by Hazel Hayes
‘Please tell me that’s not your car,’ I shout across to her, as my hands instinctively tug the hem of my t-shirt downwards.
‘That’s not my car,’ she replies, and I’m about to exhale in relief when she adds, ‘it belongs to my neighbour.’
I must visibly deflate because she smiles at me then. It’s more of a smirk than a smile really; there’s something quite knowing about it, as if some brilliant joke hangs in the air between us and only she can see it.
‘Don’t worry,’ she says, ‘he’s not home. And also he’s an asshole.’
I notice her accent now but I can’t quite place it. Scandinavian maybe. Something about the way she bounces off certain words is very satisfying.
‘Good to know,’ I say.
‘I can help you to clean it,’ she offers.
‘Oh, thanks. You really don’t have to do that.’
‘It isn’t a problem,’ she replies, ‘I’ll be down in a moment,’ and she disappears from the window before I can protest further.
A few minutes later I’m standing by the car surveying the damage when the girl emerges from a door across the road. She’s still wearing the pyjama top, now tied at the waist over a pair of denim cut-offs. I’ve thrown on a pair of shorts too, but while mine hang loose around the ends, as though my pale legs have shrunk inside them, hers seem to hug her thighs as she walks. I can’t help but watch. I am instantly jealous of her.
‘Thanks again,’ I say as she approaches.
She shrugs. ‘I was bored.’
I don’t know how to respond to that. She raises an eyebrow at the car.
‘It’s pretty bad, no?’ she asks.
‘No,’ I say, nodding, then, ‘I mean yes, it is. Bad.’
Jesus.
People often tell me they were intimidated by me when we met. I’ve always found that silly, but right now I’m beginning to understand what it feels like.
A moment passes, then the girl holds out her hand, palm up, and nods to the plastic bag under my arm.
‘Shall we start?’
‘Oh,’ I say, handing her the bag. ‘Sure. Thanks.’
She holds the bag open for me as I carefully collect the shards of broken clay and drop them in. The windscreen is covered in soil – I’m amazed by how much there is – and the plant is lying on the ground next to the car with its limp, white tangle of roots exposed. It looks like a dying alien. I pick it up and throw it in the bag.
The girl and I work quickly and quietly. At one point she asks if my hair is naturally red. I tell her it is. She says she likes it. I say thanks. A while later I ask where she’s from. She says Sweden. I say I’ve never been. She tells me it’s fine.
She sits smoking on my front step while I go upstairs for a bucket of water, which I throw over the car, and then run back for another. The soil washes off in muddy little rivulets. Luckily there are no dents, but there is one big scrape in the middle of the bonnet where the pot landed and shattered. I lean in, frowning as I run my finger over its silvery edges. I can feel the girl watching me and I turn to look at her.
‘I won’t tell him,’ she says, as though reading my thoughts. She squints up at me and sucks on her cigarette while I think this over.
‘In what way is he an asshole?’ I ask finally. This makes her smile, that same smirk of a smile, and I imagine the invisible joke floating between us again.
‘Like, is he just a typical twatty man or is he a real monster?’ I continue. ‘Does he beat his wife? Does he starve his dog?’
‘He doesn’t have a wife,’ she says. Then, ‘His dog seems fine.’
‘Right,’ I say.
‘I just don’t like how he regards me,’ she admits finally.
‘How he regards you?’
‘He is … a bit …’ She pauses, searching for the right word. ‘Pervy?’
‘Oh!’ I say, then I mull it over in silence for a few moments more and sigh.
‘I think I should tell him.’
Without another word, or seemingly any emotional investment in my decision, she stubs out her cigarette on the ground, stands up, and brushes the dirt off her legs.
‘We’ll leave him a note,’ she says, and once again she’s off before I can say or do anything in response. As she crosses the street she calls back at me over her shoulder.
‘Follow me.’
And I do.
Her apartment is deliciously cool and shady. It’s a studio with a kitchen, living room, bedroom and office all in one room, but somehow the efficient, immaculate decor makes them all feel like separate spaces. The walls are stark white, adorned by sparsely placed artwork – including a papier-mâché moose head – and the furniture looks stylish but comfortable. For the second time today I find myself envying this girl I’ve just met.
‘Your apartment looks like an IKEA showroom.’
She’s rummaging through a drawer in the kitchen.
‘Sorry,’ I add, ‘is that racist?’ and she laughs. This is the first time I’ve heard her laugh. It’s a raw, raspy sound.
‘It isn’t my apartment,’ she says. ‘It’s his,’ and she nods to a wall of photos on my left.
The pictures are all black and white, and perfectly arranged in thick, monochrome frames. They mostly feature a beautiful blond man with a full eight pack and a jawline that could cut through glass. He looks like a Renaissance sculpture come to life. Of course this is her boyfriend, I think.
Here he is in graduation robes. Here he is rock climbing with friends. Here he is riding a fucking elephant! It would be funny if I weren’t so sickeningly jealous – of what, I’m not sure, but I feel it bubble in the pit of my stomach and rise up towards my throat.
There’s only one photo of her; she’s posing with him on a bridge in front of a gigantic waterfall. One of his stupidly chiselled arms is draped around her shoulders, pulling her close. She looks happy.
‘Aha!’ she says, holding up the notebook she’s found. ‘Here you go.’ She rips out a page and places it on the countertop next to a pen.
‘Great,’ I say, walking over to join her. As I begin to write, I’m aware of her sidling up beside me to watch.
‘You are left-handed,’ she says when I’m almost done, and I become instantly and irrationally conscious of my how ugly my hand is, clutching the pen, claw-like, at an impossible angle.
‘No, I’m not,’ I say, without looking up. ‘I just do this for fun.’ It comes out more curtly than I’d intended.
She smiles and the moment passes but even so, I find myself trying to adjust my hand into a more natural position.
‘Hey,’ she says, noticing, ‘I’m sorry if I was rude.’
She wasn’t rude. She was just making conversation. But something in me is resisting her kindness now. As though she couldn’t actually be this perfect. As though her perfection is, in fact, a personal affront to me.
‘It’s fine,’ I say, and again it comes out clipped.
‘No really,’ she says, playfully bumping her hip against mine, ‘I like it.’
Then, without a moment’s hesitation, she lifts my left hand to her lips and kisses it, just below the knuckles.
My body responds before my brain does, giggling at the absurdity of the situation. She seems amused by my confusion and she laughs as she lowers my hand back to the page, then resumes watching as I write my name and number at the bottom. She tells me I have a pretty name and I ask what hers is.
‘It’s Lena,’ she says as we shake hands, which seems an oddly formal gesture now. ‘Pleasure to meet you.’ Then she whips up the page, turns on her heel and leaves.
I follow her to her neighbour’s front door, where she pulls some tape from her back pocket, breaks it with her teeth, and unceremoniously sticks the note to the door with a smack. Behind the door, a dog barks back in protest. Lena tells it to shush.
‘Would you like to come get ice cream with me?’ she asks suddenly. The question is both forceful and vulnerable, and I feel like a broken magnet being drawn
to her and repelled by her all at once.
‘I’m sorry,’ I hear myself say, ‘I have loads of work to do.’
Then I go back to my apartment and loaf about until it gets dark.
Around eleven o’clock I realise I haven’t eaten since breakfast. There’s no food in the house – Theo usually cooks and I do the cleaning – so I make a bowl of overly salty spaghetti and slather it in butter, promising myself I’ll eat something green tomorrow.
Theo calls just as I’m about to dig in and I consider calling him back after I’ve eaten but decide to answer it at the last second.
‘There she is!’ he roars down the phone.
‘Here I am!’ I say. ‘Right where you left me.’
He laughs, and the sound makes me smile.
‘So you haven’t burned the place down yet?’
‘Not quite …’ I say.
‘Oh God, what’s happened?’
‘I just knocked a plant out the window, it’s fine,’ I say, shovelling spaghetti into my face.
‘How’d you manage that? What are you eating?’
‘Pasta,’ I say. ‘There was a bee.’
‘A what? Have you been eating properly?’
‘Yes,’ I say, swallowing a mouthful. ‘There was a bee.’
‘Oh!’
There are splashing sounds in the background, and lots of voices shouting and laughing.
‘Where are you?’ I ask.
‘The pool,’ he says. ‘Hold on.’
I hear the noise fade as he walks away from it.
‘Anyway,’ I say, ‘the pot hit a car but it’s sorted now.’
‘Fair enough.’
‘A woman across the street helped me out.’
‘Aw, did you make a friend?’
He’s only half joking; I think Theo would like it if I had more friends to keep me busy.
‘I’m not sure,’ I say. ‘Maybe. She’s a bit weird.’
‘Is she fit?’
‘No,’ I lie. ‘Why?’
‘Fit women are always weird,’ he says, nonchalantly, like this is a fact of nature. ‘There is no such thing as a sane, fit woman.’
‘Oh?’ I ask, ‘Then what am I?’
‘You, my angel, are gorgeous. And absolutely mental,’ says Theo.
I laugh and ask how his trip has been. There’s another loud splash and a cheer in the background. A man’s voice shouts something to Theo.
‘Yeah, just a sec!’ Theo calls back. Then to me he says, ‘Oh, you know how it is, wall-to-wall strippers and meth. Also, I’ve lost fifty grand on roulette. Sorry about that.’
This is the kind of humour that makes me roll my eyes and giggle in spite of myself.
‘I miss you,’ he says, suddenly earnest. ‘I can’t wait to see you.’
‘When do you get in?’
‘Around five a.m. on Sunday. Don’t wait up!’
‘Shan’t,’ I say with a smile. ‘Goodnight.’
‘Good afternoon!’ he says.
After we hang up I write frantically for a few hours. I’m tired but the words are ready to come out now and I know if I don’t let them they’ll keep me awake all night. I finish a first draft of the story for my reading, then I wash the dishes and go to bed.
Before I lie down, I look for Lena in the window. I tell myself I’m not looking for her, but I’m disappointed when she’s not there. Her apartment is dark, save for the faint flicker of blue TV light. I imagine Lena and her Adonis curled up on the sofa together and I wonder what they’re watching, whether they have popcorn, whether they’ve had sex tonight, if she’s fallen asleep with her head on his giant, too-smooth chest. Then I lie down and try to push that thought aside.
I nod off thinking about Theo. I do miss him. I miss how easy ‘us’ is. I miss his cooking. And I miss his body in the bed next to me, the reassuring mass of him. I don’t know why I lied to him about Lena; she’s objectively very attractive. Maybe I didn’t want him to know about the Hot Girl Across the Road. Maybe I don’t want to add that particular character to our narrative. I’m probably just feeling insecure, I tell myself, I’ll get up early and do some exercise.
I wake up at midday again. It’s a Saturday and the world outside is much quieter. The first thing I do is look out of my window.
Across the way, I can just about make out the shape of Lena’s boyfriend in their kitchen. He’s even taller than I’d thought, and he’s standing in the same spot where we wrote the note yesterday. I think about her kissing my hand; it wasn’t sexual at all, just oddly intimate. The memory makes me a little queasy. She’s definitely weird, I think, very fit and very weird. Eventually he leaves the kitchen and I get bored waiting for something to happen. I drag myself into a pair of leggings and a greying sports bra, then pull my yoga mat out from behind the hoover in the hall cupboard. I find an hour-long ‘core and booty workout’ on YouTube.
Afterwards, I’m lying on the floor recuperating when my phone beeps on the table next to me. I wince as I sit up to get it, then ease myself back down and hold it above my face. I have a text from an unknown number; the message is just an ice-cream emoji and a question mark.
I reply: ‘Hey Lena!’
A few minutes later she sends back a smiley face, followed by: ‘Well?’
I write back: ‘Sure! Gimme 20?’
She replies: ‘Meet you then xx’
Stepping out of the shower, I catch my reflection in the bathroom mirror and frown; I haven’t so much as moisturised all week. I decide to put on some minimal makeup – concealer, mascara and lipstick. And a bit of blusher. And actually my eyebrows need filling in too. But that’s it. I catch my damp hair up in a bun, then glance out of the window at a cloudless sky as I pull an old reliable sundress from my wardrobe and shimmy into it. I always feel good in this dress; the shoestring straps sit neatly on my shoulders, and the thin yellow material falls flatteringly in an empire line, making me look more shapely than I am, with a bigger bust and a smaller waist.
‘Good job,’ I say out loud to my own reflection, then I slip on a pair of sandals, shove my phone, lipstick and credit card into a small handbag and head downstairs to meet Lena.
She’s waiting for me just outside my building, smoking a cigarette as usual; I’ve only known Lena for a day but already this habit feels familiar, reliable even. She gives me a cursory nod then gestures towards her neighbour’s car, which hasn’t moved since yesterday.
‘Has he called you?’ she asks.
If she’s happy to see me I can’t tell.
‘Not yet,’ I say.
She makes a short hmph sound.
‘The note wasn’t on his door today,’ she says.
I shrug my shoulders.
‘So, where do you want to go?’ she asks, flicking away the cigarette stub.
‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I assumed you had somewhere in mind.’
I’m a little thrown already, partly because the pressure is now on me to suggest a good place to go, and partly because my ego cannot withstand this proximity to her. Lena looks even better than she did yesterday. She’s wearing the same shorts, paired with a white cropped t-shirt, and while her figure is much fuller than mine, she’s curvy in all the right places; her hips and lips and tits are bordering on cartoonish. She looks like a woman, and I look like a lanky, little girl.
‘I don’t mind,’ she says, with an easy grin. ‘Let’s walk and see what we see.’
I agree to this plan, and we set off towards the main street.
My anxiety about finding somewhere to get ice cream was, as with most anxiety, stupid and unfounded; almost every café, shop and restaurant we pass seems to be selling it in some form or another. After ten minutes or so of ambling along, making small talk, we come across what looks like an authentic Italian gelateria. The green, sun-faded awning reads Mimi’s, in white cursive letters and beneath it, a couple are trying to share a chocolate sundae across a wobbly metal table. There are no other customers inside, just a papery old woman waiting behind a
refrigerator full of ice cream.
‘Buongiorno,’ says the woman, first to me and then to Lena. Her expression is stern.
‘Hello,’ says Lena.
‘Buongiorno,’ I say, then, ‘posso per favor, avere due gelati?’
I hope I’ve just asked for two ice creams.
‘Sì, naturalmente,’ the woman replies. Then, moving at a glacial pace, she plucks the scoop from its bucket of water and lifts two cones off the top of the stack. Lena peruses the flavours of ice cream and smiles to herself.
‘Allora,’ I say.
Allora doesn’t really mean anything; it’s more like punctuation than a word in itself. Italians use it in the same way the Irish say, ‘now’, before going on to say or do something else. I use it to sound like I know how to speak Italian, and right now I’m using it to buy time while I try to remember the word for strawberry.
‘Vorrei, un gelato alla fragola e …’ I continue, then turn to Lena and casually ask which flavour she would like.
‘Mint, please,’ she answers, still smirking.
‘Sì, e un gelato alla menta, per il mio amico, per favore,’ I say.
My words are stilted and my accent is appalling, but the woman nods and begins to slowly scrape ice cream into a cone.
‘Do you think she is Mimi?’ Lena asks into my ear. I smile and shrug, then turn to the woman.
‘Scusemi,’ I say, ‘il tuo nome è Mimì?’
‘No, no,’ says the lady. She softens a little and gestures towards an old, yellowing photo sellotaped to the cash register. It’s of a woman in her fifties or sixties, standing outside this café with two little girls at her side.
‘Mimì era mia nonna,’ says the woman.
‘Ah,’ I say, then I turn to Lena and say, ‘Mimi was her grandmother.’
Lena nods and smiles sweetly.
‘Is this you?’ I ask the woman, leaning in for a closer look at the photo.
‘Sì,’ replies the woman, ‘con mia sorella … with my sister.’
Back outside the afternoon swelters on. Lena and I have notions of eating our ice creams in Regent’s Park but instead we have to gobble them down before they melt, making complete messes of ourselves. We stop at a shop on the way and pick up some wet wipes and a cheap bottle of rosé. The store clerk looks bemused as he scans them through.
