The Paris Apartment(78)

“And I’m sick of you bugging me,” I say. “I’m sick of all your mess around the place, everywhere I look. I’m sick of you bringing your, your . . . fuck-buddies back here. I might be a weirdo—yes, I know all of your friends think that—but you . . . you’re a disgusting little slut.”

I think I’ve done it now. Her eyes are wide as she steps farther away from me. Then she disappears from the room. I don’t feel good, but at least I can breathe again.

I hear sounds coming from her bedroom next door, drawers being pulled open, cupboard doors slamming. A few moments later she appears with a couple of canvas bags over each arm, stuff spilling out of them.

“You know what?” she says. “I might be a disgusting little slut, but you are one crazy bitch. I can’t be bothered with this any more, Mimi, I don’t need this. And Dominique’s got her own place now. No more sneaking around. I’m out of here.”

There’s only one person I know with that name. That doesn’t make any sense. “Dominique—”

“Yeah. Your brother’s ex. And all that time he thought she was flirting with Ben.” A little smile. “That was a good decoy, right? Anyway. This is different. This is the real deal. I love her. It’s one woman for me now. No more Camille the—what was it you called me?—disgusting little slut.” She hoists her bag higher on her shoulder. “Bof. Whatever. I’ll see you around, Mimi. Good luck with whatever the fuck is going on with you.”

A couple of minutes later she’s gone. I turn back to the window. I watch her striding across the courtyard, bags over her arm.

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.