Aloneness

...no cool postmodern denial can displace the sense of being engaged in something real. (Kim Mahood, Dancing the Country)

Sometimes she hears footsteps on the stairs and goes out to see who it is. No one. Just her imagination. Or this old house creaking again. Shrinking in winter, expanding in summer, tearing out of its paint and plaster so Vincent has to fix it up once every six months. Being a landlord is no joke, I can tell you.

The voices at night are the hardest. Do they come from outside her window? Across the street? She stares out desperately, trying to make out the shadows under the lamp post.

Living alone has done so much for her. She is free. No hassle of another body in her living space. And yet... it would be OK if the phantoms had not moved in and decided to take abode. She hears them listening to her breathe. She catches them whisking by in the periphery. They are gone by the time she turns her head.

Aloneness has a peculiar music to it. It is like a night of sighs, a body just about to orgasm, but not quite getting there. It leaves her with a sense of magic, a sense of possibility wrapped up in her limbs. Her languorous limbs. Sometimes she wishes she could find a lover for a night. Not a one-night-stand. Nothing so sordid.

Instead, a mysterious stranger on the Champs Elysee who asks her out for coffee and takes her to St Germain du Pres to that special cafe of Sartre and de Beauvoir. There he will tell her stories about his life as a plastic surgeon and how he fell in love with an opera singer he met in Geneva who unbuttoned her blouse to reveal a deformed breast. He will tell her about losing his virginity to an older woman who came up to him and his beautiful blonde twin brother and said: "You are pretty, I like you both. I will take one of you on holiday. Decide between yourselves." They toss a coin and he wins. Three days of waiting for her to come to him, wondering...and she snaps at him: "Taking your time is all very well, but this is ridiculous. How long do you expect me to wait for you?" Trembling, he makes his way into her adjoining bedroom and they...

Heady with the stories and wine, they kiss. And for that brief moment, she wants him. But he vanishes. Another phantom in this old house.

A vague longing. A hazy memory. A body about to orgasm but not quite getting there.

Aloneness, they say, has a peculiar music to it.

But you have to give up your desperation for something real to hear it.