The woman ordering dessert (or rather, “trying” to order dessert) is completely unembarrassed when she finally settles on the cheesecake and announces to the disinterested waiter (who has clearly seen and heard it all before), “Today, I live like a Parisian.” Renata sizes her up from the table behind her. And yes, it should go without saying that Cheesecake (a word that has double meaning here) Lady is wearing a beret. Renata wonders what it must be like to feel so unabashed about one’s humiliating behavior. How ever leaving the house can even be an option for such people. It was barely an option for her despite how invisible she tried to make herself. 

Yes, after years of practice, Renata had learned the tricks of the How to Be Invisible trade quite well. Compared to The Invisible Man, she made it look easy. And part of her success at it, unsurprisingly, was making herself look as unattractive as possible. Being a brunette was already helpful to her cause and, to enhance that “brunette-ness,” she would tease her hair out. Make it look really frizzy and dry—sort of like pre-makeover Anne Hathaway in The Princess Diaries. And, speaking of that “aesthetic,” she would also add a pair of beat-up glasses with smudged lenses to her face for good “invisibility cloak” measure. Although some might assume such “costume-y” accoutrements might only attract more attention, au contraire, they aided with maximum “blendability.” For, in the end, it was only the fashionable blonde-haired waifs (not the black-haired ones like Emily Cooper) who warranted much attention in a city like Paris. Where being “hot”/“precious” was just as much of a commodity as being rich. Because looks were a different kind of congenital wealth. Although beauty, too, was a symptom of winning the birth lottery, it put normals (read: non-affluents) on a more level playing field with the uber rich. 

When one “had” attractiveness, they could still ascend the social ladder without money, and end up making it later as a result of their physical good fortune. Perhaps if Renata had tried at that a few years ago, things could have worked out differently for her. After all, there were only so many viable work opportunities for an Italian woman who didn’t speak French fluently in Paris. That’s why Renata was reduced to being a cleaning woman at a primary school. Didn’t need to know much French for that. In fact, Renata was “lucky” if anyone ever talked to her at all…save to tell her that one of the students had misfired in the bathroom and could she please hurry and clean it right away. 

Renata found that, after a while, she didn’t even really need the “disguise” she had grown accustomed to putting on. When you were a member of a certain class—a certain sect of humanity—you became invisible anyway. Renata was only too happy to have acquired that superpower (though no one “acquires” it, so much as they’re born into it). Back when she was still living in Cavaglià, a small Piedmontese town, she felt far too seen. Too noticed. At times, walking down the street felt like a scene out of Malèna (even if Renata didn’t live in the South). She fled before she got any hotter, or she was bound to get raped like Malèna, too. Although both her parents, as well as her two brothers and three sisters, were livid about her decision to take off for Paris on a whim at the age of nineteen, she didn’t care. She was done trying to be the obedient daughter and the dutiful sibling, as the tacit “law of being Italian” dictated. But only if you were a woman. If you were a man, of course, you could leave the family nest in the name of whatever you wanted (usually money or pussy). Renata didn’t have the time or resources to endure a sex change so that she might be permitted the same luxury. 

Thus, she left town without guilt or shame. Dispensing with both the minute she decided to dispense with Italy. It hadn’t served her there, and it definitely wouldn’t in France either. Nor would her beauty, she decided. Sure, it might have helped make things easier in the beginning, but so much harder in other ways later on. Like having to reconcile that her looks were all that she had ever been valued for. That would be a pain she couldn’t bear. Much better to be valued for your mind or work ethic than the ever-mutating flesh husk that housed you. It was more honest. The early manifestation of the body was a lie, prone to change with the sands of time. 

Nonetheless, it was still her body she used to make money, even if it wasn’t through sexually exploitative means. Just physically exploitative ones. Her mind was hardly in use, that was for sure—not as she spent most hours of the day lifting, heaving, scrubbing or moving various cleaning tools back and forth, around and around. It should go without saying that Renata was fucking ripped. Yet another reason she worked at being invisible, covering herself in muted clothes that draped over and covered her body. Made her as forgettable as the wall while she disappeared into wherever she was during her few free hours. 

If she wanted to be seen, however, it proved far more of a challenge than going undetected. For even if she deigned to act like the Cheesecake Lady in the restaurant, calling herself “Parisian” because she ordered cheesecake (Renata honestly had no idea where the woman got such a notion), she wouldn’t be able to “carry it off.” Wouldn’t be convincing as someone who made such absurd declarations about herself. She would probably remain invisible still, in fact. That was the irony: that she actually didn’t even need to try so hard to go unnoticed. But, as it is said, old habits die hard. And this one was more than just a habit. It was a way of life. And that is far more ingrained than any mere “pattern.” 

Even so, Renata was curious enough about what it would be like to inhabit the same unwitting fearlessness as Cheesecake Lady. To be so unconcerned with how you were perceived that you could say whatever—do whatever—you wanted without fear of public opinion. Maybe this was her chance. She was never going to come back to this cafe again. Hell, it was an anomaly that she even had a day off to sit in a cafe in the first place. So why shouldn’t she “experiment”? Try on a new persona for once. A persona that was loud, uninhibited, free to do as she pleased. Even say nonsensical shit about how eating cheesecake is “Parisian.” Was the woman mistaking a mille-feuille for something it wasn’t? No matter. Cheesecake Lady was not her concern now. Her only concern was proving to herself that she hadn’t disappeared completely. 

In that instant, Renata remembered that it was Charles Bukowski who said, “The problem with the world is that the intelligent people are full of doubts, while the stupid ones are full of confidence.” She knew that aphorism played into her self-shrinking nature. That she was smarter and more interesting than half the boors that took up the air around her, with no qualms about sucking it up. Wasting it all with their non-conversations, all pertaining, in some way or another, to money. How much they had and what they wanted to spend it on next and how they were going to get more. More, more, more. Always more. No one believed in ever just shutting the fuck up and appreciating what they had. So, fine, Renata would try it Cheesecake Lady’s way, announcing in a big, bombastic tone that she wanted to try a dessert as well. Were they any profiteroles left? She was feeling truly Parisian today. The few other patrons and the waiter, however, didn’t seem to hear her. It was then that Renata had to wonder if she wasn’t a ghost after all. If she had been too effective at what she’d worked to achieve. 

Careening out of the cafe in a daze, Renata glanced around her, sizing up the passersby, hoping someone might take note of her stare. But nobody so much as breathed in her direction. This is what she wanted, wasn’t it? The reason she had left Cavaglià. So as to attain the anonymity she craved. And yet, what was it about today that made her suddenly realize she had become so anonymous that she had been seemingly obliterated from human perception? Then she looked down at what she was wearing and it all came crashing down around her: she was wearing her cleaning woman’s uniform, had donned it instead of some “street clothes” this morning while on autopilot. No fucking wonder. Then she understood: The Invisible Man had to work much more maniacally to become invisible because he was a white man with scientific predilections, a man who could throw some money around now and again on “lab work.” There’s no one more visible than that.

After recovering from her revelation, Renata dusted the smock of her uniform off with her hands, deciding to keep it on and remain: The Invisible Woman. It had gotten her this far, so why not? The Invisible Man could only dream of the life she had. Call his fantasy, perhaps, the original fetishization of “slumming it.”