As If

I was in no state to meet anyone when Korine arrived. I sat on a chair in my sublet on Aldersgate Street, central London: an epic Hail Mary. Outside it was tipping down. It was mid to late May. Colder than it should have been for the time of year. Distended sash window to my right overlooking an alley, or to be exact, the external wall of the neighbouring building. Water was running down black brick. Splashing out of the gutter pipe. This was the moment Korine chose to put in an appearance, I judged him on that. He walked in through the front door like he owned the place. He was taller than me, and lankier, and that’s saying something, given that I myself had a hard time maintaining my posture on my chair: hard-plastic shell, cracked red with other, bleaker tones, thought-up as if for people half my height. I cork-screwed my lower legs, it gave me no comfort. How could it: Korine positioned himself directly in front of me, leaving puddles on the floor: grey marbled linoleum tiling, laid in the sixties I guessed, surviving wave after wave of gentrification.

I defaulted to common courtesy: I invited him to sit down on the empty chair facing mine like an open house.

He couldn’t possibly, Korine said. His thoracic cage was prone to concussing. It hurt when he sat for too long in any one position. He would prefer to lie on the sofa. He had taken a liking to it: its teak frame, greenish leather cushions, slit where it hurt.

Please, I insisted. The chair. I was trying to contain him. Shows what I knew.

He obliged reluctantly. Sat there with his legs crossed, arms wrapped round his torso, moments from falling in on itself I was led to believe. At a guess, he was in his late forties. Younger-looking, if I took myself as a benchmark. He had dark brown hair not unlike mine, wavy and a little too long. My unremarkable eyes, they were looking back at me. He wore a novelty t-shirt, the less said of it the better, and pyjama bottoms. Not to mention his sliders: why, in this weather. Were we ever to be seen together, I thought, we would reflect badly on each other.

‘Lewis,’ I said as per introduction. ‘Aubrey Lewis.’ Former actor whose career has come to nothing, I didn’t say. Husband who lost his wife and subsequently himself, I didn’t lead with that either.

‘Lindsey Korine,’ he said. ‘Pleased to meet you.’ Then he said he was cold.

What did he want me to say. Weren’t we all. I showed him the cream-coloured tracksuit bottoms I was wearing, the mismatched top, which crucially I’d tucked in to protect and keep warm my pelvic girdle. A musculoskeletal vulnerability, I explained, perhaps to show him it could be done: tolerate the conditions. I went to the lengths of displaying my footwear: brown Oxford shoes, oddly puffed up, pillowed, even, as if the leather had been soaked in order to swell it. I didn’t know who made such things. What sort of factory. What sweatshop, it was unimaginable.

‘Can we turn on the heating,’ Korine said. His clothes would never dry at this rate.

‘No,’ I said. It was spring. The communal heating had been turned off.

Korine, I learnt, was unable to put up with his discomfort for even a minute. He got up from his chair, which was an undertaking. Nothing was simple with him. He made for the crowded coat stand by the door, minded to layer up.

Over two years into my subtenancy, I had yet to go near the various pieces of outerwear deposited there. They didn’t belong to me. Hardly anything in the flat did. The paperback with the azure-blue and light brown cover on the table in front of me: I suppose it did. The cardboard boxes next to the sofa did, too. I’d never unpacked them. The flat itself, its fittings and furniture, the large part of its contents, had no connections to me or the life I had lived prior to moving here: this, the attraction. Why I had left the place more or less as I’d found it. Some concessions: my Equity trade union card on the windowsill. I once was an active member, that was before. A Kumari Burman print of a neon-lit tiger with bindis and puffy stickers of animal astronauts, a present from my wife, which I’d removed from its frame and sellotaped to the naked wall. In an otherwise impersonal environment, I had learnt to appreciate these. Meanwhile Korine lifted one of several available tweed overcoats, grey herringbone, floor-length, and inspected it. The way he rejected it. The contempt. Not giving it a second thought, he dropped it on the floor. He pulled out a similar garment, waist-length this time: he seemed taken by it. A maybe. Still, he felt there was something better out there for him. The optimism. The leap-before-you-look sort of attitude and complete lack of self-awareness: I learnt a lot about Korine, observing his process. He threw this latest coat over his shoulder and dug deep. I felt my throat close on account of the smells released as he continued to disturb the historic arrangement: damp lanolin, decaying mineral oil, something blueberry, all in there. Korine found a scratched-up wax jacket, olive, with the corduroy collar. He tried it on. The sleeves were too short. He took that off. Returned to the waist-length tweed coat, square cut, and threw it on. It worked better in terms of sleeve length, but was too short down the torso. Still, he kept it on. He proceeded to put on the wax jacket over it. I closed my eyes and counted backwards from ten. Five. Three. What now. Korine, in double layers, was going through one of the cardboard boxes by the side of the sofa. He selected a Christmas angel, of all things, and placed it on the table. Made out of brightly coloured foil, the thinnest of sheet metals, it was blowing its trumpet in Korine ’s direction. Naturally, it had its back turned on me: I was at the receiving end of its wings, the sharp edges of them, I felt insulted by that.

The turquoise and brown vase my wife had loved and I hated? Korine was holding it. He put that on the table, too.

‘What are you doing,’ I said, meaning don’t do this.

Korine declared it was spiritually frosty in here.

Bare and unwelcoming. He was fixing it.

Old tinsel: not that. Probably made of lead, I used to catastrophise. Christmas was killing us, I declared every year. Cancer, not Christmas, ended up killing Laurie. This current spring was starting to feel increasingly dangerous, too.

I can’t have looked happy if Korine noticed: he held up his hands, fine, and closed the box. He promised to stop. But he left what he’d taken out of the box out, including the angel with the trumpet. I imagined I heard its silly fanfare.

It was madness. By which I meant, all of it. I began to entertain the idea that none of it – least of all Korine – was actually real. Why would there be anyone here: there never was, was the whole point. Likelier, I was seeing things. I had finally completely lost my mind: it had been a matter of time. I was having, what do they call it, a delusional episode. It would pass: and by this I meant quickly.

I-close-my-eyes-and-when-I-reopen-them-Korine-will-be-gone sort of quickly. Never to be seen or heard of again. I would take down the decor which I’d have to accept I’d retrieved myself while, temporarily, not with it. I would put the entire affair down as one of those things. It wasn’t as if I didn’t know why this was happening: against my better knowledge, I had met with the director yesterday, Fran Howe. Why go. Why do this to myself. A particularly cruel form of optimism, was why. An irrational holding on to the possibility of a comeback, if that was the word if no one noticed you’d retired in the first place. Howe claiming she wanted me, I let it affect me. She foisted that paperback on me, too. Had I accepted what I already knew, namely that my acting career was over, and so was I, Aubrey Lewis, then Lindsey Korine would never have happened.

Here we go, I thought, closing my eyes. Breathing, like Laurie had taught me. In. Out. Again, in. Out. When I look, he’ll be gone.

Ok no. He was still here. Making the most of the sofa, as it were. Lying on his side, head propped up on his elbow. His legs projected out over the end of it. Restlessly, he turned onto his back – a feat, given his double layers – crossing his arms behind his head.

No good either: he sat up again. Tested the resilience of the cushioning. Made himself at home.

I’ll-go-to-the-bathroom-splash-some-water-onto-my-face-and-return-to-find-him-gone quickly then. I got up and left the room. I pulled the switch in the bathroom, the light came on. So far, so good. I looked at myself in the mirror, then at the mirror itself: it was de-silvering at an alarming rate. Back at myself: my eye was a little worse for wear. My left eyelid, it was swollen. Other than that, no different than yesterday, or the day before. I washed at the sink: hands, face. I resolved to put on a towel wash later. Personal hygiene, so important. Regular things. Normal things. I straightened my track top. Fixed the tuck: I took reassurance from that.

I remembered the day I stepped into the tracksuit. This, just over a year ago. A year and a half after I quit acting. Two years after Laurie died. That day, the bathroom mirror stopped working for me: I didn’t recognise who was reflected back to me as myself. The jeans I used to wear without as much as a second thought, how I resented them. The non-descript shirt. Even the belt. Especially the belt. A redeeming fact: I had taken the trainers with the N off already. I found them repellent. Next to go was the belt. Couldn’t get it off quickly enough. Down with the jeans, too. Kicked them into a corner, straight off the top of my foot. Then the shirt. Off with it. Some hesitation: could I save the vest? Any forgiving qualities? Grey, formerly white. Washed a thousand times. It felt ok? No. Down with the vest. I pulled it over my head and threw it onto the pile of rejects in the corner. I consulted the mirror again. A pale long figure in underpants and, what’s that, sports socks. Off with the sports socks. Hair, this was where the pins came in. I had found hairpins in the bathroom cabinet the day before: kirby grips to be precise. The original tenant’s girlfriend’s, I assumed. Female company. I pulled my fringe to the side, then back. Used one pin to fix it. And another. A third and a fourth. Better. Quite good, actually. After that, I went into the bedroom. Went through the various clothes that the original tenant, or sublessor, had left in the wardrobe. I chose the cream-coloured track top as soon as I saw it. Sorry no: it chose me. The beige bottoms, not a match, but close enough: I saw a possibility to relate these disparate items. I selected the Oxfords for their soft leather, unaware of their disadvantages, including a lack of ankle support: which wasn’t a then problem, but more of a now problem.

Final check in the mirror: yes. A relief. I looked like someone I could bear the look of. A stranger: the best I could hope for. Long way of saying, I knew the difference a new set of clothes makes. I say this in Korine’s defence.

When I returned to the living room, he was still there. Definitely, unmistakably still there. In league with the Christmas angel, heralding springtime.

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From As If by Isabel Waidner. Used with permission of the publisher, Farrar, Starus & Giroux. Copyright © 2026 by Isabel Waidner.