Aphelia

by Nicol Mikella

  “Your friend is here.”

  I turned around. Mia was standing in the middle of the tables waiting for me to notice her. She smiled at me. Louis wasn’t Julien, but nevertheless she refused to join me at the bar. I got up to go find her, hoping Louis would hold me back by my T-shirt.

  “Hi,” she said, softly.

  “What are you doing here?”

  I spoke in an amused tone, pretending to look for her friends. But I was well aware that she was alone and that she was here for me. She shouldn’t be hunting me down across the city like this. She’d made the mistake of following me into the hideout where I went to escape. She didn’t give me any explanation.

  “My world is crumbling,” I said. “Everything I know…”

  I didn’t finish my sentence. The bonfire around which we’d united had been extinguished with a garden hose, and all that remained was the smell of ash and a thick grey smoke.

  “Come to my place, please.”

  Mia stroked my arm softly with the ends of her nails and shivers ran through my body. A heat lodged itself between my legs. It wasn’t fair. I asked myself whether she thought of Julien, sometimes. If she could see him waiting for me in our bedroom, me who’d never been with a woman.

  Louis was watching us. The bartender too, searching for a rational explanation for what was playing out in front of him. He took a cigarette out of his pack, and Louis signalled that they were going to smoke near the employee exit. I chased them away with a flick of my hand.

  “I’ll join you! One minute.”

  Louis threw me a look I recognized. When they disappeared into the hallway, I turned back toward Mia.

  “I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

  She shrugged her shoulders, as though to say bad decisions had been taken for a long time. I followed her into the street, then into the night bus that charged down the empty boulevard toward the stars, full to bursting.

  Mia helped me climb the stairs without falling. Inside, she handed me a glass of water and I begged her to turn on the television to see the news.

  “Now?” she sighed.

  “Yes! Maybe there are new developments.”

  We sat down on the couch. Mia took off her jacket. Underneath, she was only wearing a white, transparent camisole. I kept my eyes glued to the commercials on the screen, each as trivial as the next. We waited without talking.

  “Why are you so far away?” Mia finally asked me.

  She meant in general. The news started, and in a solemn voice, a newscaster announced that Anaïs Savage’s body had been found that morning. They had only just confirmed her identity. It must have been broadcast on the ten o’clock news when I was on my way to the bar.

  “The body?” I asked Mia.

  “Oh, no…” was all she said.

  I started breathing too quickly. The ends of my fingers went numb. I got up to open the window, wobbling, and breathed in the humid air from outside as though emerging from a long dive underwater. I closed the window and leaned back against the wall. Mia watched me, worried.

  “Come.”

  I walked a bit in the cramped room. Mia turned off the television. We would learn the details later. Understand where we’d gone wrong. I sat down, my head in my hands.

  “It’s going to be all right. You drank too much.”

  “That has nothing to do with it.”

  We stayed silent. Mia put her arms around my shoulders. Then she kissed my neck. I pushed her away. I asked what she was intending to do, exactly.

  “Did you think it was a game?” I asked, indicating the blank screen of the television.

  “No. But there’s nothing we can do, you know.”

  I got up. I took my bag and left. Mia followed me and went out onto the balcony, yelling for me to come back while I hurtled down the outside stairs. I hailed the first taxi that passed.

  Julien wasn’t yet in bed. He asked, reluctantly, why I was crying, and I simply answered that the girl was dead.

  “What girl?”

  Eight

  I awoke from a deep, dark sleep. I felt like I had slept for a long time, but it wasn’t even ten o’clock yet. The neighbourhood was plunged in a cocoon of Saturday morning silence, and for a second I believed the previous night hadn’t happened. I got up, plagued by nausea.

  I turned the television on and raised the volume so I could hear each word of the news from the kitchen. I had to know what the police had found. The newscaster’s every intonation was calculated, and her voice reverberated through the apartment. Julien was reading his emails while eating breakfast. Annoyed, he asked me to turn it down. The cause of death hadn’t been determined. I broke a glass while emptying the dishwasher.

  Julien turned around and saw the blood on my hands, and me watching it drip into the sink on the dishes waiting to be washed. He sighed and turned back around. I rinsed off my hand. As soon as I took it out of the water, the blood spilled everywhere again.

  “What?” I asked Julien.

  “Nothing.”

  He left the kitchen, bringing his bowl of cereal and laptop with him. I wrapped my finger in a dry rag and followed close on his heels. He sat on the couch facing the newscaster, his computer open on his knees. I shrugged my shoulders, impatient.

  “What? What did I do?”

  “Nothing. You did nothing.”

  We stared at each other.

  “You do nothing,” Julien continued. “And when you decide to get up, do some cleaning, do something, this is what happens.”

  He pointed toward my finger with his chin. I sat down beside him. Julien shook his head, then went and shut himself up in the bedroom. It was almost certain now that I was going to lose him.

  The camera showed a bird’s eye view of an uncultivated field of wild chicory along the edge of the highway. It was there that she had been found, after some motorists had reported what looked to be a lifeless body to the police. She was lying kilometres away from the place where I’d seen her, an hour north of the island, on the path that could have been her escape. Later, Anaïs Savage’s boyfriend appeared on the screen in tears. He said to the journalist, who had pursued him up to his door with a microphone, that he hoped they would soon nab the bastard who’d done this.

  “It’s you, it’s you, it’s you!” I screamed.

  The house red wine costs four dollars a glass. It leaves a bitter taste in your mouth. My energy has already left me, and B.’s warm look cools when it falls on me. I am drinking out of habit, because the guys like to party, but the atmosphere is tense because of an argument B. and I had during the day. The smallest disagreement between us now turns into a big drama. Louis went home earlier than usual.

  B. is ignoring me. He moves from one group to the other, he who knows everyone. He had abandoned me at the bar. I watch him, my elbow leaning on the bar and my head supported by my hand. A few guys accost me. They offer me drinks and I say yes. The room starts to spin dangerously. I love B., but I also want him dead each time his smile shines for someone else.

  The bartender is there, and Florence, who looks dramatically younger. She talks with her friends, sitting at a table lit up by slot machines. We still amuse ourselves with our resemblance. Jokingly, we compliment each other’s clothes and hairstyles, which are often identical. Our hair falls in heavy curtains on our chests. Mine is dead, bleached a dull platinum blonde, and doesn’t capture the light the way Florence’s does. In love, the bartender leaves his post from time to time, jogging over to kiss her then returning to serve customers. He respects B. too much to try anything with me.

  A friend of the bartender sits down at the bar. I listen to them with one ear because I don’t have anyone to talk to anymore. The friend is in search of a girl to seduce and take home. But besides Florence and me, and the brunette in deep conversation with B., there are no other girls around. I take small sips of my fifth glass of house wine. I just want to go sleep, gently, and for B. to be close by, for, by some miracle, him to still love me. I am h
ot underneath my black turtleneck and jean jacket, and I’m not doing anything to cool myself down. The guy, playful, points to Florence and asks the bartender what he thinks. The bartender shakes his head.

  “Don’t touch.”

  They laugh. I turn toward the guy.

  “I look a little like her. I could make a good consolation prize. Also, I only drink four dollar glasses, so you’d get good value for your money.”

  I don’t know how those words come out of my mouth, or which tone I use. The bartender laughs, but his friend is like marble. He seems to think a bit and observes me attentively for too long, and I am annoyed with myself for having given him this opportunity. I take a mouthful while turning to face the room. He keeps his eyes on my profile.

  “No, I must admit I don’t find you beautiful.”

  The words fall, and the bartender laughs too loudly to dispel the discomfort he helped create. At the end of the bar, the group around B., absorbed in their own discussion, bursts out laughing too. B. raises his eyes toward me and they’re without expression. The guy approaches me to touch the arch of my eyebrow. He follows the curve descending to my eyelid. His damp finger draws unpleasant lines on my skin. B. watches him, nothing more. Maybe he hopes he’ll take me, take me out the back door and I won’t come back. He could finally have his little brunette, whose smile for him is relentless.

  “Too sad,” the guy finally says. “Sorry, but you are too unhappy to be beautiful.”

  I stare at him. He turns his palms toward the sky, shrugging.

  “No offence.”

  The bartender serves me another glass of red. In the end, the consolation prize is for me. I get up to leave, which would be the right thing to do. The friend has completely lost interest in me. I don’t know what comes over me. At the precise moment when B. bursts out laughing again, far away, I kick one of the legs of the guy’s stool. It sways. To avoid losing his balance, the bartender’s friend has to get up, and his stool finishes its descent toward the floor with a crashing noise. Florence stops talking and turns in our direction.

  “Yes, I am sad. And it’s people like you who make me crazy.”

  I realize I am screaming because B. is now walking toward me with long strides. He has no problem with my anemia, my paleness, the way I get bored or weak from insomnia. But this, he cannot stand. I lean back against the bar, in the silence I created.

  “Calm down,” say the two guys in unison, the friend a bit panicked, and B. aggressive.

  I throw the contents of my glass of wine, still full, at the guy’s face, then I let the glass crash to B.’s feet. He backs up a step by instinct, then grabs me. The bartender holds out a napkin to his friend. B. pulls and pushes me toward the exit. I have time to see Florence get up and hold her hands to her chest. A small little doll, a little angel. She doesn’t make the slightest move to defend me, and I feel like yelling at her that this is only the beginning, a preview of life. She will see how things end up slipping through our fingers, and how we can no longer keep up with them. I tell myself Florence will one day get what is coming to her. Her joy can’t last.

  We find ourselves outside. The fresh air hits me and I start running. I am too drunk to go fast, but I can at least delay, delay everything. B. yells after me, saying I am nothing but a stupid bitch, then he tries to catch me. No one follows us outside—they don’t want to save me. I rush into the grungy alleyway. The sound of his steps follows me.

  “You really made a fool of yourself.”

  “It’s you who makes a fool of me.”

  I slap my hand on his sternum with all my strength in a desperate attempt to hang on to but hurt him at the same time. The blow arrives in the darkness, hitting the right side of my face. I back up a few steps and turn around to vomit. When I finish spitting out a red and bitter liquid, B. disappears into a taxi.

  I will never see that guy at the bar again. The bartender won’t speak of it to me again either, even when I start trying to catch his eye and give him half-smiles a few weeks after my recovery. I would have liked Louis to witness the scene, maybe he would have been proud of me. The people of that bar were part of a system where Louis and I, and other little stars, were gravitating around B., an immense sun. Their faces were familiar, their secrets, unspoken. It had taken this stranger to come upset everything and expose us.

  I will often miss the person I was during those few seconds when the wine flew through the air and people were afraid of me.

  I ignored Mia’s calls when I arrived at the call centre. Sitting at my desk, I searched the web for everything I could find about Anaïs Savage’s death. Mia had been right—the crime scene was intolerably peaceful. The same photo accompanied each article: that of a field of light and blue flowers covered by men in white jumpsuits. It had been revealed that she’d died because of a blow to the head. There were no traces of any other bruises on her body, but the autopsy had shown she was in an advanced state of intoxication at the moment of her death. I asked myself whether she’d been forced to drink all that alcohol, or if she’d numbed herself, feeling the end was near anyway.

  I tried to reconstruct the path Anaïs Savage had taken between the edge of the water and that impersonal field, which resembled the one in the heart of the city where I’d spotted her. The investigators were encouraging the public to participate in catching the individual who’d committed this murder. Everyone could be a suspect. I plunged into sadness, understanding she hadn’t escaped, that she hadn’t followed the path that called her. Rather, she’d been transported far away from it.

  I was menstruating. Blood was flowing non-stop, forcing me to change my tampon every hour.

  Later, I wrote to Mia to say I wanted to end our affair. She answered in a fit of anger that I was no better than all the men she’d known. Then she apologized; she sent me links, asking if I’d read the news about the Savage case. But I had made a mistake, and now I knew without a shadow of a doubt. Mia’s seduction had been just as violent and illusory as mine. She had allowed me to believe that together we would find that girl who’d disappeared. That it was possible to recover from violence, possible to save yourself. And me, I’d let everything else die.

  *

  Julien announced he was leaving me a week later. He had me sit beside him on the bed. He was speaking and all I could hear was that I’d lost him. It was my own fault. I’d lost again. I avoided his eyes, letting mine wander around, reviewing the objects, the furniture in our bedroom, the small photos of us he’d taken the care to frame and set up on his dresser. The closet. The double doors were open to reveal the disorder of my clothes, which Julien had ripped from their hangers and crammed into garbage bags. He was crying a little. I wasn’t capable of doing the same. I tried to say I wanted to cry too, that I wanted it more than anything, but it was impossible.

  I put my hand on his and the other on his thigh. He let me lean on him and lay on his knees. He was still calm when he asked me to admit that of which he was certain. I did it. He wasn’t crying now. I lay on my back to see him better. He never suspected that what he had first loved about me could turn against him. The mystery followed by the chase, the impetus, taking, stealing, pilfering from the other what I needed to live, and doing it all over again if it wasn’t enough for me anymore. Starting again with sex, love, oblivion. That night when he’d seen me wearing too much makeup, my eyes still swollen with tears, dark in my outfit that smelled like the bottom of my backpack, he’d awakened in me a fire he thought he could extinguish. But I would never find enough love. Julien would go stay at his parents for a few days to give me the time to disappear. I’d never been worthy of him. And I’d gotten what I deserved. This revelation was good for me, in a certain way.

  In a moment of rage, I started cleaning the entire condo. I should have done it a long time ago. I displaced dust that fell slowly in the rays of light crossing the room, like a pinch of ash settling on me. As I was vacuuming, lost in my thoughts, the wind started blowing. It gained strength, unrelentin
g as it hit the trees with violence. I would restore this place to its initial whiteness. I washed the floor of the bedroom, bent over on all fours. I approached the night table on my side of the bed, and the odour revealed itself, clear and terrible. I lay down on my stomach to see better. There was nothing. While getting up, I pushed the bed. A ball of tissues caught between the bed and the wall came free and I caught it with the ends of my fingers. Unfolding it, I found a used condom we must have forgotten weeks earlier. Julien’s semen had gone rotten inside it. It was liquid and had the colour of blood diluted in water.

  *

  That night, I kept searching the horizon beyond the deserted parking lots, where the ground descended down to the water. The boundary between the yellow grass and the dirty water, where you could vanish into thin air. Escape what pursued you. I often thought about going there after my work shift, as daylight began, to see what would happen to me. Then I forgot about that whole story. It took constant effort. I would concentrate on the computer screen, which would go into sleep mode. I would go walk in the street. I would come in and answer the customers. I ordered my sky chart. I finally closed the blinds of the call centre as soon as the other employees were gone.

  *

  Mia came to find me at work two or three times during the month of July, in the brightness of early morning. She would move toward me at dawn with courage and we would walk together. Sometimes one of us would rest our head on the other’s shoulder, or we would hold hands. I hadn’t told her that Julien and I had separated, not yet. I was scared of being forced to explain myself to her. I only wanted to talk to her as I’d liked to do, without hiding behind what I thought I should be. Maybe, through her, I would join all the other girls, Florence, Marion, Lara, Anaïs Savage and the disappeared, those of the local news items. But it wasn’t like it had been before.

  Nine

  The month of August passed, and I felt more and more free. I had moved to Louis’s place and finally chased Mia from my memory. It was Julien’s ghost who would appear among the crowd from then on, the spectre of the life I could have had. I hadn’t asked my boss to move me to the day shift. I continued to do what I did best: wait. That summer, I’d waited to be taken out of my reality, for the crime to be committed without me. I’d waited to be loved. To be called. I therefore answered the few night-time phone calls that would take me out of my inertia with the same hope. I’d been waiting for one voice, maybe since the first day. I was waiting for B. to call me and tell me that everything was finished, that it was time for me to come home.