Your love patrols the core of my worlds surfaces, you know how to service it, eternally because there is only the now not later.
Love is our equator, the reflective essence of your presence I equate to.
See your energy elevates me and mine moves you forward.
Our connection explodes and every flows it never stays dormant.
When passion is a club we will never need a doorman.
Cos I’m your missing piece of the equation. Just call me your 1.
Love

On REPEAT:
“Tenderness” by General Public

Arms around my shoulders

Mine around your waist

Your body pressed tight to mine

My head rests upon your chest

Hug me tight

In an embrace that speaks volumes

When a word is never uttered

I am desperate for your love

Reflected in our touch

And will accept nothing less

Than the tenderness of your hug.

Tenderness de John Polson.

Estrena: 20 de novembre de 2009

“El detective Cristofuoro es un veterano policía obsesionado con el caso de Eric Komenko, un joven que acaba de salir de prisión tras cumplir condena por el asesinato de sus padres. Eric Komenko también ocupa los pensamientos de Lori, una problemática adolescente que se siente irremediablemente atraída por él desde que presenció un extraño suceso años atrás. Lori se presenta por sorpresa en la vida del joven, determinada a acompañarle allá donde vaya, a pesar de las advertencias del detective Cristofuoro, quien, convencido de que Eric es un asesino en serie que pronto volverá a actuar, no dudará en seguir sus pasos.”

Website: http://www.tenderness.es/

Languidece noviembre, amarillean las hojas de los árboles y todo ese rollo… y como ellas, van cayendo marchitos los estrenos del fin de semana, sin despertar gran interés a un servidor. Algo me dice, sin embargo, que unos cuantos millones de personas se empeñarán a llevarme la contraria:

-Luna Nueva (estrenada el miércoles 18): Blockbuster palomitero apoyado en el fulgurante (y por mí no catado) éxito de las novelitas de Stephenie Meyer, aquí está la segunda entrega de… sí, otra historieta de vampiros y amoríos adolescentes, en la línea del producto HBO True Blood. Cómo será de pobre el guión cuando de lo único que se ha hablado es de si el vampiro Robert Pattinson, cansino como él solo, sale con esta o con la otra; y, sobre todo, con cuántos kilos de músculo se ha forrado el hombre-lobo Taylor Lautner. Pobre crío él, que a sus 18 años se ha visto obligado a machacarse en el gimnasio y engullir proteína tras otra, y quién sabe si metiéndose hormonas y otras mierdas, para cambiar su cuerpo cuando aún estaba desarrollándose, por culpa de unos productores que sopesaban la idea de largarle por alfeñique. Con más razón que nunca: para fans de la saga.

-Amelia: No parece que sea el caso, pero película que hace Hillary Swank… (casi) Oscar que se lleva; ahora encarna a una aviadora pionera que tiene que sufrir a Richard Gere y a Ewan McGregor (¡Dios!) mientras rompe barreras más chungas que el sonido, como la discriminación por ser mujer, bla, bla, bla.

-Un lugar donde quedarse: Sam Mendes, otrora admirado por American Beauty, parece cada vez más fuera de onda; ahora sirve una comedia gafapastiana y con airecitos Green Village, rollo cultureta/alternata/intelectualoide que tira para atrás.

-Tenderness: El título, la verdad, no invita nada. Luego, ¿quién sabe?, igual hasta engancha la historia de un poli (Russell Crowe) obsesionado con un chaval que mató a sus viejos y del que está convencido que, fuera ya de la cárcel, se cepillará a más gente, incluida una niñata enamorada del tal asesino. Una incógnita.

-La noche que dejó de llover: Luis Tosar se merece nuestro eterno respeto por su Malamadre de Celda 211; pero esto, hasta que alguien me demuestre lo contrario, es una ESPAÑOLADA.

No voy a extenderme comentando el título que se estrenó el miércoles, porque de “Luna Nueva” mucho se ha hablado ya en este Blog, y mi compañero Snake, recogió la noticia el mismo día en el que debutaba en las pantallas españolas (para leer su post, pinchad aquí).

Por otro lado, y para quienes queráis tener una información más completa de la película, si pincháis aquí, podéis acceder a un especial sobre ella, confeccionado por Karelia, otra de los componentes de este Blog.

Y dicho esto, me dedico a comentar los cinco nuevos films que podremos ver a partir de hoy en nuestros cines.

“Tenderness” es un thriller producido en USA, protagonizado por Russell Crowe, Laura Dern, Jon Foster y Sophie Traub. La película está basada en una novela de Robert Cormier, escritor de literatura juvenil, ya desaparecido, y, precisamente, los dos personajes sobre los que gira la trama del film, son el joven Eric Komenko (Jon Foster), puesto en libertad recientemente, después de cumplir condena por el asesinato de sus padres, y Lori (Sophie Traub), una adolescente obsesionada por Eric, que irrumpe por sorpresa en su vida. Russell Crowe interpreta a Cristofuoro, un detective de la policía que sigue de cerca los pasos de Komenko, convencido de que este es un potencial asesino en serie.

“Amelia”, es un biopic sobre la vida de la aviadora estadounidense Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank) que desapareció mientras sobrevolaba el océano Pacífico en 1937 en su intento de realizar un vuelo alrededor del mundo. El film nos cuenta también sus relaciones con su marido, George Putnam (interpretado por Richard Gere), con la ex esposa de este, a la que da vida Virginia Madsen, y con el que fue su amante y gran amor de su vida, Eugene Vidal (Ewan McGregor), padre del escritor Gore Vidal.

“Un lugar donde quedarse” la dirige Sam Mendes, realizador de las aplaudidas “American Beauty” (1999), “Camino a la perdición” (2002), y “Revolutionary Road” (2008). El film es una comedia dramática, que también puede encuadrarse en las llamadas road movie. Es el peregrinar de una pareja treintañera por Estados Unidos, buscando el lugar ideal donde afincar su familia, ya que están a punto de  tener un hijo. En su recorrido conocerán a muchas otras familias, vivirán con algunas de ellas situaciones surrealistas, pero siempre sacarán algo positivo de sus encuentros, lo que les llevará a una reflexión final.

“La noche que dejó de llover” es de producción española, está protagonizada por el aclamado Luis Tosar (“Celda 212” -2009), y fue pre-estrenada en el pasado Festival de Valladolid. Cuenta como Spleen (Tosar), un hombre fuera de lo corriente, que pasa las noches filosofando en una taberna con sus amigos, conoce a una chica con la que inicia una relación también fuera de lo corriente, y que tiene como marco la noche.

“Los condenados”, también producida en España, fue pre-estrenada en la pasada edición del Festival de Cine de San Sebastián. La dirige Isaki Lacuesta, del que pudimos apreciar “Cravan vs. Cravan” (2002) el documental con el que debutó en la pantalla grande. En esta ocasión, nos cuenta una tensa historia en la que dos ex-guerrilleros se reencuentran después de 30 años en una excavación ilegal, en la que comienzan a buscar el cuerpo de un compañero desaparecido en aquella época.

Y… hemos llegado al final. A la semana que viene, más.

Buen cine.

LA SAGA CREPÚSCULO: LUNA NUEVA

Título: La Saga Crepúsculo: Luna Nueva

Título Original: The Twilight Saga: New Moon

Género: Thriller, Fantasía

Nacionalidad: USA

Año: 2009

Director: Chris Weitz

Guión: Melissa Rosenberg

Intérpretes: Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Taylor Lautner, Ashley Greene, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Bronson Pelletier, Alex Meraz, Kiowa Gordon, Billy Burke, Chaske Spencer, Edi Gathegi, Rachelle Lefevre, Michael Sheen, Christopher Heyerdahl, Charlie Bewley, Daniel Cudmore, Dakota Fanning, Graham Greene, Anna Kendrick, Michael Welch, Christian Serratos, Justine Wachsberger, Jamie Campbell Bower, Justin Chon, Hugo Steele

Sinopsis: Basada en la novela Luna Nueva, segunda de la saga Crepúsculo de Stephenie Meyer.

El romance entre mortal y vampiro alcanza nuevas cotas cuando Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart) tienta al destino en su intento de conocer mejor a su amado vampiro, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson). A medida que se sume en los misterios del mundo sobrenatural del que ansía formar parte, descubre un par de antiguos secretos que la ponen más en peligro que nunca.

Nada más cumplir Bella 18 años, Edward decide abandonarla con intención de protegerla. Una desconsolada Bella se ve pasando su último año de instituto sola, medio dormida e insensible, hasta que descubre que puede visualizar la imagen de Edward siempre que corre peligro. Su deseo de estar con él a toda costa la lleva a asumir riesgos cada vez mayores, e incluso llega a aficionarse a correr temerariamente en moto a toda velocidad.

Con la ayuda de Jacob Black (Taylor Lautner), su amigo de la infancia y miembro de la misteriosa tribu quileute, Bella restaura una moto para sus aventuras. El gélido corazón de Bella se va descongelando poco a poco gracias a su creciente relación con Jacob, que guarda su propio secreto sobrenatural.

Cuando Bella deambula sola hasta un prado, se encuentra cara a cara con un letal atacante. Tan solo la intervención de una manada de lobos sobrenaturalmente grandes la salva de una espeluznante muerte y el encuentro deja terriblemente claro que Bella todavía corre grave peligro. En una carrera contra reloj, Bella descubre el antiguo secreto de la tribu quileute y el auténtico motivo por el cual Edward la dejó. También afronta la posibilidad de una reunión potencialmente mortal con su amado muy distinta de la que esperaba.

TENDERNESS

Título: Tenderness

Título Original: Tenderness

Género: Thriller

Nacionalidad: USA

Año: 2008

Director: John Polson

Guión: Emil Stern

Intérpretes: Russell Crowe, Laura Dern, Sophie Traub, Jon Foster, Alexis Dziena, Michael Kelly, Jake M. Smith

Sinopsis: El detective Cristofuoro (Russell Crowe) es un veterano policía obsesionado con el caso de Eric Komenko (Jon Foster), un joven que acaba de salir de prisión tras cumplir condena por el asesinato de sus padres. Eric Komenko también ocupa los pensamientos de Lori (Sophie Traub), una problemática adolescente que se siente irremediablemente atraída por él desde que presenció un extraño suceso años atrás. Lori se presenta por sorpresa en la vida del joven, determinada a acompañarle allá donde vaya, a pesar de las advertencias del detective Cristofuoro, quien, convencido de que Eric es un asesino en serie que pronto volverá a actuar, no dudará en seguir sus pasos. Aunque tenga que emplear métodos poco ortodoxos para intentar detenerle.

AMELIA

Título: Amelia

Título Original: Amelia

Género: Drama, Biopic

Nacionalidad: USA

Año: 2009

Director: Mira Nair

Guión: Ronald Bass, Anna Hamilton Phelan

Intérpretes: Hilary Swank, Richard Gere, Ewan McGregor, Virginia Madsen, Christopher Eccleston, Mia Wasikowska

Sinopsis: Basada en la vida de la aviadora Amelia Earhart (Hilary Swank), legendaria piloto y un enigmático símbolo del espíritu libre americano, cuya existencia se rigió por una profunda curiosidad por todo lo que la vida le podía ofrecer. Los precoces triunfos obtenidos por Earhart en el ámbito de la aviación y su meteórico ascenso en fama y fortuna, recibieron el estímulo de su tempestuosa asociación y posterior matrimonio con el editor George Putnam (Richard Gere). Unidos por su mutua ambición, admiración y, finalmente, gran amor, el vínculo entre ellos no llegó a romperse ni siquiera con la breve pero apasionada aventura que Earhart mantuvo con Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor). Earhart fue la primera mujer que cruzó el Atlántico en solitario y fue el primer piloto, ya sea masculino o femenino, en atravesar el Pacífico, también en solitario. En su intento por ser la primera persona en dar la vuelta al mundo por la ruta ecuatorial, la vida de Amelia se vio truncada trágicamente por su misteriosa y prematura desaparición en las aguas del Pacífico Sur en el año 1937.

UN LUGAR DONDE QUEDARSE

Título: Un lugar donde quedarse

Título Original: Away we go

Género: Comedia

Nacionalidad: USA

Año: 2009

Director: Sam Mendes

Guión: Dave Eggers, Vendela Vida

Intérpretes: John Krasinski, Maya Rudolph, Jeff Daniels, Carmen Ejogo, Jim Gaffigan, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Josh Hamilton, Allison Janney, Melanie Lynskey, Chris Messina, Catherine O’Hara, Paul Schneider

Sinopsis: Cuando Burt y Verona (John Krasinski y Maya Rudolph) descubren que están a punto de tener un niño, sufren una crisis de pánico. No soportan el pueblo donde viven, y ahora que los padres de Burt se mudan de allí, pierden el sistema de apoyo con el que contaban. Deciden emprender un viaje en busca del sitio ideal para echar raíces y criar un niño. De paso, visitan a una serie de parientes y amigos. Algunos son absolutos excéntricos, otros son conmovedores, pero todos ayudarán a Burt y a Verona a encontrar su destino. Acabarán por descubrir que para crear un hogar, sólo se necesitan el uno al otro.

LA NOCHE QUE DEJÓ DE LLOVER

Título: La noche que dejó de llover

Título original: La noche que dejó de llover

Género: Drama

Nacionalidad: España

Año: 2008

Director: Alfonso Zarauza

Guión: Alfonso Zarauza

Intérpretes: Luis Tosar, Nora Tschirner, Mercedes Sampietro, Chete Lera, Miguel de Lira, Fede Celada, Cristina Solano, Macarena Gómez, Camila Bossa

Sinopsis: Spleen (Luis Tosar), un tipo poco corriente, pasa las noches filosofando hasta el amanecer en compañía de sus amigos de La Taberna de los Dramáticos, santuario bohemio al que no falta ni una noche desde hace años. Después de tres meses de lluvia ininterrumpida, de pronto esa noche deja de llover. Es entonces cuando Spleen sale a comprar pan y conoce a La Rusa (Nora Tschirner), una rubia con flequillo en la que materializa sus ilusiones. Juntos iniciarán un viaje inesperado, tierno y surrealista a través de la noche y del interior de ellos mismos que transformará sus vidas por completo.

LOS CONDENADOS

Título: Los condenados

Título original: Los condenados

Género: Drama

Nacionalidad: España

Año: 2009

Director: Isaki Lacuesta

Guión: Isaki Lacuesta

Intérpretes: Daniel Fanego, Arturo Goetz, Leonor Manso, María Fiorentino, Bárbara Lennie

Sinopsis: Dos ex-guerrilleros se reencuentran 30 años más tarde en una excavación ilegal, donde buscarán el cuerpo de un tercer compañero desaparecido entonces. La tensión y los secretos escondidos durante ese tiempo aflorarán a medida que se acerquen a la impredecible solución final, donde no todo será lo que parecía.

-

Swanson 

Brushstokes

Lead me into temptation –
and let there be no boundaries to your whisper
as I caress the longing of my inhibition.
It is not enough to love you that I embrace this desire
for my heart is swollen with aspiration.
Might I not be able to hold you within my arms
then I shall hold you in my
- Dreams.

© Charles Coakley Simpson 2009

is there a word for space
or light ?
pure sensation
wide open

I make the leap
from language
to being
words happen
and I watch
gratefully
like watching rain
outside the window

beautiful precious
sparkling
the rain ends
there is silence
the wet ground
the glistening light
stillness
and peace.

with gratitude, S.

Nueva semana de estrenos, amigos. Esta vez, el número de estrenos es inferior al de la semana pasada. Las producciones españolas y americanas copan la lista de nuevas películas. A continuación os adjunto la relación y sus enlaces correspondientes a los que podréis acudir en caso de necesitar conocer más detalles:

La saga de Crepúsculo: Luna Nueva (estreno el 18 de noviembre)

Amelia (estreno el 20 de noviembre)

Los condenados (estreno el 20 de noviembre)

Tenderness (estreno el 20 de noviembre)

Un lugar donde quedarse (estreno el 20 de noviembre)

TENDERNESS (estreno 20 de noviembre)

Género: Thriller
Producción: EEUU
Director: John Polson
Intérpretes: Russell Crowe y Jon Foster

Sinopsis:  Eric Komenko es un estudiante de instituto atractivo y encantador, con unos padres abnegados pero dominantes. Tras una acalorada discusión con su madre a raíz de que ésta descubra su promiscuidad, Eric los asesina brutalmente. Años más tarde, Lori Cranston, una chica atractiva y atrevida que ha sufrido en silencio durante años los abusos sexuales de los múltiples novios de su madre, está fascinada por la historia de Eric. Sin dejarse intimidar por los instintos asesinos del chico, Lori huye de casa para ir a su encuentro. Más información.

I remember reading in an article by Sylvia Boorstein about a saying she came across: ‘life is so hard, how can you be anything but kind…’

Life is hard. balancing all the things we do in a day, work, relationships, play, and managing to be safe and get through it and feel good is so difficult. for every one of us. and yet, what I can’t understand is, why we make it harder by being so hard on ourselves!

We are so good at turning something good about ourselves into something horrible. Words I heard from a friend who calls herself needy because her favorite moments of the day are when she is physically close to her children. Dah! that is part of being a mother and a human being. I love physical touch. the warmth of snuggling my toes on my dear one’s lap.

words from another loved one: ‘ I can’t afford to be tired! I need to get this done’.
words from me about a gift I got a loved one: ‘its nothing, …’ even though I had put in thoughtfulness and effort into it. just so many echoes of the same thing. aversion for our physical body and wanting to look a certain way. putting down ourselves. never receiving compliments because we don’t think we deserve them. self-judging, that becomes self-loathing.

it is the feeling and the touch, the sensing through our physical senses that makes us a human being and not a machine or robot. how we are needy. we need people. we need each other. we need affection and touch. all of us do. we are vulnerable. and we need unconditional love.

have you noticed when you are tired or in pain, how comforting a kind word is ? a smile, attention. how good that feels. that is how self-love can be. a cool breeze on a hot hot day. makes all the difference.

and people who don’t love themselves don’t make others feel good either. and when someone is not kind to us, we do have a choice : of compassion and deciding not to carry their emotions forward in us. we have a choice of love over hate.

this is every day life. we are good people. we deserve to feel good and be happy and kind. and that makes all the difference. when we are no longer judging, all that energy is freed up for other things. good things. try it out! it is a great journey and one that feels good!

with joy and possibilities, S.

Dos sorpresas agradables. Por un lado, un extraordinario largometraje documental dirigido por Juan Carlos Rulfo y Carlos Hagerman, titulado Los que se quedan, el cual cuenta varias historias de mexicanos que se han ido a Estados Unidos en busca de algo de dinero, pero a partir del testimonio nostálgico de los padres, hijos y esposas que los esperan de este lado.
De Estados Unidos, nos llegó 50o días con ella, una comedia romántica que demuestra que es posible mantenerse dentro de los márgenes del género y aún así entregar una película de dolorosamente honesta.
Finalmente, les ofrecemos la reseña de Asesino íntimo, un filme protagonizado por Russell Crowe que en Estados Unidos fue lanzado directamente a DVD y que en nuestro país dio tristemente el semanazo en cines.

The Tenderness of Motherhood

The tenderness of motherhood exists throughout the world we live and we humans, as well as our animal counterparts, seem to honor and exhibit that tenderness of motherhood in exemplary fashion. A tenderness that is exhibited whether it is…..

On A Riverbank….

In The Artic….

On the African Serengeti….

In the Oceans….

In the Jungles of India

Or…..

At a City Park Near You

La tenerezza è un film 2008 crimine americano diretto da John Polson, che stelle Sophie Traub, Tim Hopper e Russell Crowe. Laura Dern, Michael Ahl, Vincent Bagnall e Tayna Clarke anche fare le apparenze

Leggi altre notizie su: | Drammatico | Poliziesco | John Polson | Russell Crowe | Alexis Dziena

I am in Barnes & Noble with the sole purpose of buying He’s Just Not That Into You, because I’m tired of hearing about how honest it is, and have decided to rip it open and extract these supposed universal truths of how not to be a fucking fool when seeing a man, a concept I have not yet finalized, which brings me here to standing in front of Caroline. She is a very nice cashier whose face contorts with a tinge of pity when I place the book in front of her. Or maybe I’m just imagining that. The last book I bought here was Flannery O’Connor’s Everything that Rises Must Converge, and I cradled it in my arms when I walked out of the store, letting it sit in my lap as I drove home, holding it like a lover while I read about a bull goring Mrs. May, its place on the pillow next to mine. Tonight I have slinked in and snatched my book selection from its shelving, walking curtly towards the counter in a haze that feels strikingly like shame.

“Is there anything else I can help you find tonight?” Caroline asks.           

“My dignity,” I say, only half-joking.

Caroline musters a small laugh. She hands me my selection in a plastic green Barnes & Noble bag. I thank God it is a solid color when I walk through the mall, crowds of shoppers examining the last of the winter clearance offerings, so they cannot see what I am reading. When I get into my car, I slide it out of the bag. Jennifer Aniston is on the cover from the He’s Just Not That Into You movie along with other heavily make-uped actors pretending to smile on their plastic phones and a random littering of candy conversation hearts around the edges. I toss the book back in the bag and throw it the backseat and start the car. The stale blue lights of the parking garage cover my car in stripes of fluorescent light when I drive under them. It is the most depressing purchase of my life.

I flip through the pages while I eat a fruit cup, pseudo-noncommittal, soaking in the premise: if he isn’t around, he’s just not that into you.

Oh, yeah? What if he’s out of town on business? I ask. Or visiting family. Or catching up with his college roommate. It doesn’t mean he’s dating someone else.

Right, the book says. He’s probably just volunteering at a homeless shelter on the weekends. If by “volunteering at a homeless shelter” you mean “fucking some other woman senseless.” Only of course it just implies this, because any book with Jennifer Aniston on the cover would never utter such explicit filth.

I think of him, his short but striking stature, black Persian hair and wide brown eyes which would narrow like crescent moons when he smiled. His glasses sat high on his slim nose. He is an attorney, a black briefcase turned on its side always on the table by his apartment door. “I will be out of town this weekend, my dear,” I hear him tell me, “visiting New Haven and getting smashed off of Maker’s with my old roommates. I’m sure the Yale Club will probably have us leave in handcuffs.”

“Alright,” I say. I nod my head twice, which is supposed to signify that I am unconcerned, and gather my purse from the chair. It’s the fifth successive weekend he’s been out of town.

“But we’ll catch up next week,” he says, leaning in for a kiss. “Maybe Tuesday? I don’t know what your plans are.”

“Tuesday might work,” I say. He kisses me and my eyes are fixed on a print he has on his wall of an old coin with a king in the middle of it.

“I’ll see you then, my dear,” he says. I look back at him. He is standing with one hand on the doorknob and smiling at me, not suspiciously, but with a spark of nervousness that is imploring me not to ask any questions. I concur because I have no place to ask these questions. We have agreed that we will see each other casually at first and see where it goes, meaning that we are both to pretend we aren’t sleeping around.

“I don’t want any surprises if maybe you see me out with someone else,” he had told me over pizza. It was our second date. “I’m going to continue to date and I hope you do, too.” I had nodded and cut my pizza with a dull knife, which did little more than smear its sauce around the plastic plate it reclined upon. He continued, “And if, after some time, we decide to just see each other, well, that’s an option, too.”  I nod again, as though I am taking this into consideration; the truth is, I am horrified that I have stumbled into a relationship in which we “see where it goes.” I want a yes or no, a decision that we are going to share bottles of wine over a Saturday night movie or that he is annoyed by my snoring and I have begun to hate him for his inability to call ahead to make plans, and we are scrapping the whole thing altogether. But instead we sit here and he is so natural, so good at making conversation: “Tell me your feelings on the movie at the Naro last week,” he inquires, because the first time we saw each other, I had just gotten out of a Naro movie, walking down the sidewalk on a brisk fall night with a houndstooth scarf knotted around my neck and he in a black overcoat. His black hair sparkled in the moonlight. I remember thinking that I liked his jaw line.

You have nothing to lose, I think while he explains a documentary he wants to see. I’m trying to implore any nonchalant-ness I have ever built up inside of me, like casual dating is something I do all the time. Don’t get too involved. Enjoy it. I take two deep swigs of beer and make a joke of some sort, something offhand, and he laughs brightly. The performance has begun.

I lie in his bed and read Design Within Reach while he brushes his teeth.

“There is a three-hundred dollar stool in this catalogue!” I call to him. “And a fifty-dollar cheese grater!”

“Ah, but it’s a fuck-you cheese grater,” he calls back to me. “For people who have so much money they can drop fifty bucks just to slice a wedge of cheddar.”

“Goddamit, there’s a pencil sharpener for seventy-five dollars! And it isn’t even electric! You have to grind that shit yourself.”

He laughs and I see the bathroom light switch off, leaving just the faint glow of his tableside lamp when he comes into the bedroom. There’s something handsome about him in just a t-shirt and boxers, kind of a quaint fatherliness to him that makes me soften a little whenever I see it. He pulls the bedspread down and says, “I just keep these catalogues around, you know, to hear you yell about them in the next room.”

“If I didn’t yell about a six-hundred-dollar mailbox I wouldn’t be an effective representation of the middle class,” I sniff.

I am wearing my glasses, which I now keep with me in my purse along with a spare contact lens case and a toothbrush in a baggie, a makeshift toiletry kit. I take care not to leave anything at his apartment.

His sheets are freshly laundered from when he goes to visit his parents every week. “You’ll be impressed to know that though I am thirty and have no washing machine, I do all my laundry at my parents’ house myself,” he assured me. I tangle his cool sheets between my calves. He adjusts himself, righting the pillow under his head, shaking it down until finds the right spot, and pulls me into him. His breath is soft and warm on my forehead. For a few moments we are silent. “Oh, little lady in my bed,” he says softly, and in a voice an octave higher than his own, and slides his hand down my side. I start to giggle and he kisses my ear, rolling on top of me with the lamplight still blazing.

We wake up to NPR news on the radio each morning. The room is always chilly and smells like clean laundry and wood. He is be lying beside me, still asleep, and while I run a hand down his back I listen to the ballpoint voices of the NPR news anchors on the radio from his alarm that went off at 6:30. I was slightly ashamed by my own ignorance as I listened, not knowing who the president of Iran was or how the recession was affecting England. My favorite mornings would be when they interviewed authors. Several I hadn’t heard of before, but a few I did, somewhat alleviating my disgrace.

In the morning he puts on a bowtie and I put on my heels from the night before. “Have a good day at work,” I tell him. He pulls on either side of his bowtie and leans in to kiss me. We feel like something normal, I think.

At night we go to Kelly’s Tavern to watch the football game. “Share or at least tolerate my affection for the Redskins,” he had told me. We have a beer apiece, and discuss work between commercials. An advertisement comes on for the pending election, the Republicans trying desperately to smear Democrat Glenn Nye for going to a private college, implying he is out of touch with the supposed bumpkins he is to represent. In a mock-serious political commercial voice, he says, “Glenn Nye: too educated for Virginia.” I laugh and reach for his black hair, running my fingers down one side. He smiles warmly. He is dressed in a navy blue pullover, making his eyes look even darker. I watch them while he gazes at the TV screen, and I can see the reflection from the game in his glasses. He looks at me and I pretend to be reading the specials listed on the board behind him.

On the walk back to his apartment we pass The Wine House, where we had our first date. I spotted the booth I had been sitting at waiting for him: when he walked in the door that night he looked feverish, disoriented. He spun around towards the bar, and I waved him down. The first thing I noticed about him was how nicely he was dressed. He was in a white button-down shirt and dark dress jeans, a yellow and maroon scarf slung over his shoulder, which I would later find out was for his house colors at Yale. I had never perceived a distinctive difference between what the men in my life had been wearing until that moment. He ordered bourbon and I had cabernet sauvignon. We are both relaxed, talking like old friends. The cabernet is going to my head. I feel warm, flirtatious. He is laughing at every joke I make.

“Would you like to come back to my place for a nightcap?” he asks. “Unless you have a rule against that.”

“The only rule I have is no anal on the first date,” I say. He laughs and takes my arm. We walk back to his apartment. The wind is hitting my face but walking with him I’m so happy I feel like I’m going to lift off the ground. We huddle together like we are sharing a secret, and make our way down the sidewalk to his apartment for our first night together.

Our dates consist of dinner at first. “Shall I pick you up in my car this time?” I ask. “It will give me a chance to really emasculate you.”

“I would love to be emasculated by you,” he tells me. But when the bill comes, he insists upon taking it. “Let me. It’s nice to have the company.”

Our dates progress into nights in, almost always at his apartment because he lives alone, where he works on paperwork for his cases and I read Jonathan Ames essays. Occasionally he would remark about his cases, “Jesus, this woman charged more than $4000 on a stolen credit card,” or “Oh, vandalizing her boyfriend’s truck. I’ll enjoy this one,” but more than likely he would squeeze my hand, just enough pressure to stir me from my book-induced reverie. And we would sit next to each other in contented silence, feeling familiar and warm, something that felt a little like ease.

Eventually we would make our way to bed. He would stroke my neck and whisper to me, and I would close my eyes.

One night he while he is brushing his teeth, he has me read a scathing New York Times critique of a Coldplay album on his laptop. I can hear him pick up his toothbrush from its holder and the blast of water from his sink as I near the end of the article, which has become a sound I associate with him. When I finish the article, I minimize it and suddenly the words, I can’t wait to see you. Hugs, Lisa hit my eyes and I realize I’m in his e-mail. I inhale a sickening gulp of air and my heart gathers an enormous amount of speed. Fight or flight. The bed sheets start to feel rough against my skin. Too much skin. Stay or go. The Victorian print over his dresser of a man courting a woman starts to look pixilated and I realize I’m staring at it with abnormal intensity, wide-eyed. I put his laptop back on his pillow. The rush of water from the bathroom shuts off abruptly. I am on my feet. I hear him place the toothbrush back in its holder. My pants are back on.

When he walks back in the room, my shirt is plunging down my torso. He looks at me with some surprise. “You’re going?”

“Yeah,” I say. “I have to be up early.” It is a lie and he knows it. But we have learned not to ask one another direct questions.

“You’re sure you want to go?” he says. What have you found?

“I think it would be a good idea,” I say. How could you forget that e-mail was up, you bastard?

“Alright, dear,” he says, and reaches for me. I am stiff. “You’ll come see me soon?” Are we alright?

“Of course,” I say. I don’t know.

“I’ll be out of town this weekend,” he tells me. “I’m visiting my parents’ farm in Charlottesville. Perhaps I’ll see you Monday?”

“Sure,” I say.

On the drive home I call Troy and tell him what happened. “That’s some shit, Watkins,” Troy tells me. “But he told you up front that you were both dating around.”

“I know,” I say. “I’m almost mad because I can’t be mad.”

“You’d better decide whether that’s alright with you,” Troy says gently.

I sit in bed with the lamplight on. I can’t decide what’s alright with me.

In the morning, I am less upset. I decide in the shower that I will see him again, mainly because I am curious where it’s all rushing towards. I ring the shampoo out of my hair and watch it swirl down the gasping shower drain.

I see him again Monday. He is collected but affectionate, perhaps relieved. I decide to stop examining him. We rent a movie from the Naro video store, and I lay my head on his chest. He strokes my arm. I close my eyes when I know he can’t see. I feel like paper, flimsy and detached, floating wherever the air is blowing.

He makes me dinner one night: steak and asparagus, no carbohydrates. That’s probably not on purpose, but it explains how he’s stayed so damn slim. Sometimes when we’re naked I feel like there’s more of me exposed than him. He still slides his hands down my side, causing tiny bumps on my legs to rise, and he whispers in my ear that I’m one of the sexiest women he’s ever been with. I’m euphoric and slightly self-conscious when he says this.

He puts the plate in front of me. I adjust it on the white embroidered tablecloth he has on the tiny corner table, something too pretty for a bachelor pad, but he enjoys finer details. He has a Persian painting hanging on the wall, something done by an ex-girlfriend of his. When he tells me this, I am unexpectedly refreshed, probably because he has never been married, unlike my last boyfriend. He seems simpler in this way. So I can walk by the painting and admire its colorful details rather than obsess whether I am a replacement for a greater love lost, accepting that she is a placeholder in his life.

“This looks divine,” I tease him.

“It is a staple of my diet,” he says. “Steak and au jois.” He speaks clearly and half a tick slower than most men, each word savored in his mouth. He is never in a hurry.

“The last steak I had was at Outback,” I tell him. “Horrendous.”

He emits a small laugh. “Jesus. Bargain beef. My dear, who the hell took you to Outback?”

“Ex-boyfriend,” I say. I’ve explained my ex-boyfriend to him before. I do not bring him up often, so he is nothing more than a whitewash of unpleasantries, a caricature of vanished affection.

“You deserve better than that,” he says. He has made it clear that he is unimpressed with the man before him, a fireman whom he refers to as “an ape in uniform.” He is an ape that could rip the little lawyer in half, but maybe not – the little lawyer was also a regional wrestling champ, nimble and forceful. And God knows he could beat the ape in litigation any day. “How did you put up with it?”

“Well, it was a learning experience,” I say. It sounds cliché when it leaves my mouth.

“Why did you stay so long?”

“I don’t know,” I say. I’m starting to get uncomfortable. “It just seemed normal at the time.”

“You just put up with it.” His tone is one degree below accusatory.

“I thought it was what I was supposed to do,” I say, pretending to adjust my plate again. I spot a small stain on the tablecloth as I do. It’s an old one, probably au jois, gray against the stiff, ironed white. “He seemed lost at the time.” I am astonished at having given the ape more credit than he deserves. I wonder whom I am actually defending.

“You didn’t sense something was off?”

“I just thought he needed compassion.”

“If a man is still single in his thirties, it’s a good sign something is probably wrong with him.” His voice his gentle but sympathetic of my naivety. I feel my face go white.

“I don’t know that that’s entirely true,” I say. I look up at him. He doesn’t meet my gaze. I continue, “He was never very good to me. But I think…I think I let him get away with so much because I thought he needed love. He did need love. He needed it more than anyone I’ve ever met.”

He stops, and puts down his knife and fork. “Why do you let someone treat you like that?”

I’m aghast and exhausted, neither of which are conducive to answering his question with dignity. “I don’t know,” I tell him. “I’m not proud of it. It’s just – when you’re in the situation, it’s different. I tried to be accommodating and kind, the way I would be with a friend, but it doesn’t work that way. I would forgive a friend for snapping at me or standing me up or being selfish sometimes. But you can’t treat men the way you treat friends.” I’m searching now, and by the blank expression he’s wearing I know I have neither appeased him nor impressed him. I used to be so much better with words, I think, or maybe I just don’t care enough about defending myself to be more cohesive. He looks back down at his plate and scratches through his meat with his knife, and I clutch my fork stupidly.

“You shouldn’t do that,” he finally says, and I don’t tell him that I’m doing it right then.

We wash the plates in silence. You don’t know what it’s like to do this, I don’t say. You don’t know what it’s like to never give yourself any of the power.

In his hallway, he has a small banner that reads FOR GOD, FOR COUNTRY AND FOR YALE, but he is Yalie first, followed by a close second as an atheist, and he is far too expansive to fall into the habit of regionalism. But the banner still hangs there, seemingly very true, granted I didn’t know any better. I can see it from where I’m laying. It’s white and seems to glow in the black of the hallway. God. Country. Yale. He is fast asleep.

For Christmas, he gives me a vintage copy of To the Lighthouse. I give him a campy magazine from the 60s, a set of bottle openers, and a Sugarhill Gang LP. He comes to my parents’ house one December night when he gets off work. “Mr. Watkins, Mrs. Watkins,” he says when he comes in the door. He is dressed a nice suit and shakes their hands like he is going to represent them in court. My mother and I are making angel ornaments made from tampons, laughing hysterically at the glitter dresses we’re painting on them. She offers him one and he is amused but not astonished, prompting my mother to ask when he leaves, “Does he ever fart?”

“What?”

“He just seems serious.”

“He was just being polite.”

My mother shrugs and touches up the halo of one of the angels. “I just wonder if he could handle us.”

We play Scrabble in bed. I’ve never been much on board games so I do not know all the rules; he has to keep correcting me for adding my score wrong. I pretend to knock the board onto the bed sheets before he can claim a complete victory. “Slaughter rule,” I tell him.

He has moved his couch to his kitchen temporarily while he rearranges some things, and I sit on it while he washes dishes in the sink. “I’ve been thinking about moving back up to Richmond,” he tells me.

“Oh?”

“To go into private practice again.”

“When?”

“I don’t know. It’s just a thought right now. There’s a few people I used to work with who said they’d like to join me if I do.”

We are quiet. I try to act encouraging. “I think that’s great.”

“We’ll see.”

We go to sleep that night. He holds my hand. His skin is warm. I wonder how much longer I will feel it against mine. He dozes off and turns over in his sleep. The sheets feel more synthetic than I remember against my still open palm.

“I’m visiting some friends in D.C. this weekend,” he tells me in the morning. My feet hit his frozen front steps and I can see my breath broadening in the air like cigarette smoke.  

One night, while I am walking to see him after work, I know something is off. A more adolescent fragment of me assumes I’m just being paranoid, which is probably the only thing that bolsters me up the stairs to his apartment. The air outside is cold and feels like glass in my throat.

He is waiting for me on his couch. He smiles like he normally would and I think that maybe, for once, I’m not spot on about him. He cradles me for a moment. “How was your day?” It will be the last question he asks me before I see him as someone different.

“It was bleh. Long. The newsroom was a zoo today. I’m glad to be out.” I like the phrase was a zoo. I hear elephant noises and see monkeys swinging from the fluorescent lights of the obituary desk. It’s secretly comical in my head. It feels better to think about than the couch behind my back, harder than I remember, or his arm, whose weight feels slight on my neck.

“Oh. Well, I’m glad you’re out too, sweetie.” He squeezes my shoulder. We are silent. The lamplight is soft. It makes my hands look olive as his, and I wonder, does he really have olive skin, or is it the lighting, my own perception? Is anything authentic?

I sit up a little, because I know it’s coming.

“Seeing you,” he starts, “makes this even harder to say. And I truly don’t intend to make your bad day even worse.”

I look at his face. He doesn’t seem pained. I scoot away from him, just a few inches, but enough to brace myself for the impact. 

“I think we both knew this wasn’t forever,” he starts, one arm over the couch and the other on his lap, the way you might sit when you were telling someone about your lackluster trip to the Midwest. “And I think it’s run its course.” He looks for me to say something, but I’m too unsurprised to muster anything up. He continues, “I think you’re a great girl, and I’ve had more fun with you than I’ve had with anyone in months. Not just in the bedroom.” That last part makes my stomach churn, not even because of the implication that I think of myself as only worthwhile as someone to sleep with, but because I hate the phrase “in the bedroom.” I know he’s saying it to soften the inference that I may feel cheap, but it sounds ancient, an odd thirty-something term that gets thrown around as a joke or by someone’s father who feels too timid to use the word “sex.”

I nod, never breaking eye contact because that would seem so pitiable, blinking at forced intervals just to have something to do with myself. I wish that I had started off our conversation with my body positioned differently, instead of having my cut-off sweatshirt drooping down my shoulder like a deflated flirtation. My hands are in my lap unthreateningly, politely, even. I’m not devastated but I am slightly humiliated to be there, the same feeling of tripping over your feet in front of a crowd of people and having to pick up your spilled your groceries from off the sidewalk. It’s fine, not a big deal, but, God, it’s not.

He looks at me, searching. He takes a breath and then stops. He wonders if he should keep talking. I let him off the hook. “Okay,” I say finally. “Okay.” Because what else is there to say, from either of us. I hate how mechanical and stoic I feel gathering my purse from the chair, but it feels like it signals the end of the conversation. I collect my coat, my peacock-colored trench, and focusing on the texture of the stiffened cotton helps me to forget for a moment that he’s behind me, watching my grey sweatshirt move to gather my scarf, which I had placed very at home on his chair, something I now silently apologetically move.  I knew he was seeing someone. It was just a matter of him putting tongue to teeth and telling me so. So when I force myself turn to him for the last time, something wells up inside of me – an agreement I’ve made with the situation, a bizarre speck of honest, unromantic love for him, even. “Best of luck with everything you do,” I say without irony. “I hope you get everything you want.”

“I don’t think any of us get everything we want, but I’m sure I’ll get everything I deserve,” he chokes. I look at him standing in front of me, arms at his side. I wonder if he means it.

I hold my jacket in my arms, my purse slung over my left shoulder. I feel a bit overpacked for my exit. I can feel every rigid angle of my body, how my feet even feel positioned unnaturally. I sense as though I should say something important, but nothing comes, so I force a grin. This is his cue, and he steps towards me. He kisses my cheek with some tentativeness and the duality of his audacity and his newborn reservation are so much that I think I’m going to vomit on his rug, and then we hug for what seems like too long a time. I take in the room while we do. The way the light in the corner hits the shelf of books I liked to examine while he was in the shower. The TV that was always too big for its stand. On his faded indigo couch we watched a special on comedians and ate salted cucumbers, neither of which I was very impressed with.

I shut the car door. I do not cry. I say out loud, “Well, so much for that,” because I like the indifference, and then I start the car. When I pull away from the curb, a black iron porch light from an adjacent apartment building catches my eye for no particular reason and I wonder why I have never noticed it before, and think how there are billions of things around me to focus on but I can only think of one, and it is my own satisfied mortification.

The music in the car is too loud, but it feels real to move so I don’t reach to dial it down. I make a mental note to forget the song that’s playing so I don’t hear it in an Applebee’s someday and have to stop mid-conversation with my dining partner because I have a stabbing sentimentality welling up in the front of my neck, but it is Woodstock by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and I will never forget it. Woodstock. Written by Joni Mitchell. Joni has been there for things like this. River was playing when my college boyfriend told me he had cheated on me at a party. It was Christmastime, and while he wept over the phone my eyes were fixed on a plastic light-up Nativity scene someone in the neighborhood had placed in their front lawn, throwing an almost supernatural white glow onto the street. Goddamnit, John, I think while he cries, his apologies and assertions of love vomiting forth over the phone.

I shut the car door and it makes a defined thud in the otherwise stagnant night.

When I walk up to my apartment building, I check my phone for the time and I see I have a missed call from him. On my voicemail, he says, “Listen, I’m so, so sorry again. I feel like I owe you an explanation and if you’re the type of person who wants one, we can talk. And if not, I’m sorry again.”

I don’t think about it until I walk through my front door, and shut it crisply. The hallway is dark, but I know it by heart, and at least that is mine. When I switch on my room light, I have already made up my mind to call him back, and do so after I put my purse down on the chair and before I lose my nerve.

“Hey,” he says when he answers.

“Hi,” I say. “I got your message.”

“Look,” he says, sounding more overcome than I thought he would, “I just didn’t like the way we left it and I wanted to tell you what happened if you really want to know.”

“I already know,” I say without pause. “You’re seeing someone else.” My tone is tender, I am surprised by my own gentleness.

He is silent for several seconds. “You’ll never see her around,” he says. “She doesn’t live in this area, so you don’t run the risk of catching us out together.” That had never occurred to me. “Even now I don’t know if I’m making the right decision,” he continues, and a tiny part of me rejoices until a larger part of me says no, it’s done now.

We hang up. I sit on the side of my bed. One of my shoes is off, lying toppled like a wounded soldier on my floor.  I still do not cry. I stare at an Oriental bowl on my vanity until the colors of red and green and blue start to mix together in an unrecognizable blur.

I go over my parents’ and have lunch with them. My father wanders to the loft and puts on the hockey game. My mother is cutting apple slices in the kitchen. She asks how things are going, then asks what he and I have planned for the weekend. I tell her that we stopped seeing each other.

My mother’s eyes widen. “What happened?”

I start to lie, “Oh, we just decided it wasn’t working out…” but when I look at my mother, the truth falls out of my mouth and onto the table: “He was seeing someone else.”

“You kind of thought he was, didn’t you?” she says. Her tone is casual. She is trying to say, Oh, well, at least you were smart enough to know that, it’s no big deal, because my perception somehow equals my accord with the circumstances.

I pick up an apple slice and thread it through some peanut butter. “Yeah.”

Sensing my defeat, she resorts to making him sound like an idiot. “You tell him that wasn’t hard to figure out,” my mother says. “You tell him even your mother knew what was going on there. Pathetic.” She snaps a piece of celery in half and that’s the end of the conversation. He’s such a fool that even someone’s good-intentioned mother knew he was sleeping around. But he is no fool, and neither is my mother. That is reserved for her daughter, who is looking out the kitchen window at the family cat reclined in the azalea bushes, his black fur engulfing the light of its brilliant pink buds.

Someone tells me they came across a picture of him with his new girlfriend. They show it to me. She resembles my women’s studies professor. She is wearing feather earrings. I think I am going to be sick.

I run into a friend of his and who asks if we’re still seeing each other. I feel a stab in my gut. “No,” I tell him. “But of course there are no hard feelings.” His friend nods and I want to melt into the floor, snap myself out of existence.

For four months, I don’t see him anywhere; then, one day, I am surprised to see an e-mail from him in my inbox. He tells me that he appreciates the sweet things I’ve said about him in my blog. I write him back and thank him. He tells me he’s trying to behave so he hasn’t seen me lately. I never could resist your charms, he writes. I don’t reply back, because after writing four drafts, each one seems too reckless to send.

I start to date other people, just as the plan had always been. I see an Air Force Major quasi-seriously until he is transferred to Germany, and then I start to date a policeman that I meet in Yorgo’s. The policeman is funny and kind, but has very little interest in books, which I find disheartening. We do not sit and read interesting bits of essays and Times articles to one another, but the policeman teaches me to shoot and he knows how to swing dance.  

He comes back into my life at 9:30 on a Tuesday night. I am sitting in bed reading, and my eyes fly open when I see he has texted me: Care for a parlay?  I find myself curious enough to accept, and I am walking down his street again. The stroll is familiar – hotter, because we are in the dead of summer, but the lamplight coming from the porches burns the same brightness as it did the winter we were together. There is one point along the road where I pass a bunch of bushes. The last time I saw you, I think, sliding my fingers down one of its reeds, I was being mercilessly dumped. I look up at his apartment building and think, What are you going to do about that?

I climb the steps of the building and open the door to the lobby, which moans a recognizable creak. It always annoyed me to be announced before I was ready. He’s left the door of his apartment cracked open an inch. I knock on it anyway. “Ax murderer,” I call, and curl my fingers around the door so they are the first part of mine that he sees. I’m not sure whether I’m heightening the anticipation for him or myself.

“Oh, I’m just in here,” he calls back in a voice that his an octave higher than his own.

I find him sitting on his couch, cross-legged, one arm resting on the back of the loveseat. The performance begins.

“Laura C. Watkins,” he says. I put my purse in his chair and sit next to him.

“Hello, Mr. F,” I say.

We hug. It is the first time I have touched him in six months. He smells like soap and Tom’s of Maine deodorant. Always clean. “I use Tom’s because it doesn’t contain any aluminum, which is what stains the underarms of shirts,” he had told me.

“How are you, Miss Watkins?” he says. His voice is barely above a whisper. His eyes are kind behind his glasses.

“I’m very well,” I say. I smooth the couch with my hand, which it doesn’t need, but feels good nonetheless, like he needed a woman to come in and care for his things. “I trust you’re the same?”

“I am,” he nods. That voice. I want to wrap myself in it.

“Love what you’ve done with the place,” I say. Nothing has changed.

“As always, you’re too kind.” We feel like Jane Austen characters.

“What did you do tonight?” I ask him.

“I went to the Wine House. We drank a bottle of red. The bartender asked me for advice on DUIs, so I drank for free. It was a very productive night.”

“Sounds like it,” I smile. I never quite know what to say to him.

“And you, Miss Watkins?”

“Work,” I say. “Then I met some friends for coffee. Then reading.” As I speak, he comes in closer. He leans in and takes my face in his hands. When we kiss, I let myself devour his mouth. He returns the favor.

 “I missed you,” he whispers, and holds me in the dark.

“I missed you, too,” I say back, and I did in my way, but then I didn’t miss him. I didn’t miss him because I was annoyed at him for ruining the narrative. I could never tell my children, “Well, I met your father and then he dumped me for a woman who wears feather earrings, and then decided one night that he’d like to start having sex with me again, and here we are twenty years later, him practicing contract law and me shopping at Bloom.” And so I know this will be the extent of what we have together. And that makes it harder.

The smell of his bedroom reminds me of fall, probably because that’s when I met him, but in actuality it is the smell of clean laundry and wooden floors again. We lay in bed, in the blackness of his one bedroom apartment, and he whispers again. “It was so hard not to call you,” he tells me, and strokes my back. “I wanted to so many times.”

Each morning I wake up with him, I think it will be my last. I take in each corner of the room and think, This is the last time I will ever see that picture. I will never witness that dresser again in this light. Why did I not notice that crack in the wall? I won’t look at it after this. Then I become annoyed with the theatrics of sleeping with him and tell myself to shut up. I hear him inhale and exhale, his breath tinged in a slow and heavy sleep. Then I look at his back, small but muscular, stretched in olive skin. When I can’t look at him any longer I face the ceiling. I am twenty-five and I am already a little too tired for my own good. I detest myself for being there, for wanting to be there. I am not shutting up.

I read Blood Meridian mainly because I told him I would, but I begin to like it. We could be friends, I think. I don’t always have to fear him. I mark my place with the plane ticket from LaGuardia he left in at page 167. I read his name in black print on the ticket. It is both solid and gentle sounding.

He asks me for a drink one night after a meeting with the Bar. He picks me up in his BMW, and I feel a little self-conscious getting in, like I should know better. But we drive down the block and order a beer. Men sitting at the bar cheer at the World Series on TV. We have trouble hearing one another and I can’t seem to concentrate on making conversation. I am not myself these days.

We go back to his apartment. We lay in bed and he kisses me and kisses me, and says, “It took everything in me not to call you.”

Stop saying that, I think.

When it’s over, we lay in bed and discuss Blood Meridian, or what I’ve read of it. We are laying on the opposite end of the bed that we usually do. The whole room looks different. I’ve heard so many times that it’s all about perspective, and I’m beginning to think that may be true.

 I tell him, “I should go. I have to be up early.”

“I can take you in the morning.”

“You’ll have to be up before six. You don’t want to do that.”

He pauses. “You don’t mind if I’m not a gentleman just this once?”

“Never.”

“Then I’ll take you now. You’ll have to forgive me.”

He drops me back at my apartment.

“I’ll see you when I see you,” I say.

“Soon. We have to discuss the rest of Blood Meridian.”

I shut his car door and walk up the apartment drive. A group of neighbors from the adjacent building are drinking beer on the roof. They’ve watched me step out of a blackened BMW with hair curled from sweat and the tangle of sheets, walking back alone, the car pulling off down the road in a haze of red taillights. I want to tell them it’s not what it looks like, but then I wonder if maybe it’s precisely what it looks like.  

“Have a good night,” one of them calls to me. He lifts his beer up. I nod at him.

My footsteps through the alleyway click in the air. I unlock the outside door and take the chilled silver doorknob in my hand. When I slide the key in the lock, it makes a metallic grunt and the door opens with a long squeak, and I am back in the apartment hallway, its green carpeting and the iron banister that curls in a meticulous spiral, and I grasp it with my left hand, pulling myself up back to my darkened apartment.

●

It is a Monday night.

I finish Blood Meridian.

I write him a short note. Thank you. I leave it at his door, painted emerald green, and touch the knob before I leave. It’s cold.

I walk back to my car.

I start it up.

We are stardust. We are golden.

I decide to carve a life out of something other than paper.