Frozen Butterflies Read online

  “There’s this nice café I discovered yesterday,” I said. “It’s close to here. Just two or three blocks.”

  When we arrived at the café, we ordered two small coffees, and I suggested we go upstairs. He followed me and was as surprised as I had been the day before.

  “Isn’t this something?” I asked.

  “Very. I’ve walked by this place a thousand times, but never stopped. To be honest, from the outside, this place is not that inviting.”

  “I know.”

  “Why did you want to have coffee with me?” he suddenly asked.

  “Why not?”

  “I feel there’s something you want to ask me. Am I right?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “I’m curious about your art, what you do.”

  “Why?”

  I thought about mentioning Andrew, his journal, the posts, but I didn’t know the stranger, had too many questions in my head, and felt like I just wanted to discover my coincidence slowly, without rushing it.

  “What do you want to know?” he asked.

  Somehow I had to convince him to share something.

  “What does it mean to be a graphic novelist? How different do you think graphic novels are from regular, words-only novels?”

  He smiled.

  “The stories are built mostly through drawings, and the dialogues cannot be as developed as they would be in a regular novel. You need to be concise, choose the words and interactions carefully. Words play a part, but they don’t carry the story. The drawings do. They hold the story together. Imagine something like . . . close to . . . silent movies. The short dialogues are only there to fill in the gaps left by the drawings. And there shouldn’t be too many. You have to show, draw what’s happening.”

  He sipped his coffee, and then added, “I do think, though, that a good novel is also visual. It just draws the pictures with words.”

  I had never thought about it that way, but the stranger was right.

  “I’d love to read your novels,” I said.

  He smiled.

  We chatted more, exchanged contact information, and agreed to meet again. When I returned home, it was only nine, so I called Nick.

  “You’re never going to believe who I met at my favorite bookstore today?”

  “Who did you meet?”

  “Guess.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “A graphic novelist.”

  “Andrew?”

  “That would be crazy. No. Not Andrew. His name’s Matt. He’s published a few graphic novels. We talked about that, and he helped me pick one that I can’t wait to read.”

  “What about the ones we bought yesterday?”

  “They’re nice. But this one seems more like me.”

  “Well, then great.”

  I waited for him to say something. He seemed to be distracted.

  “By the way, I’ve finished working on parts of the July 15 pages,” he then said. “I’ll send you an email with the text soon. I just need a few minutes to review what I wrote.”

  “OK,” I said, and felt I should let him go.

  “Talk to you later, or tomorrow?”

  Yes, he definitely wanted to go.

  “If I don’t hear from you by eleven, I’ll post the piece and go to bed. I wasn’t able to sleep last night and I’m tired.”

  He sounded sad. But maybe he was just tired, as he said. I agreed to talk to him the next day, and after a short while, he sent me an email with the text of our next piece attached. Andrew’s words drew the story beautifully. I thought Matt would like that:

  I went out last night. Joe and Ed wanted to take me to a bar and introduce me to a woman they both knew. I told them I wasn’t interested. You know I hate arranged dates. But they pushed and I didn’t want to fight, so I decided to go, but I told myself I’d stay just an hour or so. Getting ready for the night was hard, and comparing that arranged date to our first date was painful. I hated myself for agreeing to go, and I hated every minute of it. She was blond, buxom, and loud. Her laughs were so loud I could barely stand them or the sound of her voice. Even her demeanor was loud. I tried to focus on my friends and talk to them, I tried to think that, after all, it was an opportunity for the three of us to be together. But she dominated and controlled the conversations, and Joe and Ed let her do so. I was disgusted. I Could not understand what I was doing there. I asked them to excuse me. I said I had to make a phone call, left, and never went back. Perhaps I should have tried to make up a better excuse, but I couldn’t wait any longer, I needed to leave. You said I couldn’t cry. Apparently, I can. But I’m not sure why I did it. I wasn’t sad. I was just angry at myself for a long list of reasons. And then I stopped at a bar where I knew I could find someone to have sex with, and I did. I chose a woman with no face, I asked her not to say a word, just to fuck me, and so she did. I paid her and left. I don’t know which of the two things was more painful. Paying for sex or meeting a woman on an arranged date. I had never done either of those things before, and I’m wondering whether this will be my life from now on. I feel trapped in a labyrinth, Emily, and it’s a dark one. I know you still love me. You can’t let this happen.

  The passage was powerful, and yet it didn’t do to me what the other passages had done, the ones Nick and I had read together, talked about. Was Nick part of Andrew’s story for me? Of its intensity? Did I need him to understand what I was reading, Andrew’s feelings, mine as I was reading? Whatever the answers to my questions were, at about midnight I jumped into a taxi and went to Nick’s. I didn’t think it through. What if he was sleeping? He said he was tired. What if he wasn’t there? I needed to see him.

  Once I got there, I saw the light of his desk lamp from the street. I pushed the intercom button and waited. He must be there, I thought. But I got no answer. And so I called him on his cellphone.

  “Nick. It’s me. I’m downstairs. Can you open the door?”

  “Susan?”

  “Yes.”

  “What are you doing here? It’s not a good time.”

  “Why not?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Are you with someone?”

  He remained silent. I should have left.

  “Are you with a woman, Nick?”

  “Yeah. I am,” he said. “Sorry.”

  I felt sick. I didn’t add a word, and I left.

  When I returned home, I poured some wine and grabbed a bag of popcorn. I had not sealed the popcorn properly while it cooked, and now it was too chewy and tasted of plastic. I tried to pull a blanket over myself but I lost balance, and the popcorn spilled on the floor. I thought about cleaning the mess, fixing myself a sandwich or something. But I didn’t clean or make that sandwich. I wasn’t hungry or thirsty. Just miserable. I started watching an old movie in black and white. The movie was fun. I cried.

  Day Six

  I woke up to a rainy Friday morning. I had fallen asleep on the sofa, and the first thing I saw when I opened my eyes was my empty glass and the popcorn on the floor. And then I thought about Nick and the night before and felt sick to my stomach and hopeless. I looked for hope, but the things that could offer some were not there. Or I couldn’t see them. Except for the rain. I opened the window wide and went back to the sofa to watch the rain and the green coming back to life through its drops. I felt shivers. Somehow the green and the trees in the rain had always had that effect on me. Yes, there was hope in there.

  After a while I rose from the sofa and took a shower. My body felt so heavy, almost impossible to move. Maybe the shower’s rain would breathe some life into me. I stayed there for a while, and then I remembered Matt. He seemed to have some peace to share. Maybe he could share it with me. And I needed to get out of the apartment, get out of my head. I searched for his number and called.

  “I was thinking of going out for a walk and was wondering if you’d like to join me.”

  “Sure. Where?”

  “Maybe the beach. Some place not too far.”

  “It’s
raining here.”

  “Here too.”

  “Are you sure the beach is where you want to go?”

  “Yes. This is when I like it the most.”

  “Fine. I don’t have a car, but I can bike.”

  We agreed that he’d bike to my place, and then we would use my car to get to the beach.

  When Matt arrived, he was carrying a small backpack. “For my sketches,” he said. “I always carry it with me.”

  We walked to my car and drove to the beach.

  “I haven’t been to the beach in a long time,” he said, as I was driving. “Such an unusual day to go there.”

  “I know. It should be beautiful. There won’t be people around, and the light will be perfect.”

  “You mean, the no-light will be perfect.”

  “Cloudy, yes, perfect,” I said, and smiled.

  I wondered what he might be thinking of my choice, of me, but I wasn’t worried about his judgment. I couldn’t worry about being judged. Not then.

  “Why the bike?” I asked.

  “Why?”

  “Yes. Why not a car?”

  “Do you want an honest answer, or a cool one?”

  Right, what did I want?

  “I can’t afford it. Too expensive. Down payment, installments, insurance, gas. Biking is free, and the bike is not even mine. It’s my friend’s. I don’t make much with my novels, and so I need to be careful.”

  “Do you do anything else besides your novels?”

  “Sometimes I work as a colorist, but I don’t like it. It’s just to make money. Although I don’t make much with that either.”

  “Is it hard? I mean . . . being an artist when you have a small income? Do you ever feel frustrated?”

  “Of course. But working nine to five would suck any creative energy from me. I might have to do it one day though. Sometimes when I visit the bookstores where I sell my novels and find them in a little box on the floor, in one or another corner, abandoned there, forgotten, I ask myself what am I doing, why I continue drawing. I guess the answer is I have stories to tell, a voice that wants to be heard. But it’s not happening for me. Not the way I’d need it to survive.”

  A voice calling to be heard. I liked that. I never heard the authors’ voices calling to be heard when I entered a bookstore and browsed for books. I closed my eyes and imagined what would happen if I could.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I never thought about it.”

  “About what?”

  “I’m sorry for the times I didn’t hear your voice and the other authors’ voices. I wish I had.”

  “There would be too many voices for you to handle,” he said. “It’d be hell. You should be glad you can’t hear them.”

  I wasn’t.

  “But it’s true, I’m free now. I don’t have to report to anyone for my choices and mistakes, and I don’t need much to be happy. People talk about needs all the times. Need to go on vacation, need to have a luxury car. I don’t have any of those.”

  I liked his approach to life. I envied his freedom. Mostly though, I liked hearing his voice. It was calming. And I was right. He had peace to share, and he was sharing it with me.

  We arrived at the beach, parked the car on the side of the promenade, and walked to the seashore. The sand was wet and cold, so we kept our shoes on. We sat very close to the water, I could almost touch it.

  “We might get wet,” he said.

  “I think I’d like that.”

  He smiled, pulled his notepad from his backpack, and started drawing. He drew the ocean and the clouds, and then me.

  “How do you come up with your stories?” I asked.

  He smiled, looked at his sketch, and without moving his eyes from it, said, “I see something inspiring, draw a first sketch, and then imagine a story for it. But I’d say I often start with a sketch of reality. It’s life, beauty, that inspires me.”

  I remained still as he finished his sketch, and I looked at him as he was drawing. He had big blue eyes, dark-blond hair as unattended as his beard, and when he looked at me, at times I felt I saw the face of a boy. And sometimes I liked it.

  “This is for you,” he said when he was done. The drawing was beautiful, and I felt bad keeping it.

  “Don’t you want to use it for a story?”

  “Oh, I will, but I don’t need this. It’s in my head. You can have it. Consider it my thank-you note for inspiring my new story.”

  “What story?”

  “I don’t know it yet. But it’ll certainly be about a girl, a beach, the rain.”

  I looked at the drawing and smiled.

  The sky looked sad. I took off my shoes, freeing my feet, and letting the water touch them, again and again. We stayed there for a while without talking. I felt as comfortable with him as with an old friend. Being with him distracted me, calmed me down, but it did not make me happy. I thought about Nick and what he might be doing, whether that woman was still with him, and whether they were flirting, having lunch somewhere.

  “Do you have many friends?” I asked, trying to push those thoughts as far from me as I could.

  “No, not many, just a few. Mostly graphic novelists.”

  “Why is that?”

  “We’re similar, feel comfortable with each other, don’t question each other’s choices, beliefs.” He looked around, and then added, “Writing, drawing, is isolating. We don’t see each other that often, and we respect each other’s spaces. Yeah, we’re solitary people, although some of us are in committed relationships.”

  “Are you?”

  “Are you what?”

  “In a relationship?”

  “No, I’m not. And you?”

  I hesitated a bit, thought about Nick, and bit my lip.

  “No, I’m not,” I said, and I felt anger. I was angry at Nick, for my life, and more than I could even be aware of.

  “What are your dreams?” he asked.

  “My . . . dreams?”

  “Yes, your dreams.”

  “I . . . I haven’t thought about it.”

  “What do you mean you haven’t thought about it. You don’t think about dreams. You just have them.”

  “Well, I don’t think I have . . . dreams. At least not at the moment.”

  “What about wishes? Hopes?”

  Right, what about them?

  “I don’t know, Matt. It’d be nice to be excited about something again, trust people. Meet people that can be trusted.” Yes, I was angry.

  “That’s all? When I think about dreams, I think big, I think of things that seem hard to achieve. None of the things you mentioned are hard to achieve if you work on them.”

  How would he understand? I turned my eyes away from him and didn’t comment.

  “What about you? What are your dreams?” I asked instead.

  “Write the most beautiful graphic novel I can write. And then be inspired, and write more, and maybe write one that will inspire a producer to make a movie out of it. Maybe I’ve got something good in my hands already,” he said, pointing to his sketch of me.

  “Oh, yes, a girl and the beach,” I said.

  “And the rain.”

  “Right, that’s important.”

  “Yes, it is. It’s part of the story.”

  And indeed it was.

  I checked my phone and noticed that Nick had called. I hated him for calling as much as I would have hated him if he had not called. I was confused.

  We sat silently for a while. When I started feeling tired I told him I had to go, and we headed back.

  “I had a great time,” he said when we parked the car in front of my place. “You were right about the rain.”

  I waved as I watched him leave. I turned to my door, and before I opened it, the phone rang again. It was Nick. I didn’t pick up. But then the phone rang again. And again it was Nick.

  “Sorry to bother you. I was hoping you could . . .”

  There was some silence.

  “Are you
free tonight? I’ve been invited to a movie premiere.”

  I thought of saying I was busy, but I wanted to see him. After he had slept with another woman. Yes, I needed to see him.

  “The producer is an old friend,” he continued, “and asked me to write a review, post something on the blog.”

  So I swallowed any self-esteem and dignity I had left and said I would go.

  “About yesterday . . .,” he then added.

  “I’m not interested, sorry,” I said. “We are not together, you don’t have to explain.”

  Was I playing a game with him? His game? Did I want to? Whatever it was, I didn’t want him to know I was hurt. But I was.

  “Fair enough,” he said, and told me he would come pick me up later.

  I checked the time. It was only four p.m. I had a few hours to go shopping, and I wanted to look stunning that night. I did a search on the internet to see where I could buy something elegant and sexy. I wanted him to want me and not have me.

  I found a couple of stores that seemed interesting and went to check them out. I was used to buying clothes online, and after what perhaps was years, I was finally back in a store, changing clothes in front of a mirror, and imagining Nick’s reaction. Was that hope? One thing I was sure of: I desired him.

  I bought three dresses, one short, one over the knees, and another longer one, since I couldn’t make up my mind as to which would work best. And I even bought new underwear at a store I had never dared visiting before. I thought it looked cheap, but now it seemed perfect. Black lace underwear.

  I chose to wear the over-the-knees dress, black heels, and pearls. That would do, I thought. But before I could even try to put makeup on, Nick called.

  “I’m here.”

  I looked at myself in the mirror and decided to skip makeup, except for some red lipstick. The contrast between the color of my skin, my wet hair, and the lipstick was . . . interesting.

  I grabbed my purse, turned off the light, and left.

  “So . . . where have you been all day? I tried to call you three times.”

  “I was with Matt.”

  “Oh . . . your graphic-novelist friend.”

  I smiled and said nothing. He turned to look out the window, and then he looked at me for a while.