Bonne nuit tristesse

The closer we get to August the more we tend to stay up until the rest of the village here begins to wipe the sleep from its curious eyes. Henry tells the locals we're the children of expat art dealers from Lugano, I guess it makes him feel alive somehow. We're still waiting for those heavy rains and a few moments of cold so we can wrap ourselves in cashmere blankets or wash the sweat off our broken bodies under the cherry trees in the garden.

I would change everything if I could but it's already too late as life slowly slips through our fingers like the fine grains of sand on the beaches below our house. He complains about the shopping in Cannes but I know he's just secretly cross over the fact that Chanel don't do menswear.

Ultraviolence

Somewhere on the Boulevard des Moulins, in the corner of my eye, a tall, blonde woman steps out of a black Maserati and on to the street in her impeccably tailored little cocktail dress. She wraps a bolero jacket around her statuesque shoulders with the nonchalant elegance of a bullfighter before disappearing in the crowds flowing toward the casino.

Left in the air is a faint but unmistakable nuance of Cartier de Lune, the only scent that can cause me to lose myself and my balance. I imagine the sound of my phone call echoing in the emptiness of mother's New York apartment because she's not there, because she's walking the same streets I am but in higher heels and a better tan.

As a child, I would see my father everywhere in the first couple of months after it happened. He would walk amidst the other ghosts in the California sunshine and I would call out to him but no one would ever call back. The thought of that violent silence always sends my bird's nest heart racing, a sudden rush of blood that feels just like winter.

Beaches

Elisa is a flawless revelation in her monochrome bikini, catching the afternoon's final sunlight on the balcony while I count beads of sweat like raindrops on her back.

She glows in airy lightness, the obviousness with which she turns toward me and speaks, how she says something, anything, whatever. I'm in the shade under layers of linen, an arm's length away from the hypnotic smell of coconut oil. Day by day passes by in our ever expanding bubble while I relate to my most important discovery over the last few weeks being that pale is better when it comes to rosé wines.

We make plans of vanity to keep from remembering, vaguely imagining a different future is the only drug that really works for me, the only high that lasts. Tomorrow is just hours away and I picture myself in ivory silk from Dior, my heels perforating the streets of Monaco with Henry at my side, his arm steadily around my waist in the golden sunset. We will be diamonds and stars and nobody will know who we are but everyone will wonder.

Rain

Every day I'm waiting for a rain that doesn't come, a sort of catharsis from this heat wave and the drought. In my mind the image of him in a downfall at the end of another July, an overblown meadow and the two of us helplessly unprotected from the floods and the thundering.

We're taken by surprise and drowned within minutes, my pale pastel pink summer dress like cellophane, glued tight in plastic transparency to my shivering body. He turns to me and looks at me closely, tells me to put my hands behind my back, then places his steadily around my thighs before he lays me down in the wet green of the grass. He's so adorably careful when he rolls up my dress, my panties have little black hearts on them and he kisses them softly one by one.

He comes up behind me on the balcony like a shadow. "What were you thinking" he asks and I tell him about how he undressed me and how we drove back in the most comfortable of silences and how I wore his overcoat in the car. How I forgot about the cold with him inside me and how I need him to fuck me in a rain like that again soon, just to keep from falling apart.

Miramar

At the break of dawn on Wednesday, exhausted by the lack of stimulation, we decide to go for a drive in Elisa's car. First on La Corniche d'Or toward Miramar and then north, away from the sun. The morning light bounces softly off the cliffs and in to the ocean like fields of cotton, nothing disturbs the silence but the sound of the engine and tires against glistening asphalt.

We pass by a sandstone house, barely visible from the road but subtly alluring in its Belle Epoque glory. Henry wants to take a closer look so we stop and walk the 100 yards up to the empty driveway. One of the windows is slightly open, "let's go in" he says.

The darkened chill inside contrasting the outside, rays of sunlight filtered narrowly through Venetian blinds and on to the monochrome marble floor. We search for evidence of the owner's existence, puzzling together the pieces of a story from pictures we find in the master bedroom. For an instant we are living the lives of others until a noise awakens us and we hurry back to the car and the reality that is still ours.