Mimi

Mimi

Fourth floor

She’s seen me. The woman who arrived last night, who I watched this morning walking around in his apartment. She’s staring straight at me. I can’t move.

In my head the roar of static grows louder.

Finally she turns away. When I breathe out my chest burns.

I watched him arrive from here, too. It was August, nearly three months ago, the middle of the heatwave. Camille and I were sitting on the balcony in the junky old deckchairs she’d bought from a brocanter shop, drinking Aperol Spritzes even though I actually kind of hate Aperol Spritz. Camille often persuades me to do things I wouldn’t otherwise do.

Benjamin Daniels turned up in an Uber. Gray T-shirt, jeans. Dark hair, longish. He looked famous, somehow. Or maybe not famous but . . . special. You know? I can’t explain it. But he had that thing about him that made you want to look at him. Need to look at him.

I was wearing dark glasses and I watched him from the corner of my eye, so it didn’t seem like I was looking his way. When he opened the boot of the car I saw the stains of sweat under his arms and, where his T-shirt had ridden up, I also saw how the line of his tan stopped beneath the waistband of his jeans, where the paler skin started, an arrow of dark hair descending. The muscles in his arms flexed when he lifted the bags out of the trunk. Not like a jacked-up gym-goer. More elegant. Like a drummer: drummers always have good muscles. Even from here I could imagine how his sweat would smell—not bad, just like salt and skin.

He shouted to the driver: “Thanks, mate!” I recognized the English accent straightaway; there’s this old TV show I’m obsessed with, Skins, about all these British teenagers screwing and screwing up, falling in love.

“Mmm,” said Camille, lifting up her sunglasses.

“Mais non,” I said. “He’s really old, Camille.”

She shrugged. “He’s only thirty-something.”

“Oui, and that’s old. That’s like . . . fifteen years older than us.”

“Well, think of all that experience.” She made a vee with her fingers and stuck her tongue out between them.

I laughed at that. “Beurk—you’re disgusting.”

She raised her eyebrows. “Pas du tout. And you’d know that if your darling papa ever let you near any guys—”

“Shut up.”

“Ah, Mimi . . . I’m kidding! But you know one day he’s going to have to realize you’re not his little girl any longer.” She grinned, sucked up Aperol through her straw. For a second I wanted to slap her . . . I nearly did. I don’t always have the best impulse control.

“He’s just a little . . . protective.” It was more than that, really. But I suppose I also never really wanted to do anything to disappoint Papa, tarnish that image of me as his little princess.

I often wished I could be more like Camille, though. So chill about sex. For her it’s just another thing she likes doing: like swimming or cycling or sunbathing. I’d never even had sex, let alone with two people at the same time (one of her specialties), or tried girls as well as boys. You know what’s funny? Papa actually approved of her moving in here with me, said living with another girl “might stop you from getting into too much trouble.”

Camille was in her smallest bikini, just three triangles of pale crocheted material that barely covered anything. Her feet were pressed up against the ironwork of the balcony and her toenails were painted a chipped, Barbie-doll pink. Apart from her month in the South with friends she’d sat out there pretty much every hot day, getting browner and browner, slathering herself in La Roche-Posay. Her whole body looked like it had been dipped in gold, her hair lightened to the color of caramel. I don’t go brown; I just burn, so I sat tucked in the shade like a vampire with my Francoise Sagan novel, wearing a big man’s shirt.

She leaned forward, still watching the guy getting his cases out of the car. “Oh my God, Mimi! He has a cat. How cute. Can you see it? Look, in that carry basket. Salutminou!”

She did it on purpose, so he would look up and see us—see her. Which he did.

“Hey,” she called, standing up and waving so hard that her nénés bounced around in her bikini top like they were trying to escape. “Bienvenue—welcome! I’m Camille. And this is Merveille. Cute pussy!”

I was so embarrassed. She knew exactly what she was saying, it’s the same slang in French: chatte. Also, I hate that my full name is Merveille. No one calls me that. I’m Mimi. My mum gave me that name because it means “wonder” and she said that’s what my arrival into her life was: this unexpected but wonderful thing. But it’s also completely mortifying.

I sank down behind my book, but not so much that I couldn’t still see him over the top of it.

The guy shielded his eyes. “Thanks!” he called. He put up a hand, waved back. As he did I saw again that strip of skin between his T-shirt and jeans. “I’m Ben—friend of Nick’s? I’m moving into the third floor.”

Camille turned to me. “Well,” she said, in an undertone. “I feel like this place has just got a lot more exciting.” She grinned. “Maybe I should introduce myself to him properly. Offer to look after the pussy if he goes away.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s fucking him in a week’s time, I thought to myself. It would hardly be a surprise. The surprising thing was how much I hated the thought of it.

Someone’s knocking on the door to my apartment.

I creep down the hall, look through the peephole. Merde: it’s her: the woman from Ben’s apartment.

I swallow—or try to. It feels like my tongue is stuck in my throat.

It’s hard to think with this roaring in my ears. I know I don’t have to open the door. This is my apartment, my space. But the knock knock knock is incessant, beating against my skull until I feel like something in me is going to explode.

I grit my teeth and open the door, take a step back. The shock of her face, close up: I see him in her features, straightaway. But she’s small and her eyes are darker and there’s something, I don’t know, hungry about her which maybe was in him too but he hid it better. It’s like with her all the angles are sharper. With him it was all smoothness. She’s scruffy, too: jeans and an old sweater with frayed cuffs, dark red hair scragged up on top of her head. That’s not like him either. Even in a gray T-shirt on a hot day he looked kind of . . . pulled-together, you know? Like everything fit him just right.

“Hi,’ she says. She smiles but it’s not a real smile. “I’m Jess. What’s your name?”

“M—Mimi.” My voice comes out as a rasp.

“My brother—Ben—lives on the third floor. But he’s . . . well, he’s kind of disappeared on me. Do you know him at all?”

For a crazy moment I think about pretending I don’t speak English. But that’s stupid.

I shake my head. “No. I didn’t know him—don’t, I mean. My English, sorry, it’s not so good.”

I can feel her looking past me, like she’s trying to see her way into my apartment. I move sideways, try to block her view. So instead she looks at me, like she’s trying to see into me: and that’s worse.

“This is your apartment?” she asks.

“Oui.”

“Wow.” She widens her eyes. “Nice work if you can get it. And it’s just you in here?”

“My flatmate Camille and me.”

She’s trying to peer into the apartment again, looking over my shoulder. “I was wondering if you’d seen him lately, Ben?”

“No. He’s been keeping his shutters closed. I mean—” I realize, too late, that wasn’t what she was asking.

She raises her eyebrows. “OK,” she says, “but do you remember the last time you saw him generally about the place? It would be so helpful.” She smiles. Her smile is not like his at all. But then no one’s is.

I realize she’s not going to go unless I give her an answer. I clear my throat. “I—I don’t know. Not for a while—I suppose maybe a week?”

“Quoi?Ce n’est pas vrai!” That’s not true! I turn to see Camille, in just a camisole and her culotte, wandering into the space behind me. “It was yesterday morning, remember Mimi? I saw you with him on the stairs.”

Merde. I can feel my face growing hot. “Oh, yes. That’s right.” I turn back to the woman in the doorway.

“So he was here yesterday?” she asks, frowning, looking from me to Camille and back. “You did see him?”

“Uh-huh,” I say. “Yesterday. I must have forgotten.”

“Did he say if he was going anywhere?”

“No. It was only for a second.”

I picture his face, as I passed him on the stairs. Hey Mimi. Something up? That smile. No one’s smile is like his.

“I can’t help you,” I say. “Sorry.” I go to close the door.

“He said he’d ask me to feed his kitty if he ever went away,” Camille says and the almost flirtatious way she says “kitty” reminds me of her “Cute pussy!” on the day he arrived. “But he didn’t ask this time.”

“Really?” The woman seems interested in this. “So it sounds like—” Maybe she’s realized I’m slowly closing the door on her because she makes a movement like she’s about to step forward into the apartment. And without even thinking I slam the door in her face so hard I feel the wood give under my hands.

My arms are shaking. My whole body’s shaking. I know Camille must be staring at me, wondering what’s going on. But I don’t care what she thinks right now. I lean my head against the door. I can’t breathe. And suddenly I feel like I’m choking. It rushes up inside me, the sickness, and before I can stop it I’m vomiting, right onto the beautifully polished floorboards.