Forgive or forget

"I'm a vulture, Avy, I prey on the weakness of others and get my kicks from their misfortunes. I look for the frail in everything and break whatever I can while it's still within my reach. For this reason I've kept people I never cared about close to me, so that I can poison them with this sickness, this chronic misanthropy that's infested me for as long as I can remember. I've tried to fight it but I'm tired, Avy, I'm so fucking tired. It's only with you that I still recognize my own reflection and it's only with you that I sense a path through this darkness and the dirt, this numbing inability to feel anything but anger at this world and everything it stands for. It's my only way of knowing that I love you, and I will love you just as much even after you leave me."

This is what he says to me.

You say you want a revolution

She comes to us sometimes late at night (or early in the morning), Elisa, climbs into our bed without so much as a whisper and settles down softly in between us. She moves with the inviolable elegance of a Siamese cat and never seems to notice much of the worried world around her. Occasionally she wants to be caressed, that's when she comes to us, dressed in silver and a translucent skin that smells of freshly cut green apples.

The other two - I call them Tom and Daisy - are reckless people, so unlike our quiet little pet. They left for Marseille a couple of days ago and took with them that urgent sense of nausea they produce by citing Lenin while counting their piles of digitalized money. The more I learn about them the less I want to know who they are, Henry tells me they became what they are together and I'm sure he's right.

We're continuously making new plans while changing or abandoning the old. His latest idea is to steal a car and drive north, away from the coast and the tourists. "I'm sick of the ocean" he says, "I never thought I'd feel that way but I do. I really do".

Le mot juste

The heat of this summer is strangely palpable now, gradually the neighboring houses are being opened up and inhabited by their suburbanite owners with their poster families and tastefully groomed dogs. Like actors we pose as well-established Europeans on the beach, him reading a single page in a Flaubert novel over and over, me listening to the same two songs again and again but the lyrics never seem to stick.

We have everything but pretend like it's nothing, he tells me this every night as we try our best to brush off the remains of the day before going to some sort of sleep. Maybe we wouldn't question things if they were really ours but privileges like these were never handed out according to any conceivable idea of justice.

In the morning, after the nightmares and the irregular insomnia, the traces of guilt are gone and we remember nothing. He puts on his eggshell white linen pants, a lavender shirt (buttons covered) and blocks out the daylight with those oversized sunglasses he bought in the midst of the Parisian winter.

"Happiness" he says, "is just a good night's sleep away".
 

Elisa

I've been meaning to tell you about Elisa but I never find the words to describe her. Not even the pictures I take in secret do her justice which is why I sometimes think she's just another phantom of my feverish imagination.

She speaks only when she has to, with the softest, most delicate Tuscan accent and moves elegantly through the house like a muted whirlwind. Always barefoot, always in ethereal floral patterned satin dresses as if the weight she carries in her heart is less than that of a feather. If it wasn't for her inherent lightness she'd remind me a lot of Chloe.

She tells me she's working on a novel but I've never seen her write more than postcards and the occasional (very poetically formulated) grocery list. Henry met her at the casino in Monte Carlo, or so he says, to make me jealous I'm sure. He wants me to hate her but when she wraps her summery scent around us at night I can only think of her as one of those very few people that will never grow old.