Carmen

New York 2012, where the glitz and glamour concealed more of the person they aspired to be.

I saw her once, in the autumn of 2012, on a rooftop overlooking the Brooklyn Bridge. I’d just moved here, a nobody from a nowhere town to the bustling city that never slept. I had goals to catch a big break as a writer/photographer. At the time, I didn’t realise how much I lacked inspiration. But that night everything changed. That’s when I saw Carmen. She stood beneath a flickering neon green exit sign, her striking blue eyes lighting up from it, cigarette in one hand and swigging a glass of champagne straight from the tower in another. Someone whispered to me ‘That’s Carmen’ like it was supposed to mean something. But it did. She laughed — a rare occurrence I’d later learn — but when she did, the room tilted toward her like plants to sun. People stopped talking just to watch. I never spoke to her. Not once.

But I started to see her everywhere. Or maybe I just noticed her everywhere? She slipped through the scenes I wasn’t cool enough for, watching her on fire escapes at 2 am, disappearing into cabs with men who looked twice her age. Once on the L train she sat across from me. She was wearing a beat leather jacket, biting her chipped black polished nails, staring blankly onto the empty tracks. I almost said something. I didn’t.

Everyone had a story about her, none believable.

“She dated that DJ that OD’d in April.”

“She modelled in Paris but hated it.”

“She has a voice full of money.” Some Gatsby-worshipping boy said.

We smudged our eyeliner until it looked like hers. Threw on threadbare thrifted coats. Practised not caring in the mirror. We wanted to be her, or be near her, or just to be seen by her. I never really got close enough. But I started writing again, taking grainy photos with some old thrift store camera. I filled notebooks with Carmen sightings as if she were some rare bird. I thought if I captured her right, I’d understand her. Or maybe she’d see me. Or I’d be someone worth looking at. She inspired me — which was a dangerous word — because Carmen wasn’t trying to inspire anyone. And all of us wanted to be seen… but Carmen wanted to fly away.

One long, unforgettable night at some abandoned loft in Chinatown — the kind with broken windows and cigarette smoke seeping through every cracked tiles — people danced on tables, kissed in corners, spilled vodka down velvet dresses. Carmen was in the centre of it. Hair messy, eyeliner smudged like war paint, laughing like she wasn’t part of this world. She was dancing with some guy —no, three of them—climbed onto the DJ booth barefoot, arms stretched out, as if she was about to fly off. Cameras flashed. Someone handed her a cigarette and lit it from a candle. I remember thinking she looked immortal.

That was the last time anyone saw her.

At first, not many noticed. The music was too loud. Fluorescent lights blinded everyone. But soon people began to talk.

“Where’s Carmen?”

“In rehab probably.”

“She left some kind of suicide note.” whispered down the stairwell.

“She didn’t leave anything,” another said, “That’s the whole point.”

I stopped going out. My photography went dull. I left my notebook blank for the first time in months. I didn’t realise how much my life had revolved around her. She’d become the face of everything I created. It didn’t feel dramatic. Just… blank. Like a lens cap you forgot to take off. Like static where music used to be. Everyone wanted to be her, but she didn’t want to be herself.

I went to the places she used to go. The bridge near Brooklyn where she chain-smoked 2 packs. The rooftop with that busted exit sign. None of it felt like she’d really been there, her presence empty. Abandoned. I thought retracing her steps would somehow bring her back -- or something within that I lost that year. But all it did was show me how little I knew. How much I had invented her, one photo, one sentence at a time.

She wasn’t my muse

She was a person

And I didn’t know her at all.

I knew how her eyeliner looked under bad bathroom lighting. I knew the sound of her laughter from 3 rooms away. I knew the shape of her silhouette in someone else’s jacket. But she never gave us her full self, we just filled in blanks — and I was one of them. I projected everything onto her because I didn’t know who I was. And now she was gone.

New York 2024, where the people are just as forgotten as the 2012 scene.

Years later, the city was almost unrecognisable. The buildings had grown taller. Nights were quieter. Streets cleaner. I walked without meaning to — down old blocks I hadn’t walked through in years. Clubs turned cafés, past rooftops that used to hold life. And then, near the edge of a crumbling alley I saw it.

A mural — of Carmen.

Big, black eyeliner, familiar. But different now. Not glamorous. Not magnetic. My steps halted in front of it. The paint cracked, worn from rain and time, but those eyes still stared straight ahead… finally at me. She looked nothing like the girl in my memories. I knew had projected everything onto her; style, mystery, pain, because I didn’t know who I was when I moved to New York. It was easier to mythologise her than to face myself. And all that was left were two faded eyes on a wall.

I wanted to say something. Apologize maybe. Or confess. I heard footsteps behind me, a hand rested on my shoulder. I turned — a stranger. They asked,

“Did you know her?”

“No,” I said. “I thought I did.”