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“Suppose,” I said, “we were together. Just for the sake of argument, imagine it. I will die long before you.”
“And then I will be sad before having a happy rest of my life. I will find another man. Maybe another old man like you. Maybe a younger one.”
Her answer was so clean, so perfect, so smart. “Of course,” I said. I reached over and held her hand.
“I told you. You do love me. Tu es mon beau ténébreux.” She leaned over and placed her head against my shoulder. It was an agreeable feeling, a nice weight. I would later confess to myself, sadly, that everything she had said I wanted to hear. I studied the top of her beautiful twenty-two-year-old head, peered through her hair, through her unblemished scalp, through her bone and into her brain, and loved her, wanted her to feel loved. More precisely, I wanted her to feel loved by me. It sounded as stupid then as it does now.
ahhhhh
The women excused themselves and left us on the patio.
“You dog,” Richard said. “You’re not going to say that this isn’t what it looks like.”
“No, I’m afraid it’s exactly what it looks like. A goddamn train wreck.”
“The daughter? How old is she? Twenty-five?”
“Twenty-two.”
“What about the mother?” he asked.
“What about the mother?”
“She’s beautiful, in case you hadn’t noticed. And she knows?”
“Yes.”
Richard whistled. “To the French,” he toasted.
“I’m an idiot,” I said.
“Well, I don’t know.”
“Take my word,” I said.
OR THIS lolllll
“Victoire,” he said to the moon. “She’s a beauty.”
“There are lots of beauties out there,” I said.
“Right. Aren’t you above it all.”
“Yes, she’s beautiful,” I agreed. I stopped at the middle of the bridge and looked down at the Seine.
“Don’t do it,” Richard said.
“Don’t think I haven’t thought of it.” I looked at him. “So, my friend, am I crazy?”
“No, but you’re a carrier.”
“Am I?”
“Yep.”
“This can’t lead to anything,” I said.
“Nope.”
“I’ve got a beautiful family.”
“Yep.”
“Is this pretty much how this discussion’s going to go?”
“Yep.”
“I actually have feelings for this woman.”
“I’m sure you do,” Richard said. “I don’t even know her and I have feelings for her. And for her mother.” He laughed softly. “Don’t listen to me. I know you’ve done the math, but here it is again. She’s nearly twenty-five years younger than you. When she’s thirty-five, you will be fifty-nine. Not quite old, but you see where this is going. Your daughter will be nineteen and will hate your guts. Your son will be fifteen and he’ll excuse himself from the dinner table so he can go to his room and jack off to internet images of Catherine Deneuve.”
“I preferred the monosyllabic routine.”
oh my god lol
“She must have some pussy.”
I caught myself before I could become angered by his remark. Instead, in my head I heard Victoire’s whispered “Je t’aime” and saw her green watercolor. “You have no idea,” I said.
“Tell me, does she make you feel younger? Is that part of this?”
On the face of it this was a reasonable enough question. I thought about it. “No,” I said. “In fact, I feel older. I would have to, wouldn’t I? But the thing is, I don’t care. She doesn’t care. She really doesn’t. So, I don’t care.”
“How moving.”
“It’s all I’ve got.”
cant believe i didnt save this either omg
I lived in a town called Altadena in California. It was north of a town called Pasadena. Altadena means "higher dena," as in Pasadena. I do not know what Pasadena means. Apparently no one does. There are many things that no one knows, which is comforting, up to a point. At the time of this writing, I do not know whether I will live much longer, and you don't know what I"m talking about. I was led to this point by a simple note, marks on an odd scrap of paper, words that could have meant nothing, that I could have allowed to mean absolutely nothing. But that's not really possible, is it?
meta-commentary on writing as a practice? i was led here [broadly speaking] by marks on an odd scrap of paper
"If I was flirting, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to. I didn't realize I was."
"Okay."
Her "okay" was so flat, so distant, so blaming, that it actually did make me angry, and so I said nothing else. Instead I fought the urge to say something mean under my breath,not that I could have come up with anything, and stared through the open window until I believed I was asleep.
Igor finished his coffee and nodded toward a young woman walking past.
"What?"
"Don't tell me you didn't see her."
"You know you can count on me to come visit you on every third Sunday," I said. [...]
The worst feeling in the world is knowing your child is afraid, not startled or apprehensive as when about to take a test or ride a roller coaster but paralyzed by that icy cold in the pit of her stomach, confused because she suddenly believes her parents cannot make it all okay. [...] there might have been nothing wrong at all and certainly I was afraid, but the look of fear in Sarah's eyes sent that same ice lance through my center, lodged it in my spine, and stayed there, unmelting, unmoving. My daughter was my reason for waking each day, and I wanted to kill myself for having in some fashion already resigned myself to losing some part of her. [...]
[...] The students were apparently demanding many resignations because the president and his administrator were insensitive to the needs of students of color. It sounded like my college days twenty-five years earlier, when we were asking for essentially the same things. I was sadly as apolitical then as I was at this moment. I dealt with fossils. I crawled through caves and measured the bones of birds long dead. [...]
lol
[...] Signs seasons abounded in Los Angeles and around, more subtle than the abundant death of leaves that so many seemed so in love with. The blooming of flowers and trees, the appearance of various birds. In the spring, the phainopepla appeared, the males showing off their white-patched wings. Purple finches in the fall. Santa Ana winds blowing hot through October. Rains in the winter. The sun there was bright, often too bright, somehow too close, and it was so that day, hammering on me as I drove.