the old ultraviolence (five songs #2)

“If you’ve done anything worthwhile you’ve got enemies,” Benjamin said, not knowing whether he meant it. “Look around you. These people are not your friends. Kindness is a mask. Violence is unmasking, and unmasking is violence.” Have I ever said a single thing that I really, truly believed?

Eleanor looked around her, as if following Ben’s instructions. The walls papered in grandmotherly patterns of alternating honeysuckle and lavender. The coke in white glimmering lines on the coffee table’s walnut top. She bent down to it.

Jorge saw Eleanor through the window, filmy with old smoke. What has brought us together through this pane of glass? He pondered. There are forces outside our understanding, and it doesn’t matter if we call them god or magic or kismet or quantum physics. But maybe it does matter. He saw her through the window, and he thought of killing her. He thought about sending them both into death.

They hoped it was only a dream, that they could awaken, lightly, into joy.

Either way, they knew, there was more to it. The worlds that awaited on the other side. How they knew, not one of them could say. And some of them were less than certain. But, they reasoned, what else was there to do?