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.
‘You keep calling me, remember?’ he says, and I want to smack my hand over my face to see my own silliness spelled out like that.
