She looks at me more closely. “Ohhh. Was it that kind of no sleep?”
“What do you mean?” I wish she’d stop looking at me so intently.
“You know what I mean! Your mystery guy?”
My heart’s suddenly beating too fast in my chest. “Oh. No. It wasn’t anything like that.”
“Wait,” she grins at me. “You never told me. Did it work?”
“What do you mean, did it work?” I feel like she’s crowding me, the smell of Miss Dior and stale cigarette smoke suddenly overpowering. I need her out of my space.
“The stuff we picked out. Mimi!” She raises her eyebrows. “You can’t have forgotten? It was only, like, two weeks ago!”
Already it feels like it happened to someone else. I see myself like a character in a film, knocking on the door to Camille’s room. Camille sitting on the bed painting her toenails, the room stinking of nail polish and weed.
“I want to buy some lingerie,” I told her.
Maman always bought all my underwear. We went together, every season, to Eres and she would buy me three simple sets: black, white, nude. But I wanted something different. Something I had picked myself. Only I didn’t have any idea where to go. I knew Camille would.
Camille’s eyebrows shot up. “Mimi! What’s happened to you? That new look and now . . . lingerie? Who is he?” She smiled slyly. “Or she? Merde, you’re so mysterious I don’t even know if you actually prefer girls.” A smirk. “Or maybe you’re like me and it depends what mood you’re in?”
Could she really not know who it was? To me it seemed so obvious. Not just that I was into him, but that he and I had a special connection. It felt like it was obvious to the outside world, to everyone who saw us.
“Come,” she said, jumping up, throwing her foam toe dividers to one side. “We’re going now.”
She dragged me into Passage du Desir in Chatelet. It’s a sex shop—one of a chain—on a big busy shopping street alongside shoe and clothes shops because, I guess, this is France and screwing is, like, a thing of national pride. You see couples coming out carrying bags over their arms, smiling secret smiles at each other, women striding in there on their lunch breaks to buy vibrators. I’d never gone into one before. In fact every time I’d passed one of their stores I’d blushed at the window displays and looked away.
I felt like everyone in there was looking at me, wondering what this blushing loser virgin was doing among all that latex fetish wear and lube. I lowered my head, trying to hide behind my new fringe. I had horrific images of Papa walking past and somehow spotting me inside, dragging me out by my hair: calling me une petite salope in front of the whole street.
Camille dug out boxes with things called “love kits” in: whole lingerie and suspender sets for ten euros. But I shook my head; they weren’t sophisticated enough. She grabbed a huge, bright pink dildo with obscene protruding veins, waved it in front of me. “Maybe you should get one of these while we’re here.”
“Put it back,” I hissed, ready to die of shame. Yeah, we have that expression in French too: mourir de honte.
“Masturbating is healthy, chérie,” Camille said, way louder than she needed to. She was enjoying this, I could tell. “You know what’s not healthy? Not masturbating. I bet that school your papa sent you to told you it’s a sin.”
I’ve told Camille about the school, just not why I had to leave. “Va te faire foutre,” I said, giving her a shove.
“Ah, but that’s exactly what you need to do. Go fuck yourself.”
I dragged her out of there. We went into a classier place where the shop assistants with their chignons and their perfect red lipstick looked at me sideways. My men’s shirts, my big boots, my home-cut fringe. A security guard tailed us. That would be enough normally. I’d leave. But I needed to do this. For him.
“I want to pick out something too,” Camille told me, holding a silk harness up against herself.
“You own more stuff than this entire shop.”
“Oui. But I want something more sophisticated, you know?”
“Who’s it for?” I asked her.
“Someone new.” She gave a secretive smile. That was weird. Camille’s never mysterious about anything. If she has a new fuck-buddy on the scene the whole world has normally heard about it about thirty minutes after their first screw.
“Tell me,” I said. But still she refused to say. I didn’t like this new, mysterious Camille. But I felt too high with the thrill of my purchase to think much about it. I couldn’t wait.
Next to shelves of designer sex toys we browsed through racks of lace and silk, felt the fabric between our fingers. The lingerie had to be perfect. Some of it was too much: crotchless, buckles and straps, leather. Some of it Camille rejected as “stuff your maman would buy”: flowers and silk in pastel colors—pink, pistachio, lavender.
Then: “I’ve found it, the one for you.” She held it up to me. It was the most expensive set of all the ones we’d looked at. Black lace and silk so fine you could hardly feel it between your fingers. Chic but still sexy. Grown-up.
In a changing room with velvet drapes I tried the set on. I held up my hair and half closed my eyes. I was feeling less embarrassed now. I’d never looked at myself like this before. I thought I’d feel stupid, gauche. I thought I’d worry about my small tits, my slight pot belly, my bow legs.
But I didn’t. Instead I imagined revealing myself to him. I pictured the look on his face. Saw him sliding it off me.
Je suis ta petite pute.
After I’d changed I took it over to the desk and told the shop assistant to ring it up. I liked how she tried to hide her surprise as I took out my credit card. Yeah: fuck you, bitch. I could buy everything in here if I wanted.
All the way back to the apartment I thought about the bag over my arm. It weighed nothing, but suddenly it was everything.
For the next few nights I watched him through the windows. They’d got later and later, these writing sessions: fueled by the pots of coffee he’d make on his stove and drink looking out of the windows onto the courtyard. It was something important, I could tell. I could see how fast he typed, hunched over the keyboard. Maybe he’d let me read it one day soon. I’d be the first person he shared it with. I watched him bend down and stroke the cat’s head and I imagined I was that cat. I imagined one day I would lie there on his sofa with my head in his lap and he would stroke my hair like he did that cat’s fur. And we’d listen to records and we’d talk about all the plans we’d make. I saw the image of us there together in his apartment so clearly it was like I was watching it. So clearly that it felt like a premonition.
Nick
Second floor
A hammering on the door of my apartment. I jump with shock.
“Who is it?”
“Laissez-moi entrer.” Let me in. More hammering. The door shudders on its hinges.