Aphelia

by Nicol Mikella

  Mia whispered some mockery in my ear that made me laugh. The man took hold of my hips. They both got closer to me, and I let them do it. We formed a tighter and tighter circle. I liked the closeness. The night was taking an unexpected turn, but I wasn’t opposed to anything. The events of the evening would happen as they would.

  At some point I stopped to catch my breath.

  “Bathroom,” I said to the man whose name I didn’t know.

  I indicated the direction of the bathrooms to Mia, who tried to follow me. I signalled to her it wasn’t necessary.

  In the bathrooms with red lighting, some girls were speaking loudly and another was crying. Out of breath, I took refuge in the corner between the hand dryer and the wall and called Julien, plugging my ear with a finger. It rang for a long time before the voicemail picked up. It was past two in the morning. I wanted to talk to him. It was urgent. I hesitated before hanging up, letting the bass of the music record. I called back, twice, but no answer. I don’t know what I was expecting from him. My fingers knew the path of B.’s phone number on the dial pad by heart and, like each time I’d been drinking, I had to convince myself it would be a disaster. That I would expose myself to a humiliation even more stinging than the ones from the past. When I came back, Mia asked if I was okay and I said everything was perfect, even if my throat was tightening with disappointment.

  In the mob, the heat became unbearable and we went outside to get some air. The windows of the restaurant facing us lit up the line of people waiting to get in, which stretched all the way to the intersection. Through the windows, you could see young people doubled over their plates, pallid beneath the pink and yellow neon lights. A couple was eating fries without talking, too drunk or too indifferent to do so. The man I’d danced with earlier came out of the bar. He delicately put his hand on my shoulder and asked if I would go home with him. Mia watched us out of the corner of her eye. He ignored her. I shook my head.

  “I’m a good man,” he said with a big smile.

  “I know you are, but please go,” I replied, incapable of holding back my overly charming smile. My eyes were full of desire for him to take me with him.

  Mia threw me an insistent look, like she’d soon intervene. She was desperate for him to leave, and I wanted him to stay, a bit in spite of myself. I got closer to her and put my arm around her shoulders to show it was Mia I’d come with to celebrate, that it was her I was celebrating. He moved away with his friends, who had been waiting further down the street, and I examined his back and his sensual walk while he ventured under the dirty neighbourhood viaducts that were covered in graffiti. He showed me the nape of his neck one last time, that place where I liked to take refuge in men, that place where I had a habit of plunging my head to protect myself from the light of day. He turned around and winked at me, and all my senses opened up. I was suffering; I was tempted to run after him to follow him. I murmured, I’m a good woman too, a good woman. Let him go, let him lose himself in this city that’s too big, too small. Let him wander from hotel to hotel, dance from one woman to the other. One day, I would catch him again.

  When Mia asked me what I had said, I lay my head on her shoulder and closed my eyes.

  We walked as though putting off the moment when we’d have to make a decision. A tension hung in the air. I ignored it while talking to fill the silence. Mia was smiling, silent.

  “Let’s go to a hotel.”

  I sighed. It was so easy. Since the beginning, it could have been. At the corner of the street, we hailed a taxi.

  I took the front seat, as was my habit. Mia chuckled and sat in the back. The car was going slowly, stuck in nightlife traffic. Suddenly, I recognized Florence, on the sidewalk in conversation with a group of people. She was wearing black jeans and a short-sleeved blouse, the same as mine. My vision blurred. Why don’t you say anything? You never say anything, I thought. Florence turned her head to follow the car we were in. I was mistaken. It wasn’t her.

  The driver turned onto a main thoroughfare and accelerated. Did he understand what was happening to us? Mia asked that we open the windows. The wind rushed inside, deafening, and we let our arms get swept outside.

  We chose a shabby downtown hotel. The shag rug and the walls of the room were the same brown. Mia rushed to the bathroom. I followed her but she slammed the door on my nose, laughing. I slumped against the door. The sprint had made me dizzy. We were crazy and drunk, two queens on the run.

  I turned on the television and found the twenty-four-hour news channel. I sat on the end of the double bed and waited. After a minute or two, Anaïs appeared. I helped myself to a beer from the minibar and sat back down. From afar, there was the sound of a toilet flushing. A third photo had been added. It had been taken with a webcam; the family must have found it on Savage’s computer. It wasn’t meant to been seen, and I didn’t like the fact that they were circulating it. Mia came out of the bathroom and sat down close to me. We looked at Anaïs Savage, who’d posed only for herself. There still wasn’t any progress in the investigation. I swallowed a mouthful without tasting, then I put the bottle at the foot of the bed, telling myself for once that I’d drunk enough.

  A hand clutched me. I turned my head toward Mia. She had taken her bracelets and silver rings off one by one. They were sparkling on the polished surface of the night table. She lay down on the bedspread that was embroidered with ragged flowers. I fell into her neck.

  We were trying to sleep and could hear a couple fighting. It started with a muffled sound. An object had crossed the room and shattered. Then the woman screamed a string of incomprehensible words, until one fragment stood out from the rest.

  “You don’t listen to what I say anymore. You’re betraying me.”

  Objects continued to fly.

  “I don’t listen to your stupidities anymore, no.”

  A door slammed. Mia curled up against me. The dispute moved through the wall to what I supposed was the bathroom. The man begged the woman to come out. Someone finally knocked on their door, asking if it was possible to keep it down. The man apologized calmly, but the woman screamed that no, it was not possible. That if she kept silent for one more night she would die.

  When our neighbours finally shut up, the long, asthmatic whistle of the air conditioning came on. Now we could only wait until dawn came to chase away the darkness, like the cool hands of a mother abating a fever.

  We went back to Mia’s very early in the morning. She got undressed right away and slid between the covers.

  I dawdled a bit in the small apartment. It was like I was there for the first time. I didn’t recognize the drawings in the living room.

  I was dying of fatigue, an over-excited fatigue. My body was heavy and wanted to let go, but my thoughts were unreeling too quickly. I was angry. Julien should have known, should have read in my eyes more translucent than water, he should have guessed everything that was causing me pain. That I was constantly falling. Crossing the line. Now it was too late. I inspected my reflection in the bathroom mirror. My face was no longer good-looking; I didn’t like it anymore. I had childish features. The face of a little girl on a body imbued with hopeless femininity. And my fairness would erase everything anyway, forgive everything. The whole thing seemed accidental and vulgar.

  “Where are you?”

  Mia’s voice was weak and bird-like, made vulnerable by the night. I joined her in her bedroom, which was a white bright enough to blind you. Mia was laying there, one arm covering her eyes. I slipped into bed without taking my clothes off. For the first time in ages, I was cold. The summer wasn’t affecting me anymore. The age difference between Mia and me was erased. We were both very old; we’d lived for centuries. Her shoulders were dotted with freckles. Along her back, the thick cloud dispersed until it disappeared in the hollow at the small of her back.

  I pretended to sleep until she left to run her errands. Later, I slipped out of bed and left. My clothes were soaked in an alcoholic sweat. The setting sun was grazing the wind
ows of the skyscrapers. It was beautiful. After walking for thirty minutes, I stopped in front of the lake, in our park. The water was taking on all hues—brown, green, blue—but I preferred it when it was grey, which meant it would rain. I liked rain when it didn’t spare us, when it left the city out of breath, purged, clean. I thought again of what B. had said to me, that we were nothing but water striders. I saw a few on the surface of the lake. Where was he? Had he succeeded in radically changing himself, in finding meaning? Without me. I would return to my messed up life now. It was my own fault.

  B. hadn’t apologized for what he did to me that night, but he knew it was wrong. It was almost impossible that he hated me that much. In the morning, he had taken me in his arms for a long time and kissed each part of my face, repeating that we drank too much the night before. Then he had handed me two ibuprofen pills before swallowing his own. I’d thanked him.

  When he was gone, I called Louis, who came to find me. I opened the door, and he saw the red marks on my eye. You might have been able to believe it was a sting or an allergic reaction. And yet it was violence. As soon as love is withdrawn, there is violence. Louis had clenched his fists, a ridiculous gesture for someone who was so cheerful. We considered each other for a second before he left again, examining our equally blonde heads, our faces bloodless in the light, our appearance of sickly children with skin crisscrossed with blue veins, our white eyelashes. Afterward, I’d taken refuge in the bathtub and hadn’t come out.

  When B. had come back that evening, he found me plunged in the water that had become cold with only the tips of my breasts and my face, framed by my floating hair, emerging. He hadn’t said anything. He leaned against the doorframe to look at me. My makeup had run and was gathered on my collarbone. The arch of my right eyebrow was still making me suffer and involuntary tears were escaping from my injured eye. Messages from Louis were scrolling down the screen of my phone, which was on the side of the bathtub. He was saying he shouldn’t have abandoned me, that he could kill himself for doing so. He should have gotten me out of there.

  B. had held out a towel and encouraged me to get out of the bathtub. He kissed me while clutching my breasts. I was already on fire. My desire for him hadn’t weakened, because it was also the desire for him to approve of me.

  The weeks passed, but my eye wasn’t healing fast enough. A dark bruise had remained on my skin, going from my eyebrow to the edge of my eyelid. The mark had widened the distance between us, which had become insurmountable. I would never manage to bring B. back to me.

  So I left. I packed up my things in a few minutes.

  At Louis’s, a feminine odour had come to distort the one I knew as his. It was Marion. Their relationship, he said, was destined for failure, because she would go back to France in the next few months. Neither of them was bothered. The apartment was deserted. I took advantage of this to moan under the cold water of the shower. Long, curly brown hair had accumulated at the bottom of the bathtub. I thought of B., of his hands that were so strong despite the slenderness of his body. His were capable hands.

  I got ready to sleep on the blue couch with a pillow and a blanket. When I woke up, I was stiff and aching all over. It had taken me a moment to understand where I was. I confirmed the intuition that had disturbed my sleep the whole night. Turning on my phone, I saw B. hadn’t called me.

  I turned on the entryway lights. In the living room, everything was in order, like in the uninhabited pages of a magazine. Julien was there. Shirtless, sitting on the couch, he was reading. He hadn’t raised his eyes when he heard me. I wanted to throw myself into his arms to cry, to scream, so that he would reassure me. But it was an egotistical reflex, and I hated myself for even thinking it.

  “I decided to sleep at her place. It was too late. I was tired.”

  I made my way toward the bathroom to wash myself. Julien raised his head as I left the room. “I saw you tried to call me.”

  It took me a quick moment to remember what he was talking about. Then it came back: the girl who’d cried in the red light of the bathroom at the club.

  “Yes, it’s true.”

  “What did you want?”

  “Oh, to talk.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  Part of me could have screamed, but the other part, the weaker part, preferred to lie down. I could have said, What’s so strange about wanting to talk to you?

  “Mmm yeah.”

  As I was drying myself after my bath, I heard Julien’s steps resonate in the stairwell. He hadn’t said where he was going. All sorts of anxieties plagued me as I got dressed in the bedroom. Exasperated by the pervasive stench, I opened all the windows of the house. I was afraid I wouldn’t smile in my wedding photos. I was the type of girl it would happen to.

  Seven

  Julien still hadn’t come home when I left for work at nine o’clock. I set myself up at my desk for the night. My stomach was churning, and my reflection in the windows was deformed by the large circles under my eyes. I didn’t masturbate. I didn’t eat anything. Outside, a downpour broke out. Merciless, it ruined the empty land and flooded the parking lots.

  Mia called quickly.

  “When are you going to tell him?”

  I sighed, covering the microphone so she wouldn’t hear me. My raspy voice was struggling to extricate itself from my throat. I would have liked to explain to her that the stars of a constellation seemed very close to us and linked to one another because they are visible in the same part of the sky at the same moment. Even if from our perspective they form a whole, they are actually very far from one another. We’ve been drawing lines between them forever, giving them the first names of characters from mythology. We create impossible links between shining stars that have often been dead for thousands of years. It was one of the things I’d learned. I tried to change the subject and talk about Anaïs Savage, but we quickly exhausted the topic. It was now the twenty-first day of her disappearance and, contrary to the fact that her parents were continuing to feed the Facebook page in her name, the media were tired of her. Little by little, Anaïs Savage was becoming a missing person poster among so many others: twenty-five years old, five foot four inches, 140 pounds, brown hair, brown eyes, clothing unspecified.

  Mia came back to the matter at hand.

  “When are you going to tell him?”

  “I have to let you go.”

  “No, please, don’t do this to me.”

  “Someone is waiting on the other line.”

  “I need to see you.”

  “See you later, very soon, Mia.”

  I hung up. The actions of the night we shared replayed in my mind; I couldn’t stop them from surfacing. They were tearing me apart. I wished I could have the chance to give myself over to it again without putting everything in peril.

  I opened my astrological site without believing it. “You might have issues with self-worth today, Pisces. The key is to stay positive.”

  When I came back home, ready to collapse from fatigue, Julien was waiting for me in the bedroom. He asked me, ironically, if I had slept elsewhere.

  “No, I was working. You know that.”

  I went to sleep after taking my shower. When I woke up a few hours later, he was gone.

  *

  The next Friday, I walked to the bar to give myself the chance to gain some composure. I would have to face Louis, whose invitations I’d been evading for too long. I also didn’t know what I would say to the bartender to justify my absence. He would ask me what had kept me so busy recently, and I needed to find an explanation even if it wouldn’t hold water. I could tell him, like I told Mia, that I’d covered some replacement shifts at the centre and it had tired me out. He had sent two or three text messages in the previous weeks, inviting me to pass by, with or without Louis.

  The portable air conditioners hanging from the windows sounded like sad little fountains. Pools of water had formed beneath the appliances on the sidewalk, and the alleyway cats were drinking from th
em. Crowds were overrunning the sidewalks in waves. I had forgotten it was the evening before Quebec’s national holiday.

  Louis was waiting for me at our usual spot. He’d already ordered me a beer, which was perspiring on the bar. He took me in his arms, relieved by my presence. These days, he didn’t have faith in it anymore. I was pale. He asked if I’d slept recently, and I said no. The bartender leaned over the bar to kiss me on the cheeks.

  “Finally, you’re here.”

  He was already drenched. The bar was packed more than usual. Partiers were wandering in haphazardly to have a drink, no doubt in search of a bit of cool air, which they wouldn’t find in this place. In vain, I searched the bartender’s attitude and gestures for signs of a domestic quarrel. Florence wasn’t there. Maybe he would confide in us after a few drinks, I suggested to Louis, disappointed. But as time went on, the bartender became increasingly cheerful.

  I didn’t talk much with Louis, like all the times when we had a thousand things to tell each other. The fan was circling lazily over our heads. The front and back doors of the bar were wide open, but the air wasn’t circulating. The evening already seemed like it would be tedious, and I felt like leaving. We had to talk louder to bury the voices of strangers.

  A beautiful blonde made her way to the bar and sat on the stool beside Louis. She looked me straight in the eyes, almost menacing. No matter who this was, I didn’t have the strength to pretend to be up to her challenge. I lowered my head. The bartender kissed her on the mouth. He was with her now. I understood that the blonde had taken me for Florence.

  The stranger left as quickly as she’d arrived, it seemed to me. The bartender, in an excellent mood, offered us a pitcher of beer. We clinked our glasses, incredulous, and I secretly thought about Florence, who was no longer there to reflect my image. I felt empty. Almost immediately, another pitcher landed on the bar. A round of drinks on the house. The bartender was very drunk, and we were too. Louis was twirling around on his stool. But then he stopped cold.