Nocturnes and Other Nocturnes

by Claude Lalumiere

  There are no flowers. It is a little barren. She can change that. She will change that. Nevertheless, like Lewis himself, his home is seductive in its stark simplicity.

  He says, “I work for a travel agency. I scout locations, hotels, tours.”

  He’s made dinner for her. He tells her the name of the dish, but the word is too foreign; it slips past her, unremembered. She’s so nervous she forgets the taste as soon as she swallows each mouthful. They drink red wine from Sicily. It is so smooth it is like drinking rose water.

  They do not speak much during dinner. She feels awkward, tense, inadequate.

  Finally, he clears the table.

  Then, without a word, without hesitation, he takes her.

  He rips her clothes off, ruining them, and bites the soft skin of her neck, hard enough to leave marks. He slings her over his shoulder and carries her to the bedroom. He throws her on the bed.

  This time, he is not gentle. Not delicate.

  Katrina emerges from sex bruised and raw. Their passion abated, she drowsily locks eyes with him, and both she and Lewis immediately erupt with laughter.

  They snuggle and talk all night long, drifting seamlessly and languorously from one sentence to the next.

  Katrina is in love, and it is perfect. Lewis is perfect, unhaunted by better decisions not taken.

  By the end of the week, she has moved in with him.

  ~

  As the months pass, Katrina comes to appreciate the faint ghosts of Lewis’s other, inferior lives, because they remind her that Lewis is unerring in always making exactly the right decisions. He is not only perfect; he is perfect for Katrina.

  She has blended in her beloved flowers to the minimalist esthetic of what is now their shared home. Neither the flowers nor Lewis are jealous of the other. It’s a perfect life, one that she had never imagined nor even known she needed. Now that it is hers, she cannot bear the thought of losing it.

  Occasionally she dreams that it slips away from her: that Lewis starts making the wrong decisions and that being near him and those ghosts of better Lewises becomes unbearable. Tonight, the dream is especially vivid. Every time he talks to her, he says something wrong, unkind, thoughtless, imperfect. With every word, a new, better ghost of Lewis superimposes itself over the original, until she can no longer perceive him at all.

  She wakes up to his strong musk and comforts herself back to sleep, to love.

  ~

  On their first anniversary, walking hand-in-hand down La Rambla in Barcelona, she finally asks him: “How did you know? How were you so certain that we should be together when we didn’t know anything about each other? How could you know? I was merely a shopgirl. I could have been anyone, anything.”

  He grins. “I’ve never told anyone. But I’ll tell you. I can see.”

  See? She tenses as she waits for him to elaborate.

  “I see connections. I see the links that tie people together. Like a layer of perception on top of physical reality. Over the years, I’ve come to understand the nature of the different strands between people. Hate. Dependency. Jealousy. Envy. Lust. Admiration...” He squeezes her hand. “Love.”

  Katrina sometimes wondered if others, besides herself, might be able to see, but she had never considered that it could be possible to see something other than the ghost lives she can perceive.

  Lewis continues: “When I first noticed you working at World Travel, I saw the most gorgeous, complex, alluring connecting strand ... and it united us. We were at each end of it, tethered together. I knew then that you were my girl. That one day, no matter what, we would be in love and that it would be wonderful. I also knew that I didn’t have to rush anything. The strand was so strong. It could never, would never fade or break. I am unambiguously forever yours, just as you are mine.”

  Katrina stops walking. She turns to face Lewis; she touches his mouth, kisses him. He accepts the kiss perfectly, reacting exactly right to the probings of her lips, her tongue, her teeth.

  They walk in silence for a long time after that. She nearly tells him about her ghost sight, but the moment passes.

  ~

  Katrina’s dreams worsen. These nightmares of Lewis’s potential failures grow both in intensity and in frequency.

  It is becoming difficult to hide her anxieties from him, from his focused attention.

  She loves Lewis, but the reason the dreams gnaw at her with such ferocity is that she is self-aware enough to know that her devotion, as strong and true as it is, would not withstand the ghosts of better Lewises haunting their relationship.

  Katrina’s flowers give her some comfort, but, after tasting love with Lewis, they could never be enough for her by themselves. Not anymore.

  She remembers what Lewis told her that first night: Your eyes themselves are like flowers: gateways of seductive colour that open to reveal fragile yet savage beauty. She knows what she must do to ensure the survival of their love: she must no longer be able to see.

  ~

  She calls emergency just before doing it. She makes up a lie about a badly wounded child. They will come quickly. It gives her urgency, a deadline. She cannot hesitate.

  She uses her fingers. It is so difficult. She’s trembling uncontrollably. But she must focus.

  She does it. She digs her eyes out. At first, she doesn’t realize that those primal, dreadful screams are her own.

  ~

  She tells the doctors, the psychiatrists, and the police that she doesn’t remember anything. Calling emergency. Taking out her own eyes. She feigns horror; she claims not to understand how she could have done such a brutal thing to herself. She knows they are talking to Lewis as well, but they haven’t allowed him to see her yet.

  Eventually, after three weeks, they give up. Aside from that one lapse, they can find no evidence that she might be a danger to herself or others, or that Lewis might be abusing her.

  The truth is, she is giddy. It worked. She can no longer see. All those people who questioned her ... and not one whiff of ghostly lives.

  She is proud of what she has accomplished: no unbidden ghosts will ever cause her love for Lewis to falter.

  ~

  Despite her blindness, she sees Lewis the instant he walks into her hospital room. His ghosts parade through her mind’s eye.

  The real Lewis speaks to her; she can faintly hear his voice trying but failing to communicate with her. He is drowned out – and, she knows with despairing certainty, will always be drowned out – by the all-too vivid ghosts of lesser Lewises, those nightmare Lewises who do not love her so perfectly.

  This time, she knows the screams are her own.

  Being Here

  The night before, you and I had fought, and it had taken me forever to fall asleep. We didn’t make up then, and I still regret that. We’d argued about nothing and everything – the dishes, the vacuuming, the cat litter. A stupid fight. One in which none of the important things got said, in which all the real reasons for the tension between us were carefully avoided.

  Exasperated, you had turned your back to me; a snore interrupted me mid- sentence. Waking you up would only have made a bad situation worse. There was nothing I could have said at that moment that would have brought us closer. I let you sleep and tried to calm myself.

  It was useless. I lay awake for hours, unable even to keep my eyes closed, until I fell from sheer exhaustion into an unrestful sleep.

  I woke up at dawn, as I always did. The clock on my bedside dresser told me it was not quite six yet. I usually took advantage of the time before I woke you up at eight to go running in the park. That morning, thinking I had a choice, I decided to be lazy and stay in bed. I knew the exercise would help snap me out of my funk, but I just couldn’t gather the energy to get up and start my day.

  After a few minutes, it occurred to me that in the morning I always needed to pee urgently. And yet there I was, feeling absolutely no pressure on my bladder.

  I wanted to enjoy a drowsy morning in bed, just rest and
relax. But I couldn’t get comfortable. The blankets were so heavy.

  ~

  The clock read 7:12. The feeling of being trapped by the blankets was unbearable. I was getting tenser and angrier by the second. I couldn’t muster the strength to get up. I liked mornings, but already I was hating this one.

  The digital readout on the clock became my lifeline to sanity. That every minute a numeral changed filled me with a strange and pathetic reassurance.

  Still irritated from the previous night, I wanted to shout at you to stop snoring, but, with our fight still so fresh, I knew waking you up this early would only make things worse.

  Lying there, I was hypersensitive to noises I usually blanked out. The morning traffic, the creaking building, the shrill wind outside. I could make out what the neighbours were saying through the walls; they were calmly reading each other snippets from the morning paper. Everything was so loud.

  And the smell! The cat litter stank like we hadn’t changed it in months. Were we really that bad? The whole apartment reeked: the unwashed laundry, the sinkful of dirty dishes, the garbage. How could we have let things slide so much, I thought.

  ~

  Finally, it was eight o’clock; time to wake you.

  No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t push the blankets off me, I couldn’t reach over and touch you. I wasn’t paralyzed, though. I could move my neck, my face, and the top of my right shoulder – everything that wasn’t caught under the blankets. I tried to say your name over and over again, but no sound came out of my mouth. I thought: you’ll be late for work; you’ll be furious with me.

  And then the fact that I couldn’t speak hit me, hit me much harder than being trapped in bed. I panicked, losing track of time, unable even to think, until I heard you roar my name.

  But that was no roar, not really, only a mumble amplified by my hypersensitive hearing. You were finally waking up. The clock told me it was 10:34. You always mumbled my name when you were in that dozy state, rising from sleep to wakefulness. I loved that.

  You turned toward me – I’d never noticed before how pungent your morning breath was – and your eyes popped open. You were looking past me at the clock. You flung out of bed, screaming my name without looking at me, shouting abuse and insults because I hadn’t woken you up in time. The noise and stress combined to give me the god of all headaches.

  When you got out of bed, the blankets moved enough so that my other shoulder was freed. But no more than that. I could move that shoulder again. Such frustrating relief.

  Ten minutes later, you stomped back into the bedroom – your skin moist from the shower – and, still angry, shouted, “Where the fuck are you?” You turned on the light, and it was too much for my eyes. I squeezed them shut to block out the searing brightness. I mean, I tried to. My face wasn’t paralyzed. I could feel my facial muscles react when I moved them – even my eyelids. But closing them didn’t stop the light. While putting your clothes on, you kept shouting at me like I wasn’t there.

  Before slamming the front door on your way out, you had let George in from the backyard. He jumped on the bed and walked all over me. His paws were like steel girders; the bed under me gave with his every step. After a minute or so of this, he zeroed in on my crotch and kneaded it mercilessly. Purring. My life was pain. At least you had turned off the lights.

  ~

  George stayed nestled on my crotch until you came back home after work. How much did he weigh? Eight pounds? Ten? Something like that. It felt like a bowling ball was crushing my pelvis.

  As soon as he heard you unlock the front door, he leapt off me. He meowed to be let out. You cooed at him and opened the back door. These noises were still too loud, but by this time, having had to cope with it for a whole day, I’d become somewhat used to my newfound sensitivity. Even the light and smells, while still harsh, didn’t bother me as much. In general, the pain was getting duller – an irritation instead of an assault.

  After shutting the back door, you called my name. I tried to answer, but I still couldn’t manage to make any sound.

  I heard you pick up the phone, no doubt checking for messages. The phone hadn’t rung all day. I was thankful for that bit of silence.

  You swore and slammed the phone down. You turned on the TV and set the volume high. I braced myself for the pain, but I was adapting well – too well – to my condition. There was no discernible increase in my pain level.

  I heard you wander through the apartment, shuffling papers, opening doors. You returned to the living room and plunked yourself down on the couch. Over the sounds of a car advertisement, I could hear you sniffle and sob. Already, I missed you so much.

  ~

  You watched TV all evening, not bothering to eat. At 1:04 in the morning, you finally turned off the TV and walked into the bedroom. You looked miserable. You stared at me. In a tearful whine, you said, “Where are you?”

  Desperate, I tried to channel all my strength, all my energy into screaming that I was right there, but I still failed. Couldn’t you see me? It’s not like I was dead. If I were, there’d be a corpse, a body.

  And that’s when I couldn’t ignore it anymore.

  I craned my neck to look down at myself, at where I felt my body squeezed into immobility by the blankets, and ... and there was nothing there.

  ~

  I stayed awake that whole night.

  You fell asleep on your stomach, without taking your clothes off. You didn’t move all night, but you snored – of course, you snored. Your left arm fell across me and crushed my chest – the part of me that still felt like a chest – until you woke up at 10:42 the next morning.

  It was only after your arm had been separating my upper self from my lower for several hours that I noticed that I was no longer breathing. When I thought about it, I was pretty sure that I hadn’t breathed since I’d woken up in this condition.

  Whatever that was.

  I listed the symptoms: I was invisible, even to myself; I didn’t get hungry; I didn’t need to pee or shit; I didn’t get tired, but I felt a constant, numbing weakness; my senses were too acute for comfort; I wasn’t breathing; blankets were too heavy for me to lift.

  Like a list was going to explain everything, or anything.

  And where was my body? How could I feel so much physical pain if I didn’t have a body?

  ~

  You rolled on your back, away from me. I felt my rib cage pop back up. Did I still have a rib cage? I looked at where I felt my body to be, and there still wasn’t even the slightest hint of a shape. Was I even in there with you? Or was that sensation an illusion of some kind?

  I told you, silently, that I was sorry for everything, for being so distant, for so often only pretending to listen to you, for so often having some stupid thing to do when all you wanted was to enjoy spending time with me – and in the middle of my futile apology George sat on my face.

  ~

  You called in sick for the next two days. Minutes crawled by like weeks, sleepless days and nights like lifetimes.

  You called my office and a few of my friends, but I could tell from your voice the emotional price you were paying for doing this. You gave that up quickly.

  Couldn’t you see that all my clothes were still there? My keys by the bed? Couldn’t you feel that I was still there, longing for you?

  Your orbit consisted of the bed, the fridge, the couch, and the toilet. The centre of your universe was the TV.

  You stopped calling in sick. You just stayed home. When the phone rang, you ignored it.

  ~

  A week later, your sister used her spare key to come in when you failed to respond to the doorbell. At first she was furious, yelling at you to snap out of it. Eventually, you broke down and started crying. That mollified her.

  You told her that I’d vanished on you with no warning. She said she was surprised at that; she’d always thought of me as good for you.

  You were an odd combination of fragile and tough, and I’d fallen in l
ove with the intensity that accompanied that mix. You needed undivided attention to feel loved. You didn’t give your trust easily, but, once you did, you trusted without question. Being with you was a heady experience that left little time or energy for anything else. I indulged like an addict: your intensity was a powerful narcotic. You had tended to attract lovers who abused your fragility, who took pleasure in shattering someone so strong who could nevertheless be so easily broken. Your sister had liked that I made you laugh, had seen how it thrilled me to have you permeate my whole world.

  Eventually, life outside our bubble intruded. Friends, work, whatever. And I drifted away. I let you suffer, even though I knew you were suffering; I let my growing indifference chip away at you. And, like a coward, instead of talking to you and trying to mend the rift, I just ignored it. I ignored you.

  Sex with you was so beautiful, such a complete escape, sad and hard, silly and serious, in all the best ways. How could I let anything get in the way of that? Of being close to you?

  I’ve never wanted to comfort you as much as when I heard you tell your sister how much you’d been hurt by my disappearance. But I’d started to disappear much earlier than you were telling her, and I hated myself for that. For betraying you. For betraying myself.

  ~

  Do you remember when, the week before we moved in together, you stopped by my office and took me out to lunch? Warming your hands on my cup of tea, a fleck of something green stuck between your teeth, you asked me what I needed, and we bonded because of our common goal: your happiness. When did that stop being important?

  ~

  Your sister couldn’t see me either. She cleaned the bathroom. After she put you in a hot bath, she turned off the TV and put on the radio instead. Classical. Worse: opera. Then, she attacked the embarrassing mess of our apartment. I’d like to say that most of it was due to your recent binge, but our place was always a disaster area.

  And then she changed the bed.

  The weakness disappeared when the weight of the blankets was lifted off me.

  And, just like that, I was free. I was free! I danced and leapt and twirled and ran and—