He's obsessing over a Balenciaga sweater he
found at Printemps just before we left. The stone print reminds him of
Grand Central, or so he says. I let him worry because it's good for him,
it takes his mind off things for a while and he sleeps less lightly.
At
nights I lie awake beside him listening to the rhythm of the ocean
outside. I always leave places imagining that things will start over
once I get back. They never do, instead it immediately feels as if I
never left, that my absence was just a glitch in time, a short moment of
sleep before the morning.
It was always like that but somehow I
learned to live with it and my dreams are intact, unbroken. He turns to
me and looks me in the eye for a second that could last a lifetime. The
poison is working, tomorrow is just another day.
We spend a few days in Nice, he insists on
staying at the Negresco ("call Stéphane" he says, "he'll make you the
best Tom Collins in this part of the world"). The shopping is not as
good as in Cannes or Monte Carlo but the atmosphere is calmer, much less
nouveau riche.
We're at a café on the Promenade when I
remember: this is where we met when he first needed to see me almost two
years ago. He wanted to tell me about Carl but waited until Paris, he hasn't mentioned it since and I never answered his question.
The
fear still grows inside me like a weed, I can't control it and I know
it still gets to him too. It's easier to keep quiet so we do, hoping we
will some day both forget about it and move on with our lives, apart or
possibly together.
"I have to show my face in Saint-Tropez" he says, "don't ask me why".
As
soon as we get there he changes his posture and the way he holds my
hand when we quickly walk through the marina. Someone calls his name and
he flinches, I haven't seen him that worried since the first time I met
his sister in Paris.
We end up on one of the smaller yachts by
the Quai Jean Jaurés, he nearly gets in to a fist fight but manages to
talk his way out of it, as he always does. The threat of violence
triggers something in him, I see it in his eyes and we make our way back
home in the humid summer night. He starts undressing me in the taxi,
the sex is the best we've had in months.
He's writing on something, too long for a
letter but not enough for a book. When he's done for the day he puts the
pages in a desk drawer and locks it, in plain sight so I'll wonder
until the next time he takes them out.
I'm doing it to him too:
blogging while he's not looking, reducing him to words without giving
him a chance to comment. Does he write about me? I want to ask him as
much as I want him to know about this blog. Just to watch his reaction,
to see what he would do to me.
Today is Bastille Day, the
celebration of a violent revolution. It seems fitting somehow. We'll
watch the fireworks like we did last year, then drink the rest of the
night away, both of us stubbornly holding on to badly kept secrets.
It takes a few days to adjust to the rhythm, I
don't sleep as much as I usually do and the colors are brighter
somehow. Opening the blinds to the ocean in the morning is like coming
to life again after an eternity of sleepwalking in the dark.
Henry
stays in bed while I make us breakfast (if you can call a glass of rosé
wine with freshly baked pains au chocolat breakfast). He puts on his
bone white linen shirt and joins me in the balcony but we don't talk
before the alcohol starts to kick in. Being drunk in broad daylight
feels just like falling through endless skies in a beautiful dream.
I
try not to think or plan too far ahead, these few weeks by the sea are
much too precious. Eventually it will all start over again, another
summer will have passed us by and left us with nothing but the memories
and an idea of what living should always be like.
A few of my earliest memories are from 4th of
July celebrations, pre-11/9. Neither of my parents were born American,
like so many others, but equally proud and grateful. They had both
escaped
their respective backgrounds and found a sanctuary by the sea where the seasons never changed.
They
met in New York but lived their lives in Los Angeles, as did I before
Henry and everything else that happened a few years back. I followed him
to Europe more than a year ago, images are slowly starting to fade like
they always do with time.
We spend the weekend in Monte Carlo,
in and around the casino. Him in his tailored tuxedo from Zegna, me in
my most extravagant velvet and the jewels he got me for my birthday.
He's surprisingly gracious in defeat, probably because he can afford it.
We don't talk about money but something tells me it came from his
father. Part of me wants to know more.
