Free In the Red by Elena Mauli Shapiro Page A

When it was furious enough, it flung furnishings out the door: blood.
    It was only that, blood. This whole woman thing again. How could she forget this every month?
    But when she was with Andrei she never forgot her femaleness. He trapped her in this vulnerable state where she could be penetrated. Even now, she cannot forget. It comes upon her at unexpected moments, a yearning so sharp it slices through the core of her, her body’s insistence that it was made soft to make him hard. A disturbance, a sudden volcanic eruption into a quiet ocean—here she is all red molten rock, all black plumes of ash, all hissing heat boiling away the tentative equilibrium of life that had just begun to bloom again. Here she is polluting herself.

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    T here was something about the other girl’s body but Irina could not tell what. It was as if Elena contained some kernel of knowledge that offered glimpses of itself while refusing to give a full reveal. As clear as a mirror image, and somehow as untouchable. Irina watched her do slow, leisurely laps in Andrei’s small blue swimming pool, wondering how she could move through the water without her tiny string bikini exploding off her. Irina was also wearing a bikini, a sturdier one with ruching in flattering places, splashed with a pattern of large flowers. It was reminiscent of something a pinup might wear. Had Irina put on red lipstick, curled her hair, and sat in a coy pose, she might have been a painted woman winking down from the nose of a World War II bomber.
    Elena’s bathing suit was plain red. It was unclear whether there would have been room to fit a pattern on the bitty triangles of cloth that barely made her outfit legal to wear publicly. She looked more like something out of modern Hollywood than Irina did. Irina admired the lithe lines of her body as she rose from the pool and came to lie down on a chaise longue without patting herself dry. Everything was pert and trim. Her hip bones jutted out slightly from her flat stomach. Her rib cage, her clavicle—so many bones exposed. They made Irina feel heavy.
    â€œWhat?” Elena asked.
    â€œYou are very pretty,” Irina explained.
    Elena looked down at herself as if to check on what Irina had just said. “You are prettier,” she answered. “I look like a child. You look like a real woman.”
    â€œYou could be a model,” Irina said.
    Elena shook her head as if she had already tried that tack. “Not tall enough,” she said. She indicated a pair of fuller breasts on top of her own. “I want your breasts,” she said.
    â€œYours are adorable,” Irina answered. “They’ll never sag. Mine would fall out of that little top you’re wearing!”
    â€œCan I take it off here? I want to tan.”
    Irina didn’t see why not. There was no one else out here with them. The landscaped apartment complex was so quiet under the dazzling sun that it felt empty of people. Besides, if it was against the rules to strip down, who would come set them straight? The police? The homeowners’ association? Elena reached around her back and pulled the string to undo the knot. She slipped off the halter without untying it and let it drop to the ground without looking at it. Beads of water glinted on her skin. Her rosy nipples drew Irina’s gaze.
    â€œYou too,” Elena said, motioning at Irina’s top. “You do not want lines in your tan, no?”
    Irina was about to say no. She had always been the kind of girl who hugged her breasts to herself while changing in the locker room so that others would not see. Clearly, Elena would have been one of those girls who walked to the showers buck naked, talking loudly with her friends, proud of her pride itself. Or not—what did Irina know of her, anyway? What did Irina even know of herself? In a matter of months, she had turned from an innocuous model student to a willing accessory in God knows what. She had been