The sun went down. The only people still around were drunker than we were. Their voices echoed against the trunks of the tall trees whose branches twisted with the sky. The fountain was flowing, calm and regular, reflecting the light of the almost-full moon piercing through the clouds, the white water an open eye over the dark mask of grass. We walked a little. I stopped behind a grove to pee, and Julien moved away so he wouldn’t hear the sound.
The air smelled like rain. I felt the imprint of B.’s absent arms on my body and I was crying for real. Of the two of us, Julien noticed first. We sat back down.
“What’s wrong with you?”
The crickets were singing. A buzzing emanated from the life around us and made me feel dizzy. The grass was moist against my naked thighs, and my tattoos had turned blue. I touched the one on my upper right thigh, a bouquet of forget-me-nots in black ink. My shorts revealed it that night. I felt a pressure in my head. I lay on my back, taking my head in my hands.
I observed Julien from below. He was looking at me with dull eyes that betrayed his long workdays.
“Nothing, nothing,” I murmured.
Behind him, the sky was two-dimensional. Wallpaper on a black wall, dark and opaque. I was exhausted, bitter. Each summer day was swallowing me in its spiral.
*
I played with the phone cord while looking around me. The empty chairs, the silence, the users who weren’t calling. I was waiting for Mia to call and I was nervous. She’d said she would, the nights I was working. During the day, she could have found herself talking to any agent. But at that time, I was the only living soul in all the buildings on the street. Mia was fascinated by my job, and by the fact that I stayed there. I pulled my naked feet up under me.
While noticing an ad for a new promotion on the bulletin board, I remembered my email. I opened the company intranet page while still watching the phone. It was 10:45. I tried to connect two or three times, unable to remember my password, until it finally worked. Forty-seven unread messages. I disconnected.
I consulted my horoscope site. Mars in Cancer should make me susceptible to mood swings. “Surprises are to be expected at home, Pisces.” I looked outside, far over the parking lots and empty land. The river drew a thin line of coal on the horizon. The full moon in Sagittarius had started to wane.
The phone rang. I let it ring a few times to calm myself down. Then I cleared my throat and pressed the green button, uttering the standard greeting. Mia laughed on the other end of the line. Her laughter filled the headset before slipping down to my lower abdomen.
“Oh, it’s you.”
“It’s nice, your professional voice.”
“Ha, ha.”
I was intimidated. This telephone device was a new thing for us. I had to struggle to avoid falling too deeply into Mia’s voice. We were preparing ourselves to play the game that had become ours: penetrating the mystery of the missing girl. It had been exactly fifteen days since we’d last had any trace of her.
An article that morning had put forth the hypothesis of a kidnapping. We reviewed all the information at our disposal, some of which had been made public in the previous days. They were hoping to jog the memory of anyone who might possess a clue. What we knew: Anaïs Savage had recently completed a master’s degree in law. During her studies she’d worked as a legal secretary. The Monday of her disappearance, she’d said her goodbyes to her colleagues. She’d submitted her resignation two weeks before and her goodbye party had been scheduled for the following weekend.
At the end of her workday, she left at the usual time, around six o’clock. Her boyfriend confirmed to the investigators that she was supposed to meet him at his place around 7:30, after she went to her apartment to change. Stuck in traffic, he was late. When he arrived, the young woman’s car was found parked in front of the building where he was living, but there was no trace of her.
Mia maintained Savage could have been taken once she was inside. Except there weren’t any signs of a struggle in the apartment, nor anything to indicate a forced entry. The furniture was in its place, intact; the whole place “immaculate,” which was the word the media had used. It was difficult to imagine that this young, educated woman from a good family had debts or even enemies. Who would have had anything against her? Her parents had described her as someone who was determined. They emphatically rejected the possibility of a suicide. A journalist had listed the warning signs for them, and they denied it in front of the camera. Like me, Mia had seen the interview. Anaïs Savage hadn’t left a note, nothing to explain what could have caused her to stray from her planned route. Those closest to her hadn’t noticed a change in her attitude.
“I admit,” Mia agreed, “the crime scene was rather peaceful. In that case, it must have happened on her way from the car to the front door. They can take you at the edge of the road, put you in their car by force, and then you never come back.”
I thought about it.
“I don’t believe it,” I finally said. “Maybe she left on her own. She had a project, an obsession. Something to accomplish.”
Our conversation stretched out. Mia yawned several times, struggling against sleepiness. I was eating coloured jujubes, sucking them to melt the sugar coating.
“Someone’s on the other line.”
I put Mia on hold. I spoke to the customer with impatience. I didn’t want the outside world to interfere with us and compromise the narrow space the phone was creating between our mouths. When I took Mia off hold, she spoke in a soft voice.
“You know, I don’t believe it was a kidnapping either. I think we’ll find her. They had just gotten engaged,” she said.
The dawn rose, calm. The silver globe of Venus was floating in the sky. I would be able to watch it for the whole month of June at daybreak, before the sun veiled it with its brilliance.
*
Louis showed up at my place. I’d spent the whole morning on the phone with the air conditioning contractors. They were snowed under, the demand too high. They said to wait another two weeks to get an appointment. Discouraged, I went back to bed, in the mustiness that persisted even though I couldn’t find its cause. Louis came in through the unlocked door and found me in my USA T-shirt, which I absolutely had to put in the wash. I had stretched out in the same position for too long, eyes fixed on the window. I slowly turned my head toward my friend. He watched me from the doorway.
“I don’t hear from you anymore.”
“I don’t have anything to say.”
He opened my closet and threw me a pair of jean shorts and a T-shirt. I slipped them on. We would go treat ourselves to ice cream. It was so hot it was probably the only thing I would be able to swallow.
Outside the wind wasn’t succeeding in lightening the air. Louis pulled me by the arm, as though I no longer knew how to walk. We sat on a bench with our cones. Mine melted much too quickly in the sun. I didn’t eat it fast enough, and it dripped onto my thighs.
“We’re going back to the bar on Friday,” Louis announced firmly. It seemed things weren’t going well between the bartender and his girlfriend. She’d even made a scene the other day, and we’d missed it.
I shrugged my shoulders, even though I was dying to know what could have happened. We got up to wander haphazardly, not in any hurry. We were always a bit out of it when we were together, as though our long years of friendship were preventing us from being entirely part of the world. He walked me back to my place, making me promise to join him at the bar again. We stopped at the corner of my street, hesitating.
“You can talk to me, you know. If ever.”
I smiled at him. He took his hands out of his pockets, joining them in a prayer position. Louis was begging me to tell him a single word, but I didn’t know where to start. He nodded his head before kissing me on the cheek.
*
“You are so confident today, Pisces. And how could it be otherwise? You are fantastic.” I closed the tab. The multicoloured stars continued dancing in front of me for a fe
w seconds.
I took a bite of the chocolatine I’d brought. I diluted the taste of sugar on my tongue with a mouthful of café au lait without taking my eyes off the edge of the vacant lots, in the hopes Anaïs Savage would resurface. She would walk again without seeing me, with that same decisive step. Mia thought I should call the police and tell them what I’d witnessed to help advance the investigation. But at dinner, before work, Julien hadn’t seemed convinced. And besides, Julien and Louis both claimed nothing proved the young woman who’d disappeared and the one I’d seen walking toward the water were the same.
“In any case, the chances that she’s already dead are high,” Julien said, after placing a plate of grilled salmon in front of me.
“I think it’s the same person,” I replied, pensive, ignoring his objections.
While eating, I observed the couple we formed. For some time, I had been weighing each of our gestures. This is love. That is not love. A meal made for the other, love. A kiss on the forehead, a distracted massage while watching TV, love. The desire to kiss the body moist from the shower, desire. Finding a back to ward off insomnia, habit. I’d been trying to find out if, in front of me, I had the Julien I’d stolen from his ex the first time we’d met, and who had appeared to me as a saviour. He had allowed me to transform myself, to change my own skin, like love always allowed at the beginning. That night, I had caught him furtively eyeing the pearl that hung on my chest. And me, was I the same?
Since that story of the disappearance, I wasn’t watching my true crime shows anymore. Instead I was constantly watching the news to catch each report that mentioned her. I had dissected the segments where those close to Anaïs Savage were testifying as to their version of the facts. I knew everything about that girl. After learning her birthdate, I started reading the daily horoscope for her sign, Taurus. I liked knowing what type of day she was going to have, wherever she may be. “Try to see your life from someone else’s perspective today. It might help you to see the positive side of things, Taurus.”
People had become attached to her. Anaïs Savage’s disappearance had made her known to everyone. We were sorry for her family. Her parents had created a Facebook page in her name, which they fed with hopeful messages. Finding her alive had become a national challenge. We could then reassure ourselves about our ability to save the girls who’d fallen through the cracks. We would take her case as an example to pride ourselves on and forget those who remained unfound. I had understood, during the press conferences held by investigators, that they had made it into a personal thing. Finding Anaïs Savage would allow us to stop looking for the others.
That same morning, a neighbour finally remembered having seen her leaving her boyfriend’s place, about five minutes after having noticed that Savage’s car was parked in front of the building. I texted Mia the news, and we asked ourselves why everything in this investigation was happening so exasperatingly slowly. We now knew she had walked toward the corner of the street. But a tree was blocking the neighbour’s view, and he couldn’t say where she had gone. He didn’t remember her returning, but the possibility wasn’t excluded, because he’d then finished smoking his cigarette and left his balcony. He was the only person who’d seen Anaïs Savage after she left work. No security camera had captured her in any shops. The investigation wasn’t making any progress and, deep down, I thought she had succeeded in her escape. It was perfect. She’d taken off.
“Why leave when you have everything?” Mia asked.
I thought again about the handsome, dark-haired man who appeared so willingly on television. He hadn’t worried about his girlfriend’s disappearance soon enough. In examining her closet, he also hadn’t been able to indicate which articles of clothing were missing. His memory wasn’t working well. They’d found the dress Anaïs Savage had been wearing at the office in the laundry hamper. “She has so many clothes,” he’d apologized. Despite all this, he was taking up a lot of space in the media.
“Or maybe she didn’t have it all,” I replied to Mia. “Maybe that guy is crazy. Jealous, a manipulator, a bad boy-friend. Who knows?”
“If we rely on her text messages, she was definitely planning to join him.”
“Yes, but maybe she was lying. I think she arrived there then—”
“Then what? She just… left?”
Mia was sceptical. I had a very precise scene in mind, in which Anaïs Savage was going home to this man’s place and realized at first glance that she must flee.
Even when we refused to accept the possibility of a kidnapping, the idea of a predator stoked the imagination. Mia was worried for me. Was I really alone at night? What would happen if someone entered the building? Yes, I was completely alone. I hadn’t even seen lights go on at night in the buildings around me. I had a security button I could press that would set off an alarm if I needed help. But if that wasn’t enough, who knew. I’d never thought about it before.
Sitting cross-legged in my ergonomic chair, fearful, I started watching what was happening in the invisible spaces beyond the grass, as though what had happened there could happen to me, too. It would creep toward me. It would come for me.
Six
Julien’s pelvis slammed against my ass. I tried to meet his eyes over my shoulder, then I pushed him abruptly while turning onto my back. I pulled him toward me and let my head knock against the wall in a soft and reassuring rhythm. I wrapped my legs around his sweaty body, twisting like an eel, the whiteness of my skin against that of the sheets. I always wanted Julien to be more there, because I was so alone. I would have liked him to succeed in breaking me. For him to fuck my mouth until I was calm, sated, until I had nothing left to say. When it was finished, he went to the bathroom.
My cell phone rang. It was Mia. I went out onto the balcony even though Julien was in the shower.
“When you run away from a man, you find yourself another.”
It took me a few seconds to understand. I smiled. Her tone was imperceptibly more delicate that day, which pleased me. Ten days had passed since the last time at her place. She had never insisted on seeing each other again, and my desire was growing.
“You think Anaïs Savage took a lover?”
“Yes. She loved another. He came to get her in a car,” explained Mia. “That’s why her car was left there. They could escape without worry. No one was looking for them. He wasn’t on TV. “
“I’d like to think she left alone. But that idea isn’t crazy.”
I spoke again without thinking.
“Come dance with me.”
It was her birthday soon and we had to mark the occasion, I added.
I told Mia about my last birthday party. Before going out for a night of dancing that Louis had organized, Julien and I ate cake in bed and made love. But of course I didn’t tell her that. I recalled the nocturnal glimmer, reflected on the snow, that was defaced by the slits of the blinds and had tinted our skin blue. I had arrived in a new life, where I was no longer constantly afraid of being abandoned. People were telling me I had hit the jackpot.
Spooned against Julien, I hadn’t been able to stop myself from letting the others pass through my mind, all the others there had been, and inventing faces or names for those I had forgotten, like a mandatory inventory that must be made with the addition of each new year. I would have much preferred to find another way to paint my own portrait than through my lovers, but I didn’t know how.
“I don’t know how to dance,” Mia said.
“It doesn’t matter.”
The next day, a Friday, I wasn’t working. I would have to push back my night with Louis again, but it wasn’t important. Until tomorrow, we told each other. Then we were silent, and I smiled into the phone. My heart tightened at the thought of Julien.
“I really have to go.”
We hung up. The shower was still flowing at high pressure. I joined Julien under the water, hoping it would purify me of bad decisions.
*
We found ourselves in the middle of
an immense patio lit up by necklaces of yellow bulbs where people were smoking and dancing compulsively. If you looked carefully, over the electric lighting saturating the sky, you could detect the presence of the stars. I hadn’t come to this patio in an eternity, yet it was the best place in the city for dancing. After ordering shots and beers at the bar, we cleared a path through the dense mob, holding hands so we wouldn’t lose each other. I dove into the music. Near us, a group of American tourists were speaking loudly. They were easy to recognize because of their accent. I couldn’t stop smiling. My legs would never tire. Mia was laughing too. Her eyes seemed more dangerous with makeup than when they were naked. Less comfortable with dancing, she made fun of herself and her drunkenness. We lost our balance several times and fell on strangers, who held us up by meeting our bodies with theirs. One of the Americans approached me. A good-looking man with a shaved head underneath his baseball hat.
“I’ve heard girls are very nice here.”
I burst out laughing and wiped the sweat off my forehead. As soon as we stopped dancing, the heat would besiege us.
“We’re just regular girls.”
A familiar song followed the previous one and I started jumping with the crowd. My body searched for Mia’s amid the mass. She was very close, and our hands found each other. She scratched the inside of my wrist with her fingernails. The man gave me a full bottle to replace the empty one I was holding. The condensation dampened my palm, and I placed my moist, cold hand on the man’s shoulder.
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