For a moment I actually feel better, calmer, freer. Like maybe I’ll be able to think more clearly with her gone. But now it’s too quiet. Because it’s still here; the storm in my head. And I don’t know whether I’m more frightened of it—or of what it’s drowning out.
I lift my gaze from the courtyard. I look back into his apartment. A few days ago, I let myself in there with the key I stole from the concierge’s cabin. I’ve been going into that cabin since I was a little girl, sneaking in while I was sure the old woman was on one of the top floors cleaning. It used to fascinate me: it was like the cabin in the woods from a fairytale. She has all these mysterious photographs on the walls, the proof she actually had another life before she came here, as hard as it is to believe. A beautiful young woman in so many of them: like a princess from the same fairytale.
Now I’m older, of course, I know that there’s nothing magical about the cabin. It’s just the tiny, lonely home of a poor old lady; it’s depressing. But I still remembered exactly where she kept the master set of keys. Of course, she’s not allowed to use them. They’re in case of emergencies, if there was a flood in one of the apartments, say, while we’re away on holiday somewhere. And she doesn’t have a set for my parents’ apartment: that’s off-limits.
It was early evening, dusk. I waited, watched him go out through the courtyard, like I watched Camille just now. He was only in a shirt and it was cold, so I didn’t think he was going far. Perhaps just a few streets over to buy some cigarettes from the tabac, which still gave me enough time to do what I needed.
I ran down the single flight of steps and let myself into the third-floor apartment.
Underneath my clothes I was wearing the new lingerie I had bought with Camille. I could feel the secret, rustling slipperiness of it against my skin. I felt like someone braver. Bolder.
I was going to wait for him until he came back. I wanted to surprise him. And this way I would be the one in control of the situation.
I’d watched him so many times from my bedroom. But to stand in his apartment was different, I could feel his presence there. Smell the scent of him beneath the strange, musty, old-lady odor of the place. I wandered around for a while, just breathing him in. The whole time his cat stalked after me, watching me. Like it knew I was up to no good.
I opened his fridge and I riffled through his cupboards. I looked through his records, his collection of books. I went into his bedroom and lay down on his bed, which still had the imprint of his body in it, and I inhaled the scent of him on the pillows. I looked through the toiletries in his bathroom, opened the caps. I sprayed his lemon-scented cologne down the front of my shirt and in my hair. I opened his closet and buried my face in his shirts, but better were the shirts in his laundry basket—the ones he’d worn, the ones that smelled like his skin and sweat. Better even than that were the short hairs I found around the sink where he’d shaved and hadn’t managed to wash them all away. I collected several on a finger. I swallowed them.
If I’d watched myself, I might have said I looked like someone in the grip of an amour fou: an obsessive, mad love. But an amour fou is usually unrequited. And I knew that he felt the same way: that was the important thing. I just wanted to become a part of it, this world, his world. I’d had thousands of conversations with him in my head. I’d told him about my brothers. How horrible Antoine has always been to me. How Nick is really just a big loser who lives off Papa’s money and I honestly didn’t get why Ben was friends with him. How the second I graduated, I’d be out of here. Off to travel the world. We could go together.
I found a glass in the kitchen and poured myself some of his wine, drank it down like it was a glass of grenadine. I needed to be drunk enough to do this. Then I took off my clothes. I lay down on his bed: waiting like a present left there on the pillow. But after a while I felt stupid. Maybe the wine was wearing off. I was a little too cold. This wasn’t how I’d planned it in my head. I’d thought he’d have come back sooner.
Half an hour ticked by. How long was he going to be?
I wandered over to his desk. I wanted to read what he was writing so late into the night—scribbling notes, typing on his laptop.
I found a notebook. A Moleskine, just like I use for my sketching. Another sign that we were meant to be: twinned souls, soulmates. The music, the writing. We were so similar. That was what he was telling me that night when we sat in the darkened park together. And before that, when he gave me the record. Outsiders, but outsiders together.
The book was full of notes for restaurant reviews. Little doodles in between the writing. Cards for restaurants tucked between the pages. It made me feel so close to him. His handwriting: beautiful, clever, a little spiky. Exactly as I would have imagined. Elegant like the fingers that had touched my arm that night in the park. I fell a little deeper in love, seeing that writing.
And then, on the last page, there was a note that had my name written there. A question mark after it, like this:
Mimi?
Oh my God. He’d been writing about me.
I had to know more, had to find out what this meant. I opened his laptop. It asked me for the password. Merde. I hadn’t a chance of getting in. It could be literally anything. I tried a couple of things. His surname. His favorite football team—I’d found a Manchester United shirt hanging in his closet. No luck. And then I had an idea. I thought of that necklace he always wore, the one he said came from his mum. I typed in: StChristopher.
No: it bounced back at me. It was just a blind guess, so I wasn’t surprised. But just because I could I tried again, with numbers substituted for some of the letters, a tighter encryption: 5tChr1st0ph3r.
And this time, when I pressed enter, the password box closed and his desktop opened up.
I stared at the screen. I couldn’t believe I had guessed it. That had to mean something too, didn’t it? It felt like a confirmation of how well I knew him. And I know writers are private about their work, in the same way that I’m private about my art, but it now felt almost like he wanted whatever was on here to be found and read by me.
I went to his documents; to “Recent.” And there it was at the top. All the others had the names of restaurants, they were obviously reviews. But this one was called: Meunier Wines SARL. According to the little time stamp this was what he had been working on an hour ago. I opened it.
Merde, my heart was beating so fast.
Excited, terrified, I began to read.
But as soon as I did I wanted to stop; I wished I had never seen any of it.
I didn’t know what I had expected, but this was not it.
It felt like my whole world was caving in around me.
I felt sick.
But I couldn’t stop.
Jess