by Carina Caccia
1.
He hadn’t meant to idealise her, to put her on a pedestal, to overwhelm. Radiant, she was. She drew people in, shook their hands, pulled up chairs for them. Are you the organiser? she’d been asked. No, she wasn’t. Just a woman with a smile, a woman in a sundress who scooted over and made room for others. What was her name again?
And then she directed her smile at him, her warmth, her questions. Matthieu stirred in his seat, gripped tight the neck of his bottle so as not to tremble. He did that sometimes, or rather, the nerves did – as though they were an entity of their own.
“What does your tattoo mean?” she asked, leaning in, both hands on the edge of her seat as though to anchor her curiosity. Juvenile energy, something young and endearing about her gap-toothed smile.
“I drew it,” said Matthieu. A ghost – an illustration he’d scribbled in his notebook the day his dad ignored his new shoes, leather. He’d traded in his scruffy Vans and their worn tongues because real men, not boys, wore real shoes.
“Really?” said the woman, wide-eyed. “What does it mean?”
Cliché question but it was she who’d asked it.
“I think I felt invisible,” he said.
“What does that feel like?”
Right. How would she know?
And how would he know that she was more than a bubbly personality, a pretty face, a question mark?
2.
Do you listen to everything others say, or do you stare through them, do you see what isn’t there? Café, worn leather seats, pamphlets scattered across the windowsill.
Matthieu stuttered, hands jittery as he spoke, responded.
Had she noticed? Her eyes fell upon his trembling fingers, his body quivering like the crown of a tree, voice rustling as light as leaves.
“So, what brings you to Lille?” he asked. Silence. Fill the silence. He felt too visible beneath her gaze, fiddling with a sugar sachet.
He watched as her lips moved in response, how a smile flittered here, there, disappeared. How her eyes crinkled. Brown-green? Hazel? Freckles sprinkled across her sunburnt cheeks. Dead skin on her nose peeling like dry glue, nasal hair untrimmed, upper lip in need of a wax (though plump and pink and soft, he bet). She was far from perfect; she was an ordinary individual with ordinary flaws and ordinary ideas – mediocre, even. He wouldn’t idealise her, not this time, not again. She’d do. Just like this, just as she was. And my, hadn’t he grown? Aware of his own patterns, he was.
“What about you?” she asked.
“What about me?”
“Pourquoi es-tu venu à Lille?”
Sweet accent, hers. Her voice changed in French – regressed, rather. The voice of a girl, always curious, always inquiring, douce – and he might just burst with nervous laughter, might just grab her hand, kiss her feet. Happy, he was, merely to be in her orbit. Happy, he was, to sit across from her in an orange summer dress, doe-eyed, as pretty as a present with ribbon tied. But he was no longer one to idealise, remember?
And happy, it was the right word – ordinary, just like him and just like her. At least that’s what he told himself.
3.
“But you don’t know me,” said Nora, head propped up on a pillow.
“I know,” said Matthieu. “I’ve been reminding myself that you’re just another individual, too, and that you’re flawed. That I’d have to accept that version of you.”
“It sounds like you’ve been thinking a lot about me.”
“I have.”
“Idealising me, really.”
“I’m trying not to, hence why I’ve been thinking about your flaws.”
“But that’s also obsessive. I don’t want to be anybody’s limerent object. It’s reductive. Dehumanising, even. You know, nobody ever sees me. They project their fantasies, their desire, onto me. And that guy from the language exchange, for example, Laurent, he’s already grabbed my waist multiple times, even though I flinched and pulled away. I can’t just be. Ever, it seems.”
“Well, now you’re making me feel guilty for being attracted to you. We can go back to being friends if it makes you feel better, but I’m not sure I’d be able to.”
“Maybe,” said Nora, dragging herself out of bed. “Coffee?”
4.
Hi Matthieu, I think we got carried away last night, and I’m feeling a little uncomfortable. Is it OK if we go back to being platonic? If so, are we still on for the fireworks? I would bring my friend along.
Send.
Pages and pages of text. Nora scrolled indefinitely. Disproportionate, it was. You can’t tell me how to feel – my feelings are mine, and I care about you now. You initiated intimacy. Don’t tell me not to get attached. I don’t resent you but…
Page
after
page
like kissing him was a contract.
You’re afraid of intimacy, but deep down I think you’re open to a romantic connection. It’s just that you’ve been hurt before. You’re closed off, sure, but you’re just scared.
Page
after
page
like kissing him was a sentence.
He’d made her tea and microwaved leftovers, kissed her while she was drunk, and now she was emotionally responsible for this near-stranger? Three times, they’d met. First, the language exchange. Then, coffee. Finally, at a bar after a bad date.
And now he expected love as though it were an exchange, a currency, a food stamp. Starving, he was, and he devoured the thought of her, licked the bones clean.
Matthieu, she wrote, I’m feeling overwhelmed. You’ve crossed several of my boundaries and now you’re psychoanalysing me – me whom you don’t know. Maybe I’m afraid of intimacy, sure, but not with you. I simply don’t want to be with you, and that’s OK.
Nora flinched at his response: You should be more considerate about the feelings of those you decide to initiate intimacy with.
Hi Matthieu, we don’t know each other well enough to be having this kind of conversation or this level of emotional intensity. It’s inappropriate and unfair. I won’t have it.
Blocked her, he did.
Unblocked, new message: Sure, I shouldn’t have sent you all that at once, but I stand by what I said. And it’s none of my business what you’re like with other men regardless of my opinion. And I was dishonest about my emotions yesterday because I felt used and rightfully so. Just send me your bank details so I can pay you back for the beers you insisted on buying me despite me expressing my discomfort. But I wish you the best here in Lille.
5.
We don’t own the rights to how we’re perceived or imagined by others. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t violating. What had he done with the thought of her? And why could she feel it? Why was it palpable? Why could she smell it hanging in the air like spoiled milk? Why could she taste it in every forkful of instant noodles? She pushed her bowl aside, fork cluttering against the porcelain. She’d lost her appetite. Dry gagged. Everything tasted, sounded, smelled of him – of him taking liberties with the idea of her, pulling her apart and reassembling her like a Mrs. Potato Head, all the while unaware that he was doing it, that he’d reduced her to a plaything and stuck ears where they didn’t belong, chose his favourite set of eyes, removed the mouth. Who needs one, anyway, when you’re a blank face projected onto? Arbitrary, you’re rendered. But you have just enough of an identity, of individuality, to serve as the screen – to personify all their desires and projections, and for them to think it’s not their imagination but you.
6.
Nightmares sometimes linger, their fingerprints loud and luminescent on the waking world. Nora lay in bed, heart pounding in her chest. He’d followed her, he had. Wide awake. Bad dream. And now she rose, afraid she’d find him outside her apartment door or in her stairwell. Fastened the chain lock, she did. Shut the curtains three-stories high. Turned on the kitchen light above the stove to dispel the darkness should it morph into a man who’d lived God knows what with the fantasy of her, a man who resented her autonomy, her boundaries, her refusal to assume the role he’d cast her in. But what if he was outside somewhere? What if he saw her light come on? Nausea and goosebumps evoked by a near-stranger. A near-stranger who’d conjured up a narrative centred around her—her and him—a narrative which he seemed to believe despite its nonreciprocity.
Limerence, it wasn’t flattering but degrading, reductive, dehumanising. He’d poured into her all his expectations, as though she were a container, a heart-shaped cake pan.
7.
Matthieu pulled at the doorknob, but it caught in its frame. Locked. If he could just speak to her in person…
Cold, it was, wind climbing up his spine and caressing his neck. He sat on the kerb, shoulders hunched, watched a group of drunken girls trip over themselves, squeal, their heels clinking like Go stones. One stumbled across the road, and past him, jangling keys, metal scratching against the keyhole, creaking door. His dirty shoe, a doorjamb just in time. Then, he followed her in and sat in the stairwell outside Nora’s door. Rehearsed his lines in his head. Then aloud. Knock, knock. If he could just speak to her in person… Knock, knock.
Knock, knock.
