by Corine Gantz
He had never been in love. His life did not allow for that kind of attachment, and now he wondered if the strange way he felt, his fascination with Althea, was maybe what love was supposed to feel like. Was love supposed to feel like a macabre obsession? Was he capable of an obsession that wasn’t macabre? He had no map for this. He could clearly see what she was doing to her body. It filled him with anger and at the same time made him want to rescue her. He did not accept his attraction because he did not feel sexually attracted to Althea. She looked sick. Did he see her as his little sister? No it wasn’t that. She was beautiful and looking at her was like being punched in the gut. If there was such a thing as passion without lust, then this was it. Could the lack of lust be an elevated form of love?
Jared unwrapped the white paper parcel and took out a coffee éclair. Sitting on the cold stone, he ate in silence, absorbing the wetness of the air, the smell of distant spring. In the distance, flashlights were advancing in his direction. He was able to make out the silhouette of the two guards, dark against dark. A moment later they were standing, towering over him.
“Monsieur can’t learn to be here when the place is open like everyone else?” the skinny one said.
“No, he is too good for that,” the fat one continued.
“This time we’re taking Monsieur to the police station.”
Jared crumpled the paper and put it in his pocket. “After you,” he said.
Chapter 15
“We’re fine,” Althea’s mother said vacantly.
“Do you and dad know what to do on weekends, now that I’m in Paris?” Althea asked.
“The weekends are just fine.”
“Well, my weekends are very busy, and noisy! With all these little kids around.” When her mother didn’t ask whose kids those were, Althea moved on. “I finally went up the Eiffel Tower,” she said, though she hadn’t. “It was so high, you could see everything.”
“That’s fine,” Pamela answered.
Fine? Althea braced herself. “Well, I better go now, someone else needs the phone,” she lied. “It’s always so busy here, with everyone sharing the phone and all.”
“All right then, I’ll speak to you later. Goodbye.”
“Love you, Mom!”
“Yes, yes,” her mother answered.
“Miss you! Give a kiss to Dad for me.”
“All right then, bye.” And her mother hung up.
Althea’s knuckles went white from clenching the phone. Her mother had nothing to say, and worse, no questions to ask. That was the gist of their relationship. Maybe her mother was too depressed to show real interest in her, or in anything, or maybe she had interest only in herself and what affected her. By traveling to Paris, Althea was no longer affecting her. She was twenty-five years old and for the first time she dared contemplating the fact that this was not what mothers were supposed to be like. Living at Annie’s for a short month, she could not help but witness what it was that mothers did. Mothers did things with their children, when they were not talking about their children, thinking about their children, or living their lives around their children. Sure, the children of the house were young and she was a grown woman, but her mother had been no different then than she was now. Her mother had always been deadened and indifferent at best, punishing at worst. She, the child, had been the one preoccupied with her mother’s well being. Even as a little girl, she had been the one who jumped through hoops and tried to read her mother for signs of displeasure and pain, and maybe the occasional light of joy. And how did it come to this? Why was it that those moments of faint satisfaction came only when she brought her mother accounts of her own failure and unhappiness? Yet, even knowing all this, or not knowing but sensing, she had been hoping that her mother would show an interest in her life in France. Or concern, any concern at all. Crazy as it was, her mother had yet to ask for her phone number or her address in Paris. The simple reality was that her mother would have no way to find her if Althea stopped calling. It would be the end.
“I’m healthy,” she had told Annie.
“You don’t look it,” Annie had said.
All had seemed to be fully in her control in the beginning, but no longer. No longer was it about not eating food, but about food eating her. A war was raging inside. Althea was the assailant and the victim—she was the war zone. These days, the battle wasn’t simply against fat. It was for survival. Getting out of bed, having simple desires, not hating everyone, trusting someone, keeping a banana down, having even a few normal moments in a day. How far had she been ready to go to procure her mother some sick joy or to trigger motherly instinct her mother was clearly incapable of? But now she was in too deep to recover or even desire recovery. She had practice only in despair and did not remember what it felt like to feel good, if she had ever known.
Althea walked up the stairs. The house was empty, or so it seemed, the children in school, Annie and Lola on one of their outings. Those two did things together all the time. Althea closed her eyes as she climbed, helping herself to the railing. The railing was smooth and warm. The steps were uneven in places under her bare feet. The house smelled of wax and soup. There were three doors on her floor: her room, Jared’s room, and the third room that was full of rubbish and that no one went into. Her floor was the silent floor.
When she was sure everyone was gone, Althea had the habit of walking around the house, opening doors, closets, drawers. Lola’s trashcan was filled with crumpled unsent letters to a man named Mark, and her floor was covered with health and parenting magazines. Annie’s room was most interesting because of the photo albums, filled with pictures of the boys and of a handsome man, year after year. Here, the father and boys at the beach. Here, they were celebrating Christmas. There, the father and boys skiing. But where was Annie? She must have been the one taking the photographs because she was in very few of them. In the early days, she looked so different than she now did. She looked happy, beaming at the camera with an expression Althea had never seen on her face, an expression that was playful and relaxed. But as the years passed, so did her look of joy, and pictures of her became rare. The man in every image with the boys and with Annie looked like an actor, almost looking younger and better as time passed.
Jared’s room remained locked. She wondered if he even lived in the house at all until she began to figure out a pattern. He made sure to never be home around meal times and came in very silently and late into the night, sometimes not until the first hours of the morning. Then he slept, but his room was so silent that at first she had trouble knowing if he was in. She learned to put her nose to his door and recognize his presence though the smell of cigarette, weed, and paint thinner. At some point in the afternoon Jared took a brief shower, always leaving a mess behind him, after which she spend a long time putting everything back in order. She took care of his things. She hung his towel to dry, put the shaving cream and the razor away, closed the shampoo bottle, mopped the wet tile, and scrubbed the sink. Once she left her hairbrush in the bathroom and the next day retrieved several of Jared’s black hairs tangled in it. It shocked her to think of her hairbrush, such an intimate possession, being used by him. After that, she made a habit of leaving it behind. One day she left a few of her own long red hairs in the brush on purpose. It made her dizzy when the next day she found some of his hair entwined with hers. She wondered if he ever noticed.
Althea liked her yellow room. She had stopped making her bed or putting away her clothes. She kept her room as messy as she kept the bathroom spotless. She spent hours each day staring out the window. If she remained absolutely still, she became invisible enough for the birds to come very close to where she was, using the metal railing of the balcony as a perch, sometime even tapping at the window and peering into her eyes.
She avoided Jared and made sure never to look at him if they ever were in the same room. Since he had arrived in the house, the extent of their communications were quick exchanges of “bonjour comment ça va” with both of them hurr
ying away and not making eye contact. This was how she reacted to men, especially to men she liked, dooming any possibility of romance. And she told herself that she preferred it that way. But she was aware that there were no possibilities with Jared. To someone like him, she would always remain invisible. She almost preferred when Jared wasn’t around, so she could imagine him. She would dream him until she could catch a glimpse of him again. She daydreamed of walking the streets of Paris, the two of them holding hands.
This was the last place Lucas should have been in the mood he was in. Outside the café on rue de Passy, tires glided on slick pavement. The icy rain had been pouring for four consecutive days. Inside the café, the noise level was deafening, what with the espresso machines expelling their steam and waiters calling orders and the clanking of dishes and utensils. The counter was so crowded that he had to sip his espresso with his shoulders perpendicular to it. Apparently, no one seemed ready to venture out of the groggy and womb-like atmosphere of the two-hour lunch break. People actually liked being here, even though the air was saturated with the smell of cigarettes and Plat du Jour, and steam from humidity and human heat clouded the windows. A tall man with a lifetime of practice at carving himself a spot in busy Parisian cafés, Lucas didn’t usually resent the invasion of his personal space, but today, it was insufferable. His mood was not improved by the spectacle of Jared, unshaven, unwashed, and devouring his second greasy Croque-Monsieur with his left arm and shoulder literally glued to him. Lucas preferred things to be neat and in their places, and he was feeling his stomach turn periodically at the sight of the cheese’s grease dripping from Jared’s sandwich onto the plate and his three-day-old beard.
“One day I won’t be there to bail you out,” he accused. “One day, I simply will be out of town, and you’ll have to rot at the commissariat.”
Jared shrugged and continued to devour his Croque-Monsieur. Lucas took a mental count of the number of times one of the men at his left elbowed him without an apology. They were dressed without any class whatsoever, their ties too colorful, their shirts clashing, the cuts of their suits primitive. They looked like pimps as far as he was concerned. This was Johnny’s flashy crowd. What Annie had ever seen in that man remained a mystery to him. The men laughed and eyed a table of pretty women in spring wardrobe. The women giggled, crossed and uncrossed their bare legs. The spring dance has started, again. This realization depressed him. Would this be one more spring of reluctantly chasing the wrong women while the one that mattered continued to elude him? The reason she eluded him, he hated to admit. It could be summed up in a few words: As long as he tried nothing, took no chance, he still had his chances.
One poke too many from the colorful cretin with the pointy elbow tipped the balance and he suddenly felt very irritated. “Annie is constantly alluding to the fact that I haven’t made a move on Lola. Why is Annie so invested in this? Does it mean that she wants me to, or that she doesn’t?”
“Be a man, Lucas. It’s time to make your move.”
“I... I’m not ... there quite yet.”
“So make a move on Lola and see what happens,” Jared said
Lucas waved the notion away. “If I wanted to have an affair with a model, I would already have done so,” he said.
Jared laughed, a rare feat that brightened his face. “How humble of you. Why not this particular model, if it’s that easy for you?”
“Why of course that would be a terrible mistake for two reasons. Number one, she and Annie are new best friends. So the day the affair ends, it would become really complicated there at the house.” He took a breath. “Last but not least, once that story ends, I’ll still have to deal with her at Annie’s.”
“That’s the same reason twice.”
Lucas waved his hands angrily. “I can’t ruin my chance with Annie by having sex with her supermodel best friend in her own house.”
“Bien sûr,” Jared said. He reached in his pocket for money and seemed to find nothing. “You know, she’s a supermodel with a millionaire husband. There is also the possibility she might not want you.”
“I’ll have you know that according to Annie, she does.” Lucas unfolded his napkin, jammed his elbow into the side of the man to his left, and dabbed his mouth with affected poise. “Does that surprise you? You think she is too good for me? I suppose you think Lola might be interested in you. I must laugh,” he added with a forced laugh.
“Not my type,” Jared said.
“You’re too young to have a type. When I was your age, I made love indiscriminately to any woman kind enough to say yes.”
“See that’s the difference between us. I get to discriminate,” Jared said. To Lucas’s great relief, he had finally finished his lunch and was wiping his mouth. “Anyway,” Jared continued, “I like the other one better.”
Lucas cried out, “Annie?”
Jared looked at him like he had lost his mind. “Of course not Annie! The other one.”
Lucas opened his eyes wide. “What other one? No! You don’t mean that skinny girl?”
Jared stood up, took an orange piece of rag out of his pocket and began winding it around his neck like a scarf. “And why not that skinny girl?”
Lucas burst into laughter. “Discriminating all right!” He opened his crocodile wallet swiftly, took out a twenty Euro bill and placed it on the counter for both their lunches. “You’re a funny kid,” he said, and with that slapped Jared on his back and left the café laughing out loud.
The rain soaked his hair and covered Jared’s eyes as he walked toward Annie’s house in long strides. He clutched a large flat package wrapped in brown paper under his coat, hurried through the neighborhood and turned into the street where Annie’s house stood. Aside from a man in a grey trench coat and a Burberry umbrella who tugged at a Great Dane’s leash, then walked away ignoring the gigantic mess his dog left on the sidewalk, the street was empty. Why were the wealthy neighborhoods of Paris so lifeless?
He ran up the few steps to the front door, slipped on the wet stone steps, nearly fell, and cursed his surroundings. He put his key in the door and struggled to open it with one hand while protecting his package. The house was silent and the lights were off. Annie must have been shopping and the children were probably in school. Jared relaxed, took off his wet coat, and hung it to dry on the coat hanger. He then tiptoed up the stairs to his room, as he had learned to do when he came back in the middle of the night. Once in his room, he dropped the package on his bed, took a breath and stepped into the third floor’s hallway which was long, narrow and in the absence of window, dark as night. He let his eyes get accustomed to the obscurity as he stood in front of Althea’s door, and waited. He put his ear against the door and heard a movement inside the room. She was in.
He tapped at her door and the movement inside the room immediately stopped. He waited but was surprised when she did not come to the door to see who had knocked. He tapped again a second time, louder. A third time. She was playing dead. The thought made him smile. Did she have any idea it was he? Probably not. He should have respected her desire to be left alone, but he had come this far, had knocked three times. He nearly knocked again but instead let his arm drop and waited next to the door.
After a long moment the door opened very slowly, and then Althea’s head, wrapped in a white towel, peeked into the darkness of the hallway. She stretched her neck to look into the hallway while keeping her body in her room. His eyes were accustomed to the dark and he saw her very clearly. She looked like she had just come out of the shower and wore a white terry bathrobe tied at the waist. She looked to the right, then to the left and found herself inches away from him. She froze. Then in an instant, she retreated into her room like a hermit crab and nearly slammed her door in his face before he could speak.
He stood in the hallway, dumfounded. Now this was really embarrassing but he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or be furious. He was tempted to forget the whole thing, but then his own advice to Lucas rang in his ear. “Be a
man. Make a move.” He took a step back, and walked back to his room. He grabbed the package from his bed, tore open the brown paper, seized the white canvas it contained, walked back to Althea’s door and knocked again, forcefully. “Ouvre la porte,” he said. Open the door.
From Althea’s room, not a sound emerged, but he sensed her body pressed against the door. Would she be a disappointment? Most women were. Only some of his dreams, once put on canvas, were satisfying.
“C’est moi, Jared,” he said again. “Ouvre, s’il te plaît.” It’s me Jared, Open please.
Althea, in a move that astonished him after the effort she had made to avoid him, opened her door wide, suddenly, and faced him. She stood in the doorway, eyes lowered, arms along her sides. Behind her, her bedroom was a model of untidiness with clothes scattered on the floor, covers and bed sheets in disarray. Jared had somehow expected her to be dressed by now, but she was still wearing that white bathrobe. He wondered if she realized how much her obvious nudity under the robe, the silent house, and the unmade bed behind her could have been interpreted as an invitation. Her face showed no expression but she was blushing violently. She was completely still and he didn’t know if she was going to scream, turn to dust, or slam the door in his face again.
“I want to...make a paint...of you,” he said, in his butchered English.
“No, thanks, merci, thank you,” she said immediately. The one thing she seemed prepared for was rejecting whatever he would suggest. Yet she didn’t budge; her door remained open.
“I can come in?” he asked.
“No, no,” she said feebly and she blushed even more and looked back at her room. She had not looked him in the eyes once. He understood that he, too, had avoided looking at her all this time. It was the only way he could let her preserve herself. Althea, thoroughly glacial from the neck down, like lava from the head up, continued staring at her feet as her lips trembled slightly. Reading a human being so easily was shameful, and Jared, at once, grasped the extreme responsibility of imposing himself into her protected universe. If she was to let him in, then she might come to depend on him. He might find himself bound to her and this was a burden he wasn’t sure he was ready for. But if he left now, said “sorry” and “see you later,” he knew there wouldn’t be a later.