by T B Gayle
Isobel could barely breathe. The thought of everyone walking around knowing what was really going on but being too scared to say anything almost made her weep.
You can’t be sad, she told herself.
She sat under the light, her soul slowly draining, waiting for morning so she could line up and join the others on their march to a life of pretending.
XVI
Maisie sat at the table sipping a glass of wine. She was sure Sam and everyone would rather she left, but she had nowhere to go really. She couldn’t go back to the flats, not with Pascal there. The last thing she wanted was to have him come knocking on her door in tears wanting a second chance when she shouldn’t have given him the first. So, she was happy to sit quietly and drink. She didn’t care that Sam was busy. Maisie just wanted to relax and try to forget her troubles for a night; the trouble was, troubles were hard things to forget.
‘You sure you’re not hungry?’ said Sam, sitting down opposite Maisie and scrunching her eyes, noticing how much of the bottle of wine was gone. Maisie wanted to say something clever about having worked here and knowing what went on in the kitchen, but she wasn’t feeling all that clever, not with the shape her head was in, so instead she just nodded.
‘You really should be at home, you know,’ said Sam. ‘You look terrible.’
I feel terrible, Maisie wanted to tell her.
‘And this probably isn’t helping,’ said Sam, pushing the bottle of wine across so it would be harder for Maisie to reach. The wine was helping, though. It was making Maisie feel like she had when she’d first started at the restaurant, when they’d spent hour after hour together.
‘I missed you bossing me about,’ said Maisie.
‘Then you shouldn’t have called in sick every second day,’ said Sam. ‘You’ve only got yourself to blame for that.’
Sam had never understood what Maisie was going through. None of them had. It’s not my fault I’m always so tired, she told herself. She knew she should have gone and seen a doctor about it, but she shouldn’t have needed some certificate saying that she was dying for everyone to cut her some slack. You’re not dying, she told herself. It was just that it felt like that sometimes. Sometimes it felt like every last little bit of her strength had been drained away and she could barely open her eyes.
‘And now look at you,’ said Sam. Maisie was quite glad there weren’t any mirrors around to do that. ‘You’re not doing yourself any favours with all this,’ said Sam.
Maisie took a big gulp of her wine. She really felt like having a go at Sam about it all. Sam was acting like Maisie had some sort of a choice in it all. Do you think I’d choose to be like this? she wanted to shout at her. She didn’t want to be sick. She didn’t want to keep hearing voices and feeling so dizzy she could barely stand.
‘None of us want to be here,’ said Sam. ‘But what else do we have?’
‘I’ve been thinking about going and staying on the coast,’ said Maisie. She hadn’t really been thinking about it. She’d been thinking about hearing voices. She really needed to look up what that was the symptom for when she got home. It was the thinking of home part that had done it. She didn’t want to go back to her dingy flat that didn’t feel much like home anyway.
‘I’m staying in the most awful place,’ said Maisie. ‘I think the sea might do me some good, help me feel like myself again.’
‘You do realise Melbourne is by the sea?’ said Sam.
Maisie closed her eyes. Sam just didn’t get it. She didn’t know what Maisie was going through. No one did. She’d almost been killed by a girl in her flat, and all anyone wanted to talk about was why she wasn’t doing as well as they all thought she should have been. And right on cue, Sam came out and said, ‘I get so worried about you. You have so much going for you, but it’s like you’re wasting it all away.’
XVII
For a moment it had felt like she was there, that he could touch her, that his life had suddenly picked up a bit; but as he lay alone in his bed, his head hurting, Pascal felt like the worst person in the world. He knew there probably were worse people out there, but he was having a hard time thinking of who they might be. He was a having a hard time thinking at all. He just wanted to lie there. Pascal closed his eyes and was about to drift away when he heard footsteps outside.
‘Are you sure you’ll be alright?’ said the waitress. Pascal grimaced. It was weird lying there knowing she was outside when just moments before it was like he’d been holding her. He kept picturing the door opening and her walking in and saying something like, ‘Did you think you could just do whatever you wanted to me?’
There was this connection between them now, and as much as Pascal wanted to keep quiet and not let her know that he was home, he wanted to see her again, he wanted to remember what it was like to be the sort of guy that could be with someone like her.
Pascal wrapped himself in a towel and crept to the window.
‘You’re not a doctor,’ said Maisie. ‘Why do you always think you’re some sort of doctor?’
‘You can barely stand,’ said the waitress.
‘I can barely stand you,’ said Maisie.
They were outside Maisie’s flat. Her door was open, and Maisie was trying to pull the waitress inside. The waitress had to gently push Maisie back, but as she did, Maisie leant forward and kissed her. It wasn’t just a peck on the lips or anything like that, either.
Maisie stepped away with this big grin on her face. ‘Go then,’ she told the waitress. ‘I don’t care.’ She pushed the waitress playfully away, then stood in the doorway smiling for a while more, before turning and closing the door behind her.
There was no smile on the waitress’s face. She stared away into the distance then turned to leave.
Just don’t knock on my door, thought Pascal. He wasn’t in the mood to talk with her, and even if the waitress knocked on his door for some reason other than talking, he wasn’t sure he was much in the mood for that either. He felt a bit wrecked. Besides, he wasn’t sure he wanted to compete with what he’d seen Maisie and the waitress get up to. He didn’t have that sort of spark in him. And it would have been way too much pressure anyway.
Don’t knock on my door, he tried to tell her.
The waitress didn’t even pause as she walked past Pascal’s flat. She probably doesn’t even know I live here, he told himself.
Pascal sat back down on the bed and put his hands to his head. None of it mattered. It wasn’t like anyone cared what he did. He wasn’t going to have to turn up to work and have everyone ask what he’d got up to the previous night. No-one ever asked him anything. That’s because they can probably guess the sad stuff you get up to, he told himself. It would have been like Isobel rocking up: no-one would have been there asking how her night sleeping on the streets had been. He knew that if she had a job, she probably wouldn’t have needed to be sleeping on the streets, but that wasn’t really the point he was trying to make.
Some people don’t matter that much, that’s all, he told himself. It was nothing to get too upset about. Isobel was living on the streets, and it wasn’t like she was getting all upset with her life or anything. She just put up with it. Not everyone could end up with someone like Maisie, Pascal told himself. He doubted he would have been able to make her happy anyway; how was he meant to when she spent her nights hooking up with stunning waitresses? It was stupid that he’d even thought he’d had a chance with her. It was like thinking that he could somehow help Isobel. He couldn’t even help himself.
XVIII
Pascal didn’t get much sleep, tossing and turning and wondering how things had turned out like they had. He hadn’t meant to mess things up with Maisie, or to stop being friends with Isobel, or to feel so miserable all the time. They’d just happened. Sometimes it felt like everything was all just happening around him and he didn’t have much do with any of it. Pascal was sure that if he just stayed home, it wouldn’t have made a whole lot of difference to anything. It wasn’t like his
company would have fallen over without him, or that there’d be anyone out there saying, ‘Oh, where’s Pascal today?’
The trouble was, when he thought about calling in sick, he couldn’t help thinking that maybe that’s what Isobel had done before getting sacked and winding up on the streets and all that. Better get going then, Pascal told himself. He shuffled into the shower, threw on the same suit he wore yesterday, a suit that really needed a dry-clean, and rushed out.
When he got to the station, he knew most of the people waiting there. He never spoke to them, but sometimes he nodded at the brunette who waited on the seat next to where he stood, and sometimes at the Asian girl as she bustled past to the end of the platform hoping for a better seat on the train.
He hadn’t really thought about it much before, but he began to realise that he only seemed to nod at the cute women waiting. That’s what’s wrong with you, he told himself. He was so caught up in the Maisies of the world that he was forgetting all the women out there that weren’t quite so great themselves, and who might actually put up with him. Pascal looked about the station, determined to set things right, but he couldn’t get past the brunette’s boots. She had on this punk black pair which was kind of at odds with the picture Pascal had of her: the posh uni student type. He’d started wondering what other things he didn’t know about her when the train arrived. Everyone piled in and he lost his chance to scope out the more realistic types he might have had a chance with.
There’s always tomorrow, he told himself. So, instead, he stood behind the brunette, but not too close that she wouldn’t want him nodding at her the next day, and tried to balance in the crush as the train hurtled forward.
He still wasn’t feeling the best after his messed-up night. He needed a good day or two to start feeling normal again after that sort of thing. It was nothing a few Panadol wouldn’t cure, but still, it wasn’t the best way to be heading into work.
Normally, he liked to let go of the loops and try to balance like some surfer, but he wasn’t really feeling up for it. It felt a bit weird to do when he’d only been doing it because that’s what he’d always imagined Isobel would have been doing. It wasn’t the same knowing she couldn’t afford a ticket, and she’d looked like she barely had the strength in her legs to stand, no less balance on some rollercoaster of a train.
When the train finally made it to Flinders Street, Pascal started walking as slow as he could towards his work, well, as slow as he could without getting in trouble for being late. The mornings always went so fast. He’d hop off the train, and before he knew it, he’d be at his desk, staring at the screen, trying to figure out some weird problem. He needed time to catch his breath before being sucked away into the awfulness of the day.
All his dawdling didn’t help, though; one minute he was at the station and the next, when he looked up, he found himself standing before his building’s revolving door. What was even more strange was that Isobel was sitting there on the footpath waiting for him. She looked up into his eyes like she wanted to say something, something important. Nothing came out, though. Instead, she hopped to her feet and looked like she was about to run for it, so Pascal grabbed her. It wasn’t like he was that keen on talking to her or anything, it was just that it had looked like she’d really wanted to say something to him.
‘You can’t force me to do this,’ said Isobel, struggling. She said it just as a manager from Pascal’s work was walking by. He paused to look at Pascal standing there wrestling with a homeless woman, but then simply hurried on, probably late for a meeting and not really caring what someone like Pascal was doing, and caring even less that it was to some homeless woman. Pascal wanted to tell him that he didn’t normally scuffle with homeless women, but it seemed an odd thing to have to tell someone.
‘If there’s something you want to tell me, then tell me,’ said Pascal. He didn’t want to rock up tomorrow and find Isobel there and have to go through the whole thing again. Let’s just get it over with, he thought. Pascal had a fair idea what she wanted. She hadn’t exactly seemed glad to see him when he’d first run into her or later at the restaurant, so the only reason he could figure for her camping herself outside his building was that she needed money.
That’s got to be it, Pascal told himself. She’d probably seen him in his suit and thought he was loaded. Well, he kind of was loaded compared to her, but so was just about anyone. He wasn’t even that annoyed with her doing it. If he’d lost his job and was living on the streets and had seen Isobel in some fashion-show type dress, with diamonds and stuff in her ears, then he would have hit her up just the same. Besides, it wasn’t like she had to worry about what he’d think if she did. It would have been hard for anyone to think much less of her when she was already homeless and everything.
The truth was, Pascal wasn’t doing as well as his suit made out. Once he took out all the cash for his rent and a few lunches and things, there wasn’t a whole lot left. He was about to tell himself that Isobel should have realised that after seeing his sorry excuse for a flat, but instead, he had to ask himself, how did she even know where I lived? Isobel was still standing there struggling in his grip. And how did she know where I worked? he wondered. He had this feeling that it mightn’t be that bad an idea to spare her a few coins and all that. It seemed a better idea than waking up with Isobel and her homeless friends all rifling through his stuff.
XIX
I can’t do it, thought Isobel. She’d tried, but every time she looked at him she knew it wasn’t him. You have to, she told herself. She could feel the darkness stirring inside her.
‘Do you need money?’ said Pascal.
I hope the real you is okay, was all Isobel wanted to say to him. She wouldn’t have minded being stuck in this dreadful world so much if she knew that Pascal had made it, that he wasn’t still out there needing her. When she’d watched him leap away, shadows all around him, all she’d wanted was for him to make it. And that’s what she hated more than anything. She didn’t understand why she hadn’t leapt with him, why she hadn’t been there for him, why she hadn’t been there to protect him like she always had.
A cold shiver ran through her body, and she turned and saw her shadow growing taller and taller again against the side of the building.
‘You’re not real,’ said Isobel. She hadn’t meant to say it. She wasn’t even sure if she’d been saying it to Pascal or the shadow growing taller and taller. She’d spent all morning psyching herself up so she could pretend that she liked this Pascal, but the thought of him pretending to like her while she was pretending to like him, seemed like the most dreadful thing there could ever be.
The trouble was, now that he knew she knew that he wasn’t real, Isobel was worried they might just roll out another illusion to take his spot. I’m not sure I want another illusion though, thought Isobel. At least this one reminded her of someone she’d cared about. Besides, it would’ve been such a bore for her to stand there as some new illusion tried to tell her why they were so perfect for each other, why he couldn’t spend another moment without her. I know why we’re perfect for each other, Isobel would tell him, because that’s just what they want us to think.
‘What do you mean?’ said Pascal.
‘If we’re perfect for each then we won’t want to leave,’ said Isobel. ‘We don’t even need to be perfect for each other, we just need to think we are.’
‘Jesus,’ said Pascal. ‘You need help, like proper help.’
Isobel sighed. She already knew that. Pascal was just an illusion. He wasn’t ever going to be able to help her find the way out. It was going to be the opposite of that.
You have no other choice, Isobel, she told herself. She could feel the darkness bubbling inside her. Soon there was going to be nothing left of her, just cold emptiness staring back where once she’d shone so bright that the shadows had trembled before her.
‘Do what you have to do,’ she said. Isobel closed her eyes. She wasn’t looking forward to what was about to happen, bu
t it had to be done. It was her only chance. Isobel did wonder what he was going to say to her, though. Was he going to tell her that he’d missed her so much; that her dry, cracked lips were like some pretty flower; that her hurting eyes were like stars in the night sky? Isobel shook her head just imagining it.
‘I’ve got to get to work,’ said Pascal.
Isobel looked up to see Pascal disappearing through the slow circling doors. He’d walked away. He hadn’t even tried to tell her he’d missed her. Isobel was at a loss. She wasn’t sure what she’d done wrong. She’d wanted to give in, she’d wanted the whirring darkness inside her to stop, but Pascal had just walked away.
You left it too late, Isobel, she told herself. Maybe they didn’t need her anymore. Maybe the light in her eyes was already too dim and there was nothing left for them to take.
XX
Pascal always felt bad coming in late and having to walk with his head bowed past all the people hunched over their computers already working hard. Each desk Pascal passed, he could see the person pause, glancing in his direction with this barely concealed annoyance. The worst desk to pass was his boss’s. Pascal wanted to tell him all about Isobel and how she’d turned up downstairs and held him up, and how he wasn’t sure how she knew where he worked, or what was wrong with her, or what he was meant to do to help her. But Pascal’s boss had his headphones in and was typing on his keyboard at a furious rate, probably writing some report on people turning up late when they were already behind on their work.
