I had been fond of Paris until my sister died. My mother told us that, before we were born, she had practised mangling her fingers to cross each of them on top of one another. She had prayed upon this makeshift rat king every night that the twins occupying her womb would emerge into the world as two identical and worldly little girls. When we were kids, my sister would joke that maybe our mum had messed up one time, leaving a finger sticking out, and God had interpreted that as a penis.
One night, eight days after Elsie had died, I was getting ready to head to a club in the 10th arrondissement, on invite from a tall American guy I had met at a fashion magazine launch. It was at Lafayette Anticipations, the attendees were the millennial-cusp, multihyphenate expats of the city – the writer-directors, the model-singers, the influencer-designers. I was working the Instagram stories that evening, and the American guy had been one of the editors on the new issue. He was about eleven years my senior and I’d opted for calling him America, because he was likely a Bradley, and I never liked that name. Angular and all-limbs, America looked like he once dreamed of running Vice Media. With a toothy smile, he had implored me not to actually post anything on socials because the turnout was lower than anticipated. To his credit, I wasn’t getting paid for that night anyway. By my third free cognac from the open bar, I was telling him that I was to be in Paris for four more months, and so I had decided against going back to London for my sister’s funeral. He called me a cold son of a bitch and patted my shoulder. With each thwack to my shoulder blade, I could feel that his fingers were strangely curled into his palm, as though he didn’t want to fully open his hand to my innate son of a bitch-ness. At that point, I hadn’t called my mother back since she had informed me eight days prior that, “Elsie never came home”. I wouldn’t want to go home either, I wanted to say. I also wanted to say that she should blow her nose because her grieving voice sounded too nasally.
Those first eight days, I did not cry once. I looked expectantly in towards myself for the break, for some kind of rupture, and knelt over, ready to surrender to its flux. It never arrived. After work, I spent my evenings doing wall-sits whilst deleting photos off of my phone for storage, and playing The Sims 4, which I had never done before, on my company loaned computer, installing weird and wonderful gameplay mods so that my avatars could get addicted to Sims cocaine or have hardcore image realistic sex. On my morning walks outside of my apartment, I followed what became my predetermined path: the boulangerie, the library, then the café on the corner, before trying to write as I listened to the music I always imagined would coax out a kind of gushing I wouldn’t be able to damper. Instead, over time, I made a habit of having mini tarte aux fraise and commercial French rap hits for breakfast.
I kept pressing on that wound eagerly, taunting myself to see what would happen, and the more that time eluded me, the more it made her death feel like a hoax. I imagined that blood would have to, at some point, erupt from the incision. Except, for no good reason, I lifted my thumb and found that a scab had already formed. I suppose I had known that Elsie was in trouble, and had been for a long time. Bummer, I thought, as I nestled into a fitted white t-shirt, leaving my phone on the dresser before leaving.
On the metro, I tried to be dull as I spoke to America about my time in Paris so far, or a version of it - looking past him, my voice inert and dispassionate, my anecdotes uninspiring. I aimed to quash any friendship points we had amassed during the magazine launch because I didn’t feel like hanging out with him beyond that night. We had met up to take the train towards Belleville together because, for all of his panache, he said he was easily disconcerted by any system that required dark tunnels to operate. A strange, nagging thought that had stuck from childhood. I asked him how he managed the subway in New York and he wordlessly shook his head. This was vaguely the moment I decided that I had to quit being boring and weird him out as much as possible. Although it seemed America paid no heed to my attempts at distance, as he talked and rocked back and forth without touching the rails, smashing his heel on a glum faced woman’s foot and then grabbing my forearm for support with every jolt and stop. With a half raise of his hand, he’d let out a pardon (PAHR-DEN).
“His sister died yesterday!” America yelled over the thumping bass to the gallery assistant he had also invited; a slender blonde, with sheets of blue and silver glitter cascading from where her eyebrows probably used to be, down to her lower lashes. I had managed to create a solitary fortress between the bathroom and the bar before he had pulled me over to meet her properly. I had been introduced to the woman as the Englishman, and I found her to be pretty and a good dancer. At least the murky red lights made her seem so. The ceiling pipes were low and heavy, and the peeling, inked up wall I leant upon felt like sandpaper on my skin.
“It was last week.”
“Oh, it was last week?”
“Yeah.”
“I’m sorry. My name’s Mathilde.”
“Nice to meet you. You look like her.”
Then, a figure from behind emerged.
“Tu prends des trois?”
Mathilde shook her head. “Three-em-em-cee, you want it?” the strange figure repeated in English, and held a key level to my nostril, a small mound of white on the tip. I snorted it before I glanced up properly for the first time to see who I was talking to. A gnome. He had a patchy moustache which adorned his thin top lip, his eyeballs perfectly replaced by two round lenses of his sunglasses. On his head, a black bowler hat. Unpleasant to look at, but not threatening.
“It makes you talk a lot. You get very loving, you know. Myself and friends, we are very close now.” His breath stunk of rotten fruit, his head craning up to mine.
“What is it again?” America asked the cartoon villain, to no response.
“Every party I go to, I am told I look like Orlando Bloom or Johnny Depp.”
“Always one or the other?” Mathilde snickered.
“Every party! Orlando Bloom or Johnny Depp, you know? Pirates. What do you think?” he stared at me quizzically, placing a little baggy in my shirt pocket.
“Yeah, maybe. It’s the glasses, probably.” I managed.
“Usually it’s because the person saying it is attracted to me. Have you tried bondage?”
I looked down at his shoes, “I find it nice that people still wear Converses.”
“Yes, they are my favourite. Do you know shibari?” he gurgled, his accent making shibari sound like the name of an old French lullaby.
Alone again. Ahead of me was another room full of more damp shadows, sweat pooling at their necks; teeth grinding; torsos undulating. I laughed to myself, as I noticed that, with each furtive glance, I was still enamoured with my own projections about these people, the ineffable cool of local cigarette slingers. I believed there to be sincerity in their movements, in their collective need to be sharp and specific in their presentation of self. They weren’t of the vulgar curator slash artist slash pint-sipper sprawls of London. I thought about what Elsie would think of it all. Half-remembering some summers ago. Wet grass on our jeans, a bottle of red wine. Her friends and mine. The night had stretched into dawn. It was time for me to go. Elsie’s jeans were still dark from the wet grass. I followed a dark corridor until I could make out the grey beneath my feet and a rich blue above. The streets repeated, and the shop shutters followed. Ferme. Ferme. Ferme. I had lost America and Mathilde inside about ninety minutes prior and felt like going for a walk anyway. I turned a corner. And another. Elsie’s new shoes were covered in mud. Mum’ll be pissed, I whispered to the traffic light. The spaces between the buildings seemed to narrow. Metro was closed. I could feel it coming. The flux. Everything was leaning at the wrong angle, like it was all wilting.