Aphelia

by Nicol Mikella

  *

  Julien was moving from room to room. Lying naked on our bed, I watched him move from the bedroom to the living room, wearing the underwear I liked. A trail of sweat had formed down the length of his spine. The weather was calling for a string of suffocating weeks, and the general excitement had given way to the anxiety of dying of asphyxiation within the four walls of our dwellings.

  At seven in the morning, feeling tired, I put my bag near the front door. I was working four nights a week, from Saturday until Wednesday, and it was only on Sundays that Julien was still sleeping when I got home. When he woke up, we could enjoy the day off together. But that Sunday, his team needed to finish a project that was running behind and had organized a “business breakfast” that would run late. The term made me wince.

  Julien moved around in the bedroom, attempting to style his chestnut brown hair with his left hand while his right did up his belt. His indifference toward me made me impatient. Touch me. I would often speak to him in my head. It was easier. After a night spent alone, I would have liked to be fucked. Feeling lazy, I let my body heat up and my heart beat in my groin. I cursed myself for forgetting to call the repair company for the central air conditioning, who’d left us in the lurch before the heat wave started. The task of calling them during business hours fell to me because Julien was at the office all day. He’d asked me to do it, but I’d forgotten. Instead, we’d equipped the rooms with portable fans.

  It was difficult to wake up day after day in his bed. This condo was always so quiet. The modern appliances operated noiselessly, and Julien was gone all day. I was under the impression that this silence was directed at me. I’d jumped from one cohabitation to the other, from one couple to the other, with only a short stay at Louis’s between the two. Everything here was contrary to my life with B. I had to adapt, and I was doing it too slowly, at the pace of an animal species on the verge of becoming extinct due to natural selection. B. and I had lived harmoniously in our own chaos. Our bedroom had been littered with my clothes and cosmetic products, which I’d used a lot more then. We had lived in an old, poorly lit apartment, where the shadowy light bathed us in mystery, making us more beautiful than we really were.

  Here, the room was sparkling. The light revealed the redness of my skin and the milky fissures tormenting my breasts, my hips. It revealed me entirely, and sometimes, feeling like a coward, I tried to slip away.

  Julien came back into the room to slip on a clean shirt. My heart made new leaps in the sensitive areas of my body, where I was hoping he’d join me.

  “You’re not supposed to work on Sundays.”

  “Yes, but you know why I’m working this Sunday.”

  He kissed me on the forehead before he left. I heard him quickly empty the dishwasher. He said something to me from the kitchen, but the radio of a passing car buried his voice. The front door closed. I asked myself what other couples did at the end of the month of May.

  Sighing, I rolled onto my side and got out of bed. On the TV in the living room, I played a recorded episode of one of the true crime shows I cherished. The long reconstructions showed interviews with investigators and excerpts of procedural videos, and they entertained me a lot. I especially liked the series where the killer turned out to be the neighbour, the teacher, or the mayor of the village. The victims resembled me, or girls I knew. A man with a cavernous voice would relay the end of their story. It drove Julien crazy. Sometimes, one of the cases would hold my attention. I talked to Julien about it a little, but he found me morbid. All the same, I continued watching the shows religiously, managing to overlook the mediocre cinematography and trying to guess who the murderer was. B. had once said that, in the city, most things were being plotted in the shadows. That there were an infinite number of actions we were totally unaware of because we stayed on the surface like water striders. We would have liked to know where all those girls from the Thursday show went, those girls of the unsolved crimes.

  I watched the show until the end, fighting my fatigue. I turned off the screen, which then displayed my black reflection. I was bored. Maybe I would have the chance to talk to Mia again at the bar next Friday. This time, I would ask for her number.

  Before going to sleep I took a shower and got goose bumps under the cold water. A long shiver ran through my body. I masturbated while leaning against the white tiles. My orgasm made me feel sad and alone, but I still had the urge to start again. Wrapping the towel around me, I dove back into the tropical humidity. My reflection appeared above the bathroom sink, etched with fatigue. I smiled at myself a few times, then knit my brows, like they suggest you do to find your premature wrinkles and apply a preventative cream. With the eyelashes and pale skin of a blonde, I looked vulnerable. Julien said I had honest features. Fine, almost transparent. I said: impassive, anemic.

  *

  Next Friday, I arrived at the bar before Louis. It was still almost empty, and in daylight you could see the dirtiness of its impersonal décor. The room looked more spacious, even when glutted with lifeless slot machines. I climbed up on my stool and the bartender leaned across the bar to kiss me on the cheeks. I needed to make conversation, but I was uncomfortable to find myself alone with him, still sober. He was the sociable type, though, and he talked effortlessly while serving me a drink. He always drank a lot while working, and the memory of the rush of affection he showed me would disappear the day after our drinking binges. We both acted like nothing had happened, which made those Fridays bearable. I watched him being charming behind his bar. Even if his beauty—perfect, stereotypical—had little effect on me, I was proud of the attention he devoted to me. A group of people I knew entered the bar and we smiled at each other. They invariably occupied the table in the corner when they were here.

  My leg was twitching with impatience. When I noticed, I put my hand on my knee to keep it in place. I’d chosen a black summer dress and white sneakers, and I was wearing a grenadine-hued lipstick that could be seen from far away. She had to come. The bartender noticed my agitation and threw me an intrigued look.

  A minute later, the door opened again. I turned around nervously. It was Florence. The bartender moved away from me, pretending to have something else to do, and I lowered my gaze to my hands, now folded on the bar. Florence leaned her elbows on the bar and said the bartender’s name to get his attention. They kissed. I took a long swig of my beer. Florence hadn’t spoken or even smiled at me, even though we knew each other well. Clearly, I had no idea how to get girls to like me. The nights Louis and I spent at the bar were all the same, and I was waiting for Mia to reappear and disrupt them—or for her to appease the tainted, hazy images superimposed on my thoughts.

  The bar slowly filled up as the day faded. Louis finally arrived, drenched in sweat. He walked toward me, arms open, his eyes apologizing for his lateness. He rubbed his damp hair in my neck to annoy me and I pushed him away, laughing. Florence turned toward us, her small face expressionless.

  “You look pretty tonight,” Louis told me. A banal observation.

  He sat down before ordering a beer and shaking the bartender’s hand. A man sitting near us made his way to the bathrooms, and a memory of the previous Friday night came back to me. I had been leaning against the wall right there, in the dark corner between the bar and the bathroom. The bartender had approached me, and I had laughed and turned my head, too heavy on my weak neck, to the left and the right. Louis had come out of the bathroom and the bartender disappeared, but I still had my hands raised in front of me.

  Florence left quite early, throwing me a last insipid glance. She’d grown tired of only being able to talk with the bartender between customers. With time, I’d become used to our striking resemblance. We were of the same blonde, our hair styled in the same way. Her hair gleamed a little more, perhaps. With her eyes just like mine and our heart-shaped mouths, people sometimes confused us. I once thought I’d recognized myself in a photo taken at the birthday party of a mutual acquaintance, in which Florence was shown f
rom behind. But I hadn’t been there that night.

  At around three-thirty in the morning, Louis convinced me we’d better leave. I had to resign myself to the fact that Mia hadn’t come.

  We walked while pushing each other into the cedar hedges lining the sidewalks, our laughter echoing in the streets. Then Louis split off toward his apartment. Maybe it was time for me to move on, to admit we’d changed. Our nights together no longer had the sheen of former times. A flash lit up the sky, and then the rain started, dense. I let it fall on me without rushing. The storm would relieve the humidity, they’d said on the weather report on TV. But by the next morning, the humidity returned.

  Three

  My phone vibrated late Sunday morning while I was in bed with Julien, leafing through a magazine while he read the paper. I sensed it was her, even though more than a week had passed since we’d met. Mia didn’t know my last name, which meant she’d searched for me and found me on Facebook. That she’d seen the shot where I was standing in front of the river, leaning a little nonchalantly on the guardrail of the lookout. I wasn’t smiling, neither cheerful nor sad, very pale in the full daylight, juxtaposed against the blue of the water. The whiteness of my neck and my chest stood out, as if the whole sun was hidden inside me. It was a photo from the previous summer. We’d been particularly happy with it, Julien for taking it, and me for not looking too bad in it. I grabbed my phone and saw Mia’s name on the screen. My pulse accelerated. She was asking how my Friday night had gone. I read and reread the short message. She hadn’t come, but she hadn’t forgotten me. I must have smiled, because Julien asked what was up with me. We were wearing our old, worn-out clothes that we always wore to bed. My USA T-shirt was threadbare, and the elastic was detaching from the fabric of my grey boxers.

  “A friend is asking how I’m doing.”

  I didn’t know what to say to Mia. I accepted her friend request. Her profile photo was in black and white, her head turned away from the camera. She was laughing.

  I put my phone back on the night table without writing anything and stabilized myself against Julien’s armpit. He stroked my hair with his free hand. I was scared he would feel my accelerated heartbeat. I let a few minutes pass, listening to the birds, stroking Julien’s chest. My sleepless night at the call centre was catching up with me. Finally I grabbed my phone abruptly and texted, “We should see each other again soon.” I put the phone back.

  “God, it’s hot.”

  I got up. I took off all my clothes except my panties. Through the window, I observed people passing by. They were weighed down, bowed over, slow. A drop of sweat fell from my forehead. The fan stirred the pages of the newspaper that Julien was trying to hold in place. Then the phone vibrated. Julien didn’t lift his eyes. Mia said, “I would like that a lot.”

  *

  I was facing three rows of computers with winding, colourful shapes dancing on their screens. The breath of the machines joined mine in a big groan. My silhouette was reflected in the glass partitions that separated my desk from the others. My headset made a funny bulge on my head that prevented me from fully recognizing myself.

  I consulted my favourite astrological site and my desk took on a rosy tinge. I scrolled down the page. In the lower right corner, a mauve star was twinkling. If I clicked on it, I would be directed to another page where they were offering to create my birth chart for only $9.99.

  “You always feel misunderstood, Pisces, but today seems more challenging than usual. Why don’t you snuggle in a blanket and stay home all day?”

  I was meeting Mia in two days. With this thought, a sickening feeling rose in my chest. A mixture of excitement and foreboding.

  Julien was happy I was going out with a girl. Since we’d been together, he’d never known me to have female friends. He’d vaguely heard about an acquaintance of mine, someone from university with whom I used to drink gin and tonics after class. In the end we had a falling out over a guy and she never called me again.

  I watched the moon, which was rising in its waxing crescent phase. The night seemed endless. Luckily, my phone lit up with a series of text messages from Mia. We organized the details of our meeting. She suggested we find each other in front of a bar in her neighbourhood where we could have a couple of drinks. She lived in a trendy area populated by students and young families. When she finally went to sleep, she left me alone and hungry for words. Boredom came back for me with even more strength than before.

  I started masturbating. When I started this job at the centre, I quickly realized nothing was stopping me, other than the occasional interruption by a short call. I could see all the security cameras in the building on the video surveillance monitor in the entryway to the office. There were none in the call centre. It was a well-known fact, because my colleagues would watch TV or eat their meals in front of the computer (which was forbidden) as soon as the bosses left.

  I told myself I’d get through this night like I’d gotten through all the others that had come before it. In a few hours, I would go out into the coolness of the dawn, take the metro, and go home, and I was eagerly awaiting it. And yet somehow, each of these steps seemed insurmountable.

  I noticed a movement in the street. It was really dark now. The clock said it was almost two in the morning. A woman was walking, her head lowered. A swath of dark hair hid her face from my view. She walked toward the parking lot, then stepped over the concrete barriers and kept going, calmly, in a straight line into the vacant lots. The orange halo of the only street lamp around allowed me to watch her for a long time. Hers was the first human presence that had appeared since I’d started this job. I didn’t want her to leave. I got up to see her all the way to the end. She disappeared somewhere at the edge of the water.

  *

  Louis was waiting for me in the grass. I recognized him from the street; he was lying down, leaning on his elbow so his torso was propped up. He was smoking, his sunglasses in front of his eyes. At that time of the afternoon, he had no doubt just gotten out of bed.

  I wove my way through many groups sitting in circles. It seemed like everyone from my generation was assembled there, each one glistening with as much sweat as the next. There would never be enough air for all of us. My black blouse drank up the sun and my hair caught fire. I quickly checked to see if there was anyone I recognized among the crowd. I was looking for Mia without thinking. Some picnickers were drinking wine straight from the bottle, and the kids were making less noise than the young adults. Louis finally caught sight of me and said my name. I gave him a discreet wave.

  I was having trouble separating the image of Louis the adult from that of the teenager I’d gone through high school with. The Louis who’d accompanied me on my adventures, who’d danced with me, who’d twirled me around the night of my last birthday before propelling himself into the air in a ridiculous way on the dance floor. Louis who would take me in his arms in a way that didn’t make me feel anything. It was him who’d introduced me to B. They’d been best friends. In the years that followed, I often felt Louis was trying to make amends for that mistake.

  I sat down beside my friend without saying a word. He didn’t speak either, not right away. We just wanted to be exhausted in the heat together. The temperature was suffocating me. Near us, a young family had finished their meal. Sitting on a large, pale pink blanket, the couple played with their child. The ball rolled to our feet. Too slow and passive, we didn’t react when the little one timidly approached. He stopped, not daring to continue, observing us with wide eyes. His father finally got up and came to get the ball, sighing. His silhouette cast a shadow over us.

  Louis emerged from his silence. He pointed his chin toward the man who was moving away.

  “That one?” he asked with a half-smile.

  “Shut your trap.”

  I gave him a little slap on the head. My palm met his damp forehead. It was a game we used to play. Louis would challenge me to get a phone number, or a date—for which I wouldn’t show up, most of the
time—from a few guys chosen at random. He wanted to prove to me that women could have anything they wanted with a little charm, and I kept telling him that what we really wanted, we would never have.

  Seduction is the form of violence I knew best. It’s a test of your existence in the world and the limits of imposing yourself on others. But ever since I’d been with Julien, I had decided to stop that foolishness. At least until recently.

  “Are we still going out together on Friday?” Louis asked with fake detachment.

  The father of the family sat back down on the blanket.

  Louis exhaled cigarette smoke through his nose in my direction. He could feel that I was distancing myself, but from what? I stretched out, my head resting on my purse.

  “I don’t know.”

  Louis wouldn’t go to the bar without me. He wouldn’t go sit alone at the bar to listen to the bartender’s jokes. I was sure of it. Nor would he go smoke with him in the alleyway alone. Maybe he’d join the table of another group, but it would seem forced. I had to keep our old habit alive, but I didn’t feel like it anymore. In all honesty, I was almost scared of that place where everything happened too fast and too intensely.

  The sky was peaceful, completely smooth. When you looked at it for a long time, you got the impression you were sinking into it. Like living in a robin’s egg.

  “So you’re going to see her again?” Louis asked.

  “Who?”

  He swept the air with his hand in annoyance, meaning he knew me better than that. I know exactly what you’re up to. It irritated me. The situation was new, but he recognized my symptoms. Anxiety, nausea, exhaustion, silence.

  “The last time I saw you like this, it was with—”

  “No.”

  “It was something in your eye when you saw her.”

  I didn’t say anything, and Louis stopped insisting. He stretched out too.