She was ready now – if only her body would obey. Her heart beat with an unfamiliar enthusiasm, as if it was in clear sight of the finish line for a race she scarcely believed she had the right to run. Her life flashed past her: her son’s little fingers, the bloated face of the husband that never was, the police shootings, the breeze on the salt dunes, sponge bathing obnoxious old men...Stop this nonsense. This is not the end. And, if it is, better to choose it than have it chosen for you like everything else in your endless little life.
Stop this. She took a deep breath.
Take the plunge.
Not far from Rosel, 25 metres underground, Violet stepped off a train in her high-heeled boots. Something about the day felt urgent and made her uneasy. She checked her reflection in the shiny metal body of the departing metro. She was dressed in caramel-coloured suede pants that fit her like a second skin; her favourite knee-high, python leather Chloé boots; and a deep purple ostrich-feathered winter coat. Violet didn’t care that she’d paid way too much for the coat. She felt spectacular in it. Her hair was slicked back into a ponytail so tight that her eyes looked like Catwoman’s after an extreme blepharoplasty. She had a great figure with a tiny waist and wore no make-up. The last laser session had worked wonders on her stubble.
In her opinion – which was the only one that mattered – she was a rather striking woman. Why the discomfort today? She walked through the long corridor to change trains, careful not to touch anything. It was not crowded, but a beefy young boy, part of a group of teenagers, shoved past her. “Sale pédé, homosexuel,” he jeered, smirking to his friends and making a rude gesture with his finger and fist that left little to the imagination. Over the years, Violet had taught herself to ignore such jibes.
Today, however, it was the boy’s turn to learn. She squared herself in front of the gabby juvenile. She was slender but, in her heels, almost a foot taller than him. Sighing into his face, she let him smell the spearmint and danger on her breath, eyeballing him just long enough to intimidate. He shuffled. She swallowed noisily, her Adam’s apple incongruously bobbing up and down her delicate neck. She smiled and, in her acquired silky voice, corrected him, “Je ne suis pas homosexuel. Je suis la femme dont tu rêves.” Yes, you fucker, the woman you have pornographic dreams about. Violet reached into her bag. He immediately covered his face, thinking she was going to mace him. She laughed, sniffed him, turned up her nose and chucked a Chanel deodorant at him saying, “Utilse-le. Tu pues du cul.”
Wiping her hands sensually on her suede pants, she winked at him and walked off before the boy could come up with a retort. Her body language was confident, nonchalant, but Violet’s heart was playing basketball in her chest. Why couldn’t this bothersome organ toe the line and stick to its job of pumping blood and keeping her alive? She couldn’t bear it when it shouted out its presence, reminding her that her own existence was borrowed, invented and ephemeral. She needed no reminder of that, thank you very much. She click-clacked her way down the tunnelled corridor. The geometrical Art Nouveau beauty of the tiles on the walls helped calm her. She kept her focus on their glossy white symmetry. Violet could do this route blindfolded – it was hardwired into her. There were days when she left her apartment and arrived at the club without remembering how she had got there.
But today, nothing escaped her. Both the participant and audience of her own reality show, she had eyes for the minutest detail. As usual, she smiled and tossed a coin at the busking geriatric swing band, the members of which lived by and for their music, performing underground day after day, like they were the closing act at the Carnegie Hall. They smiled back and started playing a funky rendition of Glen Miller’s “In the Mood”. She marched on, the music lifting her, making her lighter, until she heard the first strands of the operatic singing that haunted her every day. A plump girl with fuchsia smeared lips, stood strategically under a tiled archway, taking advantage of its hollow echo, and belted out the Purcell aria, “O Let Me Weep”.
The marching footsteps of the crowd with the lugubrious singing, peppered with her own unarticulated longing, engulfed Violet in a bubble that felt at once light and suffocating. Her mind floated away, her body treaded in slow motion, wading through an ocean of music. She knew if she didn’t do it today, she never would. So, with blind purpose, she moved away from the crowd and walked towards him, somehow sure – although not entirely certain – that he would be there.
Excerpted with permission from Clearly Invisible in Paris, Koel Puri Rinchet, Rupa Publications.