The First Time Ever I Saw Her Face

Contributed by Nicolas Papaconstantinou on 20/10/08

I guess I knew from the first moment that I saw her that she would end up meaning something special to me.

I was hanging out round back of the restaurant where I was working, having a sneaky cigarette and hiding out. Truth be told, I only really started smoking so that I could take more breaks – to me, the daily grind needed many more gaps in it than were afforded by the standard statutory lunches.

So it was just me, and the bins, and the back doors to the other businesses that we shared the alleyway with. People and cars rushed by on the street, only a little way from where I stood, but down here, and in the shelter of the commercial trash skips, it was like I was in another world – both blissfully private and in touch at the same time.

Across from me and up nearer the street was the unused recess of an old boarded up doorway. It was one of the focal points of my breaks. Local kids would use it as a way of passing on hieroglyphic messages to one another in the form of graffiti. Often these were little more than the scrawled names of the messenger – the more artistic among them rendering even those simple words obscure with spray-paint flourishes. Sometimes they were more entertaining – telling who was fucking who, and who would do what for how much, with attached phone-numbers – dog-piss bulletins or a crass kind of urban directory.

Every month, the city would clean these alleys up, and within hours, they would be a mess again. The only thing that stopped the viral spread of this constantly changing Sharpie static was when one of the kids put up something that was truly impressive – a mural or something else exquisite. These kids would mess with each other’s shit without restraint, but only the city would get rid of real art.

For the last few days, there was this one particular image, alone in that doorway, that nobody had obscured or written over. It was a picture of a girl, body an almost amorphous spray of brown, with bright green hair and barely outlined legs. It was crudely painted, and out of proportion, but there was a messy charm to it, and it preoccupied me.

The locals had left it be, too, so maybe they saw something in it.

It wasn’t that I was obsessed with it, or anything. To be honest, my focus on a working day isn’t great anyway, and it’s worse on breaks. I find the process of the smoke break meditative rather than reflective, is the smart way to put it.

But in the couple of days since the painting went up there, I’d find that when I zoned back in again, after a couple of minutes on my own out there, I’d be looking at the painting.

And this is what I was doing when, around three or four days after the graffiti first went up, the girl took a hurried detour out of the sidewalk rush of the street, and without pause settled into that slim alcove, shoulders against the painting’s shoulders, rummaging in her large shoulder bag.

The direction that she had come from meant that she hadn’t seen the girl on the board that she now almost completely covered. As she found her own cigarette and lighter and lit up, she didn’t look back toward the street, and I could tell that she wasn’t down here for any reason other than to take a breather from the city’s rush.

And seeing her was a surreal sight. It wasn’t just the fact that I was used to this space being solitary.

It was this – she was roughly as tall as the girl on the board, and though she wasn’t nearly as impressionistic, she was almost the same in other ways, too. For a start, she had the same bob hair, dark but with a green tinge that I could only assume was dyed in. She was wearing what looked like pale green tights, and a pair of modest black shoes, the short heels the same shape as the scribbled feet on the wood behind her.

And the rest of her outfit was taken up with a huge brown jumper, that swamped her shoulders and went down to her knees – though she was short, so that wasn’t as far a distance as it sounds.

In fact, the only real difference between her and the painting was that she was the cutest girl I had ever seen – a pale elfin face softened the severity of her haircut, and as shapeless as the fluff and wool of the jumper was, what was showing of her legs were slight and shapely. Her hands, as they folded around the lighter and cigarette, and moved about her body and face, were small and pale and dexterous.

And when I’d stopped noticing all of this, I realised that of course, she had noticed me.

Far from being nervous or surprised, she smiled – she was, I would quickly learn, quick and generous with the smiles – and moved towards me, beginning to introduce herself, a novelty in this city. The peculiar effect of her coming away from her spray-painted doppelganger – being able to see them both at the same time for a second before she eclipsed it again as she came nearer – confused me for a second, and I missed her name.

I’d be able to pick it up again later easily enough, as we quickly found an easy rapport – something that probably came more out of her personality than mine.

Our relationship could, of course, only go downhill from there.