Papillon

It is crucial to say that I am not proud of any of my actions that I have written here. But I feel as though I owe it to her to discuss the role I had in her death. I won’t introduce myself. I don’t believe in using names. They’re restrictive, and paint a person with a colour before you even get to know them.

Cher étranger, how would your perception of me change, depending on my name? And how would your perception of her change? What strange, unknown meaning would you try and pull out of our names? Alas, it feels wrong referring anything as “ours” after I destroyed any semblance of us.

Almost as fundamentally wrong as another woman with her name. Any remnant of her drowns me in melancholy, and weighs down my core with a vague sense of regret. So I’m not using her name. I don’t think I have the right to use it anymore. And I don’t want you, dear stranger, to know too much about me or her. You’re permitted a glimpse into our deepest interactions, but without names to place them with, she and I can stay just out of arm’s reach.

- - -

She wasn’t meant to be a part of my life. If only she hadn’t chosen to speak to me that day, or if I had chosen to smoke in some other depraved alley, perhaps she would still be alive today. But tragically, life doesn’t work on “what if”s and fanciful thoughts.

It was Monday, sometime around noon, and I had just stepped out to light a cigarette in some musty, dark corner of the world that everyone forgot. I was fumbling with my lighter when a clear, almost piercing voice shot through the muffled city’s song.

“Just give up. If you want to kill yourself that badly, you should be down in the metro on the tracks,” a young woman with a cigarette tucked inbetween her painted lips, turned up at one end. A sliver of sunlight making their way through the buildings lit her taunting smile ablaze.

“You’re smoking too, you’ve hardly got any right to talk.”

“I’m not, actually.” Laughter, and another flash of teeth on one side of her mouth, “I don’t even have a lighter. Je suppose qu’il ne faut pas se fier aux apparences. I’m just trying something new, you think it suits me?”

“Would you like a light?”

“Not really, no. Can’t imagine something that smells so terrible would taste any better.”

“I suppose so. Suit yourself.”

“I will,” and she found that incredibly funny. Tossing her head back in laughter and exposing her bronze neck, cast grey by the city’s pallid lights. The alluring gleam of her collarbone, and the inviting expanse of smooth skin above it, begging to be pierced by a pair of teeth.

From that day forth, she became my waking nightmare, shrouding my every view with wisps of her. With every click of my lighter, I’d see her smile in the sparks. With every woman I brought into bed, I’d wonder what she would look like laid in their stead. At that point, if she had wanted me to jump off the roof of my flat and kiss the concrete, I think I would have, just for another glimpse of her.

- - -

It was some Thursday, in some nameless bookstore nestled in between some restaurant going out of business and an ancient building housing a bank. But soon, that store became the resting place of my deluded mockery of a heart. I had stepped in to find a copy of some now-irrelevant book, and there she was. Reminiscent of a moth with gaudy eyes printed on the wings: unnecessary, yet beautiful. And under the muted orange lighting of the store, she glowed.

She looked up, caught my gaze, and winked. I turned to the next aisle to approach her, but she was gone.

With just that look, she secured her position as primadonna of my hallucinations for weeks to come. Even with another woman’s perfume still clinging on my collar, the book on my nightstand would fill my mind with only thoughts of her.

- - -

She drove me mad; I could hardly even see a flash of dark hair without turning, desperately hoping to catch a glimpse of her. But of course, it never was. Not until I had lost hope yet again.

The Nettoyant—a dingy bar in a basement—probably once a storage space for the impressive stone building sitting atop it. Its ceiling was covered in pipes, and its walls were always suspiciously damp, but its worn wooden counters had slowly become my second home.

I stepped in, raindrops still scattering my hair and shoulders. I sat down on a chair that wasn’t quite balanced properly, and gestured to the bartender who recognized my shabby leather jacket. The bar was crowded by its standards, with about seven people meandering the dimly lit space. The glass had just reached my lips when I caught the sound of the laughter that had been echoing through my dreams for weeks. That piercing, cutting sound that seemed to light up the room more than its dusty yellow bulbs.

She was with someone else, but I couldn’t tell you what they looked like at all. In the seconds between her laughter and her throwing her head back to see me, the whole world crumbled away. And I couldn’t care less. Her eyes met mine, and with a mocking twitch of her lip, she raised an eyebrow and cocked her head to the door. My drink still untouched, I tucked some bills under the glass and readied to leave. Laughter again, filling the void that we were now in.

The sound and smell of still-fresh rainfall briefly brought me to my senses. Puddles were drooling onto the steps down, and rumbling into the grates. Occasionally, a raindrop would loosen from the trim of the floor above, freefalling as my heart was. I had the vague sense that I should leave, or head back in and finish the drink, alone. But my feet were welded in place, waiting for their puppeteer to arrive and set them in motion.

She flung open the door and fluttered to my side, grabbing my arm. The left side of her lips curled upwards as she pulled me down the street, ignoring any puddles that her feet plunged into. When we made it under the awning of a metro station, she let go of my arm, leaving behind a faint, ghostly mark that dripped away.

Silence. And then, her lips were on mine, and her body was cold yet burning hot against me.

- - -

For weeks, I sought to reproduce the sensation of her. A perdurable fog of cheap and expensive scents clouding my bedroom, all manners of women coming in and out my flat. All of them nothing but countless nameless presences and featureless faces molding into one another. Une de perdu, dix de retrouvés. But all were nothing but crude mockeries of the object of my true desire.

I awoke every night in a cold sweat, imagining that rainy evening, the discarded drink, and the feeling of lipstick staining my lips.

- - -

I was only graced with my beloved’s name months after our first meeting. So forgive me for not wanting to share it with you in one document. But for your sake, dear reader, I’ll call her papillon; I long to introduce her as my papillon, but I’m afraid I surrendered that luxury long ago.

As I stepped into the bookstore, she walked out, and I turned to follow behind her.

“Were you not getting anything?” she asked the sound of my footsteps. The truth was, I had been haunting the store every day, not in search of any novel, but for the faintest hint of her perfume: a sign that I was close, yet so far away.

“I decided against it.”

“You know, I don’t think I ever got your name,” she turned, flashed one of her half-smiles, and let me catch up to her side. I gave her my name, and she gave me hers. A decision I’m afraid she’d regret for the rest of her life.

- - -

She found herself in my bed soon after, falling into the sheets like an angel cast out from heaven’s grace. And as papillon often was, our coupling was beyond what my words could circumscribe. To be by her side was beyond my animalistic quest of pleasure. It was simply what had to be. As a rock thrown straight up must succumb to gravity and plummet down; I had to hold—and be held by—papillon.

I never got to see her in the light of day. She’d arrive at dusk, knocking on my door. Then she’d step into my flat as if it had been built for her, and had been simply waiting for her presence since. Then joy, elation, a sense of a void in my deepest being ceasing to exist.

Even the way she redressed was captivating. The way her arms folded above her head, the moonlight silhouetting her form and seemingly glowing through her; there was something enchanting in her paper-thin presence. And before the last lights of the city went out, papillon would press a feather-light kiss to my cheek and rush out the door. On n’aime que ce qu’on de possède pas tout entier, her flight only made me want her more.

- - -

Every time the sun sank below the horizon, I lay in wait for papillon. I couldn’t do anything, could hardly call upon another woman. How could I? After papillon, caresses from any other painted hand would feel like sandpaper nipping away at my flesh. And thus, with every sunset, every fiber of my body was set ablaze, with only papillon with the ability to quench the flames.

She never offered me her number, her address, nor any way for me to call upon her. She had my everything, but I had nothing but her name. In a burning desperation, I once sought her out in the phone book. Perhaps it was outdated, or perhaps papillon gave me a false name, but I never did find her in that thick volume of digits.

- - -

Another midnight of some chilled spring day. She reached for her shirt in the flickering blue and red lights of a passing police cruiser.

“Would you like to stay the night?”

“What?” her hand, frozen midair, a faint tremor visible even in the dark. The sirens faded into nothing, and the silence settled over the room as a thick blanket of snow.

“Would you like to spend the night, here.” Please, grant me the luxury of waking up to you.

“I have to go,” she clutched at her clothing as though they were on the verge of vanishing, dressed, and fluttered out of my home in a single fluid movement. After the door clicked shut, I sat in the silence for hours, the number of which I cannot bring myself to pen down. Forgive me my secrecy, dear reader, même un meurtrier a sa fierté.

Eventually, I stepped out of bed and let the ceiling light flicker to life. The stench of cigarette smoke crept up by my feet. I could no longer smell the cheap, honeyed citrus scent of her perfume, no longer feel her warmth in the silhouette she left in my bed. Under the dim glow of my dying lightbulbs, I had never felt further away from dear papillon.

- - -

For weeks, I felt inconsolable. How could I not? Many nights, I found myself descending the stairs to the Nettoyant. After all, there was no need to stay in my suffocating flat without the possibility of papillon.

The dim swaying lights on rusty chains, the walls slick with unknown sweat, and the rumbling of fire down my throat. Countless glasses collected and vanished before me, creating faint grey circles on the wooden counter. As I tossed down more bills, I thought of her. Pushing open the doors and stumbling up the moonlit stairs, I chased my delusions of papillon’s smile. Coarse, shattered asphalt, dented and fractured as I. Rocks scattering underfoot as I paced the familiar streets in search of her.

In due time, I would find myself at that bookstore where she winked at me. My knees gave way, and as I sank down, I felt the fabric of my jacket cling to the coarseness of the bricks, threatening to tear. I sat there for a while, watching the occasional car speed by, the tires dislodging more chunks of the pavement. Then dust off the pants and walk home, glancing back at the bookstore the whole way. And rinse and repeat. Rinse and repeat my glasses, cher barman, I’ll find myself again in the embrace of those unfeeling brick walls soon enough,

Eventually, my loneliness got the best of me, and my flat once again became a revolving door for feminine spectres, my bed home to countless faceless illusions. And yet, even through my haze of yearning, I couldn’t help but see that these transient figures were more of flesh and blood than beloved papillon could ever be. When I clutched at their waists, their flesh would dimple in the light. When they scratched at my back, thin threads of red followed their fingers. Their presence, their weight, was felt in the creaking of my floorboards, the squeak of my bedsprings. Even after they were ushered out the door, proof of their existence lingered in the air, unlike papillon and her gossamer wings that gathered up her presence with her as she left.

- - -

It was raining, and I can still remember every detail of that night. From every car that passed by my window, to the smell of asphalt beginning to be wet. The door echoed with three, sharp knocks.

And in the doorway, was papillon. Her clothing stuck to her as though a second, wrinkled skin, her hair still collecting and discarding raindrops at the tips. That night, instead of her clothing, she reached for the sheets, and let her eyelids sink shut.

- - -

The warm morning sun, flitting its way though my billowing curtains, and papillon, standing above me as I rubbed the sleep from my eyes.

“So who is she?”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand. What woman—” I followed her gaze to a strand of long blonde hair, visible against my dark sheets. At my silence, she attempted a laugh, but it caught in her throat, coming out more as a choked cry than a chuckle.

“I bet you had fun, didn’t you?”

“You’re misunderstanding, dearest. She meant nothing to me, she was nothing.”

“I bet that’s what you say about me, too.”

“No, my world, my papillon, I swear–”

“Don’t you dare call me that.”

“I was under the impression that you were seeing others as well, I had thought–” and my voice gave way, unable to form another excuse. She kept her mouth shut, head pointedly fixed out my window at the swirling clouds. “You don’t understand, I have feelings for you.”

“How many women have you said that to? Did you tell that to her, too?” she pinched up the strand of hair and threw it at me. It fell short, pathetically fluttering to the ground and shining gold against the auburn wooden slats.

“No, papillon.” Her mouth opened and snapped shut. “Dearest, you’re different. If you left, I would be devastated,” the first truth of the day. Soft icicles pooled at the tips of her lashes, threatening to drag them off her eyelids. And yet, she agreed to stay for a little longer.

- - -

I fell into the thighs of another woman that night. Call me a scoundrel, a liar, a cheat. You’d be right to say that all. But I couldn’t help it. I was a mere puppet on papillon’s strings and I was desperate for any semblance of control. And if proof of that control came only in her tears, so be it. Après tout, mieux vaut prévenir que guérir. For me, at least.

- - -

Boughs of mimosas were beginning to crumble under the wind, littering the ground with a scattering of yellow clusters. And so I took papillon to the Riviera, to quench my selfish thirst to see her bronzed skin reflect the golden sun. With her shoes in one hand, she trotted down the sun-dappled stone steps towards the sand, glancing back at me with every third thought.

Eyes followed her as she trekked across the beach, peering out behind newspapers and under barely lidded side-glances. With her usual sharp burst of laughter, she tossed her shoes at me and ran to the shore. Sprays of sand, kicked out under her heels, and the water that washed the sand from her skin. The waves caressed her thighs as she stepped further into the sea, leaving behind droplets that shone like pearls, clinging to her flesh.

With my entranced self in tow, she swam towards the horizon, to where the crests of waves became nothing but mere ripples. She lay down, and her hair quivered under unseen currents as she closed her eyes. Even now, I can recall the blue ocean silhouetting her form, and the glimpses of her stomach that occasionally breached the surface. With every flittering wave, her chest would tremble, droplets of water congregating at the hollows of her collarbones. Bisous, chers bisous sur ces oasis. On those fragile bones and translucent eyelids.