I keep imagining things that never happened,
dream of people I never met. Nothing is ever as grand as the plans I
draw like chalk outlines on my bedroom floor. Some nights I think it's
all that matters in life, when I wake the morning after my lungs are
always filled with water from the lakes up north.
For the first
time in months I miss Paris. It's something about the way the air feels
at spring and I picture carousels and magnolias in the Jardin des
Plantes. This morning: the next door neighbor passes me in the hallway,
his lingering scent and my voice whispering to him as if on auto pilot.
"Play me something from Amélie".
I imagine him watching me as he
plays, just now, a few minutes ago. The waltz starts slowly like a
heartbeat, then escalates, just like my hand between my legs, slowly
then faster over the razor thin layer of Dolce & Gabbana silk and
the soft, wet warmth underneath it.
Every time we do this feels like the last:
dressing up to go out, blood red lips and smokey eyes, pale bare skin
under transparent fabrics, short skirts and high heels. Stephanie
digging through the closet in her black lace underwear, asking me about
every little detail but ignoring my answers.
It's almost too
easy. Rome might be as different from Paris as Paris is from LA but the
men are always the same, drawn to us like moths to a flame. We burn fast
together, in need of brand new kicks each night and it only gets harder
with time. When we fall we fall hard but it doesn't matter much 'cause
at least we'll know we're still alive.
Henry never called, I
thought that he would but he didn't. I quickly deleted the message he
left on my Facebook page, like an impulse telling me to rip the wings
off the spring's last butterfly. When we run out of Campari it's time to
leave, don't be surprised if tomorrow you'll find me breathing at the
bottom of the river.
"Be my Valentine" she says when she wakes me,
last night's music still ringing like church bells somewhere deep inside
my head. She's adorably seductive through the morning mist, standing in
the middle of the room in her black pencil skirt, boobs perfectly
fitted in to a cream white balconette bra with little red hearts printed
on it.
My hair smells of cigarettes and spring flowers. "You
have to fall in love ten times before Monday" she says, then laughs as
she yanks away the covers in one swift motion, like a magician. "I made
coffee the way you like it. Oh, and we need more Bourbon".
Henry
still haunts my memories but not yet my dreams. Time was always running
out for us but I still can't shake the feeling that before this day is
over he will have called me to say I'm still the one he wants.
She's back! It's after two on Sunday night
when the lights come on in the kitchen, I'm in bed with the fumes from
my fourth Mai Tai (heartbeat frequency: hummingbird wings). Instead of
piano scales I hear her clicking heels and she steps out of them and in
to the bedroom in her burgundy velvet dress.
She sits down next
to me and runs her little hand through my hair, I ask her where she's
been and she shakes her pretty head in slow motion. Her skin smells like
a Tuscan meadow. "I never mean to hurt people" she says. "I just do".
