Lovers (cont.)
And then there was Natalie, who had never had someone walk her home before. She told me that her last name was Amberson but that she’d taken it randomly from a phonebook, and that her true surname was an eastern European glottal string of consonants. I asked her where her family was and she changed the subject so quickly I got whiplash. In the eaves of her apartment—what she called ‘absolute shit-hole’ but was still nicer than my own place—she invited me up and I said no, no. That I was sick. Maybe when you’re feeling better, she suggested, and I didn’t have the heart to tell her that this wasn’t the kind of sickness you could take medicine for.
She collected porcelain masks and broken glasses and half-burnt Polaroids and thimbles and little slices of amber that belonged in pieces of jewelry but had fallen loose many years before. Natalie, she called herself the queen of negative space. That she only liked people for the things they left behind. That she was an archeologist of humanity’s residue. She called herself a lot of things.
I walked her home once more, months later after a random encounter at the market. Her face looked softer, her figure fuller, her smile somehow brighter. She asked me if I was feeling better and I lied to her face, grinning all teeth and nodding my head. We drank wine, we fumbled at slips and belt buckles. I left nothing in my wake, no suggestion of a person, no indelible impression hinted at by the ephemera dropped from my pockets. No negative space to speak of. But what else is new?
