a silo, though I was certain I could handle the lumber and steel. She laughed and revealed white teeth, one front tooth overlapping its twin. I wanted to lick it. To floss it. And my attention was obvious for she immediately smiled with her mouth closed.

I introduced myself as Patrick and she said it fit my face, said I looked like someone with brothers named after saints and parents named after relatives. I told her she was right and asked her name. She said it was Serena after her aunt and I said we already had one thing in common.

Her hair was as straight as spires atop her churches and glossy as the marble inside. Strong and rich and hiding the frailty within. I told her that her hair was the darkest black I’d ever seen and she said she knew. Said it was the only heirloom she had of her mother. Her hands were her grandmothers and eyes, her fathers. Her nose, no one knew. It was narrow and small yet both her parents had noses that reached everything before their bodies did. I assured her it was a fine nose even if bastardly. She laughed again, not hiding the crooked tooth or her father’s green eyes that never seemed to blink.

Our stops were several apart and I was running late for work. She said she had nothing to do all day so she would pass the day at the park. Walking around ponds called lakes and sidewalks called trails. I was jealous and offered to take her to lunch. Perhaps bring her lunch in the park. But she said lunch was hours and hours away as if lunch was nothing at all. As if lunch wasn’t something she watched the clock for, counted the minutes for, spun in a chair with eyes closed and dreamed for. The halfway point of a meaningless day at a meaningless job. I said I’d bring her favorite food. She said they didn’t sell it in the states. Then I’d bring her twice as much of something else. She declined again but said she’d be at the same stop the next day and again the day after that.

So the next day and day after that Serena and I rode the train together before she disappeared for the day and I sat in an office at a desk and stared at a calendar that didn’t turn.

Each day for a month we rode the train together in the morning with no real change. She spoke of Russia and animals and food. Her three favorite things. She had two dogs growing up though her father never claimed them. They had to sleep in the shed and during winter months she would sneak food and old blankets out to them. She would stay all night out there if she were allowed, but once it got dark it grew too cold and her mom would make her come in. Then each morning she would go back out there before school to make sure they had survived the night, which they did for eleven years. Survived till she was sixteen and the gray one named Slava died. Then just four days later the brown one named Mischa followed.

I listened to her stories with such interest that I would nearly miss my stop and she would have to remind me to get off. I took it personally that she remembered my stop so well, remembered to make sure I got off. That I was only allowed to be with her for those ten minutes, that she had no desire for more, and with every lunch and dinner offer turned down it proved my doubt even more. So much so that I stopped asking her entirely.

Late summer. Late sun and haze changed that. Just before the autumn turn she showed up at my stop one night. The days were still long enough and the clocks had not yet changed. The sun was still above when I would descend into the tunnels. But this time the sun came with me for waiting on the platform was Serena in a yellow dress with red flowers and brown embroidery that tied like a corset in the back. She was stunning and when she spoke I could say nothing back. All my research about Russia disappeared. My list of conversations vanished. Then she said she wanted to go home with me.

That night we tore the room apart. We broke vases and frames with people I hadn’t spoken to in months. Left each other red and breathless to leave each other red and breathless again. I had never smelled something so fragrant than that which filled my nostrils from between her legs and under her arms and neck. Like roses and onions and cinnamon, wet as melting snow, and flexing as a dictator. Her ass molded and moved like life and I grabbed and held on for my own. Slipping through sweat and sanity as she screamed in a tongue that spoke more than sucked till I grabbed her hair and she moaned and filled her mouth with more. I didn’t know if I was coming I didn’t know anything at all. I knew pale tits with red nipples that swayed and splashed against skin so I grabbed and pulled and she grabbed and pulled till scabs and scars were meant to form. Meant to remember and mold. And the next morning when the sun bounced off the glass across the alley to the broken glass on my floor I remembered. My dick lost in her pubic hair and her face hidden in my neck.

Hours later she woke. Before she put her clothes on she told me she was going back to Russia. She was going back to her parent’s cabin to watch it for the winter. She said she wanted me to come, said she needed me there. Then she put her clothes on and wrote the number to the cabin on my wrist. Red sharpie. Told me to call it the following weekend. That’d she’d be there stocking the cellar. That all I needed to bring was myself. And she kissed my neck and left.

I left the place a mess till I spoke to her again. Broken glass, paintings with holes, lamps with no shades and clothes laid torn on the ground, buttons rolling endlessly under the bed. She left her bra and I slept with it like a blanket. Smelling it as I dreamed at night of a land to large to locate and wilderness to wild to yield. And her. Her and her and her.

She picked up on the fourth ring. Spoke in Russian. Then in English. Told me to arrive before winter. Told me to stay till spring.

Chapter 3. Winter.

The snow of a new year wasn’t any colder than the snow of the year before. Once the temperature reaches a point you forget temperature exists at all. Forget leaves were ever green or red. The barren trees, like uncles to old to tell jokes anymore, stood alone holding the weight of four frozen oceans and rainforests a million miles away. Like cousins they’ve never met, seen only in Christmas cards every other year. They look nothing alike, don’t even share a last name and you’d be okay if you never met the picture at all. But you don't worry, because like the trees of Russia and Amazon, you’re a million miles away.

In the trees were animals asleep with food in their mouths and when I compared Serena to them she put another piece of pie on her plate. Girls at home would cry and close the door to the bathroom but not Serena. She took pride in gluttony and biting her thighs made me want more pie as well.

Fridays we wouldn’t have sex. We wouldn’t eat meat. We would talk very little for she prayed all day in Russian. “God” was the only word I understood other than “sorry”. These two words were in every sentence it seemed and it would drive me mad. She was a stranger on Fridays so I’d disappear to the Russian landscape. Walk in all directions. Towards the waters and the fields, but never towards the woods. They were too dense and I feared I’d never be able to find my way back. I couldn’t read the stars. Had no idea how to navigate. Without boundaries created by treaties I’d never know where I was.

Fridays were the days I’d think I was crazy. Fridays were the days I thought about my family. My brothers and friends from childhood. About my parents and the animals I had growing up. About the day I beat up Anthony Silvestri on the bus. Broke his gold necklace. He was poor. I saw his house when he was dropped off everyday. Couldn’t get over the guilt. Couldn’t face him. Started to save money from cutting yards and shoveling driveways to buy him a new one, but I knew he’d never take it for that would hurt more than my fist ever did. So I spent the money on chocolates and teddy bears for valentines who didn’t seem to care. On basketball cards I didn’t steal.

Winter days were short and I didn’t walk after night. I envied wolves but feared them. So I’d head back to the cabin out of breath and thirsty for refreshment. Serena would have the fire going and she’d be on the chair next to it reading the bible. Page after page. She read it at least twice while there and once I jokingly asked if she was re-reading it for ideas to juice up the sex. Perhaps we needed to incorporate more lashings. Her response was in Russian and I stayed in another room the rest of the night.

I grew up Catholic. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Serena was Catholic as well, yet we couldn’t relate religiously. I’ve never sat and read the bible so she called me a heretic. I called her a zealot. Since then we left the subject alone and on Saturday morning I’d wake with her supple tits in my mouth. For six days we’d feast on food and flesh and all would be normal again.

Tasting her pussy, sucking her insides as if the wetness would at some point end. Scratching my eyelids. Popping my eardrums. Spreading her ass cheeks as I spread her pussy with my tongue. She sucking my dick as if to punish a heretic, my head throbbing against her vocal chords to quiet the inquisition. Till I lubricated them to sound off even better than before like a singer drinking olive oil and honey. My fingerprints on the inside of her ass crack to be hidden when she stood like the scratches of my eyelids when I looked.

We would lie there breathing in the fragrance of each other’s come, which was hardening at the base of my shaft the same way hers hardened on my beard.

When we awoke the wine was poured again and the lard of the frying pan melted like the debauchery of another week.

I was never sure of the day till it was Friday. Therefore I was never sure of when we were leaving. When I was leaving. When I’d have to or get to, depending on my mood, go back to the states. Back to civilization. Back to where I couldn’t live off of wine and pussy and steak. Watching her ice skate. Watching her eat. Watching her start the fire and shovel the walk were things I couldn’t get enough of. I’d watch with my shovel as she cleared another foot until she made fun of how weak I was because she did everything a man was supposed to do. And like so many other things, I couldn’t refute. I was weak.

I think that had a lot to do with why Serena and I were so crazy for one another for the time we were. She needed to be stronger than me. Stronger than whomever made her come. Stronger than whomever made her need. But I was equally less in need of such strength. I didn’t need to know if I fulfilled her. She would ask if she made me come harder than anyone else. I never asked in return. I truly didn’t care. So she made me come harder each time. She wanted to fuck in every way possible and I obliged every idea. Every request. Once from behind with half her body outside in the snow and me and her ass up high, pussy below, in the cabin. When I fucked her I could see the top of the abandoned barn off in the distance. It was about a mile away and I had walked there many times by myself and with Serena. With her we’d fuck. Without her I’d climb the rafters and jump into the drifts of the snow as if I were a kid. One time I jumped and went in as high as my chest and it took fifteen minutes to get out. I told Serena this afterwards and she cried fearing I’d die before the spring thaw. And when I finally left I thought about those tears and the new ones she was shedding and realized she thought I might as well be dying by flying away.

I told her that like her father and grandfather I had to return when bricklayers could lay bricks. She said I couldn’t even mix the cement, mix the mortar, that I couldn’t do anything without her. But it was she who could do nothing without me and the more I realized that the more I wanted the thaw to come. I told her about Groundhog Day in America. About how if it saw its shadow it meant spring was coming and she said she hoped it never left its hole. I told her it had to. It always does. That it’s televised. She spoke in Russian. Hands trembling, black eyelashes fluttering, darker hair being run through and twisted between her delicate fingers. Long nails that never seemed to break.

I’d change the subject. Tell her about my childhood. About when I would race skateboards like bobsleds down giant hills and run into mailboxes and ditches and bushes. About how I’d steal lumber from construction sites to build tree forts. About throwing crabapples into the sky at night to watch the bats dive bomb after them in a cold-de-sac I haven’t seen in years. About how I’d get boners in class and not be able to stand when called on. About snow forts and report cards and brothers’ first cars and their girlfriends that I masturbated to. About creeks and fences I’ve crossed and climbed and the reasons why. Running from. Going to. Just because. And all the things before and after. Talked until she stopped trembling and she was laughing at me and saying I’d never have made it in Russia, and wrestled me and held me till I gave in to her embrace and sleep.

One Friday an icicle fell from the roof. The cabin was silent except for praying so the crash of the icicle shattered the calm. Serena looked outside and to me and back to the bible. I heard “God” and “sorry” more than ever before and she asked me before I went on my walk to please stay away from the barn. Her face as pale as the snow and eyes a desperate fading green. I promised her I wouldn’t.

That day I took off my hat and gloves when I walked, even unbuttoned my coat. The closest abandoned bus stop had puddles over mud where snow once was. And the trees, no longer covered in ice, stopped cracking when the breeze blew through their flexing branches.

When I returned to the cabin Serena was gone. She left a note on the bed that said,

I can’t bear to see you pack so please have it done

by the time I return. Went to ice skate one last

time.

Love, Serena

Chapter 4. Spring.

The Spring brought the first long days. Brought black women with large hats celebrating Christ’s death or re-birth, depending on the day. They held palms tied into crosses and extras falling from their purses. Palms imported from Florida. A whole farm dedicated to Easter. And Spring brought the four women standing before me.

One of them was wearing a hat. She was black.

One was white, the other yellow, the last, brown.

None of them were anything like Serena. I hadn’t said a word to any of them but one can tell these things. I didn’t want to think about her. Didn’t want her Friday night religion. It was Friday again, but not a “God” to be heard. The four spoke differently and the yellow one I could hardly understand. Same with the brown. The black and white sounded un-educated and I was beginning to think perhaps I understood Russian after all. They were from the south and east and north and west. From countries and capitols I had forgotten existed since before Russia. Since before Serena.

Since returning there was nothing to really think about. Since returning I enjoyed the sun and fragrance of the soil and pollen that made others cough and cry. Inhaled it all to breathe out the ballet. And it worked so well I nearly forgot her name. I needed to forget her name for I was realizing I was wrong all along. That I needed her as much as she needed me. Maybe more. I was all ego trying to build an id. I slowly stopped returning phone calls to friends. Waited by the mailbox for post cards. Stayed awake as if I’d miss a call from the future but nothing ever came.

I didn’t care for much of anyone’s company. There was work that I returned to where I watched the breeze of the trees through a window I couldn’t open. Watched faces of co-workers react to phone calls, the flicker of the computer screen like radio waves bouncing off their designer glasses. Salad bars and coffee bars. Carb free and sugar free. English spoken by women to silent to shit. To grab would hurt. To spread would slice. But time is time and black holes will occur.

As was my life. So I searched. Searched for winter. In bars and bookstores. In restaurants and races. Horses with numbers and more women in hats. At clubs of tight clothes with Sprite’s called vodka and juice called wine. Mints called meals and dishes called desserts. But always unfulfilled. I wanted to feast on pussy but the spring girls were always shaved. Nothing but bone to grab onto. Dick touching teeth never tonsil. And never coming or caring. Fucking spread legs with eyes closed, the heat never warm as snow.

And I continued to search and drink and eat. The air condition spinning the meter to bring back the season, but seasons don’t come back they just return. Different temperature, different time. Any money I made was spent because I couldn’t get a hold of Serena. It was like she never existed. There was no trip to save up for. No summer to expect and winter to see. Russia was not in any new woman I bed. And it wasn’t in the four women before me.

I had just another minute to choose. They were getting annoyed at my delay to pick and their “mother” was getting feisty.

Choose one, anyone will do you right.

And I had them spin. And I had them bend. And I ordered another bottle of wine. I drank from the neck till I felt snow on my breath and when I opened my eyes I chose the black. I had never bed a black and she at least had a full patch of hair. So I told her to lose the hat and say not a single word. I told her I would fuck her from behind and that she had to share the bottle of wine. She said whatever I’d like and I said that’s the last she should speak.

She took my hand and led me to a room with a door that creaked like a train. Tearing tapestries hung from the walls and blocked out the diseased windows. The yellow lights were dim and the red chandelier glass created rubies over the black girl’s chest. Dozens of red nipples and I tried to suck each one. Her skin tasted like anise and her breath was as thick as fog. So I drank the wine and she drank the wine and poured it over her tits to taste again. But I could taste the anise through the wine and I wanted anise no more so I bent her over the bed and ran my hands through her pubic hair.

It scraped like splinters and would cut through my eyelids instead of scratch but at least it was hair, I thought. Then I thought about the summer before. Summer, fall, winter and spring. North, south, east and west. Mathew, Mark, Luke and John. And Serena praying at the fire. I’m sorry god, I’m sorry. Then I entered the black prostitutes pussy and flashed back to my last night in Russia.

Serena was the same silhouette I fell in love with the first day she ever made fun of me for not wanting to go on the ice. She spun and swayed with ballerina appeal, never slipping or stopping. One motion into another and another after that. The melted beads of snow and ice reflecting the falling sun like the beads of sweat off her brow. Her hair in a ponytail as always trying to catch up to her as she flew over the ice like liquid. She had her eyes closed at times and I wondered what she saw. Was it she and I among the frozen land forever? Was it she and I lying with our heads in each other’s necks running out of air but not wanting to move and wake the other? Or was it moving to breathe and waking the other to reality. Waking them to show that it couldn’t last forever. That at some point the snow would melt and the grass would breathe and the trees would bloom again. Awakened by late rains and early suns, by the air of a million miles away.

When she opened her eyes she saw me standing on the ice, just a few feet away. She smiled through glossy eyes and put out her weakening hand. I looked at it and at her. Looked passed her to the barn and the horizon far beyond. Then to her red nose, sore from wiping the snot away with her coat sleeve. I skated to her, forgetting about the ice below, and took her hand in mine.

She asked me if I was packed and I said yes. She said we’d leave in the morning and I said okay. She said she’d love me always and I said I know you will.

The end.