Authors: Charlotte Stein
But I did, and that’s how it is, and so now I have to fumble out into an empty room. And though I know, rationally, that this should be a relief, it somehow isn’t. I’m not pleased that I avoided him. I’m boiling hot and absolutely furious with myself for being the same person I always am: frightened, foolish, clumsy.
I didn’t even speak to him. I couldn’t even ask him about Lucy. I let myself be intimidated by his brilliance and lamped by my own weird arousal, and now I’ll never know. I’ve missed my chance, because God knows I’m never coming back here. Never, never, never. Wild horses couldn’t drag me.
However, I suspect his business card might.
He’s left it on the desk by the window, propped up against a bottle of champagne he didn’t drink. It’s probably worth more than every drop of lemonade I’ve ever consumed, but he’s just abandoned it here. He’s used it as a backdrop for that little innocuous rectangle – the one that probably doesn’t mean anything at all.
He’s left it for the girl that didn’t come. That red writing coiled across its surface will say, ‘Lucy, lovely Lucy, why didn’t you meet me?’ Or at least that’s what I tell myself, as I try to leave without reading it.
And then somehow I find myself crossing the carpet, to get a closer look. I see the word ‘girl’ and the word ‘wardrobe’, and I know what’s coming, though I try to deny it for another moment. I was so sure he didn’t know I was there. I was so sure I got away with it. He gave no sign, you see. There was no indication he’d guessed – I thought I was safe.
Now I know I’m not.
‘To the girl in the wardrobe’
,
the card says, on its blank white back. Then on the front: his name, and his number, and one simple instruction:
‘Call me.’
When I get to my desk I do everything the same as always. I put my coffee on my little Garfield coaster and turn on my computer. I check my emails and send out various messages, then call down to Finance to make sure they’ve got my updated details. It’s just another ordinary day, I think to myself, though I can already tell it’s sliding into something else. I’m concentrating too hard on work tasks for it to qualify as normal. Usually I hardly care; now I can tell I’m caring too much.
Once I’m done with the typical morning tasks I straighten my desk, as though it really needs straightening. Everything needs to be at right angles, and there are far too many paperclips lurking behind sheets of paper. The sheets of paper themselves shouldn’t be here, so I file them away in a filing system I don’t yet have.
But I soon will.
I spend a good hour creating one – with tiny tabs and little plastic inserts and everything. Michaela snorts at me over the divide of our two cubicles, wanting to know why I’m suddenly so busy … but of course I can’t tell her. I can’t tell anyone about this, because my usual go-to confessor has flown the coop and I’m still no closer to finding out why.
I don’t want to be any closer to finding out why. I’ve already dialled his number twice and hung up, and I really can’t risk any more. The night before last was frightening enough, and maybe explanation enough, and I’d far rather be normal and busy and a customer services operative again. The phone rings and I answer it like I always do: ‘Alissa Layton speaking, how may I help you?’
And I expect the person on the other end to be boring and possibly stupid, the way they always are. ‘My payment went out at the wrong time, I don’t understand these forms, I don’t like what I’ve signed up to, do you sell milk?’ I even have my sigh pre-planned, soft and low and aimed at something other than the phone receiver. Just beyond our dividing wall Michaela rolls her eyes and makes a winding finger around the edges of her own phone conversation, like every other day in this mundane place.
So I suppose it’s more of a jolt to hear that voice, in the middle of all of this. Back there at The Harrington he belonged, but even then it was a shock. Now it’s almost impossible … like hearing a lion roar in a library. You turn around expecting dusty books and there it is, sleek and predatory and ready to devour you whole.
‘Hello, Alissa,’ he says, and I think he might devour me whole. In fact, I know he will. He’s barely said a word and I’m already speechless and frozen, unable to process his presence in my silly basic office. How did he know where I was? Why does he care where I am? He wrote those words – ‘Call me’
– but I didn’t think they were serious.
‘I’m very disappointed in you.’
Or that I was capable of provoking an emotion like disappointment. I’ve never been important enough for anyone to be disappointed in me. No one has ever expected me to make something big of myself; I’ve never done anything so awful that it let anybody down.
This is entirely new territory, and so disturbing because of that fact. It’s like I’ve stepped into another dimension, while drunk. The world slants sideways and my stomach goes with it … if this carries on for much longer I’m going to lose my lunch. I’m sweating already, and my skin is prickling, and worst of all: I don’t know how to answer him.
I don’t know.
I don’t belong in your world, I think at him, but phones don’t pick up thoughts. He has to make do with my stupid silence, and my shaky breathing.
‘Calling then hanging up? That’s hardly polite. Why would you do such a thing?’
‘I don’t know,’ I tell him, while the image of my own fear and panic rises inside me. It’s like seeing a bird caught inside a bottle.
‘Perhaps you were busy, and couldn’t complete the call,’ he says, in this purring persuasive tone – almost as though he’s daring me to say yes. Make it easy on yourself, he seems to be suggesting, but weirdly I can’t quite do it.
I can’t say, ‘Yes, go away, I’m busy’
now
.
‘Perhaps.’
‘Or maybe you had an appointment you had to attend.’
‘That could be the case.’
‘You have such an important life,’ he says, and I know for sure then. He’s teasing me, in the most subtle and strange way I’ve ever been teased in my life. I can almost hear a lick of laughter in the back of his voice, but it’s not unpleasant. It’s not even infuriating.
It’s something else, instead.
‘I really do.’
‘So many matters to attend to.’
‘Absolutely.’
He makes a little hmm-ing noise in the back of his throat, like some friendly psychiatrist. I can almost see him nodding with understanding, though of course it’s obvious the understanding is fake. It’s obvious even before he knifes me with his next words, hard and fast and right under my ribs.
‘Nothing at all to do with being afraid and intimidated.’
I fall silent again then – mainly because I have to. It’s impossible to talk when your throat has sealed itself up, and your body is frozen in one weird position. I’m almost bent double over my desk and my hand has made a fist in my best suit jacket, as though my body just had to prove him right. Naturally I’m afraid and intimidated.
I’m a completely ridiculous person talking to this scion of business. He probably eats people like me for breakfast. I’m probably not even good enough for his breakfast. I’m the water he swills around his mouth after brushing his teeth with his gold toothbrush, before spitting me into the sink.
‘Are you still there, Alissa?’
I wish I wasn’t. I wish I could tell him where to go, but there are so many reasons why I won’t. There’s Lucy and what happened with her, and that place and its mysterious allure. And then of course there’s the real reason:
Him.
‘Possibly.’
‘This makes me think of you as something ephemeral, that I might blow away with a whisper. Is that so?’
‘I’d probably phrase it a different way, but generally yes.’
‘Really? How would you phrase it? Tell me, enlighten me, let me hear your voice.’
That’s too much pressure. He has to know that’s too much, right? Just the idea of enlightening him is making my armpits prickle.
‘I wouldn’t use the word ephemeral.’
‘I see. And there is a reason for this?’
‘Yes. It’s too … pretty. It needs to be more basic.’
‘Ah, then perhaps insubstantial would do.’
‘That’s better.’
‘Or invisible.’
‘I could deal with invisible.’
‘Of course you can. Of course. Because that is how you feel, is it not? You feel so perfectly invisible, like no one could ever notice a single thing about you. And, in fact, you’ve grown so used to this state of affairs that you’ve started to fall in love with it. You like being in the background, hidden from view … lingering around the edges at parties … keeping out of conversations in case someone finds you as insufferably dull as you’ve
always
suspected you are. You can’t even talk to me because what if I don’t care either? Surely my life must be so expensive and jaded that anything you say will sound like the simperings of a child.’
He pauses just long enough for me to say something here – a denial, perhaps, or an accusation. But truthfully, I think he knows I’ll only answer with this hollow, horrified silence. I think he was hoping for it, so he can just go ahead and fill it up with this:
‘And yet I feel I have to ask: if this is all the case, and you are so little and so weak … why is it that I could feel your presence through five inches of wood? Can you tell me, invisible Alissa? Why are you – in silence – stronger and stranger than any woman I’ve actually met?’
* * *
I don’t know why I hung up on him so abruptly. When I look back on it now it seems like something a person would do if the phone suddenly bit them, and they really needed to get away. I can even picture it in my head: the receiver clattering back down onto the cradle, my hand jerking back.
He probably thought I was insane.
But that’s OK, because I think
he’s
insane. I think he’s so insane I can’t stop thinking about him. What did he mean by invisible, exactly? And more importantly: how did he know that I was? Surely the point of being invisible is that no one can see you. He must have X-ray vision, I think, but doing so doesn’t help me.
It only makes things worse, because who wouldn’t be intrigued by a man with superhero eyes? If I call again I might find out he has other skills, like the ability to fly in through a window and save me from this stultifying existence.
And for a while I come close to calling him. I get as far as the last digit, but before I can hear the purring ring in my ear I slam the phone back down again. I’m not a weak person, tricked by strange mind games and just waiting for some Superman to come rescue me. I know that he never will, for a start.
But oh, my foolish heart.
How my foolish heart fails me when my phone suddenly goes, ten seconds later. It actually seems to jerk in my chest, before slowly dissolving through my insides. I flick my gaze to that previously innocuous piece of machinery, angry at it for changing. Angry at the ring that now seems as sharp as a knife and dark as midnight.
It makes me think of horror movies, when you know the killer’s calling. The startled heroine, that lonely drilling tinkle, the wide-eyed stare in the phone’s direction … it’s all there. I actually catch myself with my mouth open. I have to compose myself and close it, before I pick up the receiver. And it’s a close call, even then.
I almost go get myself a drink of water.
But I’m glad I decide otherwise.
‘Hello, Alissa,’ he says, and for one mad second I know how Lois Lane feels. I threw up the signal and he came calling, right on cue. ‘Are you ready to finish our conversation now?’
I’m amazed he even remembers our conversation, in-between million-pound meetings and making himself so slick and flawless. The suit alone must take a thousand years to put on, with all of its buttons and extra bits and the always imminent threat of ruining something so expensive. I bet he has to lever it on with tweezers. I bet geishas roll it onto his body using their breasts.
And yet here he is, just waiting to finish something so pale and slight.
It makes me think it wasn’t pale and slight at all. Somehow I’ve stumbled into a Very Serious Discussion about important things, and now I have to finish it. How do I finish it? What were we even saying?
‘Describe your face to me.’
I definitely don’t think we were discussing
that.
‘Why? Don’t you know what it looks like?’ I ask, confused. He saw me in the lobby, didn’t he? Though when I think back … how would he have known I was the same person, hiding in the wardrobe? He couldn’t have, not for sure.
And I don’t feel like explaining. Everything might end, if I do.
‘How would I?’ he says, and I can almost hear his shrug through the phone. Just one big shoulder, as lazy and casual as a basking lion.
‘Well, you know where I work. You must have found things out about me.’
‘So you think I’m some obsessive stalker. From invisible to so sure of yourself in under a day. Very impressive.’
‘No, I don’t think … that’s not what I meant,’ I say, but I flounder over what I did actually mean. In the end I have to settle for the truth, even though doing so makes me picture that lion, suddenly baring all of its teeth. ‘It’s just that … well … you
seem
like a stalker. And also a mind-reader.’
‘You think I found out where you work because of mind-reading?’
He sounds so amused I almost take the words back. But in the end I think it’s better that I stand my ground. If he is a maniac, he’ll know I have him pegged now. He’ll picture me with my thumb on speed dial to the police, and never put me in a box beneath his stairs.
I’m not fooled by you, I think at him – though my actual words sound weak.
‘Possibly.’
‘Ah, possibly again. Not sure, can’t decide, don’t want to commit.’
‘Why would I want to commit something to someone I barely know? You haven’t even told me your name,’ I say. He doesn’t have to know that I’ve invented hundreds for him, in my head.
Stanislav, Arvikov, Amritza
, my mind murmurs, even though I’m sure none of those are actually words. ‘And I have no idea how you know mine.’
He laughs, low and dark. I swear the sound rattles my bones.