Green Girl (10 page)

Mold me.

You are their raw material. Their Galatea. A fistful of clay, gray, gray, gray, like Ruth’s eyes, like the army of everywhere pigeons, like the crisp malice of the autumnal air. If the whole city of London was sliced open all that would come out would be a mess of intestinal gray. (In the world of cosmetics gray is not gray is not gray. There really are countless shades.)

Such lovely lips, eyes, lashes. Such young skin, those brows, that neck. There is always some neglected attribute to draw out, to compliment. You drink it in. It is nourishment you have not received for a while and even if you receive it often you are always thirsty, thirsty for it. To be admired by the vast unknown.

How did you get lured in? You were looking, searching, for something. Something to conceal, to hide, to disguise those flaws, no not the bit of redness there, the shine here, the crow’s feet there, the flaws deep inside, the filthy thoughts, the prurient mind. One magical product that would perform all this. You offer yourself up to the counter. No, you need concealers and highlighters and foundations and powders. A product to cancel out the other products.

And finally the reveal. You use the hand mirror they provide. But his adoring eyes have already served as your mirror. Look at you. So lovely, lovely, lovely. The black-clad crowd crowds in for effect, the formerly bored frosted lilies now fawning over the mannequin (that’s you!), the slicked-back boys with shiny skin oohing and aahing, clapping their hands with glee.

The girl behind the counter takes over from the male makeup artist. He is an artist. He doesn’t handle financial transactions. Earlier, to try to push the expensive makeup brushes on top of the purchase, he said: I am an artist. I must use my tools. You are my canvas. The salesgirl who has played the admiring spectator before now steps in front, clipboard in hand. All cool and business-like. The illusion is gone. They are not your friends. Or, to keep that illusion just a little longer, you know you must buy something. It’s part of the exchange, the ritual. She tallies it up. She barters with you still flush with attention. At home is a full makeup bag. But is there a price for seeing oneself anew in the mirror?

This is for the eyes. This is for the lips. This is for the skin. They haggle over the skin.

The skin is necessary of course. You need the skin. Without one of the tricks in the bag it all falls apart. It is a house of cards, your new identity. The makeup artist miraculously reappears to finish the sale. Look at how lovely you look. Your skin looks so young so dewy so glowing. You are reborn. You are luminous. You are lit from within. You flutter under the flattery, docile, obedient.

I’ll take it. You say. I’ll take it. I’ll take the eyes, I’ll take the lips, I’ll take the skin. I’ll take it all.

Wrap up my new face and throw it in a bag.

They give you a face to take home, an actual paper face with colored in instructions. These masks like
memento mori
.

Faces, other faces. I can take mine off and breathe.

The very turmoil of the streets has something repulsive about it—something against which human nature rebels. The hundreds of thousands of all classes and ranks crowding past each other—aren’t they all human beings with the same qualities and powers, and with the same interest in being happy? And aren’t they obliged, in the end, to seek happiness in the same way, by the same means? And still they crowd by one another as though they had nothing in common, nothing to do with one another, and their only agreement is the tacit one—that each keep to his own side of the pavement, so as not to delay the opposing stream of the crowd—while no man thinks to honor another with so much as a glance. The brutal indifference, the unfeeling isolation of each in his private interest becomes the more repellent and offensive, the more these individuals are crowded together within a limited space.

— Friedrich Engels, quoted in Walter Benjamin’s
The Arcades Project

She goes to the same places to avoid getting lost. The perennial return to the center of the beast. She gets out at Tottenham Court Road to a drizzling rain, everyone heading down the stairs in the opposite direction. The Boots, the Sainsbury’s, the flower stand. Past the booth of fake designer watches, the table set up of bleeding black signatures—wettening posters of protest, ImpeachTonyBlair DownWithGeorgeBush InternationalTerrorists OutofIraq SendTroopsHome. Ruth shakes her head No not wanting to speak imagining the mere sound of her voice will unleash antagonism, a chorus chant of Crucify her! Crucify her!

She is not political. She is not political yet. She is halting, she is silent, she is unsure. She has not formed any opinions that are her own. Sometimes she hears someone else’s opinion, someone more forceful than herself (which is almost anyone) and she says that’s good for me too. So malleable she changes identities easily. How else does one figure out who one is? She has flashes of who she could be someday. She speaks in advertising jingles and silly catchphrases and slang. I am not really into politics she would say. She is self-involved. She is volunteering for her own Party of One. The Me Party. Campaigning under the Woe Is Me ticket. My seductive little solipsist. Does she know there is a war going on? Is there a war going on? Turning on the television I thought there was a sale going on, and a season finale, and some celebrities getting a divorce. She knows there is a war waging inside of her. Yet she doesn’t know who is winning. She did not vote in the last presidential election. I can’t believe it either, but there you are. She is the apathetic youth we always read about. They are silent when not texting away on fancy mobiles or talking on their cell phones about their new game console.

 I want to choke these youngsters just to hear them make a sound not banal or repeated or well-behaved. If I choked Ruth she would make a squeaking sound, like a rubber doll. But I won’t choke Ruth why would I choke her I love her. If I did choke her it would be in a loving way, like the poster of the Heimlich maneuver you see hung up in school cafeterias and auto shops, the two faceless figures doubled over together in a violent embrace. I would choke her to get at her insides.

Ruth heads down Oxford Street hurriedly, head down, bracing herself against the rain. Jutting in and out of a world of umbrellas an obstacle course. She does not feel like using her cheap Boots umbrella, which might break in the wind. I watch her slinking down the street. I see her shoulder blades stick out like a little bird’s wings. She is so fragile. Like she is going to blow over. She is sending out signals of distress. These lilting lilies. They shrink from the world. I want to stomp on their fragile stalks not yet formed, those spiky buds creeping up through moist dirt.

The street is decorated with lights for the holidays. The whiff of roasted chestnuts. A blonde man in a black leather jacket matches his stride next to hers. He holds his umbrella over her. The grin of a confident salesman. Can I ask you something? I’m sorry I’m in a hurry. He persists. Who cuts your hair? Ruth feels vaguely humiliated. She knows what this is, a routine to lure her into whatever high street hair salon has paid him to be charming to lonely Americans. But she can not help smiling at him, shyly shaking her head, saving a fickle strand of wettening blonde hair from falling into her face. He quickens his pace. You’d look absolutely brilliant with something chin-length. I’m not interested, Ruth replies coolly in her feather-voice. No harm to it, he elbows her chummily. She smiles again in spite of herself. Sorry. He stops and as she walks ahead, she looks back at him. He is waiting for her to turn and walk back. He smiles, waves, clipboard in hand. Still waiting. But she turns and keeps on walking.

The end is near! The end is near! Save yourselves! Save yourselves! Her Oxford Circus preacher is prophesizing the rapture from his bullhorn.

She walks in the spaces between the raindrops. She touches her chin to the butt of her cheap Boots umbrella—her face is wet. This kind of rain casts a veil over everything. Somehow one can see more clearly. Old old buildings. People living life somehow.

The question is—does she awake? And what does she awaken to?

I get the impression that her life was one long meditation about nothingness.

— Clarice Lispector,
The Hour of the Star

She sits in her usual spot by the window at Foyles café. It is still raining outside on soggy red brick. Ruth sits on a stool at the window and watches from up above, dipping her chin into the foam. Umbrellas proceed almost solemnly down the street, rims touching each other almost tenderly. Like schoolchildren proceeding hand in hand.

She thinks about HIM. How could I have washed off so easily? She wonders.

You leave. You leave and leave.

In the morning, you begin the disentangling. In the morning you go. In the morning you are gone.

She is impressionable. Yet she does not leave an impression. She is like a ghost, a non-thing.

Ruth doesn’t know this but a man in the café is watching her too. He has a sketchbook in front of him. He is drawing her outline. He is sketching her dramatic silhouette. A young girl pensive watching out the window. She is an unknown. He has discovered her. A beautiful sight. She has a beautiful figure, this slip of a girl. He wouldn’t mind poking her a bit with his pencil.

The rain has let up momentarily. She gazes at the top level of a double-decker bus stopped outside. The passengers seem unaware that they are being looked at, secure in being so high up from everything. They are in fact naked there, relaxing their tense city selves except for the small dramas of transport, the bumping and pushing and excuse-me’s, no pardon-me’s. The looking without looking. She catches a boy regarding himself in his reflection, shaking out a light caramel shag, a mustard scarf, a leather jacket the color of toffee. A bled-out brown. She meets his eyes boldly, safe within her bubble. I see you. I see you.

Suddenly Ruth spies the silver-haired shopgirl from Liberty. She seems to be waiting for someone. Her long yet uncertain body against the wall, posing daintily with her paper coffee cup, looking out into the crowds of people with a practiced look that is both cool and yearning. How many sets of eyes warm her. She looks off into the distance. From time to time she looks down at her mobile phone pocketed in her hand. She must be aware of her to-be-looked-at-ness. She is ravishing. She is untouchable. She hangs there like a dress one cannot afford.

She is such a pretty girl. Such a pretty girl. Everyone showers compliments on the pretty girl. She really has a delightful, dreamy quality to her.

That wonderful pouty mouth she has all of her original underclothes. What marvelous coloring. No hairline chips or cracks.

Pushing her way back down the stairs of the tube station, past bodies and briefcases and elbows and legs. Mind your head. Mind your head. Crowds and crowds. She stumbles around, outside of herself, looking at them looking at her.

The train comes shuttling through.

An advert on the train: Feeling knackered? Although Ruth does not know what it means to feel knackered, she has the feeling that this is precisely what she is feeling. The holidays were starting to get to her. The city was starting to get to her. She ached, an indeterminate ache. Her glands were swollen in her throat, under her armpits. She had already called in once that week at work, breathing fragile and penitent at the same time to human resources. If human resources were supposed to be so human, why did they make you feel so alienated? Yes I don’t feel well I need to take a personal day. Yes my throat and my head and I’m a bit fatigued you see. She wanted to hibernate, to surrender to the slowness of sick.