Apartment 88

Lu switched off her car engine the very second she pulled up in front of the building. The sound died abruptly, leaving behind that unnatural silence that comes only when something stops working and a person realizes how loud it had been all along.

Darkness had long been hovering over her sleeping city, although it was not particularly late. It had descended between the buildings, slipped beneath the rooftops, and filled the empty streets like thick, stagnant water. The city was not sleeping peacefully. It was only pretending to sleep.

She reached for the bag and camera lying on the passenger seat of her Peugeot 206. For a moment, she remained seated and motionless, one hand resting on the camera’s cold body. As though she were waiting for something to happen. Or for whatever had followed her all the way home to finally give up.

Nothing moved.

She climbed out of the car, closed the door, and watched the flickering lights greet her as she locked it. One brief flash. Then another. Like eyes opening only to make sure she had truly gone.

She did not want to enter the apartment yet.

She wanted to remain outside for a few more moments, breathing in the cold night air in front of the building and allowing it to fill her lungs. The air inside was different. Heavier. Full of things she could not say and memories that did not know when it was time to die.

Still, she approached the entrance.

She pushed open the old, heavy Baroque door and stepped inside, leaving its creaking sounds to stretch through the hallway behind her. The creak sounded like a warning that had arrived too late.

Slowly, she began climbing the old stone staircase, one step at a time, toward the second floor, where her quiet refuge awaited her. Her room of solace. The place where she felt safer than anywhere else in the world.

Or at least, that was what she liked to believe.

She unlocked the door and entered.

Even through the darkness, she could see large eyes watching her from the far end of the hallway. Two beautiful, pearlescent eyes she had loved from the very first moment she saw them. They floated bodiless in the dark, calm and motionless, like two tiny moons waiting only for her.

She approached without turning on the light and set her bag and camera down on the floor. The objects struck the parquet softly, although the sound seemed louder than it should have in the empty hallway.

She crouched down and found the creature’s bare, rough, wrinkled skin with her hands. It was warm beneath her fingers and blended so naturally with her own that it felt as though she were touching a part of herself she had once lost.

Apart from the apartment’s muffled silence, she could hear only the purring.

Deep. Steady. Almost unreal.

“Cleopatra, I missed you. Come here,” she whispered to the living creature before her.

She lifted her from the floor and placed her in her arms like a child.

Cleopatra did not struggle. She seemed so calm that one could only imagine how much kindness Lu must have given others for a creature like a cat to love her so simply, so unconditionally, and without question.

She passed through the kitchen and into the living room, where she collapsed into an old, perhaps even antique armchair. She threw her legs over one of the armrests and allowed her body to sink between the worn cushions.

Cleopatra pressed herself even more firmly against her. She settled on Lu’s stomach and spread her sharp claws, digging them in just enough to remind her that she was there.

Lu enjoyed every second of it.

The warmth of her body. The quiet pressure against her stomach. The fact that, for once, at least one living creature did not demand explanations from her that night.

Some time passed that way.

She did not know how much.

Time did not move in a straight line inside that apartment. It stopped in certain places, slipped between pieces of furniture, and remained there waiting—sometimes for days, sometimes for years.

At last, Lu stood. Cleopatra jumped from her and landed softly on her feet on the small brown rug beneath the coffee table.

Lu walked over to the record player resting on an old wooden cabinet and began searching through the records. Her fingers moved across their edges, slowly and carefully, as though she were not searching for music among them, but for an answer.

She knew one thing.

This evening could not be the same as all the ones before it.

It had to contain something different. Something that could not return to the beginning once the song ended.

Her fingers slid past Paraf and EKV before stopping on Blondie.

She carefully removed the record from its sleeve, holding it only by the edges, as though she might leave behind traces someone could discover later. She placed it on the turntable, lowered the needle, and allowed the first sounds to take possession of the room.

The music spread slowly through the apartment, slipping into corners and rooms like smoke.

Only then did she turn on the small lamp beside the armchair and allow it to partially illuminate that space of melancholy. The light was weak, muted, and yellowish. It did not break the darkness. It merely gave it shape.

She could still see the moonlight entering the room through the open window shutters. Cold and pale, it fell across the floor like sliced silk.

As though the artificial light had not been necessary at all.

Still, it burned.

Cleopatra began winding herself around Lu’s legs, purring more loudly. It seemed as though the creature had never before been so desperate for her attention. As though, in some language of her own, she were begging Lu to give her more love. More warmth. Not to leave her alone for even a moment.

Lu lowered her gaze toward her.

Something in the sight suddenly hurt.

Perhaps it was the way Cleopatra looked at her. Perhaps the trust she did not deserve. Perhaps the fact that animals always sensed what people stubbornly tried to hide.

Lu began avoiding her.

As though she had already given her more love and tenderness than was permitted that night. As though every new gesture might cross some invisible boundary beyond which there would be no return.

She could no longer force herself to come closer.

She merely looked at her, stepped away, and gently pushed her aside with her foot.

“Stop. Go away,” she said coldly.

Cleopatra froze.

The purring stopped.

Lu headed toward the hallway, where her camera still lay on the floor. Before picking it up, she reached for the front-door handle with something close to paranoia.

She pressed it down.

The door moved.

It was not locked.

The blood drained from her face at once.

She spun toward her bag, tore it open like a madwoman, and emptied everything onto the floor. Her wallet, tissues, pens, old receipts, lipstick, a box of pills, and various small objects scattered across the parquet.

She dropped to her knees and began sweeping them aside with both hands.

She was not searching carefully.

She was digging.

Her fingers trembled as she shoved things out of the way, as though the key were not an object but something alive, trying to hide from her.

At last, she found it.

Small, cold, and metallic.

She seized it and tried to force it into the keyhole too quickly. She missed once. Then again. Metal scraped against the door.

“Come on,” she hissed through her teeth.

It went in on the third attempt.

She turned it twice. Each turn of the lock echoed through the hallway like a gunshot.

One.

Two.

Only then did her body betray her.

She collapsed onto the floor with her full weight, leaned her back against the door, and released the air from her lungs as though she had been holding it the entire time. Her chest rose too quickly. Her heart slammed against her ribs, trying to escape her.

She buried both hands in her hair.

She focused only on breathing.

Inhale.

Exhale.

On remaining inside the room.

On not allowing the walls to move closer.

On staying alive.

She sat like that for another ten minutes, perhaps longer. Cleopatra was nowhere in sight.

Lu knew she must not approach her now.

Not while her hands were trembling.

Not while something she still could not name lived inside her.

She stood, shoved everything back into the bag without order, and left it in the hallway. Then she picked up the camera and went toward the room that had once been a bedroom.

It was large.

Elegant.

Restrained.

And empty in the way only rooms from which someone had deliberately removed every trace of life could be empty.

There was no bed inside. Only bare walls, a large window, a wooden chest spacious enough to contain the things she brought out only for other people, and a camera tripod.

Lu walked to the window and drew the dark silk curtains. The fabric swallowed the moonlight, leaving behind only thin silver edges.

That room, too, breathed with the same light of sorrow and silent tranquillity.

It was a peace that offered no comfort.

The kind of peace that comes immediately before something that can no longer be stopped.

She began removing everything she wore.

One piece.

Then another.

Then everything else.

Her clothes fell to the floor without order, quietly gathering around her feet until only her silhouette remained standing before the large mirror.

She studied herself.

For a long time.

First, her face.

Then her neck.

She ran her fingers over her collarbone, slowly, as though checking whether it still belonged to her. She continued down to her breasts. There, she paused and made a strange grimace, brief and painful, as though they were tender to the touch.

As though something deeper than skin hurt.

She continued lower.

Toward her stomach.

At last, she stopped her palm over her womb and held it there.

She did not move.

She watched her own reflection, but the expression on her face could not be read. It was impossible to tell whether she was grieving something she had lost, something she had never possessed, or something that was only now preparing to arrive.

Then she swept her fingers across the rest of her body as though exploring an unknown map of the world. Every scar was a border. Every bone a road. Every softness a place where someone might become lost.

No one knew how long she stood that way.

Not even Lu.

But time passed.

Still naked, she approached the wooden chest.

She rested her hands on the lid but did not open it immediately. For several moments, she merely stood before it as though standing before someone’s grave.

Then she opened it.

The smell of old fabric, perfume, and other people’s skin rose from within. She began removing things that other people had worn before her, but that she never had.

The objects passed through her hands like evidence.

She slipped her legs into black lace panties and concealed her breasts and bare shoulders beneath an oversized white blazer. The fabric fell around her body, only partially hiding it, emphasizing what it did not reveal more than it truly covered anything.

She wrapped her arms around herself.

As though embracing herself.

As though trying to hold her own body together.

She lowered herself onto the floor and stared at the ceiling. She stretched her arms out beside her and remained lying there without moving.

She knew Cleopatra’s worried gaze was following her from the doorway.

She did not need to turn her head to confirm it.

She could feel it.

The cat stood there like a silent witness to something she did not understand but instinctively feared.

Lu paid no attention.

She simply lay there.

Then she rolled onto one side.

Then the other.

She spread her legs, then drew them together again. Every movement was slow, precise, and almost ritualistic, as though her body were repeating instructions given in advance.

At last, she slipped her legs into black silk thigh-high stockings and stood.

She began moving through the room in time with the lyrics.

“Maria, you’ve gotta see her, go insane and out of your mind.”

At first, her movements were restrained, almost uncertain. Then they grew freer. The blazer opened and closed around her body, white in the half-darkness like a flag of surrender no one had come to accept.

She appeared relaxed.

As though nothing troubled her anymore.

As though every worry had vanished with a single movement of her hand.

As though whatever had been suffocating beside the locked door only minutes earlier now belonged to someone else.

She walked into the kitchen.

From the open bottle, she poured a black liquid into a tall glass. It was so dark that the dim light made it impossible to tell what it was.

She left the bottle open on the kitchen counter.

She brought the glass to her lips but did not drink.

She only smelled its contents.

She held it beneath her nose for a moment, her eyes closed, as though the scent alone might produce the effect she was seeking.

Then she set the glass beside the bottle.

Untouched.

She returned to the room.

She changed the film in the camera, placed it on the tripod, and began adjusting the settings. Her fingers were calm now. Precise. Almost professionally cold.

She checked the frame.

The light.

The distance.

The timer.

Then she stepped in front of the lens.

One.

Two.

Three.

The photographs followed one after another.

Photographs of her.

The kind she had spent years taking of other people, but was now taking of herself for the first time.

And others that no one else possessed in any form.

In some, she stood.

In others, she lay down.

In others still, she hid from the lens behind her own hands, although she was the one who had positioned it before herself.

The camera tirelessly recorded every pose, every shadow, and every moment between two expressions. It captured what the human eye might overlook.

And what a person might choose to forget.

When the camera finally stopped, Lu stopped as well.

The silence that followed was sudden and complete.

She approached it, removed it from the tripod, and carried it into the living room. She placed it on the armchair, where Cleopatra watched her in confusion.

The cat did not approach.

She merely watched Lu with her large pearlescent eyes, as though trying to recognize her.

Lu turned toward the record player and moved the needle back to the beginning of the same song.

The opening sounds once again broke through the apartment.

And then she heard a knock at the door.

Three measured knocks.

A familiar sound.

She did not flinch.

She knew who was standing on the other side.

Without thinking, she ran toward the door. The white blazer barely concealed certain parts of her body, falling open with every step.

She made no attempt to cover herself.

She did not ask who it was.

She unlocked the first lock.

Then the second.

She opened the door.

For a moment, she merely stared at the person before her, as though their arrival had been both expected and impossible.

“Oh… so it’s you.”

She stepped aside.

“Come in.”