Fourteen years ago in Paris, ten year old Carla was still in school. One day, sitting in the classroom with four boys and two other girls, on a round table, they all decided to play a game, to entertain themselves in the last fifteen minutes of class. The game was simple: with a dictionary placed in front of each of them, everyone should leave their book open on any page of a letter section, the first letter of their secret lover’s name. Carla’s anxiety didn’t allow her to look up from the dictionary, which she has now turned from cover to cover six times already. Hesitant about whether she should leave the book open on the M’, she raised her head, flipping her golden blonde ponytail left and right and tried to look from the corner of her wide blue eyes at Martin’s dictionary. When she was finally able to spot a word on the page he has opened, she read: “Jardin”, garden. Her doubts were in place, Martin chose Julie over her. She looked back to her dictionary and flipped the pages randomly, leaving it open on the O’s. When they were all ready, they turned their heads from their books and started exploring what the others have chosen. Julie and Martin exchanged smiles, their attraction was clearly mutual.
Carla looked around, trying to spot a C on any of the other boys’ books. None had chosen her and she felt embarrassed. Julie and Martin held hands and Carla couldn’t take it. She wanted to cry. She looked at the clock and it seemed like it had frozen on fourteen past. She still had to survive fourteen more minutes faking laughter and smiles, wearing a mask of duplicity. Eventually, the bell rang. Carla rushed out of the classroom, without even fetching her bag. She ran to the bathroom and locked herself in a cubical, and started talking herself out of her melancholy. She took a few deep breathe and when she felt ready, she opened the door and went back out to join her friends, who had been waiting in the corridor. No one noticed her coming and all eyes were on the new couple. She asked about her bag, but no one seemed to have heard her. Her voice was invisible and all she could hear was Julie’s giggles. Carla started feeling the tears coming out from the back of her eyes into her lower lids and finding their way to her cheeks. This was it; she couldn’t hold it anymore so she burst into tears. Every tear liberated jumped out with such intensity; they were true tears fuelled by hatred, jealousy and envy. At this moment, all heads turn to her. Her tears started decelerating and for some reason, Carla didn’t feel the desire to cry anymore. She wanted the spotlight and now she had gotten it, her motive had vanished. Once again, she found herself wearing the evil mask of duplicity, but this time, she was smiling inside.
Her obsession with Julie led her to believing that the path towards being the person she wanted to become was through imitating all aspects of Julie’s personality, looks and attitude. She wasted a year of her life doing precisely that, with absolutely no success. Julie’s transfer to another school was with no doubt an abrupt turning point in Carla’s life. Her only grip vanished and she no longer knew how to survive. A year of depression went by then the following year, she began to build her new strategy on how she was going to present herself: young Carla built a clear image of how she wanted to be perceived, an image that was so detailed from the outside, yet completely blank from the inside. This girl she became seemed so strong, so confident and had absolutely no need for others. Surprisingly, the apparent aspect of this personality, which she built so early in her life, remained with her till the present day.
Carla was fourteen when she wrote her first piece of work. At that time, Carla had become the class star and was the source of counselling to most of her friends. The idea of writing a teen-guide for relationship advices came to her on a weekend, as a joke dedicated to her best friend. She sat on the computer, opened a blank Word document and without the least effort, typed an entire guide, with all the advices she had in mind. Before she went to bed, the guide was ready and printed and the next morning it was in the hands of her best friend. For Carla, it was nothing to be proud of, a silky joke, but when other girls started asking her for copies and talking about how they loved it, Carla became aware of her potential.
During her final year of high school, Carla was struck by the desire to fall in love. She always had a crush on one of the older guys at school so she decided to give it some attention. She told her friends about the boy to make the feeling more concrete and she started building her emotions. One day at school, sitting in class, daydreaming about her “lover”, she decided to slip him a note in his locker. She tore a piece of paper and started writing. When the bell rang, she was still too focused on the note that she didn't realize her friend standing by the desk, reading what she had wrote.
‘What is that?’ Her friend asked, still trying to read.
‘It's nothing!’ She hid it quickly in her notebook. She realized that the idea was silly and that she wouldn't get the courage to slip him the note. A few days later, she was sitting with her friends by the football court, watching the boy play. She thought she saw him look at her, and that made her heart jump. When she got home that day, she felt the need to write about the incident, so she did. When she was done, she placed the paper in an envelope and hid it in her drawer. More incidents led to more letters. Letter after letter, it turned into a game which she loved. As the months passed, the pile of letters grew taller.
She never thought about reading them and had not planned what to do with them. On the last day of school, she woke up realizing she actually had no interest in the boy, yet she wanted her letters to be read, so just a few days before her departure for college, she placed her treasure in a package and sent it off to the boy's address.
The idea of writing an actual novel came to her during her first year of college. She didn’t have any specific plot in mind, but she knew as soon as she would decide to start, she wouldn’t have trouble finding words. After three years of art studies in Italy, Twenty one year old Carla moved to London and started writing her first novel: Life is the Novel.
Sawyer was Carla’s editor. A month after their first meeting, when she had come with her novel to see if he was interested in editing it, they started dating. Their chemistry was evident and they were both similarly fond of one another. Their lifestyle fit well, as they were both leading similar lives where their art was their priority. They didn't have space for a normal relationship, as they were both unwilling to compromise. Their relationship did not involve a lot of conversations, rather speeches. There was always a talker and a listening, no interaction. She would watch him, how he acted in every situation, how he was around his friends, how he was at work... She found his life dramatically beautiful, worth telling, and she was excited to be part of it. At the same time, he saw her as a perfect fit, a completion to the image he had of his life. When he found out that Carla was also a painter, and that he was the only one who knew about her novel, he automatically concluded that she was the worthy witness, the analyst that will watch his life with an artistic eye. She found in him the artist she wanted to be, and she became his ultimate muse.
To everyone else she knew, Carla was a painter. No one knew yet about her writing and that’s how she wanted it to be. She loved painting too, but for her it was just a temporary mask to hide her real passion from people. The reason why she hid it was simple, she thought to herself: ‘People act. Whenever anyone’s around, people are conditioned to act: fake, lie, show what they want to show and hide everything else. This act becomes even stronger when a person knows he’s being evaluated and examined, and that’s what I do, as a writer.’ She always wants her “subjects” to be as comfortable as possible so that the degree of act comes to the least and thus her job becomes easier. Although he knew about her writing, Sawyer remained her main “subject” for a while. His reactions, even to the slightest, smallest, most insignificant events, were impressive, artistic and exaggerated. Carla remembers the day Sawyer found out his dad had passed away, four months after they started dating. They were in his living room, and he was sitting next to her with his laptop on his lap when he got the phone call from his mother. He hung up and without saying a word, threw the laptop on the floor, smashing it in pieces, threw himself on his knees with his hands on his face, crying his heart out. Carla watched him motionless. He didn't give her space for anything to do but to observe. ‘If I had a camera, this would have been a fucking good scene!’ she thought to herself. What was even more interesting to Carla was that Sawyer didn't even realise it: He wasn't acting in the sense of being fake, it was who he were, who he became. He wanted his life to be dramatic and he made it this way, unconsciously. Carla never tried to see behind the act, because he wasn't a normal subject whom she evaluated; what interested her was the act itself, watching it and being part of it.
Two months after this incident, Sawyer got a phone call from a famous playwright in Scotland, asking him to come work with him on a new adaptation of Romeo and Juliet. Sawyer was exceptionally excited; working with this playwright was a dream come true , so without giving it any thought, he took a leave from work and flew to Scotland. For two weeks, Carla didn't know anything about him. His phone was off and he hadn't called or texted since he had left. She wasn’t really bothered. After all, her life was not affected by his departure as she was very busy with moving her things into a new studio which she had just started renting for her painting’s receptions and shows. One day, she received a package from Sawyer: It had a one way plane ticket to Scotland and an invitation to the opening of the play, which was scheduled on the weekend, three days later.
Carla left to Scotland the next morning. She got to there and realised she didn't have a number to call him on, so she checked-in a hotel near the theatre, where she stayed for a couple of days. The day of the play, she got to the theatre early and seated herself in the middle, at the centre of the hall. A lot of people showed up and soon enough the auditorium was full. She started looking around her, looking for him, and she assumed he would be seated in the first row with the writer and the directors. The play commenced and at her surprise, he was the lead actor. Carla couldn't help but laugh out loud, thinking, ‘finally, he got a real audience for his act.’
The play was wonderful and his acting was remarkable. She watched him closely, playing the role so well, swallowed by the character and suddenly, she felt estranged. Who was that man standing before her? Did she know anything about him? Here he was, playing a role of an imaginary character and if he were to walk out of the play and live off with the same act, it wouldn't seem unnatural, it would still be him, the “him” she knew, an actor. As the lights dimmed on stage, Sawyer's body shone under the spotlight, and Carla felt as though time had stopped. She could suddenly see him, as a whole, see what they've been through, what he's been through and how their life is going to be. She wouldn't be able to make it, she would either hate him or fall deeply in love with him. The background music started and her thoughts become more and more intense; the idea of leaving him became inevitable.
Suddenly, Sawyer looked up to the audience, then straight to Carla, locating her effortlessly. He looked her straight in the eyes.
‘It is my lady; O, it is my love!
O that she knew she were!
She speaks, yet she says nothing. What of that?
Her eye discourses; I will answer it.
I am too bold; 'tis not to me she speaks.
Two of the fairest stars in all the heaven…’
It was the last scene of the play and when the lights dimmed completely, he disappeared. Carla was expressionless. What happened next? Nothing, they never talked about it. She came back to London the next day while he had to stay for another two weeks. However, he returned only a week later, with a broken leg which he had injured after falling off the stage during a rehearsal.
Everything was different. Carla was cold, emotionless and he didn't know why. She temporarily moved in with him to help with his recovery and three weeks later, when he had started to walk without the clutches, she told him she didn't love him and ended it. Carla erased the relationship from her life in a second, getting back to her studio and her paintings, burying herself in work.
On the next weekend, she called her friend Ben and told him to come see her in the studio. They drank whine and smoked up the whole night sitting on the floor on fluffy white pillows, watching “Charlie and the chocolate factory” on the big projector screen. It was about 3 am in the morning when her doorbell rang. She got up, wearing only her panties and a huge white T-shirt, with her blonde curly hair tied up in a knot.
‘Who is it?’ she asked.
‘It's Sawyer, open up.’
She opened the door.
‘Can I come in?’ he asked, looking into her studio at the projector screen.
‘I have a friend over. Do you mind going to the roof?’
Without a word, he turned towards the elevator and pressed the button. He was holding a stick and she could see that his leg was still weak. She followed him out and left her flat door open. They got in the lift in silence and when they reached the top floor, she pushed the lift door open and kept it till he was out.
‘I wasn't going to come, but I am here and I won't leave until you tell me you don't love me’ he finally said.
‘Sawyer, I already did’ she replied hesitantly.
‘No, say it! Say you don't love me for real!’ he shouted.
‘I don't love you.’
‘Say it!’
‘I don't love you!’ she repeated.
He stood motionless and she didn't know what to do. ‘I'm so sorry’ is all she could say. He turned around and started walking towards the lift, bending on his stick. She walked after him and she stood behind him while he was pressing the lift button.
She felt sorry for him so she stood in front of his face: ‘Talk to me! Please, I...’
He interrupted her crying ‘Fuck! Where is the fucking lift?’ punching the door several times.
‘Sawyer stop this! This is insane!’ she shouted.
‘Shut up!’ he yelled.
He pushed her out of the way and holding the stick with his left hand, he held the staircase and started going down the stairs. Carla stood motionless and all she could get herself to do was keep still and listen to the sound of the stick, hitting every step as he goes down. That was the end of their relationship. After their breakup, she told him she wanted to get done with the novel and get it published or she would go see someone else. Sawyer knew that the pleasure he got, knowing that she needed him as an editor was the only way to conceal his sorrow from leaving him.
For a month, Sawyer had been making excuses, challenging her determination to get her book published. Every visit, she would walk into his office with a new version of her book after changing insignificant details which he intentionally pointed out just to delay the publishing. That was the hardest thing he had to do: find mistakes or things he could ask to be changed. Carla had had enough.
One day, Carla decided to end it all. She arrived to his office and his secretary was out of her desk so she opened the door and rushed into his office. She found him with a woman, on his desk, dealing with what she wouldn’t call business. She stood still, watching the women buttoning her blouse in a rush and running out of the office. The silence persisted for another few seconds then without sharing any kind of reaction, she took a seat and threw the sack of papers she has been carrying around almost everywhere for the past few months. Carla explained that she had reached her final limit. Her patience had concluded and she was no longer going to change anything. She left the office, headed to the tube station and decided to go home and rest.
On the train, sitting on the deck, watching the people get in and out, she realized she felt different. Suddenly, she stood up and started looking for her book, until she realised she had left it with Sawyer. She sat back down feeling lost. Carla felt like her inspiration and love to life has suddenly disappeared, has taken a break from her. She started to wonder what writing was to her, whether it was a desire, a yearning she had -as she had always though- or something more. Slowly she realized the truth: For her, writing was a need; Carla wrote to survive. She became conscious of how dependent she was, how vulnerable that could make her, and the fear born just by considering this idea caused her heart to skip a beat.
She reached home. Sitting in her empty flat, Carla was all alone. Her phone kept ringing. It was Ben. She didn’t want to see him or anyone at all. Her life never revolved around people because to her, meeting people never seemed to fall under a social purpose.
‘People are books,’ she would say, ‘at first glance all they are is a title (name, position, authority…) combined with a situation, an act they choose to present themselves with, to form a first impression, like a summary or an extract on a book cover. Some people are transparent, easily read and predicted: these are the ones that can take some of my time on a bus or on the train. The second category is the one I choose to study, where the people hold a real story, a vision. The more one studies people, the more effective he becomes in categorizing them and differentiating between the real materials and the third and final category, people I call “empty. I personally enjoy fast reading some of these people, watching those giving misleading titles, trying to appear remarkable and profound, putting all their effort into developing an impression that seems pathetically artificial. I personally give them some credit; they’re the kind who are smart enough to grasp one’s attention, but aren’t smart enough to keep it.’ Indeed, people were only among her material, the material she uses to expand her thoughts and develop her ideas.
Her phone was still ringing: Ben was still calling and has been for the past two days. Who was Ben? The best way to comprehend this unusual relationship is to explain who Carla was to Ben: She was simply everything: his idol, his best friends and of course his love. Who was Ben? He was nothing. Carla’s life consisted of jumping from a muse to another, finding a different muse to leech after exhausting her initial one. She moved from place to place, met new people every day forgetting about whom she had met before, changed her style, her attitude, her routine. She had pushed away so many people in the past; she had shut them all down, forgotten about them. At every early stage of her life, Carla had managed to free herself from all the human emotions she thought made her weak. She believed that to accomplish herself, she couldn't leave any space for care towards other people, since this feeling would come in her way. If she had allowed herself to care about anything or anyone, she wouldn't have the freedom to simply leave, to let go of people and places without the slightest attachment. She had been described at heartless, ruthless, and selfish and she knew she were. As strong as it made her feel, she was sure that this lack of emotions would affect her ability to write about them, and so when she met Ben, she tried to regain these emotions through him, the emotions of compassion, sympathy, care... It was hard for her at first to force herself to listen to him talk about his problems which she found insignificant and immature. Then she let the natural course of emotional development take place: the more he talked, the more she cared about him. ‘You are a good person, Carla’, he once said, and that was the first time anyone had said that to her. Even though she knew he was wrong, she liked hearing it. It inspired her ability to write about love, loyalty, friendship…
Soaked in the silence, hearing her own thoughts, Carla finally decided to answer her phone. ‘I long for the day when you start answering me before making me feel like a beggar,’ he said in apparent frustration. As always, she gave him an excuse, another lie she added on the pile of excuses she had used before. This pile of lies is the only string that holds this relationship, even though Ben knows the real truth as he uses them to console his pride. He never liked to argue with her because every time he did, she would win. Anything she said seemed convincing and made his arguments seem absurd, so he simply avoided another war he knew he was going to lose.
He had offered to help her with everything for her reception: preparing the studio’s light and music and arranging the paintings; but since the preparation had started, she always seemed to have everything done already. Every time he offered to help, her tone seemed ambiguous: Ben could not understand whether she was avoiding him or was she simply done for real. He wanted to see her and had hoped to be with her all the week. She told him she had to go so he wished her luck and hung up.
The day of the reception finally came. Carla woke up at eight, showered then started getting ready. She wore her blue jeans, a plain white shirt, threw a pink scarf around her neck, and jumped in her brown boots where she tucked in the bottom of her jeans. She opened her closet and picked the largest handbag she could find, where she would put all the things she needed for the night. Carla filled the bag: She folded in her outfit, put her makeup, her laptop, the CD’s along with a collection of other random things she thought she might need. Holding the bag in one hand and her coat in the other, she headed out.
The studio wasn’t far away and since it wasn’t a busy day, it only took her about fifteen minutes to get there. After she parked the car, she got her bag out, locked the car and gave it along with her keys to the porter. She did that every time she would come to the studio, always let the porter take her things to the studio while she gets her coffee. She would always ask the porter to open all the windows and leave the door open to let fresh air fill the flat, so that it looked alive when she came in.
She went to the shop just opposite the studio and ordered her regular cappuccino double with no cream and no sugar. She wasn’t in a rush. She was actually really early so she decided to have her coffee in the shop. She went outside and lit a cigarette. She looked up to the sky and noticed that there were hardly any clouds.
‘It looks like it’s going to be a good day’ said the waiter who was also outside, smoking.
‘I rarely see the sky so blue, here in London’ she said calmly, still staring at the sky.
‘You’re not from here?’ he asked ‘I always thought you looked Spanish or Polish, but since you are always brief every time you come, I never get to spot your accent.’
‘I’m French actually’ she paused to take a drag from her cigarette then continued, ‘I moved to London a while ago, after college. ‘
The platitude of the conversation didn’t bother her to the least, it actually pleased her. She had noticed this waiter many times and knew he was fond of her. After smoking her second cigarette she excused herself politely and headed to the studio. She asked the porter to not let anyone know she was here yet, especially Ben. She needed to be relaxed and knew that anyone would eventually distract her. She got in the studio, which looked exceptionally bright and calm, and locked the door behind her. She got the CD’s out of her bag which the porter had left on the table by the entry. She then headed to the stereo and played one of the tracks she had chosen for the show, to set the mood.
Observing the room she noticed that most of the paintings were already in place and that all she had to do was to wait for some missing frames. The lights had already been placed and tried two days ago. She took her phone and made a few calls to check on the sound system and know when the workers would arrive. When she hung up, she realized she didn’t need to be in the studio yet, that she could have come three hours before the show and everything would have been ready. Yet, she was glad to be there. She loved the studio, it was actually the only place where she could write. Buried under her paintings, she felt like she could create her own world. Just walking in the studio, observing her paintings, listening to the tracks, nostalgia took over her and she realized she longed for that world of fantasy more than anything, she longed for a pen and a paper, for a story. The world she always found in her studio was now shut and until she finds another story to tell, she couldn’t do anything about it.
The love to writing could be explained in million different ways, but in Carla’s case, the explanation was much more complex: Carla was writing’s mistress: She thought about It almost all the time and she was only aloud to meet It secretly in her studio where they spent endless nights, where she found true happiness. Writing was indeed her secret lover, the one she would unquestionably choose over anything else, to whom she would give all her life without expecting anything in return. It was “real love” in all its implications.
One hour before the show, the studio was full with workers. While the instalments were coming to an end, Carla got in the small rest room to change. She got ready and opened the door to find that everyone had left. She stood still, facing the tall mirror, hanging on the opposite wall. She was indeed beautiful: her long auburn dress underlined her curves with such a delicate manner, perfecting her body shape which now seemed taller and slimmer after she has put on the heels. Her blonde hair was tied up loosely allowing a few strands to escape the hair band and fall freely to the back, her makeup was simple and elegant, and the blue stone earing she was wearing shone with her beautiful wide blue eyes…
Suddenly, interrupting the peace which had filled the room, Carla’s phone rang. It was an unknown number. She answered.
‘Is this Carla?’ a women asked, with a trembling voice.
It was Sawyer’s sister. She was crying and was hardly making any sense. Carla attempted to filter through the cries and finally heard: ‘He is not going to make it.’
Sawyer had fell off his balcony and was rushed to a hospital. Wearing her auburn dress and high-heel shoes, Carla ran outside the studio, leaving everything behind.