***Part I***

The saga of the bed continues. I’ve been sleeping on the floor for over a month. It’s not that I’m playing princess – it’s just uncomfortable and unaesthetic. A new bed is expensive, so I’ve been scouring marketplace listings for bed frames. But even in Russian, I can’t figure out what’s what. I already bought a metal frame, but it didn’t fit. I live by the principle: 

If you need something, do it yourself. 

But this “do it yourself” sometimes turns into absurd, idiotic chaos in my hands. It’s even embarrassing to talk about. But I try to do it myself so as not to bother anyone.

Later, J says: 

• Next time, could you ask me for advice? I’d be happy to help. It’s just mind-boggling what you brought home!

• Uh-huh.

• And when will you stop being an independent woman so we can move in together?  

Well, there’s still no bed to hide under…

Anyway… I asked Kolya for his car and went to get the bed frame. I liked the backrest — it was like something you’d find in a museum, but not red velvet. With buttons embedded in the upholstery, it looked cozy for evening reading. I took it seriously. Early in the morning, I switched cars, took the kids to school on time, missed the right exit only twice, and found the right house in Glanford.

In front of the house, an incredibly beautiful bush had grown in a bright fuchsia color — so huge that it took up half the staircase. The trailer was parked in front of the entrance. Through the open door, I could see into the clean living room with its modest carpet and practical but not trailer-like furniture.

I ring the bell. Then, announcing myself to the trailer living room: 

• Hello? Katya’s here.

The door opened. There was a lot of furniture inside, the walls were hung with paintings, it was cluttered and dark. I stood in the doorway, not yet entering. There were three people inside, all men. I tense up a little, which is the right girl instinct – to tense up when entering an unfamiliar house with three unfamiliar men.

One looks like Basquiat – but untalented. Unkempt, wiry hair on dark skin, a sloppy sweater, and a gaze that seems perpetually aggrieved with the world. Not a kind look. Not the most pleasant. Another – Ginger Goodwin. A local legend here, on Vancouver Island, part of the road near Campbell River named after him. A coal miner, organizer of the island’s first labor unions, a man who fought against workers being ground to death, who hid in the woods before being tracked down and shot. Red Goodwin. This Goodwin – a thick mop of red hair, a nose pitted with deep pores, calm and detached, with mercenary interest but also an oddly sincere, engaged curiosity. He is a salesman at the marketplace.

Three unfamiliar men in an unfamiliar house with a dark living room. Something rustles inside me. I stand frozen in the doorway, studying each of them for a few seconds.  

And then the third. Our eyes meet, and I feel something – I don’t know what. My entire body, mind, every sense screams: 

Danger. Stop! Hel-looooo! There’s danger here.

I look at this third man. He looks at me indecently, immodestly, openly, and deeply – he looks at me from the inside, with such a heavy gaze. Not the gaze of a person who will cause harm, but a gaze that is simply heavy, as if completely out of this world, as if completely not from here. And I can’t tear myself away – I look at him, into him, through him. I can’t understand anything. I sense danger. I stand in the doorway, not being able to move.

I have to run, I feel it – I have to run. Back to the car. I can’t open it quickly, I need the spare key, I can’t get it in fast enough. Run to the road – there’s heavy traffic. Just run out into the road. It’s stupid and absurd. Run. What am I going to say to them?

• Excuse me, I feel… uncomfortable with you, I’m going to run. Right now.

What should I say?

Later, I realize: THIS is what victims of violence or abduction must feel. That moment of paralyzing awkwardness. What to do? Really? Run? But what if they’re decent people and you look like an idiot? Sure, it’s your life, your safety – but at the moment, you don’t think that. You ignore the red flags, rationalize the obvious warnings. You push away the right clues and find convenient explanations for obvious things that should raise alarm bells. That’s it! What do you do at that moment? What do you think? Only about how awkward it all looks?

That moment, that very moment –  why do we cross the threshold and go in? Why does a girl go looking for a lost puppy and get into a stranger’s car? Why does a girl agree to go into a dark alley to help someone? Are we ashamed to say “no”? Are we embarrassed about what a stranger might think? Are we embarrassed to hurt his feelings?

What is it? A desire to avoid confrontation? Fear of an aggressive reaction from a stranger and a feeling of vulnerability? 

A conflict between an intuitive sense of danger and social norms of behavior? Does the desire not to look awkward and rude outweigh the sense of self-preservation?

I’m still thinking –  well, not today… I have to be at work by one. I need to finally finish that story with a bed (so I have somewhere to hide, yeah). I rarely finish things in general. Give me a chance to show the world what I can do – just on my own without any help!

And I go inside.

The door closes behind me.

And no one knows what address I’m at. I just said Kolia – I’, taking his car to Glanford.

***Part II***

And I go in.

The door closes behind me. And no one knows where I have gone. 

I’m in a dark living room, literally surrounded by three men I don’t know. An irritated Basquiat, a mercenary Goodwin, and the most alarming one – with a handsome, tanned face and a completely incomprehensible look. I can’t read him and that gives me goosebumps.

I look around for a second. What a strange house. There are two Klimt paintings hanging on the wall. Two reproductions. So, the people who live here know something about art. I calm down. Above the fireplace is what looks like a painting by Saroyan. I swear, it’s just like one from the Tretyakov Gallery on the lower floor: Armenian houses in some gray, bearded mountains. I calm down even more. Now I’ll ask about Slavic roots, and we’ll find something in common. An antique table with legs, but with glass from a completely different era. I take a closer look: Klimt is strange, too bright, not gilded, but bright yellow. Completely fake, ugly, a cheap reproduction, screaming with market jargon. Klimt is somehow rustic. Yellow. And the decor, on closer inspection, is garishly “expensive and rich,” tasteless, blatantly pretentious – valuable, historical, antique, but completely out of place, hung with yellow Klimt and Tretyakov’s Saroyan. I stop trying to calm myself and feel anxiety rising inside.

In a moment of danger when one person encounters another, the surest step is to ask a very unexpected question or talk about something blatantly inappropriate. I can’t think of anything according to the danger protocol in a second, so I blurt out the first thing that comes to mind:

• What does your fake Klimt in the living room have to say about you?

The one in the dark corner with a look I haven’t quite figured out yet, with a smile full of artistry, but not fake, completely natural, laughs and says:

• You’re picking us apart from the doorstep! And you can’t be accused of tactlessness, but it’s precisely because of your sincere directness and charm that I’ll answer you now.

I was taken aback. Why is he talking like that? He doesn’t sound like a local. Canadians are polite… His words sounded in the original just like that: 

• You start picking us apart right from the doorstep! And while tact isn’t your strong suit, it’s precisely because of your sincere bluntness and charm that I’ll give you an answer right now.

The circle of men is narrowing. The one who is Basquiat stands at the door, the other two are getting closer.

In any other house, “The Kiss” painting would mean that the owner has aesthetic taste, that he appreciates the golden sophistication of Klimt’s artistic technique, that he is romantic and intimately passionate. It could also mean that the owner is interested in the history of Viennese modernism, and considering this table from the same era, one might think that the owner is creating an atmosphere of sophistication and good taste.

In any other house… Now comes the “but,” and I’ll be thrown into a dungeon in shackles from the Viennese modernism era.

• Yes, in any other house. But in this one… Klimt and all the others are just tasteless reproductions – they are nothing more than decoration and a ridiculous, ostentatious imitation of intellectual depth, which loudly proclaims a lack of artistic taste and the complete primitiveness of cultural preferences.

Ouch. I haven’t heard anyone speak English like that in a long time.

• Who are you? How dare you talk to me like that? In three years in Canada, I’ve only heard such a speech from our university professors. Did you rehearse in front of a mirror? Or is that how you normally express yourself?

Red-haired Goodwin, who is apparently the owner with primitive cultural preferences, looks at him, makes a funny movement with his head, as if squinting his brain, and utters something like “Ooohhh,” which later turns out to be a rude expression for the anus in the Bavarian dialect. I take a closer look: thick red hair – a rather untidy wig, a deliberately exaggerated wig, even an unashamedly obvious wig.

The man uttering these words is completely gray-haired, tanned, well-built, physically strong, and attractive. I didn’t notice what he looked like at first. I was lost in his eyes. His gaze was full of dramatic asymmetry, a kind of mystical depth and mystery. It gave me goosebumps, but I couldn’t look away. So mesmerizing that even when the hair on the back of your neck stands on end, you don’t have the strength to run away, and even if you know in advance that these are your last minutes, you stand there, glued to the spot, getting more and more entangled in this mysterious, frightening charm.

• Do you always say the first thing that comes to your mind?
• I can’t stand insincerity. I hate when people are faking.
• Oh, my dear, today you’re in the epicenter!

I couldn’t be more on edge. I realize that this is where my 39 years of bright life end and a dark abyss begins. But there’s more. He comes closer and closer, more and more tactless, and says:

• Kaa-tyyya? Kaaa-tyu-sha. Can I call you Katyusha?

My heart has stopped beating. It’s not even there anymore. Not funny at all! 

I just think how stupid it all is. Hiking, snowboarding, kayaking… romance… and to end my life just because I felt awkward about going into a stranger’s house. How stupid. How does he know my name? “No, that’s too intimate.” If it were the real Klimt, I might have considered it. However, judging by the regal surroundings of your home, please address me as “Your Majesty!” Ha-ha-ha. We have a friend from Russia, Katya, and we know all the variations of her name. Your Facebook name is Katerina, so I assumed it was the same name.

You’re not a local through and through. No one here knows Klimt.

• Well, yes… I’m not a local, we basically grew up in museums and theaters. Where’s my museum bed with the royal headboard?

I can see the headboard with the recessed buttons and the dismantled bed frame. Just like in the photo, it’s perfect. Bring it out! Oh… Basquiat is blocking the door, like part of the decor, with his hair charged from the outlet.

• Okay, Jean-Michel (I’m referring to Basquiat), they’re taking your museum treasures out. Leave me a graffiti mark on the bed rails as a souvenir and move aside, you slob!

I’m still on my guard because I don’t understand what’s going on at all. It’s a very strange house, littered with antiques, but completely out of place, as if everything had been haphazardly gathered from auctions and antique junk shops, but with absolutely no taste, stuck here and there in the most garish tastelessness. And his speech, like something out of a theatrical monologue, gives me the creeps, and I don’t understand why.

• Why do you give me the creeps? – Yeah, I ask him up front.

He guessed right – I say whatever comes to mind.

He laughs.

• Yeah… I haven’t met anyone like you in a long time.

Dogs run between us. I completely forgot to mention them. Two corgis and a white husky with different-colored eyes. My future bed is covered in fur. He runs his hand over the headboard and apologizes.

And then I understand everything. I understand why Basquiat is standing in the doorway. He didn’t close the door, he just blocked it so the dogs couldn’t run out. I understand why this red-haired Goodwin with a worn nose is subjected to passive-aggressive attacks – the two of them dated but broke up, and now the bed, which has seen many human sins, is being sold, and the former lovers are poking fun at each other with all their might. I look at the dogs’ different eyes, I look at this one, with his theatrical monologues, and I understand where the goose bumps are coming from.

We all – including my future bed – go out into the street. The nightmares of the eclectic Victorian-era dungeon with lion’s feet are over and seem completely ridiculous. I look at him and freeze. I just freeze. I stare at him brazenly and greedily.

• Has anyone ever told you that you are very, very…
• Well, what?
• You look very similar. Indecently similar…
• Yes, I know.
• Are you sure you’re not him? You’re the right age. You know, maybe he decided to run to the Canadian border in his old age and settle down in peace.
• I’m not him, I’m my own person.

Well, okay. In the late morning light, on Vancouver Island, in a yard with a trailer and a fuchsia flower, with a bed frame around my neck (it was easier to carry that way),

David Bowie is staring at me with different pupils. I can’t look away.

• Come on, tell me who you are. You’re not from around here. You never explained why you talk like that. Did you hurt your eye in a fight when you were a kid too?

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes, turn and face the strange.

He also stares at me intently, still with that bed around his neck, and sings this and also tells a tiny part of his story without looking away: about an ordinary American, about 70 years old, who met Red Goodwin online, got into a trailer, and came to visit him in Victoria. But it didn’t work out. Red, with Bavarian roots and a funny avatar in Bavarian leather pants, turned out to be something else. Primitive, uninteresting, and made up.

I ask him about this and that. He is naturally artistic, natural in his monologues, which are interspersed with complex vocabulary words that flow so beautifully into his speech. Beautiful and appropriate, completely unlike the eclectic jumble of his failed partner. A blessing in disguise – about life among antique furniture, Resplendent, Magnanimous – about Red Goodwin. And about me, of course, why be modest: utterly captivated… insatiable curiosity, multifaceted education… truly remarkable, and here’s another one that I understood as “You are in a league of your own.”

The headboard fits easily into Kolia’s car. The base doesn’t fit. It’s almost square. I’d take it apart, but neither I nor this couple have any tools. Basquiat has gone to paint his streets.

What shall we do?

My 70-year-old David Bowie (I still look at him with admiration – there are no such incredible copies, improved copies – not fakes) pushes Red Goodwin aside and asks him to load the bed into his truck and take it to me. Goodwin is so plain and slow, he has nothing to do in the morning. He says:

• I love chatting with you, let’s go, show me your treasures.

I told him about collecting art at flea markets.

We load the bed into his truck. We scratch the body mercilessly with nails. But he doesn’t care. It’s as if the truck isn’t even his, or he got it too easily.

• It’s okay, it’s okay… Keep going.

I’m talking about a local artist from British Columbia who humorously embodied the idea of the creation of the world in red cedar, where under the arch of a huge shell, on which the creator of the world sits – a raven, sprawled, crushed, on all fours and with his bare ass, stands a very clearly carved male figure with such clearly masculine attributes.

• And a naked butt? From behind? In a museum? Where can you see that?
• He made two versions. The smaller one is in his gallery in Vancouver. The larger one is at the University of British Columbia, in the anthropology department.

Bill Reid. If you’re interested. Raven and the First People. This sculptor from Haida Gwai has a sense of humor.

We continue to scratch the truck, loading the bed crookedly and unevenly. I tell my stories, David Bowie shares his. He now applies his innate artistry only in local theaters, amateur theaters. Such talent – well, from a distance and up close – it just burns. The way he talks, the way he moves, the way he looks… Local theaters… Why are there so few?

I continue to shower him with compliments. I can’t help myself when I really like something; I shamelessly admire every adjective and every movement. How clumsily he makes the bed, and how beautiful each of his movements is. Of course, I understand why I can’t take my eyes off him. I see J in him in 30 years. It’s like I’m looking into the future and seeing what a beautiful character he will become. And I love that future! 

I can clearly see all the beauty of aging. And the process itself no longer looks like the degradation of the human body, but rather the charm of silver hair, smiles of wisdom and acceptance, self-irony, sarcasm, and shameless admiration when you encounter beauty (I’m talking about myself, of course).

They are driving behind my car in a truck. We get out at my bear mountain and drag the bed, chatting non-stop like two old friends. He admires the view from my porch, I admire his beautiful voice and his ability to convey all the unspoken nuances of his thoughts with his intonation.

• I played in a band, we traveled all over the world. We were in the Soviet Union in… the 70s. We flew to Moscow and performed somewhere there. Then we were escorted to Leningrad. It was scary: we weren’t allowed to take a step to the side, we were literally surrounded by people in uniform with machine guns and without uniforms, with a look that could kill you with their eyes. We weren’t allowed to talk to the locals. Someone from the escort was always present…

We just chatted away. We carried the bed into the living room and left the headboard outside to be cleaned of dog hair. I took out my paintings and showed them to one and then the other. How on earth did they end up together? One is so elegant, tasteful, modest, educated, but not overly erudite, and the other is completely unattractive, gaudy, and bursting with his fictitious education. It’s so sad… It’s clear where works of art end up that we mere mortals can’t afford to buy…

At the end, we just look at each other with David Bowie. I wonder if this is a new twist in my life, something new. If I see a person who touches me deeply, often with their naturalness, honesty, openness, or mystery that I manage to unravel, I don’t let them go. I tell them right away: 

• I’m not letting you go anywhere.

But we all have to part. We probably even hug each other. We probably even start to regret that we spent so little time together. I close the door and stand there for a long time with a pleasant feeling, like when you encounter something magical, when you look into the future and it also looks magical. And most importantly, there is this pleasant acceptance and confidence that old age will not be scary. It will be beautiful. Beautiful, if you let it show itself.

***Part III***

In the evening, J arrives. He already has a rough idea of what I’m capable of. But he probably didn’t expect this. He just looks at me, tilts his head, tries not to laugh so as not to hurt my feelings, and says:

• You’re so unique, cutie. You’re one of a kind in the whole world. I love you so much.

He can’t help but laugh because it’s really funny.

I was so caught up in our conversation with those strangers that I didn’t notice I had only taken a part of the bed. Only the headboard and the frame. And the other side was still in the dark living room. I didn’t notice during our conversation that the frame was completely idiotically attached together from different kinds of slats, as if picked up at different junkyards. But the climax was – the long, crooked nails sticking out in all directions. Two on the sides, so that if you approached the bed, you would inevitably scratch yourself, and there was the third one right in the middle of the slat.

• I can’t even imagine what kind of perverts would hammer such a long nail into the middle of a bed. It must have gone right through the mattress.

J quickly took everything apart, and in the morning I took the bed back. Neither Basquiat, nor Bowie, nor red-haired Goodwin were there anymore. Only the fuchsia bush screamed with its bright tastelessness and shameless jumble of beautiful things – where they never belong.

I don’t know if it’s a gift or a curse – to feel these little moments that are completely insignificant, but so special to me in so many ways. A gift or a curse – not to feel danger and still go somewhere – recklessly, curiously, and without looking back. A gift or a curse – to look into the future and see what you want to see there. To invent things that don’t exist and believe in images you have created for yourself…

• Cutie, I really love your stories. Keep looking at the world and at every person with the same curiosity. You know better than anyone else how to say things to people that make them happy forever. Just please, when you buy something, think about yourself and think about your own benefit – it’s practical, first of all, and safe, secondly – for you and for all of us who care about you.

J goes on to say something wise, instructive, very tender, very artistic, with his special ability to emphasize intonation where emotions are left unsaid. I see him 30 years from now, and I really like what I see. And I want to share with him everything I have felt today, to convince him that old age and beauty are quite compatible. But he smiles nervously, and tries to convince me that he believes me. He is very unusual. Very! Like all of us – so unusual. How do we manage to find each other and never let go… Until we are gray-haired. Until we are old.