Fab: An Early Obit

OK, Fabienne: footnote.

I suppose :

Her fingers laced through my chest hair, drawn tightly to her mouth in the tent, I suppose. I suppose that that says all I might. She must know that hurts. She must pretend that she's asleep. She must pull the reaction out of -- my skin? my chest?

Or.

Or son corp de danseuse naked head-towards-feet curved backward over my two arms, curved again to kiss the London floor between her ankles, shaking in seizure, dying dove like doves I shot.

Or.

Or the blowjob on Havasu in daylight. "Keep paddling out" she says. "They're going to see. Fab? Fab, the lifeguards have jumped off the platform."

(Ants eat thru the tent, I pull her hand, she won't go on the lake at night.)

Or.

Or asleep suddenly on the campgound table as storm crosses the steppe, approaching strident purple-blackening tumescence cloudbank darkening our starry Utah midnight, gleaming. Her hair grown out now, a bit, as long as my finger from tip almost to the first knuckle, grown fast and blonding fast, whipping frenzy at her ears, her eyes still asleep still as I place the stones, one hand holding a corner of the tarp firm to the table as I roll another stone close, pump it with my leg and arm up on to the table to the tarp, to it hold firmly in place over her blankets.

And another stone, as though the tarp won't billow. And eight. And nine. And twelve. And another stone, as though a grave. And another only stone.

Her lashes in the wind alive.

"Oh, Jack, this finest place to die" she'd said that day. Why can't she feel the wind? I watch her still -- why can't she feel the wind? --

So, Fabienne.

Never mind:I'm standing in a library in Alambres, the girl in Paris, presumably, newly married. Pardon the drama.

What did Fabienne say? Her words and would I remember? -- something "wind might dry our bones could leave us clean as stars, so quiet, something something something.

Maybe she lied about the plant in Bretagne or the radioactive tailings by the coal mine in Anjou where she played con los hijos de los campesinos españoles in convincing castellano. Or even her leukemia. She might have thought I'd leave politely, leave her to the man she must have known on our first night that she would marry, the man who had reviewed her work in Le canard enchainé, whom she found comfortable but did not love -- she claimed.

If I can't say this is true, why not a paean to a ghost? Besides, Fab wouldn't die on me so quickly; she's just extremely gone.

Therefore :

"Hello. I walk in here several days a week, once or twice a day, photocopy a few documents, stroll into the stacks for a few seconds only, then always leave without a book."

And how should I presume?