THREE
The taxi arrived at Sarah’s apartment at seven, which meant I was half an hour late. Fashionably late as I would have happily announced a couple of years back because I’d been standing in front of the mirror for too long. Now I was afraid to stand in front of the mirror, because looking at myself made me think of death, my once feminine body was already losing its curves and soon I would be nothing more than a bunch of bones stacked together, forming a human body, held together by the few muscles that were still there, a nerve system that still functioned but only barely. Everything would be held together by skin and beneath that skin, through my many veins, streamed the cancerous blood that was going to be the death of me one day.
That cancerous blood was the reason for my being late that day. After my adventure at the Starbucks I had gone home, changed into a very comfortable onesie and plopped down on the couch where I had spent exactly five minutes thinking about meeting Delphine that afternoon. It had left me feeling shaken and not because of my illness, It was the way she had looked at me, the way she had given this energy-boost, it was something I hadn’t felt in a long while, maybe even ever.
The meeting itself had drained me completely and I had fallen asleep for a couple of hours, dreaming again and again about meeting Delphine and stupidly walking away from her without so much as finding out her phone number, which was totally my fault. I had never regretted anything more than stalking out of the Starbucks that afternoon.
Anyway, I had fallen asleep without setting an alarm, so when I had woken up at six-o-five, I figured I’d be late, I needed a shower in order to clean the layer of sweatiness off my body that had formed during the jog home and then the second layer of sweat that had formed during my restless sleep on the couch, after which I needed to get dressed and get myself a taxi during rush hour.
After climbing several flights of stairs, I sort of ran all the way to the fifth floor because I always figured being somewhere thirty seconds earlier made everything better, I took a moment to catch my breath before I actually knocked on the door, all the while hoping that I was indeed the last one to arrive at Sarah’s dinner party. Arriving to see your friend standing in the hallway, bending over at the waist while using an arm for support while trying to find back a normal breathing rhythm, was kind of awkward. When I was sort of back to normal after four minutes I knocked.
My best friend in the entire world opened the door and started grinning the moment she laid eyes on me. She opened her arms and gave me a hug so tight it gave me immediate bruises. It made me wonder what my body would look like in a couple of hours. At the same time I felt guilty for not having told my best friend about what was happening in my life. She deserved to know but I was so afraid of the way she would look at me, the way she might suddenly start treating me like I was a person dying from cancer. Oh wait, that was exactly what was happening.
“You look terrible babe, what’s been going on?” Sarah asked me gently when she held me at arm’s length, looking me up and down.
Her words made me cringe a little and I flashed a fake apologetic smile. “Tot a little caught up in my work”.
“You work too hard, always have always will. Come on in, let me feed you, oh, by the way, there’s some people I want you to meet. I made some new friends, they’re pretty awesome, I think you will like them.”
"There's been a change in the annual dinner party invite list?" I asked, faking shock.
Sarah laughed a little. "I guess so.”
"They must be so special.”
"Screw you.”
"You screwing them?”
"No, fuck off.”
We both laughed and I followed the brunette inside and into the hallway where she took my oversized-retro-denim jacket before guiding me into the living room where a large table was already set and surrounded by people. The entire living room was filled with the sound of voices and laughter and for a moment it was all very overwhelming. I had to close my eyes and calm my heartbeat before I was ready to face the group of people in front of me. There was room for ten people around that table and there were only two empty chairs, which meant I was indeed the last one to arrive. My eyes glided over the table, most of my friends were there, looking back at me with concern in their eyes. I’d put on an extra sweater under my black one so I would look at least a little fuller but of course it didn’t matter, my cheeks were already turning hollow, my cheekbones were becoming very pronounced, my eyes lay sunken deeper into their sockets than they were supposed to. The little skin that was visible, face, neck and hands, was paler than normal, which frankly speaking, looked a little unhealthy, like I hadn’t seen the sun in a year. In a matter of months or even weeks I’d look even worse.
At that moment, with all of my friends looking at me like that, I realised I had to tell them, they deserved to know that I was sick. A smile worked its way onto my face as I sort of half waved at my friends. “Hi guys.”
Everyone had quieted down the moment I had entered the room and they still sat staring at me. Their joined silence had to be some sort of record. My eyes roamed past the faces of my friends, to the other side of the table where two women sat staring as well. One I remembered vaguely from a picture Sarah had posted on Facebook a couple weeks back, the woman next to her I had seen that very day while being covered with sticky-ice-cold-frappuccino-and-whipped-cream. My smile faltered at the sight of her while she looked at me with a smirk on her face. I had expected to find surprise on her face or even shock but there was none to be found.
My heart picked up its pace and I realized I was more than happy that she was here and not all the way out of my life. I carefully glanced at Delphine’s face, trying to find a sign of anger or resentment. There was none either, if anything, she continued to smirk as she winked at me. That wink almost gave me a heart-attack.
Where the hell was all of this coming from?
At that moment, I threw my plan of telling my friends about my cancer out of the window. Not only because there was someone at the table I'd never met in my life and who didn’t ‘deserve’ to hear about my hardships, but also because of the woman sitting next to her. I didn't want Delphine to know I was dying. Seeing her here at this table, in this familiar living room, it felt like a second chance and if I'd bring up having cancer everything would change in an instant. The thought of Delphine looking at me like suddenly I was a person with cancer made me feel sick to the stomach.
After a relieved sigh, I went around the table, saying hello to everyone, introducing myself to the unfamiliar woman who turned out to be Delphine’s best friend Jordan, kissing everyone on the cheek except for Jordan, whose hand I shook. While I made my way around the table, I wondered whether it would be appropriate to kiss Delphine on the cheek or just weird. Finally when I reached her, I decided to just go for it so I bent down and kissed her on the cheek once. She smelled like she was freshly showered, she wore perfume, but not the overwhelming kind, it was probably the nicest smelling perfume I had ever smelled in my life. There was a faint trace of smoke hanging around her and her hair smelled of hairspray, the good, expensive kind. The combination of all scents was alluring, making me slightly dizzy and I had to grab on to her shoulder to stay upright. My body was acting weird. She looked up at me in worry.
“You smell nice,” I murmured so no one would hear, making her smile though the worried look in her eyes didn’t entirely disappear.
I finished saying hi to the rest of my friends and ironically enough, the only chair left to sit on was the one next to Delphine. It was Sarah’s late-comers chair and it was uncomfortable as hell but I found myself not minding, I always ended up sitting on that chair, we'd become friends over the years.
I sat down next to Delphine and she faced me with a grin on her face. "We meet again.”
"I guess we do.”
"Just so you know, I'm not going to let you run off like that again, I was lucky to realize who you were just in time and that you were going to be here otherwise I would have had to run after you like a crazy stalker person.”
I stared into the brown eyes that this very afternoon had gotten me so worked up. "You knew, how?”
Delphine shrugged "Not a lot of people are called Cosima, I recognized your name from Sarah's stories, but didn't realize it until fully until you actually walked out without your frappuccino and I saw your last name on it, Niehaus, that name was familiar and then I remembered you saying dinner party so I figured you were going to be there. It was a bit of a stretch, but even if you hadn't been here I would have found you, even if I'd had to ask Sarah.”
A smirk appeared on my face and I felt kind of flattered someone would go through the trouble of asking Sarah to actually find me. It made me wonder what Sarah would have said to Delphine.
"I feel flattered that you would go through the trouble to find me.”
Delphine looked into my eyes intently. "Some people are worth the trouble.”
A shiver travelled all the way from my neck, down my spine when she looked at me like that, her brown eyes sparkling and catching the reflection of the many candles that were lit in the room. I swallowed and everything quieted down around us.
"Cosima, help me in the kitchen," Sarah suddenly said, making me jerk upright, almost knocking over the dinner table in the process.
"Sure, sure" I murmured and got up, making my way to the kitchen where Sarah leaned against the kitchen counter, her hands were folded together and she frowned at me.
"What?”
"How do you know Delphine?”
"We met today, she bumped into my frappuccino and we talked some.”
Sarah looked disapprovingly and said nothing for at least fifteen seconds, her eyebrows still creased into a deep frown. "She's not a lesbian you know.”
I chuckled. "So what, more than half of the people at this table are straight-ish.”
"But you are not.”
"I'm aware.”
"She is.”
I folded my arms impatiently. "What the fuck is your point?”
Sarah snorted and shook her head like I was a little girl who had just been caught with her hand down the cookie jar.
"God, you're clueless sometimes.”
"What?”
"Nevermind. Delphine's great, don't hurt her.”
I frowned at my best friend and wondered what else this was all about, perhaps the fact that I hadn't contacted her in over a month. If that were her reason for getting angry over Delphine, I kind of understood. Still, I wasn't going to get into the topic, not here, not now, not with the rest of my friends and of course Delphine in the next room. She couldn't know about any of it. The thought of Delphine’s playful eyes suddenly turning grave and pitying whenever she looked at me, just thinking about it for a freaking second made nausea take over my body again so I pushed the thoughts away into a far corner.
“Hadn’t planned on it,” I murmured.
I helped Sarah with the first course and by helping I mean I made sure all the vegetables were washed properly because unwashed fruits and vegetables could lead to infections. Helping Sarah made up at least a little for my bad-friend behaviour, afterward she could again smile at me, even if it was just a tenth of the usual smile she gave me. How I hated lying to her, to any of them. I often wondered whether I was being protective or just selfish. I liked to think I was being protective of my friends' feelings by not telling them they would lose their friend to cancer within the year, but naturally I was aware that my reasons were mostly selfish, wanting to avoid sad looks and careful behaviour around me. I liked receiving bear-hugs from my friends, even though I knew I would have the bruises to prove I couldn’t quite handle them.
The first and main course were eaten pretty quickly and though I wasn’t particularly hungry I did my best to finish and enjoy it all. After the main course Delphine announced she would be going out for a smoke. Since this party was probably going to be one of the last evening during which I’d get to be with my friends like this I had beforehand decided that this would be an evening during which I’d drink and smoke and not think about my future. Soon I’d have to give up smoking and drinking but tonight I could enjoy both without feeling guilty about it. I’d die anyway, a couple of drinks and cigarettes more tonight wouldn’t matter much anymore anyway. I got up after Delphine, with whom I’d been having the greatest of times. We'd spoken freely about practically everything there was to talk about and it was all so comfortable, without awkward pauses, without a moment of not knowing what to say. We just talked the night away.
In a way, it felt like the rest of the people were just props, people that were there but didn’t really matter. They were our background noise but the evening revolved around us, we were the ones that mattered. Perhaps, in a way, that was exactly the way it was, for us at least. We interacted with the rest but only a little here and there and always as a pair, two against eight. The rest noticed of course but they let it slide for some reason, throwing knowing looks our way and smiling while keeping quiet. I decided to ignore all of it.
We walked outside onto the balcony and Delphine leaned against the railing, her legs crossed. She got out a pack of cigarettes and offered me one, I took it out of habit and rolled it over and over in my hands for a couple of seconds. Normally I’d be smoking marijuana, but I found that smoking made my body feel good in the moment, it was definitely a pain-reliever, yet when the effects were fading away, my body felt worse than it did before. I had therefore given up smoking altogether.
I could feel her eyes taking me in, watching my every move. I heard the familiar click of a lighter, the sound of tobacco burning and turning to ash. Delphine offered me her lighter and I held it in my hand for a moment without lighting my own cigarette.
“Do you even smoke?”
I shrugged. “No, I guess I don't.”
“So, why don’t they know you don't smoke?”
“We haven’t seen each other during the past couple of weeks.”
Delphine nodded, like she knew exactly what I was talking about. “Sarah told me she couldn’t reach you the past couple of weeks, she is worried about you.”
I shrugged and felt blood rush to my cheeks. I said nothing, unsure of what to say to the woman standing in front of me.
“I know you don’t really know me but if you want, you can talk to me, I am a good listener and I promise I won’t tell any of them about it. If you don’t want to because you feel like you don’t know me, I respect that, just know that I’m here. You don’t have to decide right now, just think about it oui?” Delphine offered, a gentle smile upon her face as she took one of my hands in hers and squeezed.
My heart warmed at her words, they'd been sincere and I really appreciated them. “Thank you.”
Delphine smiled. “I really want to hug you now, just so you know.”
I looked up in surprise, then smiled a small smile. “I give you permission to hug me.”
That made her chuckle and while she pulled me close and wrapped her arms around me I felt almost safe enough to just spill my guts about all that had been going on in my life. But then I thought of the looks of pity in the eyes of people who found out their friends had cancer. I swallowed the words that had almost come out of my mouth, pushed them to the back of my head and locked them behind one of the big doors inside of me.
For the first time there was this person who I genuinely liked, whose presence gave me an energy I hadn’t felt in forever. Becoming friends with her, no matter how tempting it was, would be so incredibly selfish. To me, it would feel like some sort of betrayal, I befriend you because you don’t make me feel like a cancer patient who is about to die but just so you know, I will probably die within the next year or so. Deal with it. What kind of person would I be to do that to her. It would be more than unfair to befriend her only to die on her in the end. No one deserved that. Standing there, together on that balcony, her arms wrapped around me, it felt too good to let go and I wanted to be selfish for just a little bit longer. So I relaxed and wrapped my arms around the woman against me, I inhaled her scent and smiled at how pleasant it was.
We went back inside after Delphine's smoke and were immediately greeted by the biggest chocolate cake I ever had in my life, also, it was shaped like a spaceship, which was strange. The chocolate cake with white chocolate frosting, had to be made for at least thirty or forty people. I was not an expert in cake portions but it looked like we would not be able to finish the cake with just the ten of us.
“Who the hell made this thing?” Felix asked, his eyes having turned huge.
Several of my friends pointed at Alison who grinned. She worked at one of the most prestigious cake shops in town and had become quite the expert over the years. I wondered whether she had put drugs in the cake. Alison was a big fan of space cake and had made dozens.
"Someone didn't pick up their cake so I could take it, hence our desert.”
“What did you put in there?” Sarah asked, as if reading my thoughts.
“Nothing in that one, I made it for a ten-year-old boy who was probably a naughty boy because his mother called that the party was off. I brought another one though for the ones who enjoy their cake a bit more,” she moved her arms to make some sort of mysterious gesture, which meant she wiggled her fingers into the air and there was the obvious pause for effect she often used before she spouted out the word “spacy” in an equally mysteriously-meant tone.
Felix, Sarah and Mark grinned and all raised their hands. How in the world would we eat this entire chocolate spaceship if half of the people would eat actual space cake. How ironic, spaceship-cake that wasn’t spacy and normal cake that was. Well, it would probably both make us high, our unit spaceship would just make us high on sugar.
Sarah walked into the kitchen again and got a second cake, a smaller one this time, while she balanced a large stack of small, squared dishes, topped with forks, in the other hand. She had become so good at this, the dinner parties, the socializing, she’d come a long way, but began to resemble our oldest friend Alison way more than me.
I watched as my best friend cut both cakes and started handing out filled with plates. When a plate with undoubtedly the largest piece was handed to me, its size resembling a large brick,
I looked up and frowned at Sarah who winked at me. “What? You look like you need it.”
I tried my best to eat the cake, even though it made me want to puke out every last piece of it in the end.
Obviously I wasn’t hungry anymore, already having eaten more than my usual amount of food. Today it wasn’t even the soars that had started popping up everywhere in my mouth the moment chemo had started, they were usually the reason for my aversion to eat, which my parents totally ignored because and I quote, my dad in this case ‘you need the calories and vitamins so even if we have to put everything into a blender and make some sort of nasty juice out of it, we will but eat it you shall’. My dad never spoke nonsense so I knew he meant this as well. So after that we never got into an argument about food again. I’d tried blending food and it was more disgusting than anything I’d ever eaten. So in the end painfully shoving in spoon after spoon or fork after fork beat drinking a large glass of what look like puke and tasted worse. Some things were just not meant to be blended and turned into drinkable food.
“Cosima, stop eating, you look like you’re about to puke,” Delphine whispered.
“I just might.”
“You look green, stop eating.”
I sat there, a fork with a large piece of cake in my right hand and I was about to pop it into my mouth.
Delphine stared at me sternly. “Put down the fork, now,” she said, her tone playfully menacing, like I was holding a gun instead of a fork with cake.
The situation was so stupid it made me giggle but in the end I put down the fork. Glad she had forced me to because I felt stuffed like a Thanksgiving turkey. When I looked around the table I found that most of my friend hadn’t been able to finish their slice of cake, except for my friends who ate the actual space cake of course, they had finished every last crumb of it, their plates were so clean they could go straight back into the cupboard they’d come from.
Ever since my last experience with space cake I’d never been tempted to have some again, I’d made the classical error of eating it until I felt something. My friends, who considered themselves experts were a bunch of assholes for letting me eat five fucking pieces of the already strong cake. After about two hours, which was the average time for space cake to actually ‘work’, I had so much of it in my system that I spaced for hours, extremely hard and the entire ordeal was extremely unpleasant.
When it finally hit me it felt like I had entered a different world, there had been colours everywhere, people had looked out of proportion with large heads or even animal heads, Smurfs were climbing the curtains, Alice in Wonderland’s Caterpillar was smoking and lounging on the kitchen counter. It had been fun at first but it had been quite a lot to take in and when it lasted and lasted it just became too much, there had been too much noise, too much to see and it freaked me out so bad I had grabbed a blanked and hidden in Sarah’s bathtub until the entire thing was over. I had fallen asleep in the bathtub and woken up with drawings on my face, penises and moustaches, yes there were more. Right then I’d promised myself I’d never eat space cake again, not even a ‘proper’ portion that wouldn’t have me freak out the way I had the night before.
When some time later my friends had told me they were going to eat mushrooms I had politely declined, if space cake already had such a big effect on me, what would mushrooms make me see. I’d probably die of a heart attack right in the middle of it.
After desert I was assigned to play DJ and I put on an old record on the LP play I’d given Sarah a few years earlier because I thought everyone should have at least a way to listen to the old-skool music as it was meant to be heard, with the creaking that distinguished LP from CD. I personally loved that sound and listened to old records mainly because of it, always hating it whenever a good album wasn’t available on record.
While Delphine and I sat down on the couch and watched the others dance and drink and even make out here and there I began to feel a bit sleepy. We talked a little here and there but sat mostly in comfortable silence, enjoying the view and for me personally, the company. It was strange how comfortable she made me feel, it was something I had never encountered before in my life, people usually made me feel rather uncomfortable during the first months of hanging out. Which was probably why I didn’t have a lot of ‘new’ friends. When I had been younger it hadn’t been as bad as it was nowadays and Sarah had once asked me how that had happened. Where had it all come from, my need to be alone and weird ways whenever I met new people. I hadn’t been able to give her a clear answer.
I wasn’t sure why Delphine wasn’t up with the rest of the group dancing with them, but I was thankful she wasn’t, even when Sarah came up to us and tried to push us to get up and dance, she declined with a gentle smile. Perhaps she just didn’t want me to push myself because it was obvious I wasn’t up for dancing. Peculiar thing was though that she was the only person in my entire group of friends who appeared to notice that I was hanging on by a thread. Being here and watching my friends have fun and laugh made me feel unhinged somehow, it made me realize this might as well all come to an end within the year. This would most likely be one of the last dinner parties I’d ever attend.
Obviously I’d miss the dancing because I absolutely love dancing. The scene in front of me made me realize that these people were my friends and though I wasn’t the best friend in the world to them, they were all I had. If not for the cancer I probably wouldn’t even have realized it, but I had to be better a friend even though it didn’t make much sense, why try my best to become a better friend when our bond would grow stronger and I would die in the end. It would hurt them even more. Better to alienate myself even further away from the group and make them like me less than make them like me more and die. My brain had a fucked up way of thinking.
Around midnight I was ready to go home, I had dozed off leaning heavily against Delphine a couple of times, only to be woken up by Delphine who at the third dozing-off-and-waking-me-up time announced she had to go home. I told the rest that I would be going home as well and no one seemed very surprised. We hugged and kissed everyone goodbye and I promised I would respond to WhatsApp messages and calls. Sarah told me she’d come over this week and I told her it was fine and that I was looking forward to it. She looked at me sceptically so I don’t think she actually believed me but I was too tired to care.
Delphine offered me her arm and we walked down the several flights of stairs, going down was better than going up but it was still tiring. Outside she sat me down on the outside, stone stairway and told me she was going to get us a taxi. I probably dozed off again because suddenly Delphine shook me gently and I became aware of a yellow taxi standing in front of Sarah’s house. We sat down inside, closely together and while we were both still putting on our seatbelts the driver already spurted away. Somewhere in the back of my head I vaguely realized I hadn’t even told the driver where to go but by then my eyes had already closed and I was drifting away into a peaceful sleep against Delphine’s shoulder.
“Cosima,” someone murmured in my ear, I felt someone’s hand softly squeezing my leg.
My eyes opened and for a moment I wondered where I was, when I looked up to my right I recognized Delphine. Seeing her face made me smile a little.
“Where are we?” I murmured when I peered past Delphine, out of the window and into the darkness.
“We’re at your home, do you want me to come up with you?” I detected worry in her voice.
“No, I’ll be fine,” I said, looking outside again, recognizing the building where I lived.
“I live over there” I added pointing into the direction of the old fire department building that had been turned into twelve apartments a few years back.
“Let me at least walk you to your front door.”
I nodded, unsure of whether I would actually make it to my door, the energy boost Delphine had given me all night had more than worn off and I felt like I might not be able to take a step outside of this taxi by myself.
“I’ll be right back,” Delphine said to the taxi driver and got out, offering her hand for support. I took it and I leaned heavily against her while we made our way over to the front door, where Delphine searched my pockets for my keys while I leaned against the wall. She opened the front door and searched my face. “You sure you don’t want me to come inside?”
I waved her comment away. “I’ll be fine, I’m just a little tired.”
Delphine obviously wasn’t convinced but didn’t push “good night Cosima Niehaus,” she murmured as she leaned in to kiss my cheek.
“Good night, thank you for taking me home.”
She flashed another smile and waited for me to close the front door. While I made my way to my house, I realized Delphine had to know something was up. It wasn’t normal to be this tired, to doze off continuously, well not at my age anyway. I wondered suddenly whether I had snored on our way to my house. I wondered why she hadn’t asked about my tiredness yet. I wondered how I would answer if she ever asked. Delphine made me wonder about a lot of things. Tomorrow would be soon enough to ponder those thoughts.
Once I reached my bed I was officially too exhausted to brush my teeth, which I would regret in the morning. I took off my clothes, let them drop into a pile next to my bed and let myself fall onto the bed without bothering to put on a t-shirt. I got hold of the covers, pulled them over me and fell asleep before my head even touched my pillow.