After Us, The Deluge

L'Inconnue de la Seine

        I was having a passionate affair with this tempestuous French girl, named, Èlodie LeMenteur. We lived a feckless existence in Copenhagen, on her parents dime, and the novelty of pretty lovers. Mostly, making love and doing drugs. Mostly, making love. She was dark and white in the most beautiful ways. Inwardly and outwardly. She possessed the slightest curves in her marble skin... So delicate. They couldn't be called angles. They were so soft. She only wore silk. It draped so carelessly, at once revealing and then withholding... I wished I was silk. 

     We lived in one of those Ikea high rises. Those boxy virgin wood and steel apartments popping up in abandoned lots all over Europe. Pratt dorms I called them. In a couple years they would migrate to New York and then LA, then Portland. Anywhere someone could be tricked into the deceptive open space lofts and courtyards. Unaware the most basic of materials were used  and then called chic. It was an extension of me, I guess. If you wanted to really analyze every word. It was a tiny apartment with one tall window. A window taller than me.

     I remember, alone, and sleepless nights.I played peekaboo with the stars as the wind caught the sheer silk curtain that we had inherited with our little flat.

     We spent the weekend dancing.  K. and E. and coke. Beeps and Boops. Frantic dancing. Like, as if... this... meaningless, masturbation meant something. Èlodie danced until the music blurred and I snuck home early. I was panicked by how deeply I had been enveloped by thoughtlessness and pleasure. I met a man I knew on the way home. He was unfashionable in a fashionable way and carrying books under his arm. He had a crooked smile I like. I spoke for the first time that summer and asked him "tell me something real" and he said something trite like "we love life not because we love living but because we are used to loving." I took his hand and we walked for hours through the Tivali gardens and on the edge of the canal. We planned a simple life in one of the fishing villages with three kids and a shaggy dog. Just living off books. I took him home knowing Èlodie would be dancing till noon. I refused his name because I preferred his face. After we had sex....And it was sex. Boring and contrived. I moaned for it to end. A push towards self confidence and climax. Heaving him off me. He snored and I noticed his socks were still on. In bad french I told him he must leave. My husband will be home soon and he would kill for me. He wasn't dressed before he was at the door.

     I lit a cigarette and I lay still to see how long I could until the ash fell, I watched the curtain float in and out. And the shadow it cast. Stiff as a feather light as a board. Life began to start to waver into a point of unreality. Words I knew began to disappear and follow the curtain. Soon memories joined. The compounding nothingness became a crushing weight.

     I became more oppressed with the curtain swinging in the wind. It seemed sharp and to breathe deeply. Menacingly. Creeping. Inch by inch. I knew it would cut me open and reveal the truth about me and my utterly useless existence. The one we all share. My life was moments that would die with me. That, what I held so dear to me mattered to no one.

     I was at the whim of inane predestination. A journey that would only end alone and ultimately for no purpose whatsoever.

      I jumped out of bed. Tearing the sheer silk curtain down. Glad to be rid of no name and satisfied, he never knew me so I could die alone. A nameless man is really like no man at all. Just a tool to comfort. So I was alone when I stepped on the ledge of the window. The white crackling paint and splinters made me worry about lead poisoning and I laughed.

     The street was so far down. Some voices carried a cocktail of languages and strangers. Traffic split in the middle of hope and despair... Some walked out in a desperate pursuit of fucking and money with an air of confidence. That strange percussion of hope or they shuffled defeated, trudging along, a bottle held close like a newborn. Their steps a fading staccato. They didn't know they were headed to the same place. Alone reaching for someone.

     I always feared pain, but I knew it would be quite the opposite this time. My God has always been a black sleep. My home, silence. I swung with the curtain, the knife in my back. That pendulum of mortality. A bit giddy I began to lean out over that automaton sea, hoping for the strength to slowly lose strength and make it easier. I was making a lie out of my own death. Since we are conditioned to fear the dark I couldn't break my nature. No matter how hard I tried I could not make it my choice. I could not,  just let go.

     I began to hum until it turned into a song. Something my Nana would sing to me when I was sad, the first song she ever sang to me. The first sound I heard. I can't tell you the song. It's mine and then I would become yours too.

     In the middle of this birth and death. Sorrow and joy. Freedom and fear. I must have missed the keys rattling. Of high heels on hardwood. I must have missed the smell of Èlodie's sweet cigarettes mixed with the lavender water, she makes on our tiny stove. The sound of silk brushing against her thigh.

     I did not hear the crash of wine. Or "Merde, sale pute!" In a twinkling slurred scream.

     I just felt the ice cold hands on my ankles and nails digging into my skin. I saw the blood drip down into the wind up scene below and thought. "So I was wrong. There is a hell."

     I didn't feel the yank. Or the pain when my nose hit the window sill splitting the skin into a smile and severing the bone.

     I felt the slap though from that beautiful angel of death, Èlodie and the lingering kiss after. Resuscitation Annie of the Rhine. She came away, staring at me quizzically Her eyelashes dripped blood onto her snow skiing. Like the Lady Madonna.

     We made love that night. Broken bones and all. Each kiss hurt, but... I realized maybe there was something better than blackness.

     And that is pain and pleasure braided and entwined. 

     Maybe the moments matter. 

     Because I will hold the feel of her skin through the silk curtain into the blackness even if I didn't know her. Even if I never loved her. 

     My visa expired a month later. We never spoke again and for awhile I chalked up my affair with her as an indulgent curiosity and a good story... My suicidal idealization to too many drugs and exhaustion. But she and the nameless man and hurried people on the street I still see when I close my eyes or look into the mirror. Even if they are moments that will die with me, I think they deserve to fade into the gray mist then come crashing into darkness.