I'm Still Here (Je Suis Là) Read Free Page A

doesn’t count. There’s nothing especially sensual in what I’ve just done, but it was a stolen kiss from the cheek of an unsuspecting woman. The idea makes me smile and I stand back.
    â€œYou’re lucky it’s still raining, jasmine flower. I’m going to keep you company for a little while longer.”
    I pull the chair over and sit down. It takes me about two minutes to fall asleep.

Chapter 3
ELSA

    I am desperate to feel something, anything, but I feel absolutely nothing.
    If I believe everything I hear, though, someone has been in my room for about ten minutes. A man. A man of about thirty, I’d guess. A non-smoker as far as I can make out from his voice. But that’s as much as I can say.
    And I can only take his word for it when he says that he kissed me, because I didn’t feel it.
    What did I expect? The Sleeping Beauty Effect? Prince Charming turns up, gives me a kiss and whoosh, here I am, ta-da!
    â€œHi Elsa, I’m whatsisname, I have woken you up; now let us be married.”
    If I believed that I’d have set myself up for a cruel disappointment, because of course nothing like that has happened. It’s far less interesting; more like: “Hi, I’m a guy who wandered into your room by accident [well, I assume he did, otherwise I have no idea what he’s doing here] and I’m going to take shelter until the rain has stopped and I can go back outside.” (I heard the shower start a few minutes ago.) Now he’s already breathing deeply in the chair beside me.
    I’m curious—curiosity isn’t chemical, so I can still recognize it when it happens—I’m curious to know who is sitting in the chair beside my bed. I have no way of finding out, so I make it up. Until now, apart from doctors, nurses and the cleaning lady, the only people who ever came into this room were people I knew. I had to imagine what they might be wearing, but that was it. This one’s a real challenge because I have nothing to go on aside from his voice.
    And I like his voice. It makes a change, at least. It’s the first new voice I’ve heard in six weeks so I expect, even if it had been a hoarse drone, I’d probably still have liked it. My sister’s boyfriends don’t speak, or they stay out in the corridor. The only thing I hear from them, eventually, is the inevitable sound of their saliva being exchanged with my sister’s. But this new voice has a unique quality, a mixture of lightness and passion.
    And it has enabled me to confirm today’s date.
    I really have been here for five months, then, and today is my birthday.
    The thing that surprises me about this new information is that my sister didn’t mention it when she was here. Maybe she thought it was pointless. Or maybe she just forgot. I’d like to believe that, but I can’t. A thirtieth birthday isn’t something you just forget, is it?
    There’s a stirring next to me. I hear the movement of fabric on fabric and recognize it as the sound of a sweater being removed. His breathing pauses while he pulls it over his head, then there are little irregularities in his breath while he gets his arms out of the sleeves and pulls it over his chest. I hear the sweater being put down somewhere and then the breathing is regular again.
    I am on full alert. At least I like to think that I am. All of my active parts, which are comprised solely of my hearing of course, are clinging to this new thing like a life raft. So I listen, I listen, I listen. And, bit by bit, I draw a portrait of him in my head.
    His breathing is peaceful. He must have fallen asleep. The tapping of the rain on the window is light and, over it, I can make out the sound of his T-shirt moving steadily up and down over the plastic of the chair. He can’t be very fat, or he wouldn’t breathe like that. I try to compare this with the sound of the people I know, but we hardly ever listen to people