Clara

26, Amsterdam, The Netherlands

I arrived at the Soho House five minutes late. Given the pouring wet snow I had gone through biking here, it felt like an achievement — I didn’t apologise.

The woman at the reception asked for my name. “I don’t have a reservation,” I said, “but my name is Hicham Sabir. I am here to meet Clara Schreiber”. “Who?” she asked visibly annoyed at the painful spelling exercice to come.

“Great, I have you for 1 pm” she said after the third attempt. “Please go to the fifth floor. The elevator is behind you.”

The restaurant was perched atop the club’s square, functionalist building, topped by a steaming outdoor swimming pool. The space had a 30’s-era art deco feel to it, decorated with colorful fabrics, bold geometric rugs and antique furnitures. Clara was sitting at the members-only bar, chatting with the bartender.

We had been introduced by her brother. “You both live in Amsterdam, you should meet,” he said in a cryptic message.

I sat on the tall chair next to her, wondering why we were at the bar when the restaurant was half empty. “It is rather crowded over there,” she said pointing her nose towards an empty table.

She was twenty-six, but looked younger. She had the well-crafted manners of someone who knows they’re being watched, with each of her delicate gestures ending precisely where it was supposed to. I felt like an elephant staring at a piece of fine china. Clara designed handbags, and had just moved to Amsterdam from Paris where she worked for Louis Vuitton.

I scratched my head thinking about ways to entertain the conversation. The only fashion trend I was aware of had been bestowed upon me by Alice, my wife. “Animal skins are back.” She had told me after I joked about her new leopard sweater. But I glanced at Clara’s outfit and she wasn’t wearing any. “How is shopping for someone in your line of work?” I asked naively. “Boring,” she said, “I am now working on the 2020 winter collection and to me, what is in store seems out of fashion already.”

She was into skiing but I was Moroccan, and lamented about not flying business class anymore when I felt lucky to get a window seat. She was an Instagram influencer when I barely had three hundred followers, most of whom I had begged for digital friendship.

She lived in the heart of Amsterdam and loved her apartment. “Do you have roommates?” I asked.
“No,” she answered surprised.
“Are you planning on learning Dutch?” I tried.
“No, the language is so rough!” she said making a series of harsh noises with her throat. “Plus, I already speak French, Italian, German, Spanish, and a bit of Portuguese. And English, of course.”

I was reaching the end of my avocado toast and none of the regular ‘make a friend’ cards I had up my sleeve were working. “What do you spend your time on besides work?” I asked, trying an open-ended joker. “Working on my Instagram account,” she said.

This was my window — I had a card for that. I went on name-dropping Carolina, a friend from San Francisco whom embodied Instagram to me, and all the tips and trend I could remember.

“That’s great!” she shouted with too much enthusiasm, “If she’s ever in Amsterdam I would love to meet her. I just had to fire my manager and would love to get some professional advice.”

A warning light went on in my head. Carolina had a staggering eight thousand followers — but never called herself “a professional”. “What’s your account?” I asked picking up my phone.

“It’s weiloe5.”

She had ninety one thousand followers.

My eyes moved up and down repeatedly between my phone and her, comparing her face to the profile picture, as if to confirm she wasn’t playing a trick on me. Strangely, the realisation that we were now certainly in two different leagues, from two different planets, put me at ease.

Our avocado toasts were gone and our glasses of mineral water almost empty. She asked why I had kept a notebook next to my plate.

“I write portraits,” I said awkwardly, not knowing if that meant anything.
“Am I going to be in one of them?” she asked looking away.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I never know in advance. It’s about the extraordinary lives of ordinary people”.
“That’s not me then,” she half-joked, “I should be in a story about extraordinary people.”

We split the bill and I put my coat back on. She took the napkin off her lap and dried the corner of her lips. As she stood up picking up her handbag, she put on her coat. It was a large faux fur leopard printed jacket.

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