I smile again. “Er . . . excuse moi? Please, ah—I need some help, I’m looking for my brother, Ben. Benjamin Daniels—”
I wish I had a bit more of Ben’s flair, his charm. “Benjamin Silver-Tongue,” Mum called him. He’s always had this way of getting anyone to do what he wants. Maybe that’s why he ended up a journalist in Paris while I’ve been working for a bloke affectionately known as The Pervert in a shithole bar in Brighton serving stag dos at the weekends and local lowlifes in the week.
The guy turns back to face me, slowly. “Benjamin Daniels,” he says. Not a question: just the name, repeated. I see something: anger, or maybe fear. He knows who I’m talking about. “Benjamin Daniels is not here.”
“What do you mean, he’s not here?” I ask. “This is the address he gave me. He’s up on the third floor. I can’t get hold of him.”
The man turns his back on me. I watch as he pulls open the gate. Finally he turns round to face me a third time and I think: maybe he is going to help me, after all. Then, in accented English, very slowly and loudly, he says: “Fuck off, little girl.”
Before I even have time to reply there’s a clang of metal and I jump backward. He’s slammed the gate shut, right in my face. As the ringing fades from my ears I’m left with just the sound of my breathing, fast and loud.
But he’s helped me, even though he doesn’t know it. I wait a moment, take a quick look back down the street. Then I lift my hand to the keypad and punch in the same numbers I watched him use only a few seconds ago: 7561. Bingo: the little light flickers green and I hear the mechanism of the gate click open. Dragging my case after me, I slip inside.
Mimi
Fourth floor
Merde.
I just heard his name, out there in the night. I lift my head, listening. For some reason I’m on top of the covers, not under them. My hair feels damp, the pillow cold and soggy. I shiver.
Am I hearing things? Did I imagine it? His name . . . following me everywhere?
No: I’m sure it was real. A woman’s voice, drifting up through the open window of my bedroom. Somehow I heard it four stories up. Somehow I heard it through the roar of white noise inside my head.
Who is she? Why is she asking about him?
I sit up, pulling my bony knees tight against my chest, and reach for my childhood doudou, Monsieur Gus, a scraggy old penguin stuffed animal toy I still keep beside my pillow. I press him against my face, try to comfort myself with the feel of his hard little head, the soft, shifting scrunch of the beans inside his body, the musty smell of him. Just like I did as a little girl when I’d had a bad dream. You’re not a little girl any longer, Mimi. He said that. Ben.
The moon is so bright that my whole room is filled with a cold blue light. Nearly a full moon. In the corner I can make out my record player, the case of vinyls next to it. I painted the walls in here such a dark blackish-blue that they don’t reflect any light at all but the poster hanging opposite me seems to glow. It’s a Cindy Sherman; I went to her show at the Pompidou last year. I got completely obsessed with how raw and freaky and intense her work is: the kind of thing I try to do with my painting. In the poster, one of the Untitled Film Stills, she’s wearing a short black wig and she stares out at you like she’s possessed, or like she might be about to eat your soul. “Putain!” my flatmate Camille laughed, when she saw it. “What happens if you bring some guy back? He’s gonna have to look at that angry bitch while you’re screwing? That’ll put him off his rhythm.” As if, I thought at the time. Nineteen years old and still a virgin. Worse. A convent-school-educated virgin.
I stare at Cindy, the black bruise-like shadows around her eyes, the jagged line of her hair which is kind of like my own, since I took a pair of scissors to it. It feels like looking in a mirror.
I turn to the window, look down into the courtyard. The lights are on in the concierge’s cabin. Of course: that nosy old bitch never misses a trick. Creeping out from shadowy corners. Always watching, always there. Looking at you like she knows all your secrets.
This building is a U-shape around the courtyard. My bedroom is at one end of the U, so if I peer diagonally downward I can see into his apartment. Nearly every evening for the last two months he sat there at his desk working late into the night, the lights on. For just a moment I let myself look. The shutters are open but the lights are off and the space behind the desk looks more than empty, or like the emptiness itself has a kind of depth and weight. I glance away.
I slide down from my bed and tiptoe out into the main part of the apartment, trying not to trip over all the stuff Camille leaves scattered around like it’s an extension of her bedroom: magazines and dropped sweaters, dirty coffee cups, nail varnish pots, lacy bras. From the big windows in here I’ve got a direct view of the front entrance. As I watch, the gate opens. A shadowy figure slips through the gap. As she comes forward into the light I can make her out: a woman I have never seen before. No, I say silently. No no no no no. Go away. The roar in my head grows louder.
“Did you hear that knocking?”
I spin around. Putain. Camille’s lounging there on the couch, cigarette glowing in her hand, boots up on the armrest: faux-snakeskin with five-inch heels. When did she get in? How long has she been lurking there in the dark?
“I thought you were out,” I say. Normally, if she goes clubbing, she stays till dawn.
“Oui.” She shrugs, takes a drag on her cigarette. “I’ve only been back twenty minutes.” Even in the gloom I see how her eyes slide away from mine. Normally she’d be straight into some story about the crazy new club she’s been at, or the guy whose bed she’s just left, including an overly detailed description of his dick or exactly how skilled he was at using it. I’ve often felt like I’m living vicariously through Camille. Grateful someone like her would choose to hang out with me. When we met at the Sorbonne she told me she likes collecting people, that I interested her because I have this “intense energy.” But when I’ve felt worse about myself I’ve suspected this apartment probably has more to do with it.
“Where have you been?” I ask, trying to sound halfway normal.
She shrugs. “Just around.”
I feel like there’s something going on with her, something she’s not telling me. But right now I can’t think about Camille. The roaring in my head suddenly feels like it’s drowning out all my thoughts.
There’s just one thing I know. Everything that has happened here happened because of him: Benjamin Daniels.
Jess