The Sound Recordist by Alina Gufran

                 spablab CC



The Sound Recordist


   “I have a proposition for you.” 
   David approaches while I’m in the middle of wolfing down a cream cheese bagel and the bodega coffee, the only things I can afford to eat for lunch that week, before I run back to class. His manner isn’t nervous, nor is it overbearing. He is just there. The barista with shrewd eyes and blue hair continues to brew coffee behind the counter, and a couple canoodling on the couch doesn’t move away from each other’s lips. 
   “Will you do the sound for my thesis film?”
   Without asking, David sits down in front of me, his hands gripping his coffee cup. I notice how he’s chewed his nails down to stubs. Conscious of the similarities between us, I put my gloves back on. He tells me about how it’s an experimental film, only one scene, perhaps two or three lighting set-ups, we’d knock it off in about a day’s shift. The sound has to do most of the storytelling as he didn’t subscribe to expository dialogue or trite narrative set-ups. I nod along, excited at finally being asked to exercise my one true skill. 
   “You know, you’re the only one who can handle how headstrong I am.” He stands up and sticks his hand out. I clasp it, surprised by how clammy it is even in the – 2º C weather.
   I’m flattered. I imagine myself to be this sort of mysterious, unassailable sound recordist with cool tech, the kind to travel through the Black Forest in Germany and capture sounds the frozen lake makes when skaters roller-blade on it. I could have a cool pseudonym, maybe I can create such an aura around me that if I record a single synth tone and release it on Soundcloud, it’ll get a million listens. I doubt anybody in school, or even back in Delhi, feels the same way. I’m not sure why I was drawn to recording sound. It’s not like I’ve ever learnt how to play an instrument, or like I have an enviable collection of records or cassettes or CDs. I’d only ever owned Walkmans that gave way to iPods to illegally downloaded songs to streaming websites, my sensibilities lost in a clutter of predetermined algorithms. I didn’t have a noticeable aptitude for technology or science, and working in sound required both. I wasn’t really sure of any one kind of ambition or direction in Delhi. Nobody around me encouraged any diverse interests, although a curious entrepreneurial spirit seemed to have gripped my friends. They’d quit their mediocre jobs and assimilated into their family businesses. I was free to do as I pleased, but that meant I was equally lost at sea. 
   We are learning Photography from Cinematography. The professor is a sixty-something lady with conspiracy theories and colourful abuses she likes to hurl at students when unimpressed with their answers. Her bright eyes distort behind her glasses as the projector beams images from the American Famine on the white board behind her. 
   “You,” she says accusatorially. “Tell me what you see.”
   I am not used to this sort of attention. I usually slink in and out of school, trying to attract as little attention as possible, a lesson from Delhi, perhaps. On the off-chance that somebody might address me directly, I immediately assume a tone of superiority, a cadence only those who know better can afford, to avoid further conversation. I’m not sure why I feel so out of place – maybe because I am the only brown face on campus, or because I feel stupid trying to discuss films in the courtyard, amongst the cool kids smoking cigarettes. I find a certain succour in disappearing behind the blinking recording buttons and experiencing the world through my headphones. It takes on a mystical quality, a private moment I only share with myself and a way to tune out the world. It is my shtick. And, everybody in school has some sort of shtick, an archetype they fall into so that others can understand them better, without the troubling differences and nuances that accompanies having thirty kids from Scandinavian, Latin and Arab countries congregate in one villa with Czech and Slavic professors.
   The professor clears her throat.
   “Look at it from the back of your head.” The professor has an entire theory about how as adults we have lost our ability to see clearly, with the cloud of conditioning weighing us down. We often indulge in something called ‘otherisation’ – ‘the zoo effect’, she once triumphantly exclaimed, in a bid to show exactly why Steve McCurry’s work sucked. I don’t understand much of what she says. She talks herself into a frenzy and often, whips her fingers swiftly on top of the heads of the students to get them to use their ‘mind’s eye’. I know she isn’t a very successful photographer and thus, is teaching in a small community college in Prague, a far cry from Parisian gallery halls. I don’t know how to tell her that bearing witness often also means keeping your mouth shut. That speaking up can elicit ridicule, defiance and worse still – indifference. 
   My mind wanders to David. The way he speaks without blinking for several minutes. Mostly, he wanders around our cramped school property, always dressed in a black bomber jacket. David is neither particularly attractive nor ugly. He looks like what I imagine an AI-generated image of the average Caucasian man would be. Tight-cropped blonde hair, blue eyes with fine crow’s feet and hands that do most of the talking. He can’t be found at any after-class drinking affair or smoking cigarettes with the gaggle of film kids in the courtyard. He attends every class and participates enthusiastically, eliciting ridicule from classmates. He doesn’t even hide behind his mobile phone or laptop screen. He just stands there and looks like he’s never really listening to you. There are some rumours about how his father is a Ukranian drug lord now in Swedish prison, but he speaks French and German fluently so it’s hard to verify any of this. Besides, who could verify it? Making friends is harder than I thought it would be. It doesn’t matter what you look like, what you wear or how often you party; all that matters is your ideas, the films you’re inspired by, how many hours you spend on your edit, what cinema you can reference during lessons. It almost feels like a deliberate attempt at some sort of esotericism that eludes me.
   I used to live in Delhi before I moved to Prague. Three and a half years spent at a desk job scripting reality TV, too much drinking, barely making rent and securing lifelong friendships. The newfound freedom - both heady and suffocating - that came with moving to New Delhi from an all-girls’ boarding school, pay-checks that felt fat at the time and the general lack of inhibition and control made things seem easy. But here, cocooned in a confined space with a multitude of ideas, thoughts, ways of being, speaking, eating, fucking, breathing, filming, it feels like language acts more as a barrier than a way to connect or understand. Still, I can always find solace in the singular task of recording sound. A footstep on dead leaves is a sign of autumn. If it’s slow and empty, it could mean danger. If there are children laughing in the background, it could mean warmth. The click of a lighter, the slow inhale of the first puff, the sharp exhale of breath on a cold winter morning, the faraway sound of the television, the static between radio channels, the crackle of wood splinters as a fire licks them up. Sounds that feel at once comforting and non-intrusive, like long walks with an old school friend.
   David doesn’t have a social media presence, just an account on Instagram with a bio that reads: Invertebrates For Life. He has pictures of phasmids, mantids, whip spiders, roaches, beetles. Each photo has a detailed caption about their origin, species, life span. He only ever posts a photo of his face if there is an insect perched on the bridge of his nose. Thousands and thousands of insects, one after the other. I once saw a post about a pair of dead cockroaches that he’d buried in a miniature coffin carved from oak. They lay next to one another, their spiky legs up in the air, their antennas still, their bodies bloated with death. The caption talked about how one had died from the grief over the other’s untimely death. A video accompanied the photo, where David lit a candle and closed the casket while a hymn played in the background. 
   The night David approaches me, I hurry home from school to research what mixing kits would be the best for his set-up, and lose track of deli pizza or the sound of the church bells. 
   The next day, I spot David on a bench in the courtyard, next to a young girl. She wears a bright red fleece jacket and a gold septum ring. She has a gaunt look like an errant orphan. Her face is impassive as she listens to him. I don’t think I’ve seen her on campus before. At the end of class, I see them walk out of the main entrance, her arm looped into his.
   For the next few days, I see them together everywhere. Walking in step on cobblestone roads around the school, eating soup across from one another at the nearby restaurace, huddled on the couch at the school cafe. Through fragments of conversations, I learn that she is an exchange student from a liberal arts school in America, that she’d briefly worked for Cirque du Soleil in Chicago and is now pursuing acting in Prague. Her instagram handle is @thesweatiestwomanintheworld and has videos of her pirouetting through the air, her legs wrapped around colourful silk binds cascading from the ceiling, photos of her in shiny purple leotards holding headstands for several minutes, time lapses of intricate yoga poses and circus acrobatics. Our eyes meet in the school cafeteria. Her face breaks into a shy smile and I feel like I should introduce myself but she collects her cup of coffee and walks away.

                                                                                                                                          *
   I don’t think I am particularly lonely but on some mornings, I wake up and look out at the church steeple outside my attic window and feel a sudden emptiness crawl up through my stomach and settle into my throat. I try to keep it at bay by running errands to the grocery store, smoking cigarettes on street corners while politely nodding at strangers covered in woollens and fleece jackets. I frantically re-check my schedule; there’s got to be one class, some class I could attend. I could go to the park but the grass is cold and the horizon dipped in mist, sheets of ice cover the walkways, so I settle inside my warm room and put my field recordings together, creating loops and loops of aural journeys, strange radio shows, picking up random dialogues from various movies and stitching new narratives out of them. The disparate sounds keep me company and every time I take a break and the silence begins to creep in again, I let the hourly sound of the church bells lull me to sleep. 

                                                                                                                                          *
   The night before the shoot, I realise I haven’t asked David for the script. I stay awake as the alarm goes off. It’s 5:00 a.m. on a new moon night and I feel nauseous. I feel like I am stepping into my first ever performance, a nervous debutante against whom the odds are stacked, perhaps due to the colour of my skin or just my lack of talent. I book an Uber and swear to myself I’ll take the tram more often. The cabbie regards me with an aggressive indifference, glancing at me occasionally from his rear-view as I take the empty streets in. 
   I think of drives at this hour in Delhi, where most people my age had never moved out of the city, lived in their parent’s palatial homes, didn’t need to get real jobs on account of their sizeable inheritances and had a lot of time to spare; with chauffeur driven Pajeros at their disposal and access to opulent farm-houses. It was easy to get swept up in the unrelenting attention of fairly attractive men and women; being young, hot and hip in the capital felt like an endless dream, a joyride without a destination.
   On set, the lighting set-up is halfway finished. A single 650W HMI beams a pool of yellow light onto the carpeted floor. I begin to set up my Fostex kit, securing the shooting perimeter with wires that I neatly tuck out of sight. I test the room tone, pad the walls with acoustic membrane, check the levels to cut noise. Soon after, I stand in a corner and admire my handiwork. Alexandria, who’s booming, nods at me and cracks a few jokes at David’s expense.
   David enters with a girl, and the energy of the room changes. I recognise her from the times I’ve seen her on campus with him It’s the girl with the septum ring. He doesn’t introduce her to us, but I hear him address her quietly. Elizabeth.
   “Have you read the script? Alex asks me.
   David explains the scene to Elizabeth in a hushed tone in a shadowy corner and I see her cross her arms protectively. I click record as the clapper takes his position in front of the camera. 
   “Scene one, take one.”
   The soft whir of the recording begins; I have my left index finger and thumb holding the volume button and the right one on the knob that controls gain. I feel the strain in my muscles melt away and I fuse with the Fostex kit. 
   Sound of a door unlocking, footsteps across the carpeted floor,. I adjust the gain as the footsteps come closer. A hand clasping another hand. The sharp inhale of nervous breath. The scratch of a fingernail on nylon. I adjust the levels. I close my eyes and the yellow fades into black. Sharp clang of a belt unbuckling. Creak of a couch. Fabric shifting, adjusting to accommodate somebody else. More creaks of the couch that reverberate in the studio. Mental note to dial down the reverb later. Heavy heaving and the rhythmic thrusting of a body. David’s breath is slow and heavy until it picks up pace. Elizabeth makes no sound except a soft moan that is soon muffled. A harder thrust and a whimper. Breathing that picks up pace and turns into pulsing grunts. A loud moan that trembles in its timbre and breaks in its pitch. Metallic belt fastening and a zipper zipping up. Zipping up sounds very different from unzipping.
   “What the fuck man?”
   Alex’s thick Malmo drawl breaks the illusion. I look up at the scene. Elizabeth sits with her legs tucked beneath her on the couch, her stockings askew, her glittery dress has ridden up her thighs. David gets off her. Everybody is staring. I feel like retching. 
   “What the fuck was that?” 
   Alex squares up against David. She looks like she might push him right in the chest. I think I see a moment of terror on his face before he excuses himself. The cinematographer clears his throat and the sound rings across the room and clips on my headphones. 
   ‘Ouch!’ I snap them off and suddenly, everyone gets busy again.
   The camera is wrapped and the HMI switches off. The studio is momentarily doused in darkness until white tungsten light fills up the room. Alex drops the mic stand and mutters to herself as I spot the red of the recording button and switch it off. Elizabeth is frozen on the couch like a time-stamp. I hear the water running from a tap in the bathroom next door. I know I have to check the kit to see if the recordings are in order. I finally look at Elizabeth. 
   “Are you okay?” 
   Elizabeth straightens her dress without looking at me and walks down the stairs, disappearing from view. 
   I ask for a moment of silence as I take the room tone. The electric sound of the radiator that all European rooms have embedded in their structural DNA courses through the recording kit. Everybody leaves without a word. I’m aching to leave campus and return to the familiar warmth of my attic room. Alex grabs my shoulder and asks me to accompany her to the Dean’s office. 
                                                                                                                                       *
   “What did you see exactly?”
   “David, during a scene, masturbated atop the actor.”
   “That is a very serious accusation,” Dean Thomas was busy packing up for the day, placing piles of folders and papers into a briefcase, switching off the gilded lamps in his luxurious office. 
   “More serious than what he did?”
   Thomas blinks a few times; to dispel his growing despair at being delayed, I think. His blonde hair is greasy; it’s swept to a side on his balding head and he looks sinister in the falling light.
   “Do you corroborate Alex’s account?”
   “Why are you cross-examining us when you really should be expelling David right this minute!”
   “Alex, please. I cannot automatically assume he’s guilty just because you insist he is. I would naturally need Elizabeth to come forward.” He was beginning to bumble like an idiot. 
   “Sophia, tell him.” 
   The right thing to do would be to confirm Alex’s claim. But, the fact is that I didn’t actually see anything. What’s also a fact is that David’s entrusted me with the sound for his thesis film, his degree is contingent on it and if I attested to something I hadn’t actually seen, wouldn’t I be letting him down? Jeopardising his degree even? Degrees are imperative. To get that coveted job, the nice apartment, the girl with warm hugs, the live-in domestic help to give me timely chai as I sat on my recordings. David needed the degree. 
   Also, why would the Dean believe Alex? Our intimacy coach had taught us several classes on how to navigate scenes like this between actors. I’d seen David there, rapt with attention, interrupting often with questions that were somehow drowning in depth and redundancy at the same time, eliciting annoyed groans from fellow classmates and tiring the professor. David was always trying hard to win the intimacy coach's favour, but only managed to elicit thinly veiled contempt. The only real crimes David could be accused of were having an inflated sense of self and going on tangential conspiracy theories about Josef Sudek and the Nazis. 
   “Wasn’t his film about Me Too?”
   Dean Thomas clapped his hands with a dramatic finality. 
   “Well, that settles it then. We’ll wait for Elizabeth to come forward. You girls are coming out of a long shoot. I’d suggest you go home, take a shower and get some rest.”
   On our way out, Alex brushes right past me, furiously texting on her phone. I call out to her to grab some dinner but she pretends she doesn’t hear me over the call of the wind and turns the corner. 
                                                                                                                                      *
   The next morning, I collect my coffee when the barista speaks to me for the first time in nine months. “They have a committee hearing at six today.” Her plastic-rimmed glasses sit at the edge of her nose like she’s ready to judge me. I briefly wonder if she harbours a certain revulsion for the strong, bitter smell of coffee beans roasting, as I often did when I walked along the abandoned tram tracks with my Fostex kit in tow, ears perked for sounds of insects or an underground rumble but picked up nothing but the sharp howl of the wind. 
   “You were on David’s set?” 
   I reach into my pocket for forty-five crowns. 
   “Why would they keep a committee meeting at six pm on a Friday?”
   She looks at me like I’m crazy. I heard she fell in love with an Indian boy who wouldn’t have sex with her unless they got married. They broke up three months later, and she’d taken to residing in a gruff anger ever since, her arms working methodically at the Nespresso machine and frothing milk with an uncanny focus on the hundred cappuccinos she served in a day. 
   The bell above the cafe door tings and David enters. I slip a fifty into the barista’s hand, nod at him politely and slip out. As I light a cigarette outside, I see him skip his order, turn around and stride towards me with purpose. The kids in the courtyard take a break from their smoking and flirting and watch him in silence. I stub the cigarette hurriedly and walk towards class. He falls into step with me.
   “How’s it sounding?” 
   “Good. Pretty good. Very clean audio,” I speed up. 
   “Want to go over the audio after school today? Maybe at yours?” 
   “What about the committee hearing?”
   “What committee hearing?”
   Before I can respond, he disappears into a classroom. 
                                                                                                                                        *
   Alex leans over, halfway through dissecting a scene from Mulholland Drive.
   “What you did yesterday was fucked up.” 
   I ignore her.
   “The girl is sixteen!”
   “She’s sixteen?”
   Alex looks at me like I’m scum. Who’s she to judge? Alex doesn’t even pay her own tuition; her Government takes care of it while I have to take a loan out to study here, make a million rounds to the immigration office in the hope of a visa extension only to get a meagre one month post-graduation to hunt for a job. I sit in a corner of the remarkably Soviet-looking office, sinking further into the tattered chairs where an overweight Czech man, smelling of beer, smoke and sweat, breaths down on me and venomously whispers, “indická děvka,” which translates loosely to “Indian whore.” I’d taken a four-week course on spoken Czech and it has mainly helped me navigate taxis on drunk nights, the underground subway system and racist immigration officers. I highly doubt it would help me get a job.
   “You better come to the committee hearing.”
   At six o’clock, I stand alone at the tram stop. I am hungry but I glimpse a bunch of students, including Alex, hanging at the panini place near school, deep in discussion. I walk right past, my scarf covering half my face. I’m sure I can scrape together a soup or a sandwich from the remnants of my fridge. I go to Instagram and realize that Elizabeth’s profile has deactivated.
                                                                                                                                      *
   In Delhi, my attraction to men was always distinguished with a baseline revulsion. It’s as if I knew exactly what they were capable of. The lives of my friends were wrapped in the validation they sought, their fragility about their sense of self exacerbated by the judgmental eyes of the world. The dress they wore, how much leg or cleavage they decided to show, the colour of their lipstick, how good looking they were; every day they carried such accusations within themselves. The ones who escaped it look back at that time with an equal measure of detachment and horror. The ones who stayed annihilate themselves with doubt every day.
   I remember when Nayna, loosely called ‘a party girl,’ accused a local DJ of sexual assault. I don’t exactly remember the drama but I do remember the comments section of her post on Instagram littered with people who didn’t believe her, who blamed her for her short dresses, leading men on for free drinks, for drawing too much attention to herself. I remember some women being outraged at the prospect of a predator in their social circles, and others defending him and consequently, themselves. Nayna's accusations were lost in a din of comments, likes, and shares, as her assault became a topic of debate. Her sizeable following on Instagram fell by a few thousand. I spotted the guy a few months later, at another party in Delhi, smiling and gyrating. Nayna moved to Portugal with her boyfriend, cut her hair short, started a zine on women in music, and owns a cat now.
   At the tram stop, a chilly wind blows around David and me. I can feel passers-by watching us, confused by the racial overtones of a shifty white man and a nervous brown girl. I take a step backwards to increase the distance between us but David comes in closer and speaks about his edit. My focus shifts to the yellow, crusty tartar between his teeth, the cold black of his eyes, his hands waving frantically through the air, his pitch rising with excitement. I only come around to the present when he mentions Elizabeth. 
   “Elizabeth’s acting left a lot to be desired but I don’t blame her, she’s only sixteen. I thought I’d prepped her sufficiently but clearly not.” 
   He looks away and kicks a pebble. 
                                                                                                                                        *
   A few hours have passed since we’ve been cocooned in my apartment. The sun has dipped beyond the horizon. An empty box of take-out pizza lies discarded on the bed alongside several cups of coffee. I’m experiencing some sense of disassociation, like I am watching myself listen to the sounds I’ve recorded from a corner of the room.
   “It’s excellent. Probably the best sound anybody’s done this year. Don’t be surprised if you win the award.” 
   I feel my muscles loosen as relief cascades down my spine. It’s been a miserable nine months. I have no friends, the weather is relentless, I run out of money every month and the man at the cafe where I eat lunch every Sunday never smiles at me. For a brief moment, my impending student debt, the pointlessness of wanting a job in Czech Republic, breaking down on the subway occasionally, being stalked to my apartment in the middle of the night, getting my ass smacked by an assailant at a drum and bass club, having a pen-knife wielded at me by a man with a scar on the subway, and sleeping with a guy I met off Tinder who wouldn’t pull out when I asked him to — all that seems to fade away briefly, like a distant memory, only apparent in its feeling.
                                                                                                                                          *
   In the basement of an extravagant Sainik Farms villa, turned into a cocaine den for some dubiously inviting party – replete with average DJs, men with coin-sized pupils, the faint smell of warm beer mixed with sweat and unabashed staring, I’d bumped into a man on the dance floor as I stood swaying in front of the enormous speakers, techno thumping through the sound-proofed room. He wore thin-rimmed glasses, a scruffy beard and a blue ikat kurta. He rocked from foot to foot, moving to the music with a kind of nervous energy. I wanted to chat but didn’t know how. So, I resorted to staring at him, hoping he’d catch my eye and walk over. The Delhi cold was particularly biting. Gulmohar trees for as far as the eye could see. Flashes of headlights as Beemers and Range Rovers whizzed past me.
   He spoke to me at the kebab stall outside. I don’t remember the conversation too clearly now but I remember being taken with his voice, his hair, his coy smile. He worked as an investigative journalist and was doing a story on Delhi’s biggest slum. I spoke to him about the odd jobs I did to make rent. He told me about his dying cat and his favourite female authors. I spoke about my estrangement with my parents since their unannounced separation. He tutted in sympathy while his orb-like eyes rested on me. I remember feeling warm at being seen, a strange sense of separation from the rest of the party crowd; this connection was special and I was lucky to have found it in the most serendipitous way. 
                                                                                                                                        *
   On the bus ride to a chalet David’s uncle owns, I look at the vast swathe of snow that covers the landscape. The sharp spikes of the linden trees stand tall, devoid of any leaves or warmth. No birds swarm the sky and no animals emerge from their burrows. I’ve never been invited to spend a weekend somewhere with somebody without the idea of sex implied. But the country has its own charms and I’m sick of the stifling perfection of the city centre. I’ve agreed, though I don’t know how to explain my sudden kinship with David to Alex and the rest on campus. Maybe, if we down enough Becherovka, I can get David to talk about what actually happened on set. I feel like I am betraying my crew members, even Elizabeth.
   We turn up at the edge of the chalet, embedded in a deep, dry forest. The setting sun casts an ungodly shadow over the looming structure. Peeling paint exposes red brick, several rooms lead to a hall-like area piled with antiquated objects. Soon, I am called to chop blocks of wooden logs piled outside. It is numbingly cold and the wind is an icy blade across my exposed cheeks. I labour through the chopping, eliciting a corny laugh from David’s uncle, Marcel. Marcel is a robust man with deep-set eyes, deep wrinkles and a stern look which dissipates with a wide grin. He is absolutely delighted to meet David’s exotic friend. It’s only after much convincing on our part does he stop referring to me as his ‘přítelkyni,’ or girlfriend. He asks me if Indians play football and if we have plumbing systems in our homes. Later, I check Instagram on the weak WiFi connection: Elizabeth’s profile is still deactivated. 
   David skins the fresh carp as we sit in the kitchen, the orange fire licking the insides of the soot-lined chimney. Marcel tells me about working his way up from being the bouncer to the owner of the first few clubs in Prague. He talks about the legality of hard drugs and the meth and alcohol problem most people seemed to have. He swigs from a pungent plum liqueur as he talks about the rising rape cases. My eyes feel lidded with the wood and cigarette smoke. I lay my head back and survey the chalet, which evokes a strange, contrasting image – one entrenched in the brutalism and sparseness of the Soviet era, another drenched in the excess of the Christian period. David soaks the fish in butter, garlic and some Indonesian herbs Marcel picked up on his travels. My mind wanders with an old Gypsy tune and my eyes close gently.
                                                                                                                                       *
   On that cold Delhi night, after a shared kebab, the man offered to drop me back home. I sat beside him, conscious of our sudden closeness as he rolled a joint beside me. His driver remained in the front seat, the engine on and the cool air from the AC wafting through the car. His car smelt of citrus and whiskey. I wondered if I smelt of sweat. We shared the joint in a kind of weighted silence. I told him where I needed to be dropped off and as the car glided on the main road, I took in Delhi’s expansive vista. Clear, wide roads, stray dogs guarding metro stations, yellow street lights collecting in pools. Everything was accentuated in my mind – the party, the crispness of the night air, our connection. He leaned in without much warning and his lips grazed my neck. We began to kiss as the driver looked straight ahead, trained not to remind us of his existence. 
   Kissing turned into heavy petting and his hand slipped under my shirt. I stopped him gently and tried to come up for some air. I was feeling decidedly dizzy when his hand snaked under my skirt. I felt the edge of his fingertips across my crotch. I sprung backwards - too soon. He seemed to have not heard me. He continued kissing my neck and caressing my thigh. Maybe I said it too quietly. His grip got stronger on my upper thigh, fingers pressing in. Stop. I barely hissed the word out. His nails dug into my muscle. From the corner of my eye, I saw that we were crossing a friend's street. I jumped out of the moving car and hurtled onto the sidewalk. I bruised both my elbows and lost an earring as I broke into a half-sprint to her main gate and the car stopped a few metres ahead. I rang the doorbell thrice as he poked his head out of the car, yelled ‘cocktease’ and slammed the door shut. The car disappeared around the corner as Medha opened the door. 
   Half-asleep, she fixed me some ginger tea. Yoko and Ono, her two shih tzus, curled up like furry balls around her feet. I clasped the mug and felt its warmth radiating into my body.
   “So?” 
   She stared at me – I knew I didn’t paint a very wholesome picture with my smudged mascara, smeared lipstick and boozy breath. 
   I told her about the party, about how I lost my friends in the crowd, how dated the music was, how average the kebabs were, that I didn’t tell her before but I got into film school with a full scholarship, that my parents were separating, that I loved her and would dearly miss her, that Yoko was almost human and could sense that I was sad, that I forgot my apartment keys and had to barge in on her like this. She noticed the hickey on my neck and the pressure marks on my thigh. Then she threw me a blanket, turned her back to the wall and went to sleep, her gentle snores melting into the sky as it broke into a pinkish dawn.
                                                                                                                                        *
   I come around to David at the stove. He’s engrossed in the fish as I book myself a cab. From the kitchen window, I see Marcel on a phone call. The cab turns around the corner and floods of all us with an almost Biblical yellow light. On my way out, I give a confused Marcel a quick hug, tell him how long the fish needs to be steamed and slip into the cab. As the cab drives out on the icy path, I watch as my jagged breath fogs up the windows. We turn the corner and the chalet is swallowed by the night sky. 
                                                                                                                                        *
   From the cab, I dial Medha’s number. It’s four a.m. in Delhi.
   “Sophia?”
   I speak to her about how I miss painting in her studio together, sneaking in and out of her bedroom window, how I finally tried tofu, about waiting for her on the bathroom pot as she bathed for too long, flitting about gallery openings and jazz nights, about how difficult it has been to find any real friends here and about what really happened that night I turned up at her doorstep. ​


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Alina G’s writing spans across the disciplines of screenwriting, nonfiction and fiction. She is an alumna of the 2019 Dum Pukht Writing Workshop. Her work has appeared in Out Of Print Magazine, Himal Southasian, The Bombay Review, The Bangalore Review, Helter Skelter, The Swaddle, Livewire, Livemint, Sisterhood Magazine, amongst others. She’s currently working on a novel in short stories, an excerpt of which is forthcoming in Jamhoor Magazine. 

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