Frozen Butterflies

by Simona Grossi

  “Susan,” Nick called from across the street. He must have been waiting for a while when he saw me. “I thought you might have fallen asleep.”

  “I actually did,” I said, when I entered his car. “I’m sorry if I made you wait. I didn’t mean to.”

  “That explains it,” he said, running his hand through my wet hair as if he wanted to examine it. I attempted a smile, but a rush of warmth that was too strong to control turned that smile into something else.

  There was something about him that felt familiar and something that made me uncomfortable. But it wasn’t the comfort that I found most attractive.

  I hadn’t asked him where we were going. When I realized that, I was surprised. I had always been in control. It seemed like I needed to. And now I didn’t care. He was in control, and I liked it.

  “Don’t you want to know where we’re going?”

  “I . . .”

  No, I didn’t.

  “I don’t go out that often,” I confessed, not sure why.

  “Why’s that? Are you a broken heart or something?”

  “No, definitely not. I’m just, I’ve been . . . on pause, I guess.” I had not been “on pause.” Actually, it felt more like stalling, with a destination I knew I was not going to reach, because I couldn’t. I was broken, perhaps bound to crash. But now it felt like I was moving. He was moving me, and he could take me anywhere really. Or was I just crashing?

  He smiled and continued to drive. We didn’t say much. He was studying me, and I was studying him. From time to time he would turn toward me and penetrate me with his eyes. It seemed as if he were trying to go deeper and deeper, as if he were testing his ability—or mine to resist. I liked the test. And so there was mostly silence, but somehow we were communicating. Then his phone rang. He glanced at it and pulled over to answer.

  “Any problem?” I asked when he hung up.

  “Yes. No, well . . . Jack, my partner, asked me to write a piece for tomorrow. He was going to, but can’t.”

  “I’ll understand if you have to go.”

  “I have a couple of hours, but then I’ll have to work. I’ll have to find a hook, something to write about.”

  “I see. Do you absolutely have to post something tonight or tomorrow?”

  “Yes. It’s the agreement we have with our sponsors . . . anyhow . . .”

  “Can I help?”

  “You? No. I don’t think so. How would you help?”

  “I don’t know. I might help you come up with ideas, write the piece. I’ve written before.”

  “Blog posts?”

  “No, psychology pieces, a book on adult . . .”

  He remained silent for a while and didn’t seem convinced, but then he said, “Fine. Let’s cancel our reservation. We’ll order pizza and go to my place to work, if that’s fine with you.” I nodded that it was.

  His place was close by.

  “This is where I live.”

  He pointed to a tall building that looked old and charming, with big windows that somehow reminded me of the nightclub of the night before. In fact, his building also reminded me of an abandoned factory. I told him that, and he agreed but said that the building was in fact an old bank.

  “This building must have witnessed a thousand interesting stories. When I write, I’m inspired. Perhaps it talks to me. I thought this could happen when I bought my apartment. I chose it because of that.”

  The apartment was a loft, with little furniture. There was an old, brownish sofa with coffee stains all over it, a large coffee table piled with books and newspapers, ashtrays filled with butts everywhere, a large desk that seemed like the desk of an architect, two computers, an old typewriter, a big TV against the wall, and a messy kitchen on the left.

  “This is how I’d always imagined the apartment of a writer,” I thought and said aloud.

  “Chaos?”

  “An artistic one.”

  “Pizza should be here soon. Would you like a beer?” he asked.

  “Sure.” I sat on the sofa while he went for the beers and returned.

  “Do you read blogs?”

  “No, not really.”

  “Why not?”

  “No offense, but I often find them boring, with no story in the stories.”

  “What type of stories do you like?”

  “Stories about people like me. Real stories, not ones made up to capture audiences, advertising. Unlikely stories, stories that might not sell. Real.” As I was thinking about what I had just said, I looked at the books on his shelves, searching for ideas, and noticed a worn notebook with a dark-blue cover. That looked different.

  “What’s this?” I asked.

  “Oh, that . . . I completely forgot about it. It’s a journal. I took the bus one day when my car was down for repair, and . . .”

  “A journal?”

  “Yes, a journal someone, a guy, lost. I like the story. It’s somehow familiar. His girlfriend reminds me of someone I knew. And I like the writing. It’s good, but a bit depressing. I asked the bus driver whether they had a lost-and-found department. He said they did, but he didn’t seem to trust it much. He said if I wanted to return the journal to its owner, I’d better try to find him myself.”

  “Is there a name on it?”

  “On the journal? Yeah. The author’s name is Andrew. But no last name. And the journal contained an envelope that seemed ready to be mailed. There’s no sender’s name, but there’s an address on it. I thought I might go and check the place out, but haven’t had a chance.” He sipped his drink and added, “I didn’t feel like opening the envelope. Although, of course, I did read his journal, so . . .”

  I opened the journal. The date I read on top of the first page was July 2 of last year.

  When the delivery guy arrived, Nick went to the door, and I started reading.

  July 2

  * * *

  Today the city seems more dirty than usual. I had to run some errands downtown and so I spent an hour there. It was awful. It felt as if there was asphalt everywhere, and the asphalt felt like black, dirty, hopeless tar, like I always imagined you could find in the lungs of a dying smoker. In fact, the city looked like giant lungs filled with death. I never took you downtown when you asked me to. You said you might want to live there one day. You said there is art, profound art, hidden in the filthy corners of the city. That you needed to be brave and explore it to find it. I said you would also need to hold your nose not to smell the urine and the alcohol and the crap. And when I said that, you looked discouraged and sad that I couldn’t see what you saw. I just saw ugliness everywhere. I still do. I still see the same, ugly scene every time I go downtown. I wish you had told me what you saw and explained to me how to see it myself. I wish you had taught me how to look at things to capture their essences, to capture what I seemed to be missing. Why did you choose me in the first place if you knew we were so different? Didn’t you want to teach me what you knew, take me into your world? You know, Emily, people are humans. You are different, you are not of this world. But I am. And, still, you chose me. But then you gave up. And it was probably my fault, ’cause I should have begged you, I should have begged you to give me another chance. My stupid pride. I miss you. My life is so miserable now that you’re no longer with me. It feels empty and miserable. And my apartment stinks. It stinks more than skid row that time you dragged me there. It stinks since the day you left.

  “What do you think?” Nick asked.

  “I like it. Is it all like this?”

  “Pretty much.”

  I leafed through more passages. What I read pulled me in. It was hard to stop. And then there were drawings. I loved those too. They seemed to be part of the story. Yes, there was a story. One I wanted to read.

  “So you were saying . . . you wanted to find him . . . The address on the envelope must be his address.”

  “It probably isn’t. He seems to be the sender.” He pulled the envelope from the diary and handed it to me. “Yeah, there’s just
an address, no name.”

  “I see a story here. Don’t you?”

  “Maybe . . . So what?”

  “Well, I would want to read this.”

  He remained silent, looking at me, perhaps thinking what I was thinking.

  “What if we looked for the author while posting some excerpts from his journal?” I asked. “That’d be a story too. A story within a story.”

  “We can’t. We shouldn’t . . .”

  “Really? Even if we hid his identity?”

  “Why would we want to do this?”

  “’Cause it’s interesting, the search would be intriguing. And maybe it’ll lead us nowhere. But what if it leads us somewhere? You never know what you might find before you start searching. Right?” I looked at him, hoping he would say yes, although I had no idea why I suddenly cared so much.

  He pulled the journal from my hands and started leafing through its pages.

  “Have you read the entire journal?” I asked.

  “More or less.”

  “Is there a theme?”

  “He seems depressed and disoriented after breaking up with his girlfriend. He talks about his relationship with her, tries to understand why he lost her. And . . .”

  “And?”

  “I’m not sure. He seems manic. That’s your field though, so I don’t know.”

  “I think the journal, this author, might attract readers.”

  “Hmm . . . I don’t know. I’ll have to think about this more. Let’s eat our pizza.”

  We ate in silence. Two strangers sitting at a kitchen table, dining as two old friends and perfectly comfortable in that silence. Nick was immersed in his thoughts, and I observed him. He looked like an intellectual, a heavy smoker, heavy drinker, extremely thin. His fingers were long and slender. He could have been a pianist, I thought. I loved his fingers, but I loved his eyes the most, and I loved watching him lost in his thoughts. He would place his chin on his right hand and turn his face slightly to look nowhere, to be nowhere but in his mind. I could observe him without him even noticing. I felt hungry for him, I wanted to know him.

  “You know what?” he then said, interrupting the flow of my thoughts. “This might work.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “You made it sound reasonably interesting.”

  “I would read those posts. They somehow remind me of myself.”

  “Of you? How so?”

  Why did I say that?

  “Sometimes I obsess about things perhaps for no reason. Sometimes I feel bored, lost, like I am stalling, waiting to crash.”

  And so this is me. Would you like to see more?

  “Is it the boredom or feeling lost that causes the stalling? Those are two different things.”

  He seemed to.

  I’m lost. Would he like my answer, me?

  “Anyhow, I don’t think he’s bored.”

  I felt relieved for what he didn’t see.

  “But clearly lost,” he added.

  “What? Who?”

  “Andrew. What are we talking about?”

  “Right. Sorry.”

  He finished his pizza, went to the window, and for a few moments stared out in silence.

  “L.A. looks magic at night, almost another city, don’t you think? Sometimes it looks like New York.”

  “Do you like New York?” I asked.

  “I lived there until my late twenties. I got my journalism degree from Columbia, worked for a local newspaper for a few years, and then got a job with the Los Angeles Times and moved here. The pay was better, the stories I wrote were more interesting, plus I had a chance to move to the West Coast. I’d always wanted to do that. Although, I must admit, sometimes I miss New York. I’m a New Yorker, will always be.”

  “What happened to the job with the Times?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes, that’s a long story. I’m much happier doing the job I do now.”

  There was some silence, and then he talked more about New York and New Yorkers.

  “I don’t know if I’m a New Yorker,” I said, “but that’s where I grew up and went to grad school. Sometimes I miss it too.”

  “Well . . . to New York!” he said, touching my first beer with his third one. Or fourth. I had lost count. “You have a nice smile, Susan.”

  I felt some heat coming from inside. I wanted to move away from him, hide it, but he was staring at me. I felt his desire. It felt so strong that it seemed to have expanded and occupied every corner of the space around me. What if I was wrong though? I might have been. But if I wasn’t, I knew his desire would have no mercy for me this time. So I surrendered myself to it or whatever I had imagined. Did he like what he saw? When he finally turned away to clean up, I was free. From his desire or my imagination.

  “Do you want to write this together?” he asked, as he sat at the computer. “We could be coauthors.”

  “Me? You mean, with my name visible on the blog?”

  “Yes, I’d like that. Besides . . . I like you.”

  Could he hear my questions? Had he just answered? I looked for his eyes, hoping they would tell me more, but they had left after turning my soul around and around so fast that it, my selves, my questions, my voices, had multiplied like in a myriad of mirrors, their loudness so strong I could barely sustain it, there, on the floor, drained, waiting to understand what had just happened, waiting to return to reality, heavier or lighter, I couldn’t say.

  “Do you mind if I smoke?”

  Yes, he had gone.

  I said it was fine. He lit a cigarette, stared at the blank page for a few seconds, and then started typing very fast, pronouncing the words he was typing as if he were reading a script.

  “I always read out loud when I write,” he said. “I need to hear the sound of it.”

  And so he played his piece for me:

  Our everyday life is chaos. We no longer have time to read, let alone write. Everything moves so fast, too fast to even stop and think, to see things, to be part of this life we are in. Yet a man, we’ll call him “J.N.,” found the time to write a journal, which he then lost, or perhaps abandoned. We found the journal on a bus. There was no name on it and so we couldn’t return it to him, but what we read was too beautiful to leave it to chance. So we decided to start looking for him, share excerpts of the journal with you, have you join in our search, seeking your insights on his art, his world, yours.

  He wrote and played more, copied parts of the July 2 pages, the ones I had read, and then signed with his name and mine. I liked his music. I watched him going over our piece, looking for typos, changing a word here and there, adding a phrase enthusiastically, and then erasing it with the same resolution. Yes, I still liked what I saw.

  “You seem a bit tired. I’ll take you home,” he suddenly said, perhaps reading or misreading my trance.

  “Oh no, no need. I’ll call a taxi,” I said, looking elsewhere to hide it.

  “I insist,” he said, looking like he wanted to take me home.

  I agreed to accept his ride.

  As he was driving I pressed my head against the passenger seat and closed my eyes. And then I opened them a bit and saw that he was looking at me, staring at my legs, which my dress had left uncovered. I closed my eyes again and pretended to sleep. When we arrived at my place I thanked him for the ride.

  “You should be careful not to hurt yourself.”

  “Huh?”

  “Your cut. You have a cut on your right leg.”

  “Oh right, I know. It’s nothing. I’ll be fine,” I said, and I hoped so.

  Day Two

  I slept last night, and I feel different today.

  Nick called and asked me to go back to his place to continue working on Andrew’s diary, and I agreed. I took a taxi to get there. I would have driven, but I haven’t driven in such a long time, and sometimes I’m not even sure I still can. When I got to his place, Nick was cooking, making something he said he’d learned from an Italian chef he had once interviewed.


  As he was chopping garlic, he cut his left index finger. He stared at it for a few seconds, almost hypnotized. I thought he might be scared or something, so I took a napkin and went closer to stop the blood, but he pushed me away.

  “Don’t . . .”

  “I’m sorry, I was just . . .”

  I looked at him, silent, not sure of what to say. He washed away the blood and continued to chop, looking down, and without varying his gaze for a while. Then he looked at me as if he wanted to say something, maybe apologize, but he didn’t. He brushed his fingers against some ground red pepper he had placed close to him, ready to be used, and then came closer and pushed his fingers onto my lips.

  “Does it hurt?”

  What? The pepper? You?

  “I need to know if you can take it.”

  What?

  “Can I use this one?”

  I looked at him, waiting for him to ask his question—the one he really wanted to ask—but he didn’t, and I did not respond.

  “What do you think about the blog?”

  I turned, trying to decide what I should say, the person I was going to be for him, what I wanted him to see.

  “Why are you biting your lips? Does it hurt?”

  I turned toward him but didn’t answer. He took an ice cube, came close to me, and pressed the ice against my lips.

  “Does it help?”

  I looked at him, straight into his eyes, and said nothing. He didn’t look away. Was he finally asking his question? Were my eyes answering?

  “I like it,” I then said. “I like the blog.” If I couldn’t see him, then he shouldn’t see me.

  “I write for myself, that’s the truth.” He seemed to be fine with whatever we had. “I do need money,” he continued. “That’s also true. So if I can make money with my writing, I’m happy, and I can continue . . . writing for myself.”