Passage II

Still can't figure just what in the conversation made me pass out last week. If the abuse stories got to me, I may be better off. But the last thing said could as easily have had to do with the plant.

"Oh, they'll fire him," Terry Lynn tells William as I walk by, "It takes a while when they do that, but they always get them." She could mean anyone. She dislikes me, but I doubt that makes me unique.

Moneypenney called at work today, and I told her everything was fine, of course. She started off in French, and I felt flattered even though she initially threw me and wound up apologising profusely for her supposed accent. I had to go to Bettina's desk to take the call, but what can I do? I think about her when I visit the ducks.

"Cheers, Bettina; have another ficus."

Once upon a time, Bettina, the Sátanas must have been a real creek, though it must have dried sometimes without the treated water coming out of the pipe -- meandering flat on the flattish sand, a line of trees between the sparser bush.

The story will wait.

If I leave, will they keep Edna on? Maybe I should just give Edna some money and know she's moved out.

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?

snoitisnarT

Sorry to leave abruptly. There's a rhythm to this; I'll get it. I imagine a You: When I don't write, You get pissed. When I get pretentious, you feel shame; you don't forward the site. You stay away, but only for a bit.

So go ahead, pretend I'm real.

I'm staying with my father, have for months since I got back from Paris broke and 40-some hours awake, startled at the width of suburban streets.

I explain for myself if not you.

I don't mean to present this as romantic or deliberate or other-than-fuckupped. I came, I wrote, I floundered. I had some idea that I could write truth, so no one read to say I sucked. I sat ripping pages out of Writer's Market, nothing to smoke them with. Phillipe loaned me a couple grand to relocate: "Come to Paris." Whyever not? About the time the money left I left my address book and passport on a car in the Rue de francs bourgeois long enough to get a couple car-lengths away and turn -- oops.

The Embassy folk Place Concord felt I'd behaved badly. The Embassy must be a fun place to work. "You meet the strangest people," as an elegant ancient man with a curling handlebar moustache told my aunt Monica one time on a bus in Culver City as she leaned over and glanced at his sketchbook to verify that he was, indeed, Salvador Dali.

The embassy does filter the people entering. But then, I qualified -- a blue-eyes-no-Qu'ran thing, I suppose: as an American citizen, I had a right to know why I couldn't return home.

"All you have to do is bring in five Americans who do have ID's to vouch for you."

"Can I get them to come into some office in Los Angeles?"

"Don't you know anyone?"

"I'm American."

"The United States Government will not issue a passport with no way of
identifying you."

"Can I get a dozen Frenchmen to say I'm not French?"

"American citizens with identification. Do your best."

Now I wish I were back at le Beaubourg, thankful again at the grey rain slanting outside, proud owner of a chair with a view of two library stacks. Do I miss it? Or does seeing the rainwater jet through the handcarved gargoyle mouths on Rue Saint Denis give me a way to avoid being in my father's home in Lakewood CA speaking Aeromilitary with you --

-- and dealing with my job for ECorp, at LISA, where I classify the documents of said industry in a language which contains just four verbs, none of which involve leak, break down, irradiate, brainfart or fuck up.

No no no: moi, je suis poete: so I've just got to find what rhymes with incident.