1. Caterina
Saturday 3 February, evening
I’d like to start smoking again, but it would ruin my velvet skin.
As for drugs, I’m too old to start now. I remember the early days of my career when all those girls were into them. They had no choice if they wanted to stay in the industry. Some even confided to me. I would sigh and tell them that I understood their situation, that yes, it was hard, that they would be able to clean themselves up after they achieved success. Instead, they would eventually destroy themselves before that. They just felt supported by my strong personality and kept using. It was too late when they would get that. I didn’t do that to eliminate the competition, I didn’t need to. I used to take pleasure in watching life destroy their dreams, hopes and everything that was important to them.
By exclusion, alcohol is my only alternative, the only faithful companion in this ten-room penthouse in the city centre, full of knick-knacks and devoid of love. The wide, low glass is cold between my tapered fingers. The large ice ball falls inside with a dull thud. The bronze hues of liquor envelop it and make it crackle, for the fourth time tonight.
I put the bottle back on the trolley and go to sit on the sofa in the living room. The scent of leather penetrates my nostrils. I cross my long legs on the ottoman, satisfied with the dark purple of my toenails. I close my eyes, stretch the arches of my feet and slowly rotate my ankles. More memories of women come to my mind. Although my smile goes along with certain thoughts, I suppress them because I have come to hate having to resort to the past to feel good.
The ice ball has shrunk. I welcome it into my mouth and feel it slowly melt between the caresses of my tongue. That’s what happened to so many girls when I kissed them for the first time. Just like on this glass, my lipstick would remain on their lips, in exchange for a piece of their souls.
Throughout my life, I have done all sorts of things while sober rather than drunk. In any case, it did nothing to make me feel satisfied. Nor did it do anything to make me feel at peace with myself or to give me what everyone has by nature, since birth. Life has denied me this.
The taste of injustice is one of the most excruciating sensations you can feel. It corrodes you from within. You are forced to watch something happen to you in a cruel and merciless way, and you can’t do anything about it. Constant exposure leaves its mark on you, to the point of triggering a perverse mechanism: when you can no longer absorb or endure it, you become its perpetrator. You know it’s wrong, yet you don’t care because you want to do it. The desire to give back to the world what it has inflicted on you burns inside you; you just want to restore balance.
Before you know it, life becomes miserable. You crave revenge against everyone and no one, and it becomes the only thing that brings you satisfaction, though it never fulfils its promise. This feeling only lasts a short time before you want more, without realising that this is not the way to fix yourself. Eventually you get to understand this, and that’s when despair takes over until you reach the final stage, apathy.
It’s become unbearable. I’ve sunk deep into darkness, and there’s no more light left in my life.
I am tired. I’m drunk too, but it’s not the alcohol talking, it’s me. As I take my last sip, I swallow an antidepressant pill. They say it’s not a good idea to mix the two, but I’ve always done the opposite of what I’ve been told, sometimes out of curiosity, and mostly out of spite. It’s been years since anyone could tell me what to do. I’m the one who does this with my manager and with brands who want me as their testimonial. I also do this with many beautiful, young, naïve girls. I don’t know if mixing antidepressants and large amounts of alcohol is fatal. Not that it matters much now, since I’ve already taken care of it.
I’ve done my research, I’ve been a good girl. In the pre-asphyxial phase, water begins to enter the airways; quick gasps of air occur due to the element of surprise. In the resistance phase, there’s an initial period of apnoea in an attempt to not inhale the water. In the dyspnoeic phase, the glottis opens involuntarily, leading to underwater inhalations, which are followed by an expiratory dyspnoea in an attempt to expel the liquid. Then comes the apnoeic phase, where respiratory functions cease, as do consciousness and reflexes, finally leading to the terminal phase, with cardiorespiratory arrest. But my experience will be muffled, less frightening, because I will take enough sedatives to be unconscious throughout it all.
I imagine myself floating in the centre of that enormous aquarium which I know so well, wrapped in an emerald-green evening gown in all my beauty, like a mermaid.
I wonder who will find my body, probably Isabella. Poor woman, I should pity her. Instead, watching her pain feels pleasant. After the initial shock, she will feel suddenly close to what I have always prevented her from getting back, without understanding that it is still not possible for her, since she didn’t lose him because of me. We didn’t even know each other back then. When I’m gone, she’ll have to come to terms with reality, for the second time. The thought that a woman who has always hated me will hate me even more when I am dead instead of enjoying my departure gives me an intoxicating sense of power. This corrupts me more than anything else, and makes me lascivious towards any material pleasure. I light a cigarette. After all, my skin won’t have time to show the signs of ageing from it.
I get up from the sofa and walk over to the grand piano. I have no idea how to play it. As I lift the lid and touch a few keys, I am reminded that when I planned my demise, I have considered other people too, one in particular. If I must give in eventually, I’ll inflict pain one last time on the one who, of the few who succeeded, hurt me the most. I am going to record the story of my life. I imagine myself doing so while she sits in front of me, restrained, gagged and forced to listen, her beauty marred by a single, painful imperfection. She is going to find the recording. She’s the only one who can.
She will listen to it and despair because of me, for one last time.
