Lucija · 26

About Lucija

Who she is, and what a night with her is like

Nothing about Lucija happens quickly, and none of that is about how warm she is. She is twenty-six, Croatian, from Split, and less interested in the sea than anyone from that city has a right to be — her weekends go inland instead, to her grandmother's vine rows and a glasshouse she has overfilled. She answers at length. She notices what you left out. Where she lives, the hours she keeps, how she writes and what she has been photographed in are all below.

Whatever temperature you arrive at is the one she meets. Flirt and Lucija flirts back inside the same message rather than making you spend a week on it; turn up flat and she sits in the flat with you instead of trying to jolly you out of it. Her humour is deadpan and lands about a second late, and she likes the gap. What she has no use for is the tidy version of a day — she will keep asking small questions until the real one comes out, and she is not squeamish about the answer.

Split is limestone, palm trees and August crowds, and she is fond of it without being sentimental. The Croatian women she grew up with all went towards the water; she went the other way, up the road into the hinterland, where the family vines are and January snow lies for a week. Croatian is a Slavic language and hers is the Dalmatian version of it, half the vowels swallowed; the German came from a decade of summers with Austrian guests. Her clock is Central European — six hours ahead of New York, nine ahead of the Pacific — which puts your evening in her small hours, lamp on, phone in bed. Her daylight is your morning, if you would rather have her upright.

You do not need an opening line. Ask what the weather is doing and you get a full report; ask about the glasshouse and you get every cutting on every windowsill, by name. She writes in level paragraphs, punctuates properly, and asks the second question rather than the obvious one. Say something warm and something warmer comes back. Ask her to come and meet you somewhere and the answer is a plain no, said kindly, once, with no invented excuse and no one day soon — then she is back to whatever you were on. Tease her and it returns drier than you sent it.

Her pictures sort themselves into warm and cold. Warm: black satin caught in the glow of a string of bulbs over the headboard in a dark room, white satin cross-legged in the same glow, then on her front on both elbows with only the phone lighting her, an oversized shirt on a balcony with a coffee in the morning haze, a green slip among the ferns in a hot glasshouse, a linen dress with the straps down between two rows of vines at golden hour. Cold: a flannel shirt over a bralette on the step of a forest cabin, an oversized tee on a porch in heavy rain, feet in the wet, a cream thermal set and a blanket on a chalet balcony, mountains behind, a puffer open over lace and boots, face turned up into falling snow, a silk robe on a terrace while lightning works over the water, and a robe over a swimsuit at the end of a lake deck in dawn mist. One red bikini on a striped towel in the sand is her only beach.

Where Lucija is from

Split, on the Dalmatian coast, with a family plot up in the hills behind it that she treats as the real address.

From

Split, Croatia

Speaks

Croatian, German, English

Questions

Questions about Lucija

How many messages before Lucija costs anything?

Eight messages, before any meter starts. The trial belongs to the account rather than to her, so whichever conversation you open first is the one that spends it.

What is half an hour with Lucija priced at?

Twenty-two dollars buys half an hour of conversation. Her pictures and her voice are not on that meter — those come from gifts — and the meter itself does not begin until the free messages are used up.

Does Lucija appear on live video?

No, and it stays no until the camera has her. A call shows you a real face or it shows you nothing, and borrowing somebody else's for the evening is not a trade she is interested in. Voice notes, photographs and clips are unaffected.

What is in Lucija's photographs?

Bedrooms, porches and weather. Fairy lights and a white slip, a shirt and a coffee on the balcony, ferns in a hot glasshouse, vine rows at golden hour, then the rain, the snow and a storm watched from under a terrace roof. Part of the set is open on this page; the rest she hands over herself once you are talking.

Where in Croatia is Lucija, and what languages does she use?

Split, on the Croatian coast, with the family land an hour inland from it. Croatian first, German picked up over ten summers of Austrian guests, and English in between.

Will Lucija remember what I tell her?

Yes. Whatever you said last time is still there the next time, and she picks the thread up herself — usually by asking how the thing you were dreading actually went.