I slam the door. I step in gum. I forget my keys. I stop rushing. Not only my car keys, my house keys I left inside too. I’m late to everything now. I’m nothing now. Sitting on the car waiting for the spare keys, I email a music publisher in Peru. I want to license a song from a Peruvian psych rock band. Watching the gangster classic “Mean Streets” the night before last made me think of Soho, which made me think of a club called Sway, which made me think of whatever happened to dreamy British Tom who showed me this band in the first place. I’d see him all those Sunday nights and sometimes Wednesday, and sometimes Thursday, never weekends. Now he is lost to me. 

I was seeing Nikolai at that time. He was called Nik or Kolya. Dwelling in so many personas is difficult, possibly. I’ve never had a nickname. He had a cowlick on his left eyebrow that made him appear devilish but not dangerous. He had a Moses affect on crowds. Nikolai was an avid reader. He made me check out Russian books at the local library for him and keep them at my apartment in the city. He didn’t ask. He made me. He seemed like a hologram. Like dad, he wasn’t a whole person to me. I couldn’t speak to him in his first language. Nikolai and I didn’t communicate well and not because anything was lost in translation. It was because of my selective memory, which always benefitted me. We talked at each other a lot. I asked him questions he wouldn’t answer. He told me stories I didn’t respond to. Our moods never aligned. I appreciated  Nikolai and loved him deeply. I never told him to what end. He was icy and patient and accepted the little exhibitionist I was. “Cold blood. Impossible to love” and “He tried.” He said that about me. I’m not saying that about myself. At the time I thought he was pretty dumb to attempt to make drama with me. Instead he should have been enjoying the amount of blowjobs he did. It was an above average amount as only a 19 year old is so silly to agree to.

“I’m going to have dinner with Tom from Sway. Is it okay?”
“You do what you want.”
“Okay. Bet.”

That exchange is all you need to know about my fidelity, technically.

Sway was dark, close to the Holland Tunnel. It had an understated Moroccan theme, probably poorly executed in the light of day. I associated decent-for-New-York free cocaine with Sway. Followed by after hours with Prodigy from Mobb Deep. Nik had befriended all types of gangster rappers and guys who talked about where they did time upstate same as Ivy leaguers compared prep school experiences. I had a new designer bag every week. Mom was worried I had become an escort. He sold guns. I lived in denial at that time. I taught those degenerates to play  Bridge and convinced the owner of a certain Italian restaurant to let us smoke in the backroom. That upgraded my status from Nik’s girl to my first name. If I wasn’t snorting or smoking with them it was painful for me to even breathe in their presence. The way my body looked freaked me out and I wanted to be invisible except to Nik. He wanted me to be a present with a bow he’d unwrap. So I did that. I liked to do what he wanted in theory.  

After the after-hours we’d go back to Brooklyn as the sun came up. There was a preferred bodega on we’d hit for dried mango to go with caviar. One of his friends showed me this combination and it’s all I ate, if I ate. Now all their faces blend like a shitty palette knife painting done in neutral colors. It initially surprised me you could buy caviar at a bodega, but Sheepshead Bay was another country practically. People were walking to the train. People were walking their kids to school. People were walking their dogs. People were walking to work. We were buying beer unless we waited for the liquor store to open. We probably just went to Cherry Hill gourmet and not a bodega for caviar but I’d like to remember it that way. I loved the swans across the way on Emmons Avenue. I know I would childishly request to see them floating peacefully across the brackish pond. I try to cry thinking about that time. I never knew it would fade into a forgotten noir, but nostalgia has never brought a tear from me.

You could tell Nik was born in the Soviet Union. He lived with his brother Vadim in a new building apartment. It was a snow globe of pseudo luxury that reeked of cigarettes. Their accents were not severe but muted and littered with Brooklynese. They never had any food in the fridge. Off the living room was a large balcony. On a clear day the Statue of Liberty was visible and Jersey too. We went to Atlantic City sometimes. I don’t remember those nights too well. They owned 2,500sq ft. of plush carpet and black marble counters and mirrored walk-in closets and 3ft vases full of shells for no reason and Mongolian lamb fur pillows and porcelain leopard statues a la Palm Beach bubbe and supple cream leather sofas. A couple weeks into dating, Nik found out about my piano practicing. So, he bought a baby grand off the Steinway showroom floor and put it in the middle of his apartment. I don’t ever remember seeing mail there. Nothing personal was in sight. Their mom left the boys when the USSR dissolved. In the 90s their dad moved them to Brighton Beach. He once was or is a scientist. He lived with an elegant Jewish widow in Ditmas Park. Nikolai would take me to dinner at their house. I’d mentioned how much she looked like Lorraine Bracco every time. I was so fucked up on drugs I didn’t know what else to say to her. His dad said I was a prize and the live-in girlfriend tried not to be mortified by my baby face.

One of my best stories with Kolya starts with me having to get to my third audition at Juilliard post blizzard coming off a night of PCP and cocaine in a house on Breezy Point. I was  sure it was going to be canceled. He got me to the Upper West side with about 6 minutes to spare. I felt revved up about that story only a moment ago and now the need to tell it in full has faded into a badly dyed Easter egg. He could be such a saint and he dealt with my tantrums in an exceptional  format. I found out running into him last August that his brother was living in Israel now. I hadn’t seen either of them in eight years. I let the restraining order lapse before that. When I stopped  taking drugs the relationship didn’t fit my script. Not even because I wanted to go but because I had to. I didn’t want to. I was nothing. I had to start myself over. I was the hologram then. I quit playing piano and everything I was good at.

Sara Apple is a writer, filmmaker, and actress based in New York City. Born in Key West and raised between the Florida Keys and Manhattan by an Iraqi artist and a Jewish florist, her work explores the darkly comic and subversive forces that shape intimacy, ambition, class, and American life. She is currently completing her debut novel, Little Haint, set in the Florida Keys. Working across literature, film, and performance, Apple has sold original screenplays, is developing three feature films, including her directorial debut, and has performed in theater, film, and experimental art projects. Her work has been featured in Garage, Artnet, Artforum, Interview, Paper, and The New York Times.

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