There is a store which Elise likes to walk past on the street parallel to her own. Its windows are dimly lit and display a variety of unusual furniture—rare antiques and vintage designer, she imagines, as the store hosts few customers and a French name: Les Petits Trésors. The air is cold and grey this morning as Elise hurries down the street, stuffing her hands into the worn pockets of her peacoat. The wind tugs softly at her hair, freeing the front pieces from an unruly ponytail she tied up a few minutes earlier. She is late for work—a waitressing job at a small, run-down diner which has been around for thirty years, only a day longer than she has. Even in her rush, Elise slows down to peer through the store’s window, but a reflection obscures her view of the furniture. She makes out a constellation of beauty marks, cracked lips, tired eyes, and a rosy nose before they all blur together again into a singular, pale mass. A moment passes before she recognizes it’s her own face.
As summer had turned to fall, and fall turned to winter, Elise found it increasingly difficult to pull back her yellowing covers and roll up from the mattress on her bedroom floor. Earlier, she had awoken to the cold light of winter reflecting off the chaotic spread of letters, lists, inspirational quotes, and picture clippings taped up on her wall. She checked her phone: twelve past nine—oh, shit. Hurrying across the floor, she managed to trip over last night’s glass of bedtime wine. The remainder of red liquid trickled over broken shards as Elise ran into the bathroom, getting toilet paper to clean up the mess. A cobweb watched the morning drama from the bedroom’s ceiling corner.
Isak was in the kitchen by the time Elise grabbed her keys.
“Late again?”
“Oh, fuck off.”
“Ah, come on, you know I’m just teasing. I’ll see you at the corner later.”
“Mm-kay, see you.” She snatched her peacoat and trampled down the stairs.
Elise turns her attention back to the street, lighting a cigarette. She looks up at the empty sky as she blows smoke from her lungs. It vanishes quickly in the air, becoming one with the pervasive greyness. Snowflakes fall and turn to slush on the sidewalk. An accelerator whirls and tires screech beside her, but their sounds feel distant. Elise picks at a loose button hanging desperately onto her coat by its last two threads. It doesn’t matter that she saw only her reflection in the store’s window before; she sees it now in her mind’s eye.
There is a fiberglass chair the color of buttermilk, all round and shiny like a porcelain egg; another chair of honey-colored wood is held up by front legs only, which extend backwards on the floor, both stiff and fluid, thin and sleek. In one corner is a lamp in the shape of a flat-topped mushroom, glowing fuchsia; another reaches over a red leather sofa, its chrome head dipping down as if it were eavesdropping. Her favorite chair is positioned towards the back. The chair’s form is simple—a rectangle for the seat and a semi-circle for the back. Its cushions are a supple leather, charcoal black and impossibly smooth. A chrome rod curves around the contours, framing the chair and forming two U-shaped legs on either side. In her mind, she sits in it with her knees pulled to her chest, rocking gently, eyeing the cobweb in its corner. Just breathing.
Looking to her right, Elise passes the bodega at the corner of the street. The light glows warmly through the windows, and she sees Paul stacking shelves inside. He briefly catches her eye, gives her a nod, and flashes a smile. She raises her hand in a wave, tossing her cigarette stub as her hand falls back down.
A year ago, on the night of her twenty-nineth birthday, Elise, Isak, and Paul were having a smoke outside the corner store. Paul owns the store, and it quickly became the trios daily meeting place. Paul went inside to get a bottle of something when Isak suggested they walk across the street and go into Les Petits Trésors.
“Don’t be funny, Isak.”
“Come on! It’ll be my birthday present to you.”
“Walking into the store? That’s the present?”
“Walking in, leaving with a few things—your room could use a makeover.”
“Why would… no! We’re not doing that. I wouldn’t go there during daylight. And I hate presents. No.”
Isak raised his eyebrows in a smirk. Elise rolled her eyes back at him.
“Sometimes I can’t believe you. No! We’re not breaking into the store like a couple of teenagers, stop it.” She laughed—what a thought. To be young like that again.
Elise’s hand freezes up as she pushes the steel doorhandle of the cafe. The bell jingles as she enters, a smell of washroom drains mixed with waffles fills the air. Tommy looks up from his post in the kitchen. Elise smiles apologetically.
“Hey. Sorry I’m late. Did you have a lot to prep this morning?”
“Nah, it’s all good. Yo—isn’t it your birthday today or something?”
Elise takes her coat off, hangs it up. Pours herself a mug of hot coffee.
“Tomorrow. Well, midnight, I guess. Coffee?”
“I got some already. But I’ll cook up some birthday pancakes for you, how about that?”
Elise smiles weakly, pulling her sleeves over her wrists.
When Elise is at work, she likes to recall the furnishings in Les Petits Trésors, sometimes assigning her customers a piece that seems fitting. The woman sitting alone in the booth by the window, for example—she would have the dust-colored lounge chair, wrinkled with age. Elise imagines her sitting in it with the same, big eyes and thin smile which she timidly offers Elise as she reaches for her cup of tea with both hands. The woman would have a stuffed cat in her lap, Elise decides, and wonders what series of wrong events would lead to such a tragic existence. Then there are the two men in the middle of the cafe—digging into their plates of eggs, sausage, bacon, and French toast drowning in syrup, washed down with a glass of orange juice. They would each have one of the modern, black lounge chairs, which admittingly look like a hybrid between a sun-bathing and dentist’s chair. Only men of their appetite would be comfortable in such obscene luxury, she decides, their midlife mindset blinding them from the unavoidable misery of themselves.
In truth, Elise knows that anyone who steps foot in this diner will never own a piece of furniture from Le Petits Trésors. She knows that they are all on the same hamster wheel—customer, cook, and waitress.
“Hi. What can I get for you today?”
Elise’s hand is not her own as it pulls out a pad to scribble: toast + egg scram, panc. blue., straw. milksh., coffee x2.
A smile is produced on her face. “Sounds great. I’ll bring that right out for you.”
Her body moves mechanically through the diner, moving round and round, continuing like the gears on a machine. Bring food, fill water, tea, coffee, pen scribbles, new notepad, clean dishes, new apron, punch in, punch out, receipts. Tommy rings the kitchen bell. Her steps echo in her ears, dishes weigh down her arms, but Elise is gone—her mind remains elsewhere.
In the three years that Elise had been living in her apartment, she has never set foot in Les Petits Trésors. She has, however, imagined it a thousand times while getting dressed, serving coffee, and walking the city streets. Making her entrance in an elegant suit, she would comment on the designs—their form, line, balance. The store would have the enticing smell of something familiar that you can’t quite place. Dim lights would reflect warmly off the furnishings, arranged together like books on a shelf. The vibrant hues of chestnut, umber, honey, charcoal, chrome, sapphire, and scarlet would swell and blend so that the entire store became a place so sacred in beauty that time stands still—the clocks simply stop ticking. Elise imagines wandering around, recalling the names of designers she doesn’t know—Alvar Aalto, Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, Hans Wegner—whose pieces reside in the Les Petits Trésors. In the store, Elise would be powerful. She would be wealthy with knowledge in the discipline of design, wealthy in figures too. And, after many blissful hours, Elise would exit the store with her favorite chair as her new prized possession.
At home, Elise would place the chair by her bedroom window looking out onto the street below. Her new chair wouldn’t be lonely; collections of art, lamps, rugs and other designer furnishings would fill every last inch of her apartment. For once, Elise would have the time to waste on simply rocking in her chair. If she got tired, she would walk out onto the balcony in her silk robes and feel the sun on her skin. The air would taste fresher, and she would finally breathe easily. In the evening, she would waltz around her apartment with a glass of fine wine until, sleepy, she would rest on a bed as plump and cushioned as a cloud.
—
The moon shines faintly in the darkness as Elise awakes. It takes a moment before her eyes make out the shape of her bedroom ceiling, her littered walls, her body tangled in sheets. Elise tries to swallow, but her throat is dry, and she coughs instead, noticing an aching in her head. What time is it? She checks her phone: ten to four in the morning—oh shit, I missed our meeting at the corner. A knot starts forming in her chest, one that can only be unraveled by falling back into her dream. But now she is awake. Elise rolls over and stands up, her feet cold on the wood. Moving across her floor, she looks at her phone again: Friday, January 26—happy thirtieth birthday, Elise. She fumbles through her coat pocket for a cigarette and lighter, then opens her window and stares into the night.
A deadly calm washes over Elise with each inhale. When her cigarette reaches its glowing stub, she counts the seconds that it takes to drop to the street below. The night is quiet, and the stillness of her apartment amplifies the emptiness in her chest. Elise can’t see Les Petits Trésors from her window, but it’s almost as if she can, if she just tried a little harder. It’s so close, just there—on the other side of that building. That room of dreams, hope and possibility, always out of reach.
Elise checks her phone again: thirteen unread text messages and five missed calls. The first are from Isak.
Isak: Don’t sleep too long, we still have to celebrate you!
Isak: Paul and I’ll be waiting, u know where to find us.
Elise imagines them standing at the corner, laughing. Laughing because she’s never really been the one to bring smiles to their faces.
Isak: Hey, it’s like twenty minutes until your birthday, come over
Elise wants to tell them she’s not worth a toast of celebration.
Missed Call Isak (2)
Missed Call Paul
Missed Call Isak
She dismisses the rest of the notifications. A small sting catches her attention: her foot is bleeding from the broken wine glass she never finished cleaning up. Elise lays on the floor, and for once, her mind doesn’t float to the store, to the soft leather of her favorite chair. She stays in her room, on the hard wood beneath her; thirty, alone, empty, and bleeding from her foot.