“Callisto”

Three minutes is an extraordinary amount of time. Think of it. All the things you have done in just three minutes. I once drank an entire bottle of tequila in three minutes; or once or twice or three times when I was twenty-four and lonely and living in an apartment filled with a dead woman’s laundry, I made myself finish in under three minutes. But I’ve learned to languish in things more now. 

Not that there isn’t a place for the three minutes or less bathroom stall. The french tech music pounding into the floors, the walls, the skin of the woman I am holding.

I look down at her now, and wonder if she might be an angel come to earth. The space between her legs tells me different. We smile at each other. “What’s your name?” She asks me. I laugh. Startled by her, her deep voice, her eyes that are looking at me like I’m something extraordinary her hands beneath the fabric of my dress.

“Astrid,” I say into her ear.

She kisses me again and beneath my closed eyelids I see the angel once more.

“I’m Camille.”

We wash our hands at the sink. Stealing glances in the mirror, we giggle at each other, at how many other women surround us, how unaware or uncaring they are. I get the urge to stick out my tongue at them all and do so before I’ve thought better of it.

In the mirror I am pale. Sweat-dampened hair and cheeks burning pink. I am a bore, I think. Pulling down the hem of my new purple dress that was once a piece of lingerie, but has now been worn to a charity event. 

“You’ve gone far away,” Camille says, she has grabbed my hand and is leading me through the bathroom doors. “You are very forward.” I yell over the music as it grows louder. We find our way up a busy flight of stairs. Dark and pounding like everything else. I steady myself against the cold brick wall, Camille leans in close and I wonder if she might be a vampire.

“Where do you go when you are not here?” She asks. I laugh, turning to place my forehead against the brick. “Sometimes I go to Greece.” I feel my lips splitting into a grin as she laughs at me.

“I can see you there.”

“Can you?”

“Do you come here often?”

I stick my finger at her chest, “You are a stranger, why should I tell you anything at all?”

She shrugs. “I do not mean to be rude.” She takes my hands and I watch our entwined fingers for a while, the singular ring on her thumb.

“We began in such a way,” she leans in close, “how will I continue to excite you now?”

“The night has just begun,” I shrug, she laughs again, a roar. Her head of pale gold curls thrown back. I fight the urge to reach out for one, to put my finger through a ringlet.

“Come,” I say, and she grabs a hold of my arm as she follows.

The dance floor is tight, humid, the lights flashing red. My heart begins to race. It’s difficult to feel real underneath it all.

I reach my hands for the sky, the disco ball spinning slowly in the shape of a skull. 

“This place is ridiculous,” I scream into her ear.

“I love it here,” She screams back. “Where are you from?”

I shake my head, “I will not tell you my secrets.”

Camille roars again, placing her hands on my shoulders. “Give me one to take with me.”

Our foreheads touch and I tell her, “I’m three blocks over.”

She nods ecstatically, a mischievous grin, a hunger there I can feel in my toes.

I turn my back to her. Take in the mass of limbs and moving parts, all in our own universes. We dance a while longer. Everytime I look back her eyes find mine, flashing green in the dark.

We spill out onto a street in Paris's Belleville district. The streetlights and tall, brightly colored buildings blind me. I take a few steps into the night and wonder what the lion-maned woman will think of who she has chosen the walk home with. When I find her face again she is smiling, baring all her teeth. I begin to walk, hoping like Orpheus hoped she is following behind me. But her fingers find mine, her hair brushes my arm, and I have taken the chance to reach out for her hair before I can help it, I tug gently.

“Should I tell you something now?” She asks as the street gets quieter. 

“It’s only fair.”

She gathers her thoughts. “I will tell you a rumor that was once told about me,” she decides. I am infatuated, but keep my eyes on the Seine as it begins to glitter alongside us. She takes a deep breath, “They used to say I set the old campus of my school on fire.”

“Did you?”

She tilts her head from side to side and does not answer. I step in front of her, unwilling to carry on until more is told. “The matchbook was mine, and I was of the last to leave the building.”

“Did you get in trouble?”

Camille spins me around, wrapping an arm casually around my shoulder. “Not quite. Do you believe in any god?”

It is my turn to tilt my head into a shoulder smelling of sweat and expensive citrus cologne. “I sometimes pray to the universe like a god of its own, or my great aunt Gloria.”

“And does she answer?”

I laugh. “Sometimes. But not with words, or signs when I’ve begged for them.” I search for the right words underneath the drunkenness. “There have been moments, very rare though, where I feel as if a presence is looking after me.” I look at her and she is nodding.

“I’ve felt something of the same, not your great aunt,” she smirks, “but a guiding hand. I do not listen to it often.”

“And end up in schools on fire?”

“End up living, truly. For no one but myself.”

“Is that not selfish?”

She shakes her head, “Ourselves are all we really get aren’t they?”

We turn down my street, and it is still alive even at three in the morning, a couple deeply wrapped in each other’s arms, a man sleeping on the ground, an empty guitar case open beside him, a window warmly lit on a woman dancing alone in her apartment.

“Who are you to say how life should or should not be lived?” I ask.

“No one. A woman in her twenties. Anyone looking to exist as fully as they can in a world so full of others.”

I unlock my gate. “Well that sounds lovely.”

“Does it? Or has my pretension bothered you already?”

“Only slightly.” 

She nods and grins at me, and in the shadow before my doorway, I wonder who I’m really allowing up the cluttered two flights of stairs I cannot fully claim as mine.

Camille tilts her head like a cat, questioning. I shake my head at her, and turn to unlock the white door, but her fingers are already around my waist.

“Can I ask you one thing more before this night ends in your bedroom?”

I turn to face her. “Of course.” My heart is thumping in my ears so horribly I wonder if she hears it, or sees it through the lace across my chest.

“Have you ever wanted to do something completely insane?”

I feel a smile creep across my lips. “Like what?”

“Would you trust me if I said I don’t think we should let this night end here?” My face feels hot and flushed and this woman is too beautiful to be here with me, and mostly I’m not sure. I haven’t let anyone up those stairs, I haven’t let anyone sleep over in any bedroom since my Junior year of college. But Camille reminds me of an angel or a lion and she is staring at me with parted lips. “Where will we go?”

I follow her as she walks away, back out the gate and down the street where the man still sleeps but the couple is gone and the dancing woman’s curtains are closed.

Camille pulls a flask from the pocket of her leather jacket and takes a swig before handing it to me. “Liquid courage,” she says. 

I take a small sip, and force back a cough on the black licorice burning down my throat. “Absinthe cannot be your drink of choice.”

She shrugs, holding up her hands nonchalantly.

“You are very strange,” I tell her.

“Let me tell you something true about me,” she says as we turn in from the river onto a busier street, the lights of the cars ground me. 

“Please,” I say.

“I’m an artist,” she says. I smile, hoping she will continue. “When I was a kid, I used to graffiti everything in sight.”

I laugh, and watch our reflections in the shop windows of all the dark vintage shops and boutiques, our faces lit up by the yellow streetlights.

“Did you get in trouble often?” I ask and she nods adamantly. 

“I did not set fire to any schools, but I did get expelled from two.”

“What is the best thing you ever vandalized then?” I ask. She chuckles, and thinks for a moment, directing us across another street.

“My mother’s car.”

I hit her arm, “Why?” 

“I don’t really remember, but you can be sure we were in an argument of some kind.”

“How old were you?”

“Fourteen.” She shakes her head of white curls. “You tell me something now.” As I look around us I am ashamed at how quickly I have become unfamiliar here. “I came to Paris almost a year ago, and although we cannot be very far from the apartment, I’ve never walked down this street,” I stop and examine our reflections again in the window of a used bookstore. “It’s a shame, I think I would love this place, I can smell those books from here.” I point to a shelf overwhelmed by thick-spined books all painted black by the hour.

“We will go there.” Camille says, gently dragging me onward. “When the lights are on, I think you’d have a good reading voice.”

I wonder if my face will hurt from all this smiling when the sun comes up. “You haven’t told me what kind of artist you are.”

“The same. Although I’m paid for it now.” She takes my hand and leads me into a neighborhood park. The trees are old and leaning in toward a dusty path, benches lining either side. The streetlights don’t reach here, I am left to trust the moonlight and her warm hand in mine. 

“Where are you taking me?” I ask, tugging her back a step. 

“Are you afraid?”

“No, I’m very hopeful you are not about to make me a crime scene.” 

She pulls me close, and presses her forehead against mine. “That is not my intention.” She kisses me, and I feel as though I’ve swallowed goldfish and my belly is their perfect pond. I wonder who this woman is in the daylight. I wonder who this woman is alone. What her darkest secrets are. Does she sleep with a nightlight still? Does she watch television surrounded by dust and unfinished tasks? How does she like her coffee or eggs or girlfriends?

“Give me a hint,” I say between her kisses.

I watch her think, light eyes tilted upwards. “Do you know who Diana is?”

It is my turn to think, “The god?”

“She’s in town. We’re going to visit her.” Camille walks ahead, and reaches back to me, her hand upturned and waiting like a magician. I find myself reaching back before my brain and my heart get the better of me. I ought to see this through to the end.

“I’ve never done anything like this before.” I find myself saying. My heart has begun to thump in my ears. 

“Really?” She takes another swig from her flask, I hold out my hand for it, and she smiles at me. “Walked through a park with some pretty stranger?”

“No,” I say. “I haven’t gone on a date in months. Is that embarrassing to say?”

“Not at all.” She puts the flask back into the pocket of her jacket, there is something else there, I wonder if it’s a hair accessory. “If it makes you feel any better, I’m the same. Well no dates or anything fancy like that.”

“Wonderful.” I say. “Have you brought along other girls to do something insane?” 

She frowns at me, and is quiet for a moment too long before she says, “I’ve never brought anyone along for this. Don’t worry, I think you are–” she laughs, in a way I think is mostly toward herself, “Very alluring.” She grins, “That is the only thing I can think.”

I smile, the exit of the park and its streetlights greet us.

This street is much busier, I breathe in a deep city breath, “I’ve been here before.” It is lovely. Alive and vibrant and drenched in cigarette smoke, there are people everywhere, in all shapes and forms of clothing you can imagine. But now more than anything. I am noticing the walls, and the way they are covered in street art.

“Is any of your work here?”

She looks shocked, the coolness of her melting away for a moment, and her cheeks turning pink, like a painting.

“I suppose there is some, yes.” She puts her face in her palm. “You are–” she shakes her head. “I will show you.”

The piece is above a restaurant serving late night cocktails and I wonder what Camille stood on to reach there, a ladder, a cherry picker? I picture her in a harness lowering herself down, working on the arm or the leg of the feminine silhouette, the glossy eyes, and dark, dark lips.

“Who is she?” I ask. Stunned by her, and perhaps jealous as the painted woman gazes down at all of us mortal fools below, her chin up, a ruler of this nocturnal Belleville street.

“I don’t know. A dream.” I feel warm fingers on my wrist. “She looks a bit like you.”

I feel so warm I cannot stand it, flustered I turn away but only for a moment before those eyes draw me back again, a silent siren song.

“We are very close now.” She says drawing me on, picking up her pace until we are running, this small and alive corner of Paris rushing by us in a stream of colors, shadows, streetlights. I let it take me in. 

There is a courtyard, leading to a tall white building. Camille spins me quickly, before pushing me back against an old and thick-trunked tree. I look around at the building, how it looms.

“A museum.” I say, through labored breaths.

Her arms envelop me as she leans her forehead against mine again, for a moment the only sound is our shared breaths, crisp in the air of early Spring.

“The Pavillon Carré de Baudouin,” she whispers. “The temporary home of two women forever reaching for each other.”

“What do you mean?” I ask, as I desperately search for the meaning in any of this.

“Astrid,” she says my name slowly. “Have you ever stolen anything?”

I laugh almost silently, “What are you asking of me?”

“To let go of all the rules until daylight.”

I have let a mad woman lead me into a trap. I lean back against the tree, letting my eyes close as a wave of anxiety barrels down on me.

I feel Camille’s hand brush my cheek. “Do not be afraid,” she whispers, her lips grazing my ear. “I won’t let any harm come to you. Trust me.” She takes my hands, “Just follow me.”

Against my better judgment, I do.

Her hand doesn’t leave mine as we circle the museum, it is dark and cold and so very quiet. She leads me to a window at the side, peeks in, hands cupped around her eyes. 

“All clear.” 

She grins, sliding on black gloves that were not in her hands moments before. She removes the other thing I noticed from her inside pocket, handing the flask to me, and with all her force stabs the tool into the window. “Look away,” she says as the glass shatters.

What follows feels far more dream than reality. The museum comes alive with the sounds of a symphony as Camille lifts me through the window. For a moment my feet linger just above the floor and she looks at me and there is so much in that look I think I’d follow her anywhere. Silly.

We run from room to room ecstatic and alive, everything is spinning. We slow down at every painting, every little piece of someone’s history we are examining.

Here in this moment everything is possible, and I reach out, slide my fingers along an ornate frame and then the painting within it, the little boats and line of the ocean, the grass on a cliff that must exist somewhere. 

“There is so much I will never see,” I say, my voice coming away thick like a fog.

“Do not say that,” she says, shaking her head and taking my face in her gloved palms.

We walk on, holding hands in the red glow slowly pulsing against every wall. 

“Tell me a dream of yours,” she says, as we dash up a flight of ornate steps. 

“I don’t know,” I laugh. “They all feel so childish now.”

“Tell me.”

All the guards are down anyway, whether from drink or lust or hope that I will somehow, impossibly keep this woman’s interest. I feel so strongly for this stranger. I tell her;

“I wanted to be everything. Firefighter. Dancer. Jazz musician. Writer. Explorer, perhaps most of all. To only be one thing for all of it—I couldn’t. But now I’ve—I think it’s too late for me to become anything at all. I don’t know where that puts me. I don’t even have a place to call my own.”

She raises her eyebrow, awaiting an answer.

“My great aunt died months ago, I was supposed to be cleaning out her place but I just stayed. Like a parasite. I’m no one.”

“Here,” she says with all the gentleness. “Come.” 

The painting is not as big as I’d imagined it, but when we enter the room both of us go straight for it, moths to a light.

As I take it in, all its lovely ageless colors, something heavy and dreading coils in my stomach.

Because these women do not reach, full of love and longing for one another, Diana is pointing and I remember this story and how it ends. A warning. A prophecy. The torture that becomes of being snake-charmed by a god.

Camille pulls me farther, so I am level with the poor young woman about to be struck down, the cherubs watching from the clouds.

She takes the painting from the wall. I gasp, pull away as she sits down, legs crossed on the floor and expertly cuts through the frame, gently releasing the artwork from its protective walls.

“You’re really a thief?” I whisper, as the sounds of the alarm wash over me.

She shrugs, holding the delicate paper out to me as if it is nothing.

“Among other things.”  

“And now I am–”

“An accomplice, among all the other things I’ve yet to discover about you,” she does not say this unkindly, still holding the painting out to me. I take it tenderly, fingers only touching what they must.

“What have I done?” I ask more to the room than the woman before me, but I am laughing already. “You are insane!” 

She gets to her feet. “And you?” She circles me. “What is sane in following dark and handsome strangers into the dark?”

“What will we do now?” I ask. 

“Whatever you like,” she grins. “I believe we have about three minutes.”

“I don’t understand.”

She is behind me, her hands on my shoulders, we look at the painting together. “I am no one, just like you. Nothing. But I’m something different everyday,” She whispers, “I could teach you.”

I can feel all the blood rushing, my heart is pounding, I am dizzy, drunk, I am Astrid, Astrid.

“Astrid,” she says. I turn and what she finds on my face shocks her, I step back, almost tripping on the broken frame. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

My smile turns into a laugh, wild and unlike myself, but who am I anyways?

I look down at the two women painted forever in this moment of before, the poor maiden never to know her fate, it’s too cruel, her head turned away in anguish. I cannot bear it.

I rip the painting in half. 

Camille gasps, but then she is laughing with me, and as I grow silent, a perhaps maniacal grin on my face, she says, “You glow.”

Before I can reply, a siren cuts through all else.

She reaches for me I think, but then the painting torn in half, two women now forever separated, is taken and she is going to the window. Doors somewhere are opening and someone, more than one someone’s footsteps echo throughout the museum. She says something, but there is so much noise and she turns away and punches, and another window is shattered but this is the second story. 

Her hand is open again, for me. Reaching for me.

“Camille–” I scream. 

Her hair is wild as a lion’s mane, and there is no fear there, not for anything. I run toward that hand. 

There is a light so blinding, all I can see is the contrast she is. A dark figure in the night, as she disappears from the window.

I will never know if she looked back.

In between are handcuffs, the caged backseat of a police vehicle, a holding cell, a phone call to my last girlfriend who lives in London and does not answer. When I tell the police officers all I know is her name was Camille, they tell me that is not her name.

At eight in the morning the bars creak open. The police officer who has handed me two paper cups of coffee has the audacity to smile at me when he tells me I’m free. I do not question him.

The woman who checks me out like it's a doctor’s office hands me my wallet, and a leather jacket I don’t recognize. Until I do.

The inner pocket holds a slip of paper with an address scribbled in red ink. 

In the reflection from the windows of the police station I wipe mascara from my eyes.

At the cafe I order five pain au chocolats and smile brightly, unbrushed teeth and all, as the waiter asks if he has heard me correctly.

We sit outside and although the wind bites my face and legs I am warm inside the leather jacket.

She wears all white, her curling hair still damp from a shower, and I think of white flags waving in surrender. What does she think of me in the daylight? What do I think of her?

Across the table she slides half of the painting, the mortal woman held within the gaze of a god. I fold it, and tuck it into my new jacket pocket. 

We are staring at each other, and I wonder who this woman is closest to, if that person could someday be me, if getting closer to her will one day be my downfall. If she is magic, the devil, a spirit, a god, a girl I could love. She opens her mouth but there are no words, she smiles, shakes her head, about to begin again.

I beat her to it.