Mikaela has a mouth full of it. When I look back up she’s staring right at me. Her face has changed.
“Sorry,” she whispers. “I’m sorry.”
I put my burger down and wrap it up. I wipe the mayo off my finger, from under my nail, with a paper napkin.
“It’s alright.”
She doesn’t ask me why I’m not eating. She finishes up and then throws away her wrappers. I stay in the kitchen and watch as she starts unpacking the boxes in the living room one by one, carrying the boxes to her room and hanging up the clothes in her closet – box by box they go, dresses first, maxis, minis, midis, shorts, high waisted, low waisted, hot pants, jeans, tops, camisoles, skirts, playsuits, all labeled carefully in her handwriting. I don’t know how long I stand there. After a while I leave the kitchen. As Mikaela starts unpacking her shoes, I pick up the landline and dial the Parnem landline number I know by heart. It rings three and a half times before it is answered.
“Hello?” Aunt Evelyn says. She has a deep voice, like a tough grandma, slightly nasal though, as if she has a perpetual cold. When she says hello it doesn’t sound like hello, it sounds more like why the hell are you calling me, whatever it is, get it over with quickly.
“It’s Eve,” I say.
There’s a second of silence.
“Eve! Is everything alright?”
Her tone of voice changes. She softens the words, trying to sound maternal I guess. She’s never had kids so she’s not very good at it. And I’m twenty-one years old. I don’t need maternal.
“Yeah. I was just thinking of coming up to Parmen for a few days to visit. Maybe a week.”
“Oh! Oh, that would be lovely, you should come! Silliman misses you.”
Silliman is her six year old cocker spaniel. Till this day I cannot understand why someone would name their dog Silliman. Unfortunately he does not respond to nicknames.
“Uh, okay then. Is sometime next week alright?”
“Any time is fine, Evianna. Just give me a call the night before you reach so I can get your rooms ready.”
“Right,” I mutter. “Sounds great.”
“How is everything there?” Aunt Evelyn asks. “Mikaela doing alright?”
“Mikaela’s fine,” I tell her. “Everything’s fine. We’re getting settled into the apartment. The rent’s pretty decent. Neighbours are cool.”
“And how’s Augustus?”
Aunt Evelyn has met Dr. Lemaiy once. Once. Still she insists on calling him Augustus. It may have something to do with the fact that she is a sexually frustrated forty something and he is an attractive, probably sexually active forty something. Aunt Evelyn hasn’t had a boyfriend in eight years, since the last disaster, a European architect, Jonah Lefebvre. He was a tall, good looking intellectual educated from Yale, with horn-rimmed glasses and interestingly printed shirts which he almost always wore with khaki pants. They dated for six years between 1992 and 1998 – I remember vaguely his presence at Christmas and New Year’s and birthdays and anniversaries, glass of wine in hand, kissing Aunt Evelyn at the table, imparting his vast knowledge even on the most quotidian things like chopping knives – he had an opinion on everything from opera to onions. I always disliked him and kept my distance. In 1998 Aunt Evelyn announced their mutual decision to part ways after she walked in on him with another woman’s legs around his neck in their own bedroom. I had been glad. Since then she has gained maybe twenty odd kilos, adopted a cocker spaniel, has taken an odd liking to silk kaftans and tights, and, as far as I know, has not been with another man.
“Dr. Lemaiy is fine,” I tell her.
“Good, good,” she says. She waits, maybe for me to elaborate, but there’s not much I can tell her about Augustus Lemaiy.
Then she says, “Alright then. Get packing. I should go, I have a meeting an hour.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Sure. Have a good meeting.”
“Thank you, Evianna. Good night.”
“Good night.”
I put down the receiver. Mikaela is folding a black silk Calvin Klein jumpsuit on the sofa. She looks up at me.
“So?”
“Guess I’ll leave in about a week,” I tell her. I look around our apartment, unsure of where to go, whether to stay here and keep Mikaela company as she unpacks her myriad clothes, whether to have a drink from our stock, whether to go to my bedroom and attempt to just sleep everything off, whether to go to the bathroom for a shower, or whether to just walk out of our front door because tonight is one of those nights, one of those nights I know is going to be bad, one of those nights where there’s an itch behind my ear I can’t get rid of, where I cannot ignore Mikaela and her painfulness, where I cannot ignore anything, not even myself.
She says something in response but I don’t hear it. I turn to the front door, taking my house keys from the bowl. I unlock the door, step outside, and close it again behind me. Mikaela doesn’t come out to ask me where I’m going. From inside Ruth and Emile’s apartment I can hear a twanging string instrument and laughter, yellow light leaking from under their door, bringing with it the smell of paint. I walk past this other alien world, holding nothing in my hands. It is dark now. Jack’s Mausoleum’s shutters are being rolled up, people arriving. I walk past them. I walk in the opposite direction of the pubs, towards Fanny’s, past Fanny’s, which is now open, a few cars parked in the lot, a family loading groceries into the boot of the four-wheel-drive, the kids sucking on Twisters, a bunch of hipster teenagers swinging packs of beers and singing Franz Ferdinand – I walk past these normal people with normal lives, and I see the turning that leads to the other grocery store – I walk in the direction opposite to that and I take a few turns I know I should take and after a while I find myself in front of a large grey mossy building. There’s a group of four guys loitering by the entrance, each with his own cigarette, dressed in loose jeans and t-shirts, scruffy in an attempt to look formidable. As I walk up they look at me and tell me they can show me a good time and one of them offers to fuck me right there against the wall so hard I wouldn’t be able to walk but I don’t care about them and their sexual wants, I walk past them and into the main lobby, up one flight of stairs, and finally I stop in front of door number 1B. I ring the doorbell, a plain one that goes ding-dong. There’s a scuffle of wood-on-cement from inside and then the door swings open, a blonde, fresh-faced girl behind it, her eyes widening in recognition. I’m only able to force out one sentence before I can feel myself starting to lose it.
“Can I stay the night here please?”
*
e l e v e n - 7.12
Start from the beginning
