One Star Awake

by Andrew Meehan

  —This is important, too, I said. I was in that car.

  He was colourless, his discomfort as palpable as weather.

  —You weren’t there.

  —I had to be.

  —We had finished long before that. God, this is fucked up. I don’t know how you lost your mind, your memory. But you weren’t in that car.

  —Who else was in the car?

  Nose delivered some raw fish plated in an uptight arrangement and Jerome ate his in a single mouthful, angrily.

  —It’s not important.

  —Then I’d like to know.

  —The person I just texted actually.

  —She was in the car and I wasn’t?

  —No you weren’t.

  —Another girlfriend?

  This was standard stuff and at first I thought—with his expertly kind, solemn expression—Jerome was going through the motions. No wonder people fell for it. This poor girl on the phone, whoever she was. Me. Besides.

  I squeezed the fish between my forefinger and thumb but didn’t eat any. There was a herb sauce brushed alongside it so that the plate looked patterned. Very clever, I thought. Very confusing. The neck of the dress was bunching around my ears. Jerome sat upright before leaning forward, as you would do in a negotiation.

  This was not our perfect day. I wasn’t fussy but this wasn’t it.

  I had my face in my hands—either I was there for some time or Jerome was particularly impatient. I could hear him asking me to stop and I could feel my breath misting in my palms. My head didn’t feel right. I hoped it wasn’t what I thought it was. To offset the headache I imagined I was one of those divers breathing through an aqualung in an old marine conservation film. I imagined my skull caving in—that’s what I presumed would happen if I ran out of oxygen.

  I sniffed at my next plate—lamb blah-blah—and pushed it away. When Nose came to remove it Jerome made a point of reassuring him that everything was all right.

  Then, to no one, he said, —This is kind of a weird one.

  I didn’t notice the shift in tone but there must have been one. Jerome was on the verge of saying something else. Gradually I began to feel starved of air, looking around the stupid room and suddenly feeling so desperately uncomfortable in that dress. I tried to imagine a victorious feeling of pulling it on for the first time. I tried to imagine knowing only victory. Not quite—and not quite extended all the way to not at all, not ever.

  —You need to tell me who it was, I said.

  —It’s better if I don’t.

  —Who was it? I said.

  Then it struck me that my inability to hear what Jerome said wasn’t the same as him not saying it. Nose had been and gone without us noticing and I was devouring the petits fours—my face dirty with cocoa dust—when he repeated it.

  —Ségo, he said.

  Present Tense

  I run barefoot from Renouveau. I boot down Charonne and right along Faubourg Saint Antoine and scythe around Place de la Bastille and head north towards the Canal Saint Martin, my chest blazing. I can see the streetlights flickering on, the city alight with a thousand lamps. I can see the giant containers unloading at the back of the Monoprix—as if someone is stocking up for a big party—and that gives me a boost of energy. I fly past the silent canal, past the trembling arms of a blind beggar, past groaning crowds, cornucopias, whole worlds. My chest is blazing, my senses are tapering into nothing, but I keep on along the quai feeling strangely consoled—my soul winning its war with pain. I have crossed a bridge from the beating by Jerome, and betrayal by Ségo, towards the illusion—it is really nothing else—that I can make a better future alone. As if I have solved another difficult sum, I decide I can learn to live without either of them. Joyless liaisons are behind me. Showy sex of the kind I shared with Jerome in bathrooms, sex that shamed its participants and increased the aggregate desire.

  Daniel’s place is not a visit I have planned to make but my feet are ravaged from running and I—maybe I don’t need a reason. I have not seen him in a couple of days but the moment I get in the door he resumes the conversation about the vacation. The sunsets on Île De Ré are unlike anything I’ve ever seen or ever will see.

  —I am going to lie out until I’m a rotten apricot. The beaches’ll blow your mind.

  When Daniel laughs his eyes shine—new coins—and, agog, it occurs to me finally that he might be in love with me.

  —Can’t wait, I say.

  —You should see them.

  —I intend to.

  —Once in a lifetime, he says, to square that part of it away.

  The amber light in his bedroom gives his skin a coppery tone that reminds me of Eagleback’s on that first morning at Bertrand Rose. He has noticed the dress and the bare feet. I expect him to say something and he doesn’t. But I know how I look and I know what he must be thinking. He sees that I am bamboozled by myself in the bedroom mirror. My hair is matted with sweat—as if oil has gotten into some bird’s feathers—and when I pull at it I make it worse.

  I step out of the dress and hand it to him.

  Daniel dumps the dress in his laundry basket without paying it any more attention. The basket is nearly empty because he has been preparing for the trip. The little person inside me rejoices at the ship-shape columns of underwear. His hospital corners.

  I perch on the edge of Daniel’s bed. The sight of my skin—rosy in the mirror—gives me a little shock. I ask him for a T-shirt and he mistakes this for you know what. He runs a finger lightly along my arm but I am scared to kiss anyone now. Nor have I brushed my teeth since I left Ségo’s place this morning—there has been no opportunity—and, even though it isn’t the case, I know I will come across as careless somehow.

  I inform Daniel that I want the T-shirt to sleep in and he fetches one. The cotton smells powdery. My bare skin smells of Fairy liquid and Jerome. Of course, I know the difference between lust and love and the difference between hate and love. I do—they’re different.

  Daniel gets into the beautiful bed and I follow. The headboard is carved and wooden. Here and there are flowers, small wooden roses painted in wedding-cake white. The pillows are larger than I’m used to and more comfortable, white too—the cases starched so they are cool against your face.

  —Ask a question, I say. Did you know Ségo had a boyfriend?

  —We’ve talked about it but it doesn’t feel like her favourite subject.

  Daniel asks me if I am okay with Ségo accompanying us to the island. As of this evening—as of an hour ago, unbeknown to him—I have resolved to put her out of my mind, so I say, —You know that guy I chased after outside Bertrand Rose, Eagleback?

  I break off because I don’t know what else to say. I have successfully herded a motorway full of speeding traffic. Besides. What was it Ghislaine said? Happiness is not a baguette.

  He leans in and whispers, —I am here.

  —I know.

  The spectacle of Daniel’s perfect dreads against the pillow case is too much. I have to cover my face with my hands because I have begun to cry—hollering with eyes tightly closed, even though I don’t care that Daniel sees me or what he thinks. It isn’t until I am crying—over Jerome, over Ségo, over nothing—that I understand that relief can be found everywhere. The act of crying itself is relief, in the way my face spontaneously vibrates and the tears spring out of me without me knowing how, feeling them roll down my face and into my mouth, their strange taste and the way they make me feel weightless and slightly drowsy and how they stop as soon as I am feeling better.

  Daniel #8

  Eva wakes up wired and muttering as if drugged. Daniel doesn’t know why she wants to visit Buttes Chaumont before they leave for the island.

  —I want to smell the forest air, she says. Before we head to the sea.

&nb
sp; She wants something sweet for breakfast. Bertrand Rose is out of their way so Daniel finds a boulangerie near Canal Saint Martin. They are not the only ones up and at it: American kids with jet-black clothes and his same throaty Eastern accent are buying escargot pastries just to use as props in their photos. Everyone is so skilled at framing and composition but no one eats anything. There is enough discarded pastry to dam the canal.

  Eva wants an ordinary bar of chocolate and Daniel gets her the next best thing: a pain au chocolat. He used to be able to track her by her sweet tooth. Once she had the palate of a baby, now she has no time for such dainty things. Now it’s outrageously dark chocolate, the more punishing the better.

  A dog follows her along Rue de Marseille as she rescues the chocolate and dumps the rest on the sidewalk. This isn’t what Daniel would do but he doesn’t mind. Eva raucously applauds when the dog eats the dough and afterwards licks the cement clean. The dog comes and goes so smoothly that he must have known where she’d be and what she’d do. It’s eminently believable to Daniel that Eva and this wily dog are known to each other; one wild animal to another.

  When they get to the park it seems important to Eva that they lay together on the grass in something vaguely like a date. Daniel gets ice creams for a second breakfast and they eat them lying on the ground, their eyes tilted towards heaven.

  Eva’s breathing is as heavy as a rising tide.

  —Since we’re lying here, let’s do some yoga.

  —You know yoga?

  —No, he says. But how difficult can it be?

  She laughs. Daniel laughs, too, because Eva is eating her ice cream end first. It makes more sense, as long as she doesn’t drop it on the grass, to leave the ice cream for last. It gets so he’s eating his ice cream that way too. Impossible to deny there is something sexual in that. When Eva turns onto her back Daniel wants to yoga himself onto her and for them to kiss but she is apprehensive and so is he. There are so many people around, in the park, in his mind, maybe in her mind.

  Official palpitations started two minutes ago.

  Today it’s starting: a family reunion on a sunny island, or, he guesses you could say, an outright ambush. Tony has been texting, practically bloodthirsty for the seafood, but the bed and breakfast Daniel recommended in Ars-en-Ré didn’t grab him one bit. Tony was antsy about the partial sea view they were promised.

  So long as it is near water I will eat cold Chinese out of a dirty shoe, he texted.

  Daniel doesn’t want to consider what all this means for Eva. Conversation isn’t so easy today, knowing what he knows. It’s a better idea to sit on the grass and watch the stoned Frisbee-throwers operating in exaggerated slo-mo. Somebody gets a beach ball in the face and Eva seems overwhelmed by something like nostalgia, although it can’t be that. They whittle away at a few more subjects until she begins picking grass and throwing strands in the air.

  The sun is already high and the sky has become white adobe. Her eyes shrink as she tries to describe her old life.

  —Before Eva Hand or after her I was something else.

  —Someone else.

  —When everything fell apart with Jerome I think I lived here. I lived all over the city but mostly here. I slept on benches, under bushes. When I needed food I stole it from the bins of Rosa Bonheur.

  Eva promises Daniel that she remembers sleeping outdoors as a feast of light.

  —Too poetic, he says, even though her words today seem to glitter in the sun.

  She snaps at him. —Were you there?

  —No starlight in the city.

  —There was.

  —Too much glow, he says. The street lamps.

  Daniel takes Eva’s hand but she works it free. If this was a dream he’d be unable to wake her. She is fighting tears, and he doesn’t know how to respond except to say they need to get on the road. He stands up and stretches his legs, scattering the torn grass. Now he has the urge to tell her that the plans have changed. Why don’t we all just stay here? The city is so quiet in August. If we want we can have Paris all to ourselves.

  As they descend the hill and exit the park, Eva looks at the lake and at the cedar trees and she tells him she believes there is no such thing as lost time.

  —It’s not a mystery, she says. It can’t be solved. Once there was Jerome and after him there was nothing. I was caught up in a world that was too much for me.

  —But now you are coming out of it?

  —It’s that simple.

  Young Girl, Go Slowly

  What if once upon a time I read a book that said, ‘You must know that you have not done anything wrong. Your sin in your parents’ eyes was to fall for a married man. A man who desired you, who considered you beautiful and kind. Your sin, your weakness was for a man with—you assumed—a tender heart. Your sin was to seek the life unknown. The dark waters. Your sin was to have nowhere else to go. Your sin, I suppose, was to not know your body. Your sin was confusion. Your sin was to part your lips in anticipation, in expectation, in having expectations at all. Your sin was to lay open your palms, outstretch your arms. Your sin was to wonder. To clarify—nothing you did, apart from not paying your bills, was a sin. I left you for dead. But I don’t want you to forgive me. I’m asking you to forget me.’

  Follow the A10 from Paris

  to the D735

  Daniel insists on doing all the driving as well as all the talking on the way to La Rochelle and the island. His topics include oysters and oysters—but, they’re out of season, Ségo says—and the beach house which will be our new home for the next however many days.

  Ségo is in the passenger seat and I am in the back. She is wearing sunglasses, which makes it easier to drift away in my mind. She is tapping out an imaginary piano routine, a kind of jive, on the dashboard. She looks for me in the mirror—her face says she saw all this coming. But one of us didn’t see this coming. One of us has a broken heart. One of us wonders how long they are supposed to feel this way. Perhaps I am, after all, just a bad judge of character. But the real questions have only begun—always about love, my problems with love. Problems I will solve by never considering again.

  She is watching me from behind those glasses, I can tell.

  —I found out, I say.

  —I figured. Jerome called me. He said you’d had dinner.

  —Ask a question? I say. Why you and not me?

  —There is no answer to that, she says. Are you angry?

  I want Ségo to know what I mean without knowing what I am feeling, so I nod my head even though she is looking at the road and doesn’t see me.

  —Want me to tell you a story? she says.

  —Is there a happy ending? Daniel says.

  —No offence, Daniel, Ségo says. But I need you to be quiet for the next for few minutes. Eva? You want to hear what I have to say? You want to know what happened?

  Hearing about Ségo and Jerome—from Jerome—has already been more news than I’m able for.

  She continues. —Jerome was cheating on Ghislaine with you but then he decided he wanted to cheat on Ghislaine with me. Sounds nice and neat, doesn’t it? His perfect conscience just wouldn’t allow him to sleep with more than two women at a time.

  —News to me, Daniel says.

  —Please, this isn’t for your benefit. First of all, Eva, you should know that I was reluctant to get serious with a married man. But Jerome did such a good job of talking me round. This was about three years ago, long before I met you. He was just back from a trip to Arles and I told him of my time there in some bullfighters’ hotel. He knew the place, he said. The next day he turned up at Gravy with a bottle of champagne. It was supermarket champagne but I was overwhelmed anyway. Whatever, fuck it. I don’t know how to put this, but I was just lonely and easily impressed by shit like champagne. He wrote poetry that didn’t rhym
e, you know what I mean? For the first few months we lolled around—fucking honeymooners at a resort. Such pert little things. Jerome seemed to be able to get away whenever he pleased. It was bliss, I’ll grant you that. It was fine, for a while. It was a fucking lie, but I loved it at the time. I was so caught up in him that I didn’t see what was happening. Before you say anything, I don’t need any reminding that he was not the man for me. We spoke of Ghislaine from time to time, but more often than not we spoke of his friend Eva. The Irish girl with the attitude. That’s who you were. We returned to the topic of you so often that my suspicions flourished. It took Jerome a while to admit that you guys were dating too. He didn’t seem to understand fully what this meant to me, his girlfriend. I knew he had a wife but not that he had another girlfriend. Then Jerome finished with you. For good, he said. Not efficiently, exactly, but properly. I asked him where you had gone. We assumed you had blown off or gone back to Ireland to do whatever it is you did, or to London. Somewhere. You had been gone, for good, out of the scene for more than a year. Then we discovered you were back.

  Does Ségo know where I spent my missing year? That I had a sleeping bag hidden in the alley behind Bertrand Rose? I remember a young baker giving me a just-baked and freshly filled Paris-Brest and that the hazelnut cream made me sick. I wonder what became of the sleeping bag—at least I had one, not every homeless person has a sleeping bag. I remember thinking I could get clean by jumping into the lake at Buttes Chaumont. Not so. I spent a year or more measuring my worth by how clean I could get myself. I remember walking into BVH, unimpeded all the way up to the fragrance counter. The way the Chanel No. 5 fought with my rot and the power I felt with a bottle in my hand as the security guard approached. The scent bloomed on me as I was led outside. I did this in department stores and pharmacies all over the city. I never went long without some Chanel. My picture of myself is of someone physically very alive and attuned to survival. Every time I was led to the pavement, I was afraid I would be met by the police—but I wasn’t worth their while. Being more or less negligible to other human beings made the humiliation more bearable.