a Wednesday (continued)

     “I manage. Do you want sugar with your coffee?”
     A minute before I detected an interesting and dynamic life, an experienced feminist. What happened to her? From her worried voice, I guess a frustration or a dark secret. Could it be her mother’s illness – maybe hereditary – or her Boris? Maybe her father got jailed for dealing drugs. The mystery deepens, what a delight!
     She returns with a tray she puts down on the balcony, “Here is okay?”
     On the concrete? With my skirt?
     She sits crossed-legs in one corner, “The weather is nice.” She removes her shirt and throws it in the bedroom. In her undershirt, she looks even more boyish with her scrawny chest. Ah, if I were not so fat, Etienne wouldn’t have left me. Her ringing burst of laughter cuts short my galloping imagination, “I can put it back on.”
     I sit clumsily in front of her. I shouldn’t have accepted her invitation.
     Her eyes are gazing into mine, “I mean, if you're embarrassed.”
     She reads my mind, now?
     “I was only following your train of thought. I don’t have your feminine charms. Look at me, I don't have any! It would be really handy if we could trade bodies, you know?”
     What else is she going to come up with?
     She pours the coffee and keeps talking volubly about the weather, today’s work, in a monologue which wants to be entertaining. I hear only her sweet nothings, I am elsewhere: Etienne has deserted me, I sail alone, I hurt inside. What to do against this violent feeling of mental suicide? What to do in the emotional isolation he left me?
     Tears on my cheeks, my hand shaking, words suddenly pour out of my mouth: “We split up, actually he left me for another girl, I was hooked on him, such a good lover, and then he went off with someone else, can you believe it?”
     I stand to blow my nose, to sniff in front of the map of her travels. Why couldn’t I also leave? Go far from here… far from everything… far from everybody?
     She comes behind me, wraps her arm around my waist, “I’d take you away, but you’re a stay-at-home girl.”
     Her hand on my belly, the other one caressing my hair, her voice in my back, “Go for it, cry to your heart’s content if it can do you any good.”
     “I can’t, I can’t cry anymore!”
     “But there is more. Don’t you want to get it off your chest?”
     I spin on myself between her arms and let go against her shoulder with eyes closed. She is right, I can’t get rid of him, still laughing in my face, his teeth so white, his eyes so languorous, his long hair so silky. I wanted to thrash him and at the same time to hold onto him. I haven’t done anything to deserve this.
     “Are you still in love with him?”
     Her question strikes me hard. No, I loved him for his resemblance to...
     “Are you jealous?”
     The cleaver of the words makes bleeding marks in my heart. No, I am bitter.
     “Because, you know, he also tried with me.”
     What? She knew Etienne? I bit my lip, struggling, “What a bitch! Let me go!”
     She restrains me with all her might, “One cures with the hair of the dog that bites one. Do you want to deal with it once and for all or not?”
     I swallow my saliva and my pride with a nod.
     Her voice is unrelenting, “One day he was waiting for you outside work, he recognized me and he came on to me. He was forward, he made comments on his preferences, he assured me I had sex withdrawal symptoms, he asked if I was turned on by him, if I wanted to do it with him.”
     “He put on the same act with another girl.”
     Her arm lock relaxes, “I know.”
     “We had a serious talk about it, and then I was so upset I went for a walk. When I returned, he was gone. I thought it was over between us. The next day, he came back to apologize.”
     She massages my shoulders, “It’s over.”
     “He dumped me later. In a night club. A smile on his face and that girl at his arm. Telling everybody…”
     “I know, I know.” She caresses my hair, “Let's not talk about him anymore.”
     “… that I fucked like a cow, that I was nothing but a country bumpkin. All bloody stupidities, dirty comments.”
     The taste of blood on my tongue makes me cry even more, I break free from her embrace, I don't recognize my voice, a language I never use, vicious and filthy, comes out of my mouth, stupid and dirty comments, just like Etienne. She doesn’t blink, she barely steps back, waiting for me to finish, then she touches my lips softly, “You’re bleeding!” Her finger is red, she sucks it. I’m ashamed. She tries to hold me back, her voice seems to come from far away, “By the way, they’re blue!”
     “What?”
     “Your panties. I saw them when you sat on the balcony.”
     I don’t feel like laughing, I want to go, she tries to reason with me, I’m not listening anymore, I dash down the staircase, I run into people I didn't see through my tears. I turn the street corner like a zombie. It’s hot, I suffocate, I hold my belly with both hands, my lip swells, the taste of blood is salty. Another intersection, running, bursts of honks and brakes, I restore my balance and burn my hand on the hood of a car. The sky grows dark or my sight grows dark, I take refuge on the bench of a bus stop. The exhaust fumes make me cough, I jump in the first bus to arrive and I run to the far back. On the seat next to me, a pregnant Arabic woman. I put my hand down on her belly – Little Brother! The woman smiles through her yellow teeth.
     ― Your grief awakens. Don’t let it overwhelm you.
     I must have been four, my fingers spread on the same hard warm ball where he was growing. He didn’t have a name yet.
     ― You’re hurting yourself for nothing.
     Tear of her belly at the delivery. Wound in my womb after mommy’s funeral. I didn’t want to be alone. Little Brother invented stories in the mirror, games in the empty house. His dislocated body on the white tiles, covered with…
     “Last stop, everybody off!”
     The bus left in a cloud of exhaust, there is lightning in the sky, I am in the urban development zone, far from home and I’m going to slide again into madness if I don’t control myself.
     To walk. To walk and command my legs to forget their fatigue, to supplant the suffering in my heart with the one of my body. Yes, certainly, it is possible.
     To walk and extenuate myself in the unbearable heat, away from the cooling wind, to break my stupid resistance and the heady memories of the mirror.
     To walk and lessen through another torment the one which has been racking me since Little Brother’s disappearance. Mommy, mommy! I saw your sighs, I heard your tears, I felt your voice, I ran to take refuge against your flat belly, Little Brother pulled me by the hand, we went back to our invisible games.
     To walk and subdue the torture of his living ghost’s apparition with Etienne, to hear nothing but the repercussions of the pain within my whole body, at each step ahead, and not to think anymore about our mute stories in the empty house, about our silent games in the mirror.
     To walk and cross the bridge over the Rhône without looking down, without letting myself be tempted by the vertigo, the eddies...
     ― Bent over the parapet, hypnotized by the whirlpools of the Rhône, she doesn’t feel the violence of the wind, she doesn’t see the danger. Eh! There is a good reason if we call it baby eater.1
     I see Little Brother in the eddies. He kisses me, we melt into each other like in a mirror. He’s everywhere, I see him everywhere, I feel him everywhere…
     ― It’s impossible, you’re rambling again.
     “What a shame, what a shame!” yelled God the Father. The Paternal loud mean voice. The Paternal strong long arms. The Paternal belt slowly undone. Mommy screaming “No, Marcel, no!” I saw my frightened eyes in the mirror. Little Brother lying naked in my place on the bed, he didn’t flinch at his legs being spread apart, he didn’t shout when the belt tore his buttocks, he clenched his teeth. In the mirror. I felt the burning inside, I didn’t shout, I clenched my teeth. And cried.
     In the blue-green mirror of the water and the memories, Little Brother tells me, “We must get out of here!”
     The evening has come with the rain. The pain in my belly goes down into my legs. I know I’m going to change through this self-imposed suffering. I know this is not the last of my torments. Through these throes, I know that pleasure will come back one day. I feel it hidden deep inside of me, underhand, behind the voice of God the Father shouting upstairs in the dark bedroom, “What a shame, what a shame!”
     Mommy died on a day like today. Under the rain, in the mud, I walk with Little Brother in the cemetery. He holds my hand, he kisses me with his eyes. Cold rain in the sky black with smokes, black and cold marble around the deep hole. I’m scared, I’m black, I’m deep, my feet are cold in my shoes in the mud. God the Father cries black tears. My little breasts shiver with cold. His chest is hard like marble. Little Brother is sad, he waves goodbye to me, he becomes transparent, he disappears. Trails of blood on the white tiles, in the mirror, on my legs. I’m afraid. The white of the walls of the smocks of the men of the sheets of the sperm of the milk of the paper of the snow of the butterflies of the dress of the candle of the bouquet of the veil of the stockings of the shoes to hide the blood on the tiles in the mirror to suppress the screams of God the Father upstairs in the dark bedroom from where you had taken me to these foreign, forbidden and virgin lands. Oh, Little Brother, come back to me!

( to be continued )

1 The Rhône river is nicknamed “the baby eater” because of its treacherous whirlpools.

a Wednesday

     Time has passed since Etienne has dumped me for someone “less fat and less darn stupid than you!” Why did he have to blurt that out?
     It has been a week already since he slammed the door. I consoled myself by finishing the chocolate ice cream with a bag of small sponge cakes and a bottle of champagne. The next day I had a hangover, I hid behind a mask of indifference. Everybody was hoodwinked. Except Chantal.
     She is the one who made the first step, as if she had always known about Etienne. During the break this morning, her eyes seemed to read my soul, she touched my arm discreetly, “Are you feeling any better now?”
     It’s 2 PM, I’m waiting for her under the shade of a poplar tree on the parking lot. How could she have known?
     I was observing her while she has been observing me with a lot more perspicacity. Apart from the daily banalities and some conniving smiles here and there, what did I know about her that I haven’t mentioned yet? What did she know about me that I never told anybody?
     For a month now, I’ve been helping her study for her final nursing exam. Apparently still embarrassed about where she lives, she hasn't invited me there, so we’ve been working at my apartment. From time to time, we’ve gone to the movies, restaurants or hiking, and we always returned to our respective places afterwards. We haven't talked again about that first day together, we're gauging each other with appraising looks, avoiding personal questions as if they were unimportant or not even necessary, sometimes struggling with long silences over the phone. And even so, an unspoken complicity instilled itself between us.
     She's always in jeans and, at work, she fancies scrub tops and pants instead of the nurse dresses. How many times have I invited her to go shopping? Not once has she asked my advice to find a good hairdresser, to choose some make up, to pick up a skirt or even to go and see some shoes. And never a word about whom she might be seeing, even occasionally. What does she do with her free time?
     I’m curious. I want to know. I want to know it all.
     Since the very first day, I saw in her the emancipation and the freedom of action I lack, I imagined she was a poetic image of the two aspects of a woman – day and night. One all instinct, impulse and desire, without control. The other who has searched for control through consciousness or strength of being.
     ― You’re dreaming. Here she is. Look at her and tell me you didn’t put her on a pedestal.
     Same faded jeans and full shirt, carefree as usual, she heads out to the busy street with her long supple gait, pony tail fluttering in the wind. She looks offbeat in the crowd of shopping housewives, like a bohemian, a sexy bohemian who turns around and waits with her fists on her hips. “Are you following me?”
     I mumble an excuse.
     She kisses me on both cheeks and smiles at my dismay, “I wouldn't mind.”
     “I just wanted to thank you for your thoughtfulness.”
     “I know what it feels to be lonely,” she looks away.
     Is it a hint about her secret? I could swear there was a gleam of sadness in her eyes.
     “Ah, here is my bus...”
     Maybe she's been deceived by her Boris.
     “Why don’t you come with me?”
     Maybe she wants to talk.
     “You'll see where I live.”
     I must wait if I want to know.
     “I'll make coffee.”
     During the bus ride, she tells me she often goes to the country side of Ardèche to visit her mother in a clinic. “Something is wrong in her head. It’s been years. According to the doctors, she’s stable. I’ll care for her when I’m a nurse. Ah, here we are!”
     In front of her building, she stops to apologize, “It’s not new and there is no elevator.”
     “It doesn’t matter, that doesn’t bother me.”
     “I live on the fourth floor. Sixty-nine steps, like the département.1”
     “Or like the position.”
     “You’re quick!”
     “Yes, Etienne always thought so too. I had a good teacher in him.”
     She waits on the first landing, “Why did he reject you, then?”
     I switch my purse to the other shoulder to give an impression of casual composure, to conceal my pursing lips and a pang of sorrow.
     “I don’t want to talk about it. Not like this in the hallway.”
     “Eh, it’s not your fault: men are womanizers all right, but there are many more women than men on earth. And so, mathematically…”
     “What do you know about it? Besides your mother, you see only me. You never go out.”
     She turns around on the stairs, “I haven’t always been like that. By mathematically, I was referring to the numbers in my country and in America. Here? I don’t know. In fact, I don’t care.”
     She lowers her eyes at the second floor, “Women should stick together before men instead of waging war among themselves to find a man. Don’t you think so?”
     She gives me a break on the third floor, “Just look: in politics, in offices, everywhere… they control everything. Moreover, they have the nerve to pretend that we’re always on their backs. These bastards! They always want to be on our bellies, go figure...”
     She sighs at the last landing, “You haven’t yet bitten the bullet about Etienne, eh?”
     She pulls her keys from her jeans pocket, “All right, let’s talk about something else, no big deal. Oh, by the way: are you wearing panties today?” She fumbles nervously with her the lock, “C’mon, it’s a joke, smile!”
     Yeah, right. Maybe she’s joking, but am I her first guest?
     She leaves me at the entrance, “Wait, I'll open the window.”
     It’s pitch dark inside, incense floats in the air, it exudes calm. Now I understand, it's her oasis of quiet and peace. No wonder she hasn't invited me before, she wasn't embarrassed, she waited to know me better.
     “Come in and make yourself at home. Don't look at the mess... I mean, your place is so clean and tidy!”
     If I have opted for the comfort of a big one-bedroom apartment, she has set her sights on a simple bachelor large square room with only a miniature bathroom by the entrance and a contiguous closet kitchen opposite to the only source of daylight, a set of French doors from floor to ceiling opening on a tiny balcony.
     “It's plenty enough for me and I know where my things are.” She inserts herself in the kitchen, “But sometimes the coffee pot disappears...” Noise of dishes put away, “I won't be long.”
     It looks like Ali Baba's cavern. In the dining area, a big brown table cluttered with papers and school binders, two disparate chairs and a huge separating bookcase full of trinkets, dishes, bottles, books. On the bedroom side – it’s clearer, the window space, no doubt – a single bed surrounded with piles of books and magazines, an armoire topped with a miniature Eiffel Tower, some Mexican pottery, a panama hat, and in the corner behind the wide-open French doors, a pair of old-fashion cross-country wood skis and poles. No flowers or hanging plants, no posters or pictures on the walls, almost spartan, nothing except for this world map in front of the bed, streaked with soft-color threads tightened between pins. “Looks like you travel a lot.” Maybe her parents are diplomats, military personnel. No, too boring. Maybe her father is a pilot, or a drug trafficker... “How can you afford it?”

( to be continued )

1 Territorial and administrative division of France. They live in the département du Rhône, which is numbered 69.

One day, any day ... (continued)

     “Make yourself comfortable while I prepare the coffee.”
     Among yesterday’s forgotten mail, a postcard from Etienne. I knew he was thinking of me. I’m on the Riviera for a while. I leave the field open for you, and the bedroom too. What a Gypsy! I gave him so much and he stays away. With Etienne I wanted to erase the void left by the only one who ever mattered to me, but I haven’t had the courage to hold him back. What’s left between us? Nothing. Apart from this postcard, the continuous silence between his absences without any explanation. Is this a choice he made or is he seeing someone else somewhere else? What do I know? Coffee’s ready. Where is Chantal?
     Her sneakers lie in the middle of the dining room. Her jacket hangs on the back of a chair. I find her in my bedroom, bending at the window, and peeking through the slits of the lowered shutters. “What are you doing here?”
     She turns around and stretches, her arms pulled back. “I’m curious. It’s so Zen in your room, I love it. Empty walls, low furniture… as if you didn’t want to see anything when lying down.”
     My irritation fades. That silence, that isolation, that calm, that proximity... my palms are sweaty. She raises her eyes, looking for her words. I can feel the warmth of her body, her face up close is out of focus, her thin lips move in slow motion, her voice echoes in my ears, “So, shall we drink that coffee?”
     She devours her croissants and babbles at the same time. At first, I barely listen, the fatigue of the night gets to me. But Chantal doesn’t seem to be affected, she speaks at top speed, almost to herself, “It’s been so long since I had anybody to talk to.” She grows animated, wriggles on her chair across the table, telling me about her studies, the training in ER, “Yes, I noticed you too.”
     At my second cup of coffee – I didn’t make it too strong today – I realize she’s playing with Etienne’s postcard which had been lying among the crumbs on the table, “That beach with those palm trees, and this water so blue! Like where I used to live. Makes me feel like traveling again. Can I read?”
     She doesn’t wait. So uninhibited, again. How can I hold it against her?
     She frowns to decipher Etienne’s handwriting, her lips move slowly. Then, she tilts her head, twists slowly a strand of hair, smiles at me. Finally she puts the postcard back down among the crumbs she fiddles with. “Your Etienne seems to be far away. But much less than my Boris.”
     “Boris? Is that your boyfriend back home?”
     She makes a vague gesture, “I prefer to talk about something else,” grabs the last croissant, “Wanna share?” and grins, “From the look in your eyes, this Etienne of yours isn’t just anybody.”
     “Oh, you know...”
     “No, I don't. What's he like?”
     It's the first time someone has ever asked me about him. What can I say but the obvious? “He is a big guy. Rather slim, dark skin like an Arab. I spent a year with him in Africa, people thought he was a native.”
     “Well, ok, but what’s good about him?”
     “He makes love like a god…” Why did I say that to her?
     She munches the last bits of the croissant with rounded eyes, “Lucky you. Go on.”
     “Not an once of romance, he's just impulsive, always busy organizing things. So full of logic sometimes, it kills me.”
     “But?”
     “But he makes me melt. I’ve got him under my skin.”
     “You live together?”
     “Not really. He’s a biker. He’s often on the road.”
     “With somebody else, eh?” Another grin. “Now I understand what he meant on the postcard. Is that why you invited me over for coffee?” She lowers her eyes like a kid feeling guilty for her frankness: “You don’t know what it’s like to be alone.”
     “I do. Happened to me more than once.”
     “Yes, but you have somebody in your life,”
     “I don’t need anybody to have a life on my own.”
     “Yes, but with him you have a different life. It’s not the same for me.”
     “I have Etienne, yet I live by myself. I can’t tell how I would feel or who I would be if I was really alone.”
     “Yes, but I imagine you always had somebody.”
     “That’s true, somehow.”
     “Yes, but you have somebody waiting for you somewhere.”
     “We all have someone waiting somewhere. Be it now, in a week, a year, a lifetime.”
     “Yes, but you don’t know what it is to be alone. All alone. Day after day, night after night!”
     Yes, but… yes, but… The tone of her voice had been rising, more and more agitated, as if waiting for a satisfactory answer from me. Too bad, I am not obliging: a cat is a cat, “We are who we are.” If the coffee didn't awaken my energy, I feel like I should defend myself, “It’s a matter of choice.” I don’t know where I’m going but I am going at it lightheartedly, “Time affects the body, not the mind. One imitates oneself when one doesn’t change. Sometimes, it is better to be alone, as long as one knows why. And for my part, I do.”
     “I don’t understand.”
     “You must have a good reason to be alone, no?”
     “So what?”
     “So what, so what… It’s up to you if you want to or if you must change your life. Or as the French expression goes, get a new skin.”
     ― You go too far.
     I do not. She asked for it.
     ― Look, she’s nailed to her chair and you’re out of breath. Do something.
     Chantal doesn’t give me time to react, she sighs with a prim smile, “Thanks for the coffee.” She gets up rapidly, slips on her jacket, “You’re right. I’ve been through difficult times and now I prefer to be alone.” She comes around the table, behind me and lays her hands on my shoulders, “No, stay put.” She leans to whisper, “You know, I like your frankness, and then…” She kisses my neck, “Well, actually you are the one at work who interests me.” She walks away, “The others do their things together, you stay aside, you don’t speak very much. I truly wanted to get to know you better.” At the door, she turns one last time, “I’m sorry about Etienne. I hope things will work out.”
     What, she doesn't give me a second chance?
     Should I run after her?
     Shit, shit, shit!

***

      The filtered daylight through the shutters floods the bed with a blanket of luminous dominoes. It is a bit cool in the apartment, the central heating is still set to the minimum.
     I should’ve held her back.
     I slip quickly under the duvet, curling up, my arms tight on my chest, sighing with pleasure as every time I go to bed in my bed since I bought it. I remember, the salesman was obsequious, “One piece mattress and box springs, Swedish design, extremely comfortable!” He didn't impress me as much as the bed. A bit expensive, but pleasure is not debatable.
     I should’ve ask her to stay.
     Besides Etienne, she would have been the first to share my new bed. I leave the field open for you, and the bedroom too, he wrote. He couldn’t have been more blunt.
     Would she have stayed? Yes, I think so.
     ― Get real, will you?
     She would sit at the edge of the bed, undress with her back turned. She would slip under the duvet. She would shiver and sigh. She would move her legs like scissor blades, laughing out loud. She would raise up on her elbow and caress my hair, “Is this the first time you've had someone in your room?”
     I would remain silent to hide my timidity.
     I like your clear laugh, Chantal. So different from the now mute echoes of Etienne’s low pitch voice. My bedroom is sacred, not everybody comes in that easily.
     You would settle in here with your ruffled, street urchin joviality, your eyes of a woman in love.
     No, you are not a lover, you are an Amazon.
     You would examine me as a potential prey, and my timidity would fade. I would be lucid, I wouldn’t be afraid, I would be able to confront your look. Anybody’s look. And you would ask, “So, besides Etienne, I’m the only one, eh?”
     ― You are completely rambling.
     Etienne. The past flashes in my eyes, my vision gets blurred. I am in two places at once. Chantal’s voice seems to come from the other side of a thick pane, like through the frosted glass of a dream, in that tangent space where exists an illusory reality. And Etienne is here, in my bedroom, in my bed, half-raised on his elbow, he bends over slightly to caress my hair, “So, besides Chantal, I am the only one, eh?”
     ― Stop fantasizing and go to sleep!
     Beep-beep, beep-beep, beep-beep… my heart beats too fast, Chantal. I wait for it to go away. It doesn’t. My arm becomes numb under your head. I pull free and you moan like somebody ready to fall asleep...
     ― Control yourself.
     Beep-beep… I cover my eyes from the light. You move, you sigh again, an interminable moment passes...
     Beep-beep… I don’t dare to look, you must be sleeping...
     Beep-beep… my breathing is too short, my nerves are frayed...
     Beep-beep… flash. Him again...
     Beep-beep… arising from the depths of my soul, of my guts, he pursues me tirelessly...
     Beep-beep… flash, Etienne, his living alter ego...
     Beep-beep… the warmth of his eyes, the ballet of his hands. No, I have forgotten nothing...
     Beep-beep… his fleshy mouth comes back onto my breasts, his weight on my body, his sweat on my tongue, his hair on my face, his legs between mine...
     Beep-beep, oh mon Dieu! Beep-beep, it’s too strong! Beep-beep, I’m gonna pop! Beep-beep, I can’t handle any more!
     ― You need a cold shower.
     No. I’m going to die without moving, I’m going to explode in slow motion, alone with my body bubbling in a thousand stars wanting to burst, alone with my mind full of him, full of madness and forbidden memories, full of flowers, pastel colors, foreign smells which soothe and give out a sweet fragrance, alone with my belly flowing finally free.
     Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep… Beep.

One day, any day...

      After a work night at the hospital, I take my shower and then I go home to sleep. If I can. Today, I finish my shift last. The lockers are empty but someone is still in the shower. Didn't I see the other girls leaving the building? I'm too tired, maybe it was yesterday. What a night! Eight hours on the same patient... and for what?

     “Are you gonna be long?”

     “I'm almost done. Is that you Sylvie?”

     “Who else could I be?”

     And who else speaks with that mixed foreign accent but Chantal? She's been training with me since she arrived in ER, two months ago. I don't know much about her. Everyone in the service wonders about her. During the rare breaks she spends with us, she never talks about herself, she always skirts our questions. But somehow it feels like she's been with us forever.

     I'm so zonked, I can barely take off my scrub dress.

     Come to think of it, Chantal also kept running and working all night. For a nurse trainee, she's got a lot of stamina or... Nah. I don't think she'd take drugs to keep up with us, she's just different. Usually, nurse trainees are rather shocked by the daring jokes from the staff. Chantal wasn’t put off; she easily played opposite us. Well, that’s one thing, but she quickly made us appreciate her working qualities and her love for the patients. Such an open heart! even said the head nurse. Such a heart to win! retorted the intern. To whom someone sassed, But that’s gonna be tough.

     For sure her boyish look and standoffish demeanor don't help but, anyway, everyone seems to like her.

     Her rating went up an additional notch, I remember, the day the paramedics brought in accident victims, South-American tourists; she translated in English and Spanish. I don’t know much about languages but I could tell the patients were speaking to her as to one of their own kind. Where did she learn these languages? What kind of girl is she?

     I can't stay put very long, I throw my work clothes in the laundry bin and wait, picking at my hangnails, in the narrow hallway to the shower.

     “You done or what?”

     “Yes, yes!”

     Towel on her shoulder, she comes out streaming, nearly indecent in her juvenile-looking slenderness, “I had a tough night too, you know?”

     Of course I know: we worked together. I try to smile but I feel suffocated in the cramped space, I want to retreat, all I can do is lower my eyes, “Sorry, I’m uptight.”

     “No offense taken.” She sidesteps to let me pass in the corridor, her hands on the wall above my head, her green pupils an inch away burn with curiosity, they paralyze me. “I guess, had our patient survived, we wouldn't be so tensed.”

     “Does life ever give anyone a second chance?”

     “Of course, if one can see it and grab it.”

     “You mean that?”

     “I know that.”

     “I don't believe in luck, nor in chance. This guy didn't die because he wasn't lucky enough to make it, he died because he drank himself to death. What's luck or chance got to do with it?”

     “I don't know.”

     The few meters to the shower feel interminable.

     Burning water, sedative hissing, dense vapor, cocoon of steam, smell of surgical soap, crude early morning light on the white tiles of the shower, slow breathing, I need to empty the tension, the tragedy of the alcoholic admitted during the night with a perforated ulcer, the hemorrhage welling up in the mouth and the nostrils… beep, beep, eight hours non-stop to hope, to worry, to persevere… beep, beep, beep, emergency intubation… beep, beep, swearing mentally first, then cussing out loud when he went into coma… beep, beep, beep, balloon probe fitted in the stomach… beep, beep, beep, beep, stoical nervousness… beep, beep, beep, pockets of blood pushed under pressure at the arms and legs… beep, beep, apprehension… beep, lassitude… beep, beep, erratic pulse on the scope… beep, beep, heightened senses… beep, unyielding at the inevitable… beep, beep, jolts of the patient, still conscious… beep, he recognized us… beep, beep, we’ve seen him a month ago, same diagnostic, beep, damn, we got him out safely then! Beep. Not this morning, he died in our hands at 5:53, the beep turned into a strident insistent incessant vexatious whistling as if to tell us You failed, I win… Cardiac massage, the intern was unrelenting, we all stared at him, he froze, somebody shut the scope sound off, leaving the luminous green deadly flat furrow on the screen signify the clumsy end of another life. I was so weary I almost cried.
     “Are you gonna be long?”
     Chantal's still here?
     Oh boy, this after-work languor is getting to me. I better snap out of it and finish my shower.
     Strange… in spite of the fatigue and the stress, I love being a nurse. A vocation that demands devotion and love! stressed our biology teacher at the nursing school, which made some of the students giggle every time, especially Charlotte… so down to earth, she wasn’t thinking of the same type of love. But true also, there is a different state of mind among medical personnel, not unhealthy, simply more open. Have I changed! When we work all day or all night on sick and injured patients, their bodies take on a less glamorous or significant dimension, they're only flesh around bones and we have to make their pieces work again, period. I never thought I’d become so hardened, less prudish and even more philosophical about the human body.
     I only wish I had a slender one, not as willowy as Charlotte’s though, more so like Chantal’s.
     “You done or what?”
     Darn, I asked for it, didn’t I?
     She’s brushing her long blond pony tail, nonchalant, with one foot up on the center bench of the lockers, no make-up as usual, staring at me with an amused piercing look.
     I shiver in the draft from the ventilation window; quick, my T-shirt, pullover, socks, jeans, and boots.
     “Hey,” she titters with her slight accent.
     “What?”
     “You forgot your panties. Don’t you wear any?”
     We leave the building laughing. It’s six thirty, the sky is clear, we blink at the sun already up above the roofs. I stretch, suck in my belly, filling my chest with the fresh morning air.
     “Is that your stagecoach?” Chantal points her finger at the only visible car in the parking lot, “I thought you took the bus like everyone.”
     My old Citroen, a sand colored 2CV, a bit rusty here and there but practical and economic. I don’t need much. I settle at the wheel with a sigh, suspensions and seat growl. I’m finally becalmed but I don’t feel sleepy anymore.
     As if she had read my mind, she retorts, “Wanna do something? I’m not sleepy either. Must be the stress.”
     “Or because I’m not wearing underwear?”
     Oops! I didn’t mean it that way.
     She glances towards the building, blushing, “I don’t care about that.” There is fire in the green of her eyes, and nervousness in her gesture to keep her pony tail from flying all over her face in the wind, “I don’t feel like being alone after what happened. I need somebody, a presence. You know what I mean.”
     She is so direct, almost like a guy trying to turn on the charm.
     No, this is silly, my imagination is playing tricks on me. I’m just like her, all on edge after work and, to top it off, Etienne is not in town to pamper me. Sure, I know what she means and yet my heart pounds louder when she leans down, her long fingers on the edge of the car door, artist’s hands made to create a space of gentleness.
     “Shall we go, then?”
     “Where to?” I answer a bit too briskly.
     With her inimitable accent, she tries to explain that she lives in a very tiny apartment, “And so, it’d be better if we went to your place. I think.” In the face of my silence, she becomes feverish, “I… I have no one. Do you understand?” She swallows her saliva, waiting with round eyes, her fingers turning white on the door frame.
     “All right, I’ll make coffee if you want me to.”
     She smiles, “OK, then. Wait for me, wait here,” and walks away, almost dancing.
     I shouldn’t stare at her skinny gawky body, even if it reminds me of Charlotte’s. But Chantal doesn’t swing her hips, she seems gauche and at the same time so mannish, or butch, as would affront Etienne. I wonder why she studies to be a nurse at her age. True, I haven’t mentioned it, what’s the point? The point is… the point is that I’m still staring after she turned the corner of the building, the point is that my body is tired and my brain in slow motion. Why did I let her invite herself to my place? I live with enough sequels of suffering and forgotten faces, but for one forever engraved in my memory. I cry so much, sometimes I want to die and people think I’m bizarre. Or they say I'm strange because now and then I let myself go a bit too far at the will of my imagination. Charlotte, Etienne, and now Chantal... I’ve got plenty to titillate my imagination with only these names.
     Cigarette. Lighter. Acrid odor. Dream in the smoke, the night repeats itself on the screen of the windshield. Like a film editor, I cut the scenes, I arrange a ballet of blue and green bodies, in the foreground the double exposure of the intubation, the pose of the catheters, I add a background scenery with pine trees, I mix the whole thing with my favorite Prokofiev’s piece, The Love of Three Oranges. The whole thing has this cadence, this animation like an old Méliès’s movie in black and white. No, buff-color and white – it’s more intimate, warmer.
     The music explodes in the honk of a horn. A yellow beat up Postal Service Renault arrives. Chantal waits at the wheel, window to window, “Obviously, I didn’t take the bus either. I'll follow you.” Her enthusiastic smile disorients me, “And don’t try to lose me, I’m good.”
     Ignition, nasal noise of the starter, vibrations of the shell, creak of the centrifugal gear box, rattle of the suspensions, first gear, full speed ahead, direction due north, pick up some croissants and have a lie-in. That’s what I have to do, that's what I want to do. Maybe Chantal is right: after a shitty night like that I’m not in the mood to be alone. Etienne has disappeared God knows where these last few weeks. Does he imagine I’m going to wait for him? Yes, of course. I’m too much a fool to do otherwise.
     Back to reality on the boulevards, Chantal’s car is right on my ass. Let’s leave the sleepy town quickly, go through the nauseating tunnel, up the long hill, then the unattractive highway to the small winding country road to the meandering streets to the bakery on the square.
     The fragrant smell of croissants scents the car. I have such a weakness for them, I cannot stop myself from nibbling, tearing one end, gnawing, savoring the unctuous sweet piece and turning a deaf ear to that little inner Voice that teases me too often.
     ― You know you shouldn’t…
     Yes, I know. Etienne also gives me a hard time about my silhouette, and silliness clutters my thoughts when I eat, but inexplicably Chantal has entered my mind like an intruder accepted in advance. Perhaps she’s some sort of a sister, hiding like me the mark of something or somebody deep down, there, at the very bottom under the moss of forgetting. What if I were right?
     Here we are, in front of my place. It's almost seven o’clock. Now what? In the rear-view mirror, I see her locking her car. Is she staring at me? She approaches rapidly. She opens my door. She moves aside and bows, “If Madame wishes…” Her faded jeans and tight T-shirt accentuate her casual masculine appearance, her thinness I envy because of my feminine curves, because of the nagging Voice.
     ― Is it because you’re fat that this Etienne of yours fools around?
     I exit my car and, again, I lower my eyes in front of her. She laughs, “You’ve got crumbs all over!” Dumbstruck, I let her touch me. Her fingers are icy on my chin, light on my chest. I smile to give an impression of composure, but the Voice pursues me.
     ― So, what are you going to do with that tomboy?
     The building is silent, the entry cold, dark and quiet, there is no sound from upstairs, no baby’s cry, no Arabic voice exclaiming, not even a door slamming, as if the outside world faded away behind the gates of my tenement. Tension in the air, fleeting sensation of promiscuity, sudden freedom at this transient isolation. Etienne had taken advantage of me in this very same empty hallway on a day like today.
     Chantal nudges me, “Hey! Want to go up now?”
     Chantal’s eyes… She suspects my agitation. Etienne had said the same thing, while tucking himself in.
     Chantal incites me, “Which floor do you live on?”
     Chantal’s voice… She takes the stairs four at a time, as Etienne did after asking the very same question.
     Chantal calls me, “Are you coming?”
     Chantal’s body… She waits on the first landing. My belly still tightens at what Etienne did to me upstairs.
     ― Wake up, airhead!

( to be continued )

The Second Skin

Prologue

Once was a poor snake which was collecting all its skins.

It was man.

Jean Giraudoux – Sodome et Gomorrhe

If I could only get out of my skin for an hour or two!

If I could be that man who passes by! 

Alfred de Musset – Fantasio