Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Comptine d'un autre printemps

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.




Friday, February 20, 2015

This is what makes us girls

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. 




Saturday, February 14, 2015

REDValentino

"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.




Monday, February 9, 2015

Da Capo

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".




Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Home is where the heart is

A week and still no word from Stephanie, the last echoes of the sounds she made have vanished, just like her. If I listen closely through the walls I can hear her next door neighbor playing the piano until long after midnight. I met him in the hallway today, his arm brushed against my back as he passed by, leaving traces of Givenchy Blue Label on the air and all around me.

Mother can leave and stay away for months, I never worry because I'm used to the way she slips in and out of her different personalities. Mostly everything I know about her was pieced together by fragments of stories, things she told me in passing. This is how I know that escaping once was enough for her.

When my father disappeared and came back I would always be afraid that the next time he wouldn't. I remember the sound of his keys in the lock so vividly, his voice in the living room and his sudden warmth. He would wrap his big arms around me, wipe the tears from my eyes and say "angel, remember that whatever happens I will always love you".




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