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".