Paris Letters #58

The Eiffel tower light show illuminated a grey electric sky. Manic traffic spun around the Place concord. As I waited for C I read Egyptian pictograms on the obelisk, at The Place Concorde.

Eventually she arrived, with her wolf dog, her natty hair, and her paint-splattered gypsy rags. Looking at me sideways, with a slightly demented look, she was skinnier and much reduced. Babbling ejaculations as incomprehensible as the pictograms, I hardly registered her words. But in the immunity and tinted windows of the taxi, bright constellations of Paris passed. She was in my arms again.

At her chic apartment Near Parc Monceau we descended. I asked her the questions: “Where were you? Were you with him?” An invisible noose tightened around my neck. “Relax, its OK”, she said, and she began to undress on the red divan. Her body had changed, her skin was a bit deathly. She had lost her baby fat. She was hard, like a weapon.

The rank odour of the other man covered her. Did she love him, I wondered? We fell back onto the luxurious canapé, under the chandelier, next to old out of tune piano. We made love, and then a second time in the old marble bathtub, and the next morning on a chair. She reclined in her torn stockings and wild hair, looking infinitely desirable.

“That’s the first time you have ever really fucked me”, she said afterwards. Somehow, now that there was no hope for us, we were alive. Nothing could be lost now that everything was lost. I looked around the chic apartment, which had been attacked by red paint — there were red letters all over the family portraits. Smoking a cigar and eating a raw onion, she commanded me to fuck her again.

We didn’t sleep in the bed but in the corridor, because the window was broken and it was too noisy — the apartment was like Beirut. During the day she painted with Glenn Gould playing Goldberg Variations full blast on the stereo.

In the morning we walked in the Parc Monceau. I had found new clothing in the closet to replace my old rags—I must have looked like some kind of scarecrow aristocrat. We were back together again eating candied apples in the park — real love birds.

Driving around in her rose-colored Fiat down The Boulevard des Bonnes Nouvelles, she was drunk on cheap whiskey. I didn’t try to stop her driving — I could never contradict her whims. Then, as if in slow motion, we crashed into a traffic island. Falling out of the driver seat, she cried out in a puddle of vomit, Je t’aime, Je t’aime.

What could I possibly do? Our lives were these moments of sweetness in the middle of a car accidents. It could only end like this, in a puddle of vomit, where all romantics go.