It is Friday again, and I am about to head out to the 7th arrondissement for a teaching gig. I spent the day painting and writing. The new painting is sort of a take on the Garden of Eden but it is set in Paris and Adam and Eve are a bit unorthodox. It is an effing mess, like everything else in the studio, but, as I always like to tell myself, it is not finished. It is a work in progress.
After painting, I cooked a massive pot of pasta with corn and meat and, god, I don't know what and I ate it all. It was horrifying. But I was
hungry.
After, I did another chapter of my book, Camille. I am up to Chapter 19 and have completed 100 pages so far. I thought I would give you a glimpse of chapter 18, although, since you have not read the rest of the book, this will make no sense. But voilà. I don't always make a lot of sense. Making sense is utterly boring, in fact. Don't you agree?
So, here is chapter 18 of Camille. What do you think?
__________________________
She could see a bright light straight ahead. All she
had to do was get to it. But she was so very tired. Why was she so tired? She
did not recall ever feeling so tired in her entire life. She was almost near
the light though. It was so close she could almost reach out and grab it….
Suddenly,
something ran across her face, a little creature. She slapped it away quick and
hard. The force of her motion rudely jerked Camille awake. She opened her eyes
feeling acutely panicked. What the heck was that? Was it a mouse? She saw a
tiny creature scurrying away. It was not a mouse. It looked like a spider. That
was bad but not as bad as if it had been a mouse. But in fact, where the heck
wax she? Camille looked all around her confused. She recognized nothing around
her. Her eyes darted around the room
wildly. She simply did not recognize anything around her and it was crazy, she
felt like she was crazy. She could see a
light but now it was very dim and was further away, than it had been in her
dream. A few feet at least. To touch it, she would have to get up. How could
she accomplish that? There seemed to be a disconnect between her brain and her
motor skills. She could not seem to get her body to do what her mind wanted it
to do.
“Where
am I?” she muttered. “Why isn’t anything making any sense?” Slowly, she drew
herself into a sitting position. The blanket with which she had covered herself
slid down her shoulders to her waist, revealing her naked breasts. The sight of
herself so exposed was weirdly shocking. In her entire life she had never slept
in the nude. She felt as though she had become undressed in front of a roomful
of people against her will and it made her nakedness all the more jarring and
uncomfortable. She grabbed the blanket again covering her nakedness as a sudden
chill swept across her body.
“WT-?”
she wondered aloud. “Where are my clothes? Where’s my cellphone? Wha--” She
peered around the room, her eyes slowly taking in her surroundings. It was a
very strange place, a place filled with all sorts of weird objects and things
she didn’t even know what they were.
Clearly she was not at home. Was she still dreaming? No. This was not a
dream. It was a nightmare but she was fully awake. She vaguely remembered
entering the room with a man but it was a blurry memory. Very fuzzy with no
clear details. Where was she? Why wasn’t she wearing any pajamas? She did not
remember a time that she ever went to sleep without pajamas.
A
familiar stirring in her groin indicated that she needed to urinate. Indeed, it
was more than familiar, it was a serious and strong urge. Furthermore…was she
wet? Did she….had she….. peed on herself?
Camille tossed the blanket all the way to
ankles to look at the sheets beneath her. Horrified, she realized that she had
indeed peed on herself. There was a big, wet stain on the white sheet. A wave
of mortification swept over her. A great sense of shame. She knew she had to
get up and do something about the urge to urinate as well as the wet sheets.
Somehow, she managed to get on her feet. She stood up slowly taking in every
detail of the room. There was that
light, first of all. It was the most beautiful yellow light she had ever seen
and it was beaming through the ceiling. She walked over to it. What a glorious
thing it was. She discovered that there was a glass ceiling that opened the
room to the outside world, and it was letting in all this light. She could see
the sky was a bright, clear blue color and that the sun which was directly
overhead was shining brightly in all of its yellow splendor.
“Midday,”
she muttered. “It must be midday. The sun is highest at midday.”
But
what day was it? Where did she need to
be?
She
was still under the sun roof letting the sun bathe her in its brilliant light.
And then it dawned on her. She probably
ought to be at the law firm, on Place Vendome. She was sure she had an
appointment today with the lawyers, to teach them English. But what day was it?
She placed her face into both her hands and pressed hard. “Clarity, Camille. Get
clarity! Fast!”
And
then she started to remember. She had just finished having lunch
with…with….with Edouard Laguerre. Her student and his wife. He was going to
show her the atelier to see if she wanted to rent it and so they had gotten
into the car and then, everything went black. What happened to Edouard? Where
did he go? He had been here. She remembered him being here and then…
“Edouard.”
she said, walking towards the giant door straight ahead.
“Edouard
Leguerre. I was with him. The last thing I remember. I was with him and his
wife and then…everything went black.”
“Edouard?
Are you here? Hello?” She banged on the big, black door. All the while looking
around to see if she could see any windows, a way out. There were none.
“Somebody
please? Hello? Is anybody there? Edouard?”
“He’s
not here,” she whispered to herself. “What the hell… He left me here without
clothes? In this place. This place….this is the atelier? He thought I would
rent?”
“EDOUARDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!”
she screamed. She banged futilely on the door to no avail. No one could hear
her from where she was. She was completely isolated.
Camille
continued to call out Edouard’s name for several minutes, nearly a half hour in
fact, till she was hoarse then when she was completely voiceless she fell to
the floor in a crumpled ball, exhausted and sobbing.
When
her sobbing had subsided, she realized that she was extremely hungry and that
she still had a strong urge to pee. She was also thirsty, tired, weak and cold.
She had to do something about all those things. But where should she
start? She needed her bearings first of
all, to figure out where everything was. She needed some clothes and to take a
bath. She needed to pee. Where could she find the toilet? From where she was on
the floor in the middle of the disorder and debris, she could see an archway
that seemed to lead to someplace important. She got up to investigate it. She
felt dizzy, as if she would faint. But she knew that she had to be strong. She
could not faint. She had to do what she needed to do so she clenched her teeth
and moved forward.
The
archway led to a room that looked positively medieval. That was the best way
she could describe it. It looked ancient; like something out of another time.
There was a big oven in there, or was it a fireplace or was it a place to cook?
It was blackened and looked like it had been used for thousands of years to
make thousands of fires. In this same
room, she noticed an old aluminum bath that might have been white in another
life but was now filled with dirt, rust and paraphernalia. Next to it was a big
plastic bottle could have been more than 30 years old. Was this detergent?
There
was an old wooden chair in this room, no two. And a big wooden barrel. Camille
walked further into the room and found that it led to a door which was encased
between two small windows, too high up for Camille to open and too small for
her to go through even if she was so inclined to do so.
“What
was this room?” she wondered. An old sign on it said “Defense d’entrer.” She grabbed the doorknob and turned it. She
pushed on it as hard as she could. Nothing budged. A key was definitely needed
to enter but how would she ever find this key?
Next to this room was another door. She tried to push on
it and it flew open revealing a toilet. “OMG! Does this work?!” she cried
excitedly, moving towards it and pulling the long chain with a wooden handle at
the end to flush. Water bubbled up and disappeared when she did that. It was a
working toilet! She could pee! And pee she did; for what seemed like ten
minutes straight without stopping. She felt some discomfort, a soreness that
was unusual. When she was done, she looked around for tissue paper to take care
of her hygiene; but there was none. There was a sink however, filthy as ever
but operational, and this permitted her to wash her hands but she had no towel
to dry them with.
Just
as she was exiting the room, she saw a big brown box and three giant orange
papers bags from the Bon Marche in the corner. Had she not used the toilet, she
never would have seen them but what was striking about them was the fact that
they looked so new and unrumpled, as though they had recently been laid there,
as opposed to everything else around which looked like they had been there
since 1632. “That’s weird,” she thought, walking towards the packages. “What
are these things and who put them there and when?”
She
was literally shaking as she approached the spot where the bags and box laid.
Without
touching anything, she peered inside the bags. There was a white sheet of paper
on top of each though she could see that in one bag, there was fabric and in
the other bag it looked like there were items to eat. The third bag was harder
to distinguish under the paper. The box was an unmarked brown package tied up
with string with a label that said “Camilla.”
Camilla?
Her
name was CAMILLE, not Camilla. Was this for her?
It
was easy to decide which bag to unpack first. She was so hungry, so weak really
from lack of food that the question of starting with any other bag than the one
that seemed to contain food was unthinkable. She plopped down onto the floor
and instead of removing the items one by one, abruptly emptied all the contents
on the floor. Out tumbled a bunch of bananas, a bunch of grapes, a box of tea
bags, several cans of beans, sliced bread wrapped up in a plastic sack, a box
of cereal, a bottle of instant coffee, a bottle of apple juice, several cans of
sardines and several bottles of Evian water. There were also strawberries, a
melon, some lettuce, a bunch of ruby red tomatoes and cheese. She did not stop
to analyze any of it. Camille began to gorge herself, hungrily devouring the
bunch of bananas first of all, then the grapes, then the strawberries. Then she
ripped open the bag with the bread and opened one of the cans of sardines.
Using her fingers, she extracted the contents from the can of sardines and
placed it on several slices of bread, drizzling the oil from the can on top.
She was able to make about six sardine sandwiches with this and she swallowed
them all in rapid succession. Then she unscrewed the apple juice and downed it
all in a few gulps.
She
wouldn’t have stopped, except that almost immediately, she felt a pain in her
stomach, and an unbearable sense of nausea welled up all the way to her throat. She was
going to throw up. She knew she had to get to the toilet but she could not get
up so instead, she dragged herself to the bowl, barely making it and hanging her
face over the seat just as all the contents of her meal ejected violently from
her stomach. She retched for quite some time and when she was done, she had
become so weak and dizzy she could not stand up to wash her hands and face. She
dragged herself back to the starting point, and laid there for a while. How
long she remained in this position is unclear but some time later, she stirred
again and realized she was feeling a little bit stronger. As she did not have a
watch or clock, she had no way of knowing what day it was or what time it was.
But the light of the sun, much dimmer than when she had first woken up,
indicated that it was still daytime.
“Oh
my God,” she muttered, feeling a rising sense of panic. “Am gonna die!”
She
knew that as badly as she felt, it was not the time to indulge herself in
self-pity. She had to be strong. Something had happened to her and she had been
placed into a situation that she had never in her wildest nightmares imagined
possible. And if she was going to survive she had to be strong and she had to
let her mind and not her body dominate her actions. She was flat on her stomach
with her face touching the floor at this point and she lifted her head and
looked at the spilled food and the rest of the bags and the box that had yet to
be opened. She had to find the strength to open them and to see what was in
them. But her head was pounding. It felt that at any moment, she might succumb
to a stroke.
With
every ounce of strength that she possessed, she dragged herself up to a
standing position and walked to the sink where she washed her hands and face.
Feeling a bit more refreshed, she returned to inspect the rest of the bags. She
got herself into a sitting position. The floor was hard and uncomfortable under
her naked bottom and she felt a bit cold due to her unclothed torso, but this
was no matter. She had to find out what was in the other bags and box. Maybe
this would give her some clue about how she could get herself out of this
situation.
She decided to start with the bag closest to
her left hand. She removed the paper first, laying it aside next to the one
that had been in the grocery sack. This time she did not spill the contents but
removed them one by one. It was an interesting haul. There was a new white
bath-towel, a white wash cloth, a bottle of liquid soap, a tube of toothpaste,
a packet of toothbrushes, deodorant, toilet paper, a sack of razors, a hair
brush, and a crisp white bathrobe with the name Camilla printed on the left.
Camilla
again. Who was Camilla? Her name was not Camilla. It was CAMILLE. Why did he
keep calling her Camilla when he knew that her name was Camille? She knew then
that it had to be him, Edouard, who had left those things for her. She was not
so delusional that she thought it had been a fairy godmother. But Edouard knew
her name was Camille. She actually hated being called Camilla. Why did he keep
doing that?
The
third bag contained a clock, cleaning detergent, a copper pot, two plates, two
wine glasses, two tea cups, matches, a scissor, a cutting knife, candles,
lighter fluid, paper towels, two dinner knives, two spoons and two forks.
“WT-!” she muttered, not quite knowing what to
make of it all. “I wonder what is in the box?”
She
realized that she would need a scissor to open the box and she was glad that he
had packed a scissor in the bag. She took the scissor from the pile of things
she had removed from the bag a few moments before and cut the string from the
box. It opened to reveal straw on top which she had to remove. Upon removing
the straw, she discovered that under the straw was a sexy, lacy black brassiere
with matching panties and a bottle of Guerlain perfume. Finally, there was a
copy of the New York Times dated July 27 2013.
“WT-,” she muttered again.
There was a large white envelope embossed in gold relief in the box. She
removed the envelope, frantically ripping it open. What had he said in it?
Dear Camilla,
I hope this letter finds you
in good spirits and that you are feeling better than you did on Monday. As you
can see, I have provided you with a clock so that you can keep track of the
time. The next time I visit will be Friday at 6 P.M. This gives you a lot of
time to prepare. You are to thoroughly clean the atelier, dust, brush the
floors (you will find a broom next to the bags I left you) and arrange the room
in such a way that it is orderly and welcoming for me when I arrive.
You have all the things you
need to make our first real meeting and conversation a success. I have left
you, for example, a copy of the New York Times. I have also left you with food, cleaning items
and a robe. These things are just a token of my appreciation to you. There are
many more things to receive if your behavior and comportment warrant it. And if
your behavior and comportment do not warrant it, you will obviously lose a lot
of privileges, including the receipt of items such as food, warm clothing and,
even, the bed which, as you can see, I
had specially delivered for you with fresh sheets and pillows. If I were you, I
would be very careful about following instructions and making sure that my
behavior and comportment never anger Monsieur ou Madame.
Also, finally, you are to take your bath no
more than thirty minutes before I arrive. Everything should be clean and
unsoiled.
Cordialement,
Monsieur Laguerre
