A Selfie as Big as the Ritz

by Lara Williams

  I have started going to cafés. Just one café really if I am going to be completely straightforward. I always order a vanilla latte and a banana nut muffin because I saw that on TV once and it seemed like a sophisticated combination though truth be told it is a little sickly for my liking. I sit by the window and take out my book and look like I’m reading thinking this is when I’ll frown a bit this is when I’ll turn over the page. I eat my muffin tearing it into sections nibbling it bit by bit. Last time I tore into my muffin I could see all these fibrous things that on closer inspection I realized must be insects. Spiders I suspect. Ground up and baked into the mix. I took a small piece of muffin wrapped it in a napkin and showed the waiter asking what the meaning of all these spiders was and he said there were no spiders and gave me a funny look and then I looked around and all the other customers were giving me funny looks too though not half as funny as the looks they gave me when he walked in with her with his wife and I called her a bitch whore and asked quite reasonably why she couldn’t keep her man pleased you know in a sexual sense throwing the last of my muffin at her spilling coffee all down myself then leaving without looking at him but knowing I’d probably have to find somewhere else to meditate.

  I have started taking walks. I walk alone at night the sky looks nice all theatrical and old like a heavy curtain of velvet that would catch you and land you softly in it if for whatever reason the world turned upside down and you fell. I pull back my hair into a ponytail and pull it tightly to smooth the wrinkles across my forehead. I don’t have many wrinkles if I am to be honest and the night sky is not unkind to them. I walk up past the park and then round past the playground the primary colors gone inky by the dark like somebody spilled black paint into all the other colors. I used to think walks like baths like meditation were a pointless liturgy however now I see their appeal the silken comfort of the retreat the sedate charm of the remove. I look at the windows and think about the people in them thinking this one’s maybe a botanist this one has bad luck this one’s got a hard life this one lost his wife and now he can’t get out of bed in the morning. Once on my way home I walked past him and he said what the hell are you doing here what the hell are you even doing out here and I said I was out on my stroll I was just out on my evening stroll.

  I have started a new meditation class. It is further away than the other at the Buddhism center in town but the instructor is nice with a pale moon face and a smooth shaved head and when you get down to it this is the sort of thing Buddhists excel in. I tried a few others before I found this one but what I found is they’re mostly the same the same people the same breathing the same absent groaning wanting; a safe space they say imagine a safe space they always say your paradise your dream desert island but for all my imagining for all my thoughts drifting moonward up; up into the soupy wash of sky up into the fluffy white cotton clouds up into the star speckled universe. Just an infinitesimal pinprick moving further and further away.

  A Single Lady’s Manual for Parent/Teacher Evening

  A whistling nebula of Optrex and espresso, of barely contained hysteria, you arrive late, smoothing your wool skirt, plucking bobbles from your cardigan. Your hair swishes in a high ponytail, a slack whip, grazing your neck and shoulders, your horn-rimmed glasses kick queasy angles above your cheeks. You remove a wasabi pea from a crackling packet within your coat pocket. You slip it into your mouth chewing with a precision that makes you feel capable and wise. You’re concerned no one here really—gets—your outfit. You’re concerned maybe they don’t read Cosmo.

  “Your husband couldn’t make it?” asks his Geography teacher. You have built armor for this. It props you up like scaffolding. “I don’t have a husband,” you say. “It’s just me.” You look him in the eye. You look him hard in the eye. A thin whisper of gray splinters his forehead, a crease of skin, like a loose sock, sags at the curve of his nose. Your move, you think. Your move, asshole.

  You look at the other mothers, you see how they regard you, a sinister rogue agent, with small, sharp teeth and a face full of makeup. They grip their husbands. You wish you were wearing something lower cut.

  His English teacher clears her throat, shuffling papers across the table. “He doesn’t talk much,” she says. “He’s a very quiet boy.” You look at him and think: Quiet? This gangly, leaping thing. This giant bratty creature, preponderating your house, bounding across the living room, as playful as a kitten. Quiet? “Wasabi pea?” you ask.

  You wander through to the Art studios. You nod to a student in a cravat and beret. “Got ourselves a real David Hockney,” you nudge your son. “I said, we’ve got ourselves a real David Hockney, if you know what I mean.” He wrinkles his face. “What are you talking about?” he says. “Also, you have lipstick on your teeth. You have lipstick literally all over your teeth.”

  You recognize a boy with a strained, scattered beard. You study its lazy cartography. He used to visit your house. You smile at him. “Isn’t that Christian?” you ask, nodding in his direction. “Aren’t you going to say hello?” He mumbles something, staring at his feet, scratching his chin. “Speak up,” you say. “Speak up. I can’t hear a word you’re saying.”

  You are hot—too hot—in the science labs. You remove your coat, ripping it from your arms, he holds your purse and scarf as you fan yourself wildly. A group of young men walk by, giggling and chatting, as involved as Christmas elves. They see him holding your bag, your quilted bag, with its glossy oversized clasp and your printed silk scarf. “Oh Matilda!” they laugh. “Look at what Matilda’s holding!” He forces them back into your hands. “Come on,” he says. “Come on, we’re going.”

  “He is a bright kid,” his Biology teacher tells you. “He is just as bright as a button.” You look at him, you look at his face, his big dopey face, the light of it, the captured, amber light. Light that needs splitting and refracting to burn even brighter. You want to hold his hand. You think if you were to hold his hand, at this moment in time, you would break every bone in it, crushing them down to sawdust.

  You cross the playground, looping an arm through his. “What are you doing this weekend, pal? Why don’t you go to the cinema?” You slip him a twenty-pound note. “My treat.” He yawns, removing his arm from yours. “I thought I’d just hang out with you this weekend,” he says. “Plus the dishwasher isn’t going to fix itself.” Last night, he made you a lasagne, looming in the arched entrance of your kitchen, in your rose print apron and oven gloves. “You are so handsome,” you say, squeezing his cheek with your thumb and forefinger. “You are such a handsome boy.”

  You meet his final teacher of the evening, his Media Studies teacher, she is about your age. “I work in Digital Marketing,” you tell her. “But I did a Masters in Film and Media years and years ago.”

  “Well it must run in the family,” she replies. “Because he is doing fantastic.” You give his wrist a little squeeze. His tiny, baby wrist. “His project on Jean Seberg,” she says, “is really excellent work.”

  “He did a project on Jean Seberg?” you reply, turning to him. “Did you really? My dissertation was on Jean Seberg.”

  “I know,” he says. “You told me.”

  “Well,” his teacher says. “You must read his project. The stuff about her poetry is particularly interesting.”

  “She wrote poetry? No kidding,” you say. “I didn’t know.”

  You drum your fingers on the table and look at your watch. How did I not know that? you think. How on earth did I not know that? You thought you knew everything about Jean Seberg. You thought you could write the goddamn book on Jean Seberg.

  You look at your boy. Well, perhaps it is new information, you think, freshly acquired knowledge you are not privy to, something you simply do not have time to keep on top of. Or perhaps you once knew, and now you have forgotten, stowing it away, treading water between the bleeding multitude of things you have to think about. Or perhaps you knew all along, and you have overlooked it. Or is it possible, is it just possible, t
hat you never knew.

  Not really.

  Not even at all.

  A Selfie as Big as the Ritz

  After the Faculty party Samuel held her sensing somehow she was different.

  Her body felt unusually hard; a stiff little nub, defiant in its rigidity, whereas before it felt soft and expansive, as smooth and yielding as down. He suddenly saw its capacity for secrets. The scoop of her hips. The spaces between the vertebrae of her spine. He slipped a hand beneath her breast. You could hide a twenty-pence piece under here, he thought. You could hide a fifty-pound note!

  She had worn a silver dress; a slinky, rustling number, shining like some tinfoil-covered treat. There was an arrogance in silver, he felt. A false modesty. Second best! How terribly humble! He watched her move across the room, stacking salad and samosas onto her plate, shimmering like some other-worldly thing, something dimensionally beyond his reach. He suddenly understood the movie Ghost. He thought: that’s actually an incredibly profound film.

  Now that the cartography of her body no longer made sense, like a map written in verse, nothing else seemed to make sense also. He doubted whether he had ever known her at all. She had started drifting. She drifted backward and forward. She drifted from one room to another. “The drift!” he’d exclaim, but she frowned and shrugged her shoulders. She no longer understood his references.

  He surveyed the room; the huddled modernists, the distended narratologists, the Americanists being loud and brash (of course). Standing together in groups of twos, threes and fives; a couple of loners circling the room. A chaotic Fibonacci sequence! he thought, with her at the center of all things in a way he had never really noticed, dressed like a precious metal.

  He normally enjoyed these Faculty hubbubs. He was a sharp dresser. A sophisticated fella. But he was preoccupied. She seemed more angular, more disengaged than usual. All sloping curves and smooth skin. There was no getting past beautiful women, you just sort of buzzed about their peripheries; hanging around the front door, waiting for an invite inside.

  He found himself following her, draping his arm around her neck, wanting to throw a tantrum, a full spitting tantrum, just so she would look at him. Though sex remained the same. She still wanted him in this final, absolute sense. Staring into her eyes he could see that same hunger, that same aching blue oblivion. After, he would draw his fingertip around the outline of her face and she would shiver, though not, he knew, from pleasure.

  Watching her sleep he decided what they needed was something to make them fall in love again: a shared interest in lomography, or a really good boxset. She had recently taken an interest, her own private interest, in environmental politics. She’d inherited an esoteric vernacular as if intentionally to exclude him. Phrases like “crop phrenology” and “intraspecific diversity” she would intone with the depth of prayer. She started clipping articles from the paper and taping them to their bedroom wall. The frantic collaging of the deranged. He would return from work, observe her supine on the sofa, like some undersexed Victorian, then wearily climb the stairs, peeling the clippings carefully and placing them in a black plastic bag to bin.

  He tried to ingratiate himself to this interest; reading up on ecopoetics, delivering articulate meditations on pastoralism over dinner. He imagined he must look very attractive to her, like that Athena poster of the man holding the baby. He paused, occasionally, to ask her views, and she just smiled and rocked forward her head. He thought it was probably a lot to take in.

  Holding her at night he smiled. Smiled for the small victories. The hamlets torched. The villagers mutely ravaged. The towns and cities far, far away. They were, after all, still fucking.

  Sometimes he got the sense he could do anything to her and that she would like it. He removed the rather unpleasant thought, like hair from the drain, replacing it with the notion that he should whisk her away. He imagined her in that silver dress, glittering like a disco ball. Beneath the freshly acquired layers of hemp wool and patchouli remained the heart of a glamorpuss, he mustn’t forget that. He would razzle dazzle her. Sweep her off her feet. Take her to Paris for a weekend of romance and roses.

  On the flight she listened to country music—a clear indication of melancholy.

  It was lazy. It was lazy heartbreak. Resigning yourself to strings and lazy metaphors, empty ballrooms and birthday parties no one shows up for. It lacked fight. For what were the heart’s aches and pains if not a call to arms? He had the stewardess bring them a bottle of champagne but it just made her sad. He gave her a playlist of all his favorite songs but she didn’t want to listen. Was there nothing he could do?

  Though she did seem to like the hotel. She flopped immediately onto the bed and wrapped herself in the duvet, like a plump sausage roll, her head peeping out at the end. He kissed her, holding her soft halo in his hands. “You look good today,” he said, and she blinked, twice, though didn’t return the gesture.

  He had the whole weekend planned. A river boat up the Seine, a walk around the Sorbonne; they would hold hands and visit graves. He would duck into little patisseries to buy her treats but she would eat them with a perfunctory grazing. He wondered why she hadn’t dressed with a little more whimsy. Why she would not say anything, merely stare off into space. Was there ever anything more terrifying than other people’s thoughts?

  Approaching the Eiffel Tower he implored her to hold her hand skyward, a perspective photo; looking as if it were placed in her palm. She refused, shaking her head, letting all her hair fall into her eyes like the limp tassels on one of the imitation designer handbags she wouldn’t let him buy. At the top of the tower, she would still not have her photograph taken, and hadn’t offered to take his. He angled the phone in front of his face, the screen beaming back his reflection. He thought he looked very handsome today. Well, it would be a fantastic selfie. A magnificent selfie. A selfie as big as the Ritz.

  She left soon after they returned. There was no decisive moment; she just sort of faded away. One day he looked around the flat and realized none of the stuff in it was hers. It was a relief really; the sleepy calm that comes after the exorcism of grief. And so, he slept it off. Slept like slowly seeping caramel. Slept like the biggest marshmallow there ever was. He didn’t so much mind his life without her.

  Some months later he saw her in the supermarket, in a stained shirt and clogs; a string bag of limes in one hand, box of tampons in the other. He thought he might go over and see if she was okay, ask how she was doing; but there was something about how she looked that made him pause. She looked still as if she was drifting. She looked confused. She looked like, maybe, she had been crying. He followed her for a long while, wandering through the aisles, beginning to approach her then pulling back; watching her drop things and get herself into a state. At one point, she turned and almost saw him, but he ducked behind some crackers, kneeling low on the floor; wondering what he was supposed to do or say, wondering if she’d ever even seen him at all.

  The Getting of the Cat

  There is a going-into-things-with-your-eyes-open, in the getting of the cat. It is a buying into a specific kind of identity. An identity of Blossom Dearie glasses; of chrome-plated reading lamps. Of a copy of The Fountainhead splayed open, text forward, like a yawn, the spine cracked and wrinkled, the pages sticky with thumbprints. It is a decision you make not without understanding the implications, indeed, without embracing them, and so it was fitting the cat was collected on your birthday, an indifferent gift to yourself, a nonchalant scarf or dispassionate tea set, that gleams and spits from the corner.

  You step outside into the shared garden of your flat, in the warehouse district, where your friends used to live, though they have moved to the suburbs, to settle down, to tend allotments and complain about the lack of adequate cycle routes.

  You really need this cat.

  You can hold it in your arms and waltz it around the garden, the pretty periwinkles in their red, brick beds, the slanted paving and sad water feature, water sort of spewing
from its side, like an epileptic tongue. You can show your cat all of this, scratching the silken fuzz of his head, holding its warm paw in the palm of your hand. “This is it,” you can say. “This is outside.”

  You collect it from the shelter, arriving midday, greeted by the woman you have spoken with, Ellen, in tartan tights, berry nail varnish and whispering, silver hair. Watercolor paintings hang limp from the walls. A potted plant wilts on the table, its leaves spilling over the side, in deference. Ellen looks at you like she recognizes you as One Of Us, which of course you are; a cat person, allies in isolation. “He’s had a sleepless night,” she says, placing him on the table in a creaking, wicker basket. He cowers at the back, his emerald eyes, like lilies on a lake, bob and float from the shadows.