Early Saturday mornings in the summer, the sun would aggressively light up my bedroom, refusing any attempts I might have made to sleep in, leaving me cursing the useless lacy tulle curtains my old landlady, Tyotya Leeza had dressed the windows with, and that I never bought the thick dark curtains I’d always told myself I was going to buy. Sloppily draped over the curtain rod was a swath of traditional colorful Uzbek atlas material I had lying around the apartment and that I had thrown over the previous summer on a similar morning when trying to fight a losing battle with the sun. Its effect blocking the sun was minimal and over the past year, the traditionally stark stripes of primary colors were now faded from the sun.

Like it or not, feeling sleep deprived, I would have an early start to a long day ahead, of no plans, nothing to do, with no one to talk to. It was too hot and uncomfortable to take a nap or to try and read in the house, the small rattling soviet-era air conditioner in the living room couldn’t cut through this heat. The fake velvet from the divan would prickle against my sweaty flesh, the thin wall to wall carpet on the floor scratching my hams. Even in the home there was nowhere to escape this heat. I would probably have to leave the house, dress up for the street appropriately, meaning no shorts, no sleeveless shirts, to sweat in and go to a swimming pool at one of the hotels, where I might be able to cool off, fall asleep, read my book, if not get sucked into the company of some of the other members of the expatriate community.

I didn’t really feel like leaving the house though, and I sat around at home squirming uncomfortably. I took a cold shower, only to have the effects quickly pass, as the water air dried off me quickly and transformed into a thin film of sweat.

I wished I could call someone; perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad to be so uncomfortable and alone. I wished I could call Henny, but I felt that I couldn’t. It was too early in the morning – she was probably sleeping in since she had dark curtains and good air-conditioning in her bedroom. Besides, she probably had her own problems to deal with. Every time we spoke we only spoke about her souring relationship with her husband, and I couldn’t help but think that I was just another element contributing to the problems.

Clearly something had happened to her the previous night with the incomprehensible phone calls that woke me in the middle of the night, but I had no idea, and surely this morning there would be fallout. Besides her, I didn’t really want to talk with anyone, except for maybe family and friends at home. I surprised myself by how painful it felt, when I had been assuming that I’d grown quite good at solitude, embraced it, even, found it liberating. Today it just felt like a burden.

Today it felt like a trap. There was a part of me that feared going to a hotel swimming pool that I might run into Yulia there. Of course, there were lots of hotels with pools and the chances of us running into each other were slim. I should have taken her calls or should probably call her myself before it becomes too awkward, I thought -- before too much time passes and requiring an extraordinarily elaborate excuse. I hadn’t even thought of a basic excuse for not taking her calls and I had already been back in town for five days.

When it came to Yulia, I couldn’t think clearly on how to deal with her to resolve the one thing I knew: that I didn’t want her in my life any longer – that there was no place further for this relationship to go before leading to something frighteningly official or permanent beyond the hanging out and the sex which in my head seemed to continue to be no-strings attached, but perhaps in her head might be something more, and I was afraid to find out. I wanted her to magically disappear or fall off the end of the earth, rather than deal with this.

I didn’t know her well enough to know how she would respond if I told her that I wanted it to end. She was a tough one, and if she had strong emotions, she certainly didn’t show them, but I had never crossed her, didn’t know what she was capable of, how crazy she might be, even. For all I knew, she could be waiting right outside my home in ambush for me, but I looked out the window to the street below, and as always, the streets were empty, not a sign of life below, not even a car passing by, not even the stray dogs keeping sentinel.

I suppose my biggest fear was that she could be like the president’s daughter, the vengeful princess, who several years back, after her breakup with her estranged American husband, seized his business assets including the country’s Coca Cola distributer, which she had the tax police raid, running her ex-husband’s staff and family out of the country. Yulia wasn’t a powerful princess like that, didn’t command such authority here, even with the KGB uncle she spoke of, who, for all I knew, was likely pretty low on the totem pole. A British guy who she told me she used to go out with continued to run the representation of a large cotton export company. She spoke bitterly about him – that the prostitutes at the Papillion nightclub spoke to her about his insatiable appetites. I wondered how one day she would speak of me. Would she deal me some kind of a social blow? Expose me as gay? That was something of an open secret here, though people like Henny warned me that this was likely not the wisest and safest thing. It would be somewhat ridiculous for Yulia to say since our relationship seemed to be primarily based on sex. At best, Yulia could just say that I’m a bastard, or a big child. Then again, that didn’t really make me much different from most of the men here. Or anywhere, I suppose.

I didn’t want her to hate me, I wished there was a way to end things cordially. But I wasn’t particularly good with exes. I remembered an American who lived here and left a few years back. He had dated several local women and at his farewell party, all of his ex-girlfriends were in attendance. Not only were they all there, but they all seemed to have worked together to organize his farewell party, inviting the guests, cooking the dishes, setting the tables; the party was sort of strange to me, as though he had been the leader of some polygamous love cult. That’s how it seemed to me, not being particularly good at staying friend with the exes. On the other hand, he was a genuinely nice guy.

I suppose you had to be friends with the exes in small Tashkent. In the big city, in New York, exes often enough disappeared and you didn’t have to deal with them that much. Here it was different…like a village. You kept running into them, especially if you ran in the same social circles, that is. And you had to remain cordial in this incestuous little village. Sadly, I never ran into golden teeth; we didn’t run in similar social circles, he didn’t have a phone and he didn’t know my new phone number. Perhaps he’d come looking for me at my apartment, I wondered, even hoped. Maybe we’d just run into each other sometime in the city.  ¶ 12:06 PM