This Is Not Your City by Caitlin Horrocks Page A

new moon, pale and thin as an eyelash. The harbor lights glared in the dark. Farther out in the bay were freighters and another cruise ship, painted red and white and strung with lights. On land there were stacks of shipping containers like a child’s game, towers of red and brown blocks. She could see the wind catch the thin layer of snow on the pavement and blow it into ripples, like sand.
    When Tallinn had been part of the Soviet Union and Ursula had been a child, she had watched news reports of the city, filled with exotic exiles from Soviet territories. She would go there someday, she had dreamed, and meet a Mongolian in a long, red, felt coat lined with yak fur. They would fall in love and they would both be so clever they could learn each other’s languages, and they would be finally so in love that they would not need languages at all. He would have his cousins in Ulaan Bator send her a matching coat and soft cashmere sweaters. They would move to the Black Sea and live in a dacha on the shore year round, and their children would only know what winter was like if she found the words to explain it. She thought about
telling Jukka all this, and then pushed the story back down her throat, held it in her lungs with the air so cold it burned.
    The wind had picked up and caught the white plastic chairs, flinging them backward against the wall at the rear of the deck. Ursula and Jukka had to dodge them, the chairs turning end over end or sliding along upright, four legs to the ground, as if invisible people were still sitting in them. Jukka caught a chair mid-flight and sat down heavily, anchoring it in the middle of the deck. He pulled Ursula onto his lap and put his arms around her. “Let’s go inside,” he said, and Ursula, out of breath, the wind freezing her chest, nodded yes.
    They made it back to the room with Jukka’s arm tightly around her, their feet colliding, hips joined as in a three-legged race. Jukka released the latches that held the bunk against the wall. It crashed down on top of the green sofa-bench, and Ursula heard the bag of cheese curls crunch. The bunk was already made up, tidy with sheets and a pillow. Jukka pushed her backward onto the bed, and she felt silly when she bounced on the mattress like a child’s ball. “I like you,” he said. “Really.”
    â€œDon’t say that.”
    â€œWhat? I like you.”
    â€œI don’t think you do,” Ursula said, but part of her thought that if she’d believed him this long, if she’d even pretended to, she should see the thing through. He wanted her enough to lie to her. Perhaps that was something.
    While she puzzled at what she should do she did nothing, and then Jukka was between her legs, her skirt pushed up and her underwear gone, Jukka’s pants down but not all the way off. She could feel the heavy denim bunched somewhere around his calves, crowding her ankles. She opened her legs wider, feeling for a moment that his jeans were the part of him she could not bear to touch.
    â€œGoddammit,” he said, pressing against her. Ursula turned her head to the side. Jukka was still soft, even as he pushed at her, even as he grabbed at himself, his face red and his eyes unfocused. Ursula did not move to help him. “Drank too much. Drank too goddamn much,” he said, shoving against her helplessly. Finally he dropped his head against her chest and
apologized. Ursula reached her hand up and touched his cheek. “It’s okay,” she said, and was relieved.
    Jukka fell asleep and Ursula found her underwear, smoothed down her skirt. She got down on her knees to clean the food off the carpet, scraping broken cheese curls and splinters of chocolate into her palm. She found the tube of lipstick under a potato chip. Uncapping the tube, she stepped toward the mirrored back of the room until she was nose to nose with her reflection, chapped lips and pale skin and her funny dark eyebrows.