The computer’s timer must have run out; the screen of my iMac goes black. It doesn’t matter. I can still see the image. I have been haunted by it for over a decade.
I think about how I nearly kissed his sister last night. The sudden, shocking, wonderful resemblance to him when she turned her head just so, or frowned, or laughed. And also the resemblance of the moment: the darkness, the stillness. The two of us held apart from the rest of the world for just a beat.
That night in Amsterdam. It was the worst, most shameful thing I had ever done.
It was the best thing that had ever happened to me. That was how I used to see it, anyway. Until he came to stay.
Jess
I wake in darkness. There’s a heavy weight on my chest, a horrible taste in my mouth, my tongue dry and heavy like it doesn’t belong to me. For a few long moments, everything that happened to me before now is a total blank. It feels like peering forward and staring into a black hole.
I grope around, trying to make out my surroundings. I seem to be lying on a bed. But which bed? Whose?
Fuck. What happened to me?
Gradually I remember: the party. That disgusting drink. Victor the vampire.
And then I see something I recognize. Some little green digits, glowing in the blackness. It’s Ben’s alarm clock. Somehow I’m back here, in the apartment. I blink at the numbers. 17:38. But that can’t be right. That’s the afternoon. That would mean I’ve been asleep for—Jesus Christ—the whole day.
I try to sit up. I make out two huge, glowing, slit-pupiled eyes a few inches from my nose. The cat is sitting on me—so that’s the weight on my chest. It starts kneading its claws into my throat in painful little darts. I push it away: it hops off the bed. I look down at myself. I’m fully clothed, thank God. And I remember now, in flashes of memory: Victor was the one who got me down here after I blacked out in Mimi’s apartment. Not the date-raping predator I suddenly thought he might be. In fact he’d seemed scared by the state I was in—left as quick as he could. I suppose at least he tried to help.
A flicker of memory. I found something last night. Something that felt important. But at first everything that happened only comes back to me in hazy, disjointed fragments. There are big missing patches like holes in a jigsaw. I know my dreams were really trippy. I recall an image of Ben shouting at me through a pane of glass; but I couldn’t see his face clearly, the glass seemed warped. He was trying to warn me of something—but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. And then suddenly I could see his face clearly but that was much, much worse. Because he didn’t have any eyes. Someone had scratched them out.
Now I remember the paintings under Mimi’s bed. Jesus Christ. That’s what I found last night. Those tears in the canvas, like she’d ripped them all apart in some kind of frenzy. The slashes, the holes where the eyes should have been. And Ben’s T-shirt, wrapped around them.
I haul myself out of bed, stumble into the main room. My head throbs. I might be small, but I’m not a cheap date—one drink is not enough to get me in that much of a state. It might not have been Victor, but I’m pretty sure of one thing: someone did this to me.
A loud trilling, so loud in the silence it makes me jump. My phone. Theo’s name flashes up on the screen.
I pick up. “Hello?”
“I know what that card is.” No niceties, no preamble.
“What?” I ask. “What are you talking about?”
“The card you gave me. The metal one, with the firework on it. I know what it is. Look, can you meet me at quarter to seven? So—in about an hour? The Palais Royal Metro station; we can walk from there. Oh, and try and look as smart as possible.”
“I don’t—”
But he’s already hung up.
Mimi
I put the stuff in her drink last night. It was so easy. There was ketamine going around and I got hold of some, shook the powder into her glass until it dissolved and asked one of Camille’s friends to give it to the British girl with the red hair. He seemed only too pleased to do it: she’s quite pretty, I suppose.
I had to do it. I couldn’t have her there. But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel bad about it . . . I’ve been so careful my whole life about drugs—apart from that night in the park. And then to inflict them on someone else without them even knowing. That wasn’t cool. It’s not her fault she made the mistake of coming to this place. That’s the worst part. She’s probably not even a bad person.
But I know I am.
Camille comes out of her room wearing a silk slip, black rings of smudged makeup around her eyes. This is the first time she’s surfaced all day.
“Hey. Last night was craaaazy. People really enjoyed it, don’t you think?” She looks at me closely. “Putain, Mimi, you look like shit. What happened to your knees?” They still hurt from where I hit the tarmac in front of that van; the concierge insisted on dabbing some antiseptic onto the grazes. She grins. “Someone had a good night, non?”
I shrug. “Oui. I suppose so.” Actually it was probably one of the worst nights of my life. “But I didn’t . . . sleep well.” I didn’t sleep at all.
She looks at me more closely. “Ohhh. Was it that kind of no sleep?”
“What do you mean?” I wish she’d stop looking at me so intently.
“You know what I mean! Your mystery guy?”
My heart’s suddenly beating too fast in my chest. “Oh. No. It wasn’t anything like that.”
“Wait,” she grins at me. “You never told me. Did it work?”
“What do you mean, did it work?” I feel like she’s crowding me, the smell of Miss Dior and stale cigarette smoke suddenly overpowering. I need her out of my space.
“The stuff we picked out. Mimi!” She raises her eyebrows. “You can’t have forgotten? It was only, like, two weeks ago!”
Already it feels like it happened to someone else. I see myself like a character in a film, knocking on the door to Camille’s room. Camille sitting on the bed painting her toenails, the room stinking of nail polish and weed.
“I want to buy some lingerie,” I told her.
Maman always bought all my underwear. We went together, every season, to Eres and she would buy me three simple sets: black, white, nude. But I wanted something different. Something I had picked myself. Only I didn’t have any idea where to go. I knew Camille would.
Camille’s eyebrows shot up. “Mimi! What’s happened to you? That new look and now . . . lingerie? Who is he?” She smiled slyly. “Or she? Merde, you’re so mysterious I don’t even know if you actually prefer girls.” A smirk. “Or maybe you’re like me and it depends what mood you’re in?”
Could she really not know who it was? To me it seemed so obvious. Not just that I was into him, but that he and I had a special connection. It felt like it was obvious to the outside world, to everyone who saw us.