Oriane was not herself. She was drinking juice from the carton. She was deliberately leaving her contact lenses unused in the back of her underwear drawer. She was living in a blur. As she bought bread and squinted at the pastries behind the glass, as she counted her change multiple times and it never quite added up, as she squeezed lemon over boiled water and the juices ran down her wrist, it was all a blur. Her eyes forgot how to focus.
She found a man off the intranet who she would teach English for an hour, in exchange for the use of his camera. The first time they met, she pointed to parts of her body and called out their names. Shoulders. Ear. Ears. Ankles. Chest. Ass. She ordered tap water but he bought her bottled water. At least he agreed to take the bottle home with him and put it in the recycling. The second time they met, she reviewed the parts of the body. Shoulders. Ear. Ears. Ankles. Chest. Ass. Edu was not a good student. He installed heaters for a living.
It would be more practical for Edu to teach him greetings.
The third time they met, she greeted Edu with, “Hi” “Hello” and “What’s up” to start with least three greetings. He whispered in her ear, I’ll give you the camera if we fuck.
She led Edu to the café bathroom and let him touch the top of her left breast. He asked to touch both breasts. She told him to fuck off. She hated him. But at least he recycled.
After a week passed, she needed the camera again. She arranged for them to meet in front of a bank and go behind the ATM, where she wanked his dick until her biceps were sore. He tried to push her face down over his cock. She got scared, and ran away with the camera. When she got home, she tried to put his camera in her vagina. She passed out at 4AM with a few red stains on her sheets.
Honor, a tall blonde who was surprisingly friendly for how pretty she was, provided “shit to wrap hella shit” for burrito Ladies’ Night. Honor laughed at Oriane’s overstuffed burrito, you’re such a slut. They went around the table, each of the ladies telling their latest. Oriane said she found someone who she could teach English to in exchange for a camera. Honor clapped her hands with admiration, what a slut!
Oriane had to face an anticlimactic end of Sunday that blurred into a Monday morning in the preschoolers’ classroom. Small chairs. Coat hanger hooks below her waist. Toilets ½ the size of her ass. They took toilet paper and threw it in the toilets, they thought that is all that needed to be done. Heads the size of cannonballs wobbling on shrunken bodies. When she looked at the faces of these children, she did not see youth. She saw her face, plastered on their shrunken bodies. Some turned away and buried themselves in others’ armpits. Others stared at her in a vegetative trance, with crusty snot on their upper lips, as if they had no use for the words she was paid to impart to them. As she walked across the recess yard, one little cannonball darted toward another, smashing him against the wall. The crushed cannonball needed a suspended moment, in order to synthesize the wall outside him and the pain inside him. He looked up at Oriane and the suspended moment dropped. He screamed and cried. She decided that he would be fine. She did not stop. She did not flinch. She passed and he blurred behind. She was not herself.
Oriane fell asleep on a little wooden bench in the hallway. Her belly and her right foot hung over the edge of the wooden plank. Her brain turned on like television. It was the porno channel, with a close-up of Honor’s fleshy breasts, so plump and transparent that veins were visibly pressed up inside the skin.
Quietly, she scampered through the mist and q-shaped rain puddles. While waiting for the metro, she heard a low humming sound, but she thought it must be some kind of engines in the ceiling.
The humming continued inside the metro car. When she got out of the metro car and went up mountainous escalators, the humming escalated. When she stepped out onto the street, the humming throbbed. If it had been in the background blur before, now she noticed it. There was no escaping it.
When Oriane came home, she closed the door quickly behind her, but it was too late. The humming had already entered. She took out her juice from the fridge and tilted the carton as far vertical as she could to let the last drops into her mouth. She sat down on the edge of a chair in the white glow of a cloudy afternoon, and looked out the tall windows of the flat. She searched painstakingly for an observation, an opinion, even a poetic reflection, but she could not find a single one. Oriane was a silver pool of light by the windowsill. Oriane was overwhelmed by a throbbing, humming sound. Oriane was… not herself.
Around the dark wooden square table, there were five stereotypical Orianes. One with dyed black hair and snakeskin boots, gingerly tapping fake, long red nails on a pack of cigarettes, before sweeping them toward the next Oriane. I can flirt, but never touch.
The second Oriane had a shaved head and war paint under her eyes. She was fingering two bullets in her pocket. She had a large wristwatch that converted into a switchblade, I never watch television.
The third Oriane wore a hooded sweatshirt and sat back in a dark unlit corner, I never fall asleep in public.
The fourth was naked and pink, rubbing her hands along her stomach and her upper arms in-between her thighs. She was trying to photograph up her vagina, but, she sighed, the door isn’t open.
The last Oriane was Oriane herself, standing by the window, in a silver pool of light, while a loud humming sound shot at her from down the hallway. She watched the front door open and close, and a child - a real child, not a little stump with a cannonball head - came darting down the hallway with lips buzzing loudly, knocking the naked Oriane over, and pummeling onto the last Oriane.
The moonfaced child, looked up at Oriane. The eyes of the child were almost larger than the child’s face, with the irises bursting out from behind the pupils with speckles of green. The child’s lips were freckled. The child searched Oriane’s face and the window and the air in-between as if the whole world was one big question.
The child gripped onto Oriane while the five other Orianes stood watching. One Oriane tapped her fake long red nails on the cigarette pack in a drum roll, and asked Oriane if she had any job interviews lined up. The second Oriane leaned forward and clenched the knob of her chair with one hand, stomped on the floor and roused everyone to do some physical exercise. The third Oriane crawled backward and pulled the hooded sweatshirt over her head. The fourth Oriane sighed and rubbed her arms because she was cold, and called Honor to see if she wanted to hang out tonight.
Oriane held the child on her lap. Oriane lightly tapped her fingers around the child’s doll-like waist, noticing the tiny curve where a little tuft of hair hung in the nape behind the child’s neck. The child pointed out the window, onto the silvery street and the clouds. Oriane felt large and gangly. She could tell that the child’s lips were still buzzing, because the humming sound was still there.
Her phone started buzzing. She looked down and saw Edu’s name. The other Orianes watched her, and she felt rude to answer the call in the middle of the party, so she put the phone on silent. But she continued to hold the phone below her chin, and stare at it in her hand. Maybe if she had sex with Edu she could learn how to be raunchy. Maybe if she went into the street with his camera, she could break the blur. The phone stopped ringing. It was over. The other Orianes disappeared.
Then it rang again. Once. The child reached for it, and put the phone in her mouth. Oriane laughed, as slobber rolled down the shiny black metal, and the child laughed at Oriane. The child was still clear, crisp, a condensed body of cuteness and buzzing. And Oriane looked at the child for a suspended moment, and then she crashed, her face fell down into the child’s delicate back, with big balls of wet globs pummeling down her cheeks. She would be fine, but Oriane was not herself.