Authors: Barbara Doherty
“Ideally, yes.”
“You’re not giving yourself much time, are you?”
“I know. I’m looking into it. If I don’t succeed, it can be my New Year’s resolution.
But I definitely want to move.”
Donald Jefferson suddenly burst out laughing somewhere inside, so loud they both turned to look at the door. Jessica rolled her eyes and Blaise smiled at her. He had a friendly smile, defined lips.
“Look, I know this is gonna sound like too much of a coincidence,” he said, “but I’m moving out of my apartment. It’s in Nob Hill, not too large but spacious enough. Five rooms. I’m trying to rent it. You would definitely be in by Christmas and you could look for a place to buy from there when you feel ready. You think you’d like to come and have a look?”
It did sound like too much of a coincidence.
“... I don’t know... I suppose I could have a look.”
Blaise took a black business card out of the inside pocket of his grey jacket and handed it to her.
“This is the address and my number. I’ll be here until next week. You can come to have a look anytime you like. Just think about it and give me a call.”
He waved his hand and walked away. Not a goodnight, not a nice to meet you. Her eyes followed him as he disappeared among the guests in the room, then moved down to the card in her hand.
William T. Blaise
Chambord Apartments
1467 Sacramento Street
415 558 3857
14 November 2000
IT WAS her third day at the Palace Hotel. It had started raining before the sun had come up and it hadn’t stopped since.
Jessica had planned to climb the hill to Sacramento Street by foot, but the weather had dampened her resolved and she had ended up travelling up the steep slope in a cable car, listening to its struggling engine, marveling at the view outside the dripping windows.
Even in this weather, travelling up Nob Hill’s beauty and cultural richness made her feel invigorated —a feeling she never remembered enjoying while walking through Croker Amazon, not even as a child. Window shops were slick and meticulously arranged; restaurants looked expensive but inviting; pruned potted plant adorned entrances; big, old, famous hotels loomed over the streets. Everything tidy, tall, in order.
Once off the tram, the walk to the Chambord Apartments was short and pleasant. The building stood elegantly at the end of a leafy residential road, within a wide silver gate enclosing a large manicured grass area.
Jessica walked briskly through the gate’s entrance holding her umbrella with both hands and stopped to admire the tall building in front of her. Curved balconies and immaculate statues adorned the exterior of every floor.
Blaise had told her that the apartment was on the third floor and she studied the third row of windows before walking in, trying to guess which ones were his, which ones could become hers.
She walked through the main door into an empty lobby paved with large glossy tiles and headed for the elevator. Third floor. When the lock on the 3C apartment door clicked she was standing in the middle of the carpeted corridor shaking rain off her coat trying to hold the umbrella as far away as possible. Blaise held the door open for her before she even had the chance to knock, staring at her with a cigarette between his lips. He was wearing a tight black V- neck sweater, black trousers, bare feet, his hair a much lighter colour than it had seemed a few days earlier.
He took out the cigarette from his mouth and grinned. “You’re early.”
She looked down at the watch even though she knew perfectly well how early she was. It was eleven forty five, fifteen minutes earlier than scheduled. “I guess I am. Is it all right?”
“‘Course it’s all right. Come on in.”
Jessica walked past him and he gently touched her waist to guide her inside. A corridor extended before them, two arches opened on both sides of the entry hall they stood in, the walls as white as the exterior of the building. Music was playing softly in one of the rooms.
...Beethoven...
“How did you know I was outside the door?” She asked still shaking her coat.
“You’re dripping.”
“Excuse me?”
“I was waiting for you. I saw you coming from the window. You’re dripping,” he said pointing at the raindrops falling off her umbrella onto the floor. “Let me get this for you.”
He took the umbrella from her hand and guided her through the arch on their left, a large kitchen with white walls, empty apart from glossy white fitted cupboards and a small fridge underneath an oak worktop where a solitary coffee maker sat. A small stereo played on the floor between a couple of wooden boxes.
...Beethoven... Moonlight Sonata...
“I love Beethoven.” She whispered looking at the stereo.
It reminded her of her grandparents house; warm afternoons spent in the dining room sitting on her grandmother’s arm chair, listening to old records on her old record player; her dry, wrinkled hands, the way she used to take sweets from them and hide them in her pockets so that mother wouldn’t take them away, and her father sitting in a corner with his eyes closed, almost in a trance. Stuart Lynch loved classical music, his face melted in ecstasy whenever he listened to his mother’s records; he relaxed, mellowed. Music was the only thing that got to him, everything else just seemed to bounce off. Jessica had wished many times she could play an instrument, any instrument, something she could use to perform for him only so that he would see her, so that he would see how much she wanted him to be like everybody else. An instrument she would play every time he tried to raise a hand against his mother, something that would stop him, hypnotise the monster inside him. But she couldn’t play. She could only write, and her father didn’t like reading.
Coffee started coming out of the coffee maker as she turned around, the image of her father so vivid in her mind she half expected to see him standing in the room. Instead she found Blaise standing by the sink where the umbrella was now dripping, looking at her smiling, and she smiled back at him trying to take her coat off and get her handbag off her shoulder at the same time.
“I was about to have some coffee. Would you like some?”
“Coffee sounds great.”
A couple of mugs were already set side by side.
“You can hang the coat on the door, if you don’t mind. I forgot to mention that the place is unfurnished, I hope it’s not a problem for you.”
“No problem, no. I’ve got my own furniture.”
“That’s if you decide to take the place. Milk, sugar?”
“Black, thanks. No sugar.”
He handed her a mug and sat on one of the wooden cases by the window looking up at her, waiting for her to do the same, and they sat facing each other, the music loud enough to cover the sound of the rain pouring down outside.
Jessica started sipping her coffee looking around, studying the room, the two windows by the sink, one next to the other, tried to imagine her furniture arranged against these walls. She had never seen a kitchen so colourless before, she found it eerie, bleak.
“Have you lived here long?”
“About three years, I think.”
“Can I ask why you’re moving out?”
He took a sip of coffee. “Are you asking me if there’s something wrong with this place?”
Jessica tried to order her face not to blush but she could feel her cheeks disobeying as usual and she hated herself for looking so guilty when she had only asked an innocent question. “I didn’t mean that...”
“I need more space. The more space I have the more space I tend to need. I’m moving to Russian Hill. Been there yet?” She shook her head, her lips brushing against the mug she was holding close to her face. “Much quieter than here. I like peace and quiet, you see.”
“Is this not a quiet place?”
“Oh yes, it is. It’s really very quiet. It’s just me, I guess. I like real peace and quiet.”
“And space.”
“And space, yes. That’s about all I need. What about you? Have you considered moving out of San Francisco? You could go anywhere in the world.”
She shrugged. “I guess it’s best if I stay here, my publishing company and my editor being here and all that. I like it here...”
And Kaitlyn did... But she couldn’t tell him that.
His eyes were an interesting colour, grey-blue. He had a way of keeping his head slightly lowered while looking at her that made them shady, as if he was trying to hide his stare underneath his eyebrows, behind his long hair. He was weirdly handsome.
“You bought it, then.” He said out of the blue, nodding towards the handbag sitting by her feet. The top corner of the copy of today’s San Francisco Post she had bought that morning poked out of the open zip.
“Oh, this! Yes, I was intrigued.” She patted her bag the way one does with a faithful pet.
“And? Can you see how cartoonists don’t need to be fat and middle-aged now?”
She could. His cartoon strip was nothing like she had imagined.
Elysa by Gospel
. Beautifully drawn, moody, the overall feel of it closer to Japanese cartoons she remembered watching as a kid then what she had up to then associated with newspaper’s strips. But after only two editions of the Post she still couldn’t quite make out what it was all about.
“It’s different. I like it. I’m not really into cartoons so, sorry if I offended you the other day. I didn’t mean to.”
“God, no, you didn’t. No offence taken at all.”
“Good. Why the pen name?”
He shrugged. “I like it that way. I’m not after fame and recognition. I just want to do what I like. Besides, William sounds a bit too ordinary.”
Lightening flashed and thunder struck outside and Blaise stood up from his wooden box quickly, leaving his mug on the floor.
“Come here, I want to show you something.”
He held her wrist gently and guided her to one of the windows by the sink, where she left her mug and waited for something to happen, admiring the view, the grey shades of the sky, the flat rooftops and in the distance, the Golden Gate Bridge.
Thunder struck again and she saw lightning flash out of a cloud, purple and white streaks of electricity ripping the sky.
“Isn’t it beautiful?” He asked, a strange excitement in his voice, his gaze lost in the sky ahead of him. “You can always see them from up here.”
It was beautiful, yes, and she wondered how many lightning storms he had watched here by himself, how many rainy days and nights. She wondered if he could see lightning striking from any window of the new place he was about to move into. She looked at him and he glanced at her quickly, let go of her wrist.
“Guess I should show you the rest of the apartment now. Come on.”
Jessica nodded. Most of her coffee was still steaming in her mug but she didn’t protest, she followed him out of the kitchen, past the hall, through another arch into another white room. An ivory piano stood against one of the walls, an armchair in a corner faced two large windows opening onto the rounded balconies she had admired from the outside. Next to the armchair an ashtray and a candle laid on the floor.
“Can you play?” She asked pointing at the piano.
He shrugged. “Let’s say I could be better. It helps me to relax when I feel tense. I started learning when I was very young, then I lost interest and then I started again. You need to be consistent with this instrument and I definitely have not been.”
They stepped out of the room into the entry hall.
He pointed a thumb to his left. “Ok, so that’s the kitchen, we’ve been there already...” Thumb pointing right, “that’s the dining room, a lounge or a study, anything you want.” Index finger pointing ahead, “bathroom, bedroom, storage room, over here.”
The corridor in front of them was short and narrow, two doors opened on its left wall and one on the right, a window at its end overlooked the private gardens at the back of the building.
Blaise pointed at the first of the two doors to his left. “Storage room. Nothing but shelves. We’ll get back to this one.”
He opened the second one and motioned for her to enter. Jessica walked into yet another white room, square, not too large, a white sink opposite the door, white cabinet above it, a stand alone bathtub, white toilet bowl next to it, white floor, white ceiling. The wall opposite the bathtub was completely covered by a mirror. Jessica tried to imagine William standing in this room. Did he like to admire his own body? Did he stand naked, looking at himself?
When she came out she found him standing by the window, arms crossed, suddenly looking nervous and edgy as if he had been waiting there for hours, as if he’d had enough time to think about it and come to the conclusion that, actually, showing her his apartment wasn’t really that much of a good idea.
“I like the mirror in there.” She offered. “...Everything ok?”
“It was there when I bought the place.” And he moved off the window, opened another door for her and switched the light on. “This is the bedroom.”
A heavy black curtain —the only touch of colour— covered the window in this room. It was empty apart from a stereo, a king size mattress and a gigantic black and white portrait of a girl with pale skin, dark hair and probably blue eyes resting against the wall behind it. She had a strange smile playing on her lips, almost invisible, and she looked so very familiar.
“This is beautiful. Did you draw it?” He merely nodded. “It’s big. It must have taken you a while to do it. Is it a portrait of anyone you know? ...If you don’t mind me asking.”
“As a matter of fact I do mind,” he snapped, looked at her as if she had just asked him to jump out of the window.
The air surrounding them became heavy, almost material, the music coming from the kitchen a fastidious noise she wished she could stop, and Jessica felt uneasy, unwanted.
“I’m sorry... I just...”
He turned his back and walked out of the room leaving her standing there, by the door.
“Have a look at the other room if you like. It’s rather small,” his voice already coming from the kitchen. “Have another look around.”
A thunder struck again outside and the girl in the picture kept staring at her from the wall.
And she looked so much...
So much like...
WILLIAM LEFT the apartment soon after Jessica. Everything was going well and he was moving closer to her. Jessica, perfect Jessica. Now all he could really do was sit tight and wait to hear from her.
He got in his car and drove to Taylor Street. From here he could walk to Macondray Street. His new house was there, hidden behind young trees and bushes, a beautiful white prison, a peaceful slice of heaven, much quieter than Sacramento Street, much more isolated. No elevators, no next doors, not even a doorman. Just himself. Him and his isolation, him and the space around him.
The houses on this road were away from each other, so far apart another one could have been built between them, but one day —he knew already— even this much distance would seem too little. He seemed to need more and more as months and years went by, more and more space to protect himself from the world, to stop anyone from looking inside him too much, to stop anyone from forcing him to look inside himself. It was easier to run away than face his demons, easier to run away than face the darkness his father had planted in him, the dreary years spent in his house. It had been a long time ago now, but it all felt like yesterday, it all seemed too vivid to ignore, too real to forget... The flicker of the light bulb in the spare room, the strangers around the bed, their hands touching him and his sister, their breath on his skin, the shame, the fear, the anger, the perversion. Nobody could remind him of any of it if he kept his distance from the rest of the world.
He opened the door and walked in. The house still smelled new, it was pure, untouched, silent. In the lounge he switched the stereo on, pressed play, turned on the VCR, pressed mute. On the coffee table in front of the sofa there was still an empty bottle of red wine and a glass from the night before, cuttings from The Dispatcher newspaper, the small column about the death of Kaitlyn Lynch, about the suicide. No picture. He sat on the sofa looking at them, touching the paper with his fingers as the music started to fill the room.
Preisner
, his favourite composer.