And I have the chills.
Goosebumps glazed in sweat. Nice.
Mr. Epstein Barr, come a-calling. How I hate him.
So? he says. Lilan dares meet a girl named Juliet late on a Monday night? She dares sip mineral water beside the Spree, on a beach of shipped-in sand, at a club called Kiki Blofeld? She dares take public transport there and back? Hike up platform stairs and down? Transfer from Tram to U-Bahn? I think not.
No matter that Juliet paints 30-foot installations, all muscle and whimsy. No matter that she has a face one wants to frame, cheekbones of an Icelandic princess. And that her father is one of 18 siblings, son of a Mormon in Salt Lake City.
Mr. Epstein Barr does not care.
How shall we off him, this mean old man? How shall we teach him that the sofa is not where I belong? Not now, summer at its keenest, the forging of new friendships vital as breath.
* * *
Loneliness greets me mornings, bedside. That's my other guest, unwanted, grim as the Reaper. He walks me to the bathroom sink, glowers as I brush and floss, lotion my cheeks and neck. Can it kill you, I wonder each day, loneliness such as this?
I curl black mascara on each lash. I put on a pretty dress. I go out. Red shoes wobble on cobblestones.
My hooded guest clasps my elbow. Think of the Ex, he hisses. Pick the past apart. Why he left. What his words meant. Whether you should have seen it.
With every step, a twist of the mind's kaleidoscope. The pieces of the breakup tumble, re-settle. If I look at it from this angle? From that? Analyze his childhood? My own?
Talk to the Ex, my hooded guest croons. Tell him he's wrong. Tell him he's broken. Expose all the truths he's too blind to see.
I mutter all the way down Ryke Strasse. Planning the inevitable run-in. Words hard. Fiery. Desperate.
I keep thinking these talks will bring me peace. Funny.
I take myself to Sowohlalsauch. Order bottled water. A decaf. Manage, unexpectedly, to pump
out the memoir synopsis I've been putting off for months. I'm giddy with my own productivity. What was it I thought would kill me this morning? How could anything harm me now?
Or: I meet my Serbo-Croatian literary hot-stuff friend at Cafe Gotlob. Her hands tremble. She got an e-mail from the ex. Jesus, I know her pain. Its blood, its pulse point. Precisely. I touch her shoulder. I would cup her heart, twitching like a fallen bird, if I could.
Instead I talk fast, I talk vigorous, I bounce from Paula Fox to my own mother to an American painter named Juliet. Anything. For only in the pauses will she remember, only when I stop to breathe can it ache.
You see. How everything shifts, everything changes. Without even noticing it, I have shaken them off, my hooded guest, my invisible Ex.
They will be back tomorrow. They will be back, even, in a few hours. I will do battle. All over again.
Seething. Knotted.
That is why, I beg you, Mr. Epstein Barr, do not come. Not this month. Two I can wrestle. Three? No.
I don't think so.
Wow. Such poetry and pain. Takes my breath away. Leaves me longing. For love. Health. Certainty. Peace. Clarity. Calm. Reassurance. Good will to (wo)man-kind.
Posted by: Mary Beth Augustine | July 29, 2008 at 04:09 PM