as we slide through Paris traffic. I’m holding her hand, watching her more than the sights. She’s radiant, lovelier than ever. She had her hair trimmed, three inches off the bottom. Got a manicure, a pedicure, the works. Her eyes soak up the sights.
I’m going to make this the best month of her life. Take all the drugs to kill the pain and fight the nausea. Pretend it’s a stomach bug that won’t quite go away. There’ll be time, later.
I know she should have more time to adjust, but…selfishly, I can’t give her that. I want this time for us.
Us without
The Big C
between us, hanging like a bloody carcass, dripping effluvia all over our joy.
No. This trip is about us.
The first two weeks have been magical. We spent it walking, shopping, sitting in cafes sipping espresso and eating flaky, delicate pastries.
We attended Mass in Notre Dame at midnight. The nave was bigger than belief, the vaulted ceiling dark with age. A beautiful young woman in a blue gown sang an aria in Latin, sang it with such holy, reverent beauty that we both wept.
One day we strolled across the Pont des Arts bridge with hundreds of padlocks on it—there was signage posted in English and French prohibiting further locks, because the weight of them was beginning to compromise the integrity of the bridge, but we stood there at the apex of that romantic bridge at sunset, watching the water flow underneath like a ribbon of silk blowing in a silent wind. The locks caught the light, reflected and refracted, and each one represented a love story. We examined some of the locks and pretended we could determine the details of the lives of the people who’d put them there.
We lay in the long green lawn under the dizzying height of the Eiffel Tower, listening to the chatter of a dozen languages, watching lovers take selfies.
We made love, endlessly. I required a lot of chemical help, now, but she didn’t need to know that. All she needed to know was that I loved her, that I worshiped her body, that I treasured her.
I barely sleep anymore. It’s like my mind, now that the end grows near, refuses to let miss even a few hours of life.
I watch her sleep.
I write poems to her, about her, for her.
I write vignettes, remembering our life together. That time we tried to adopt a dog from a shelter, and it turned out to be a wild monster of destruction, sweet and hysterical but obsessed with eating couches and shoes and counters and cabinets and even, when locked in the garage, my lawnmower. It ate my fucking lawnmower. The final straw for it was when it ate Nadia’s Michael Kors purse—literally ate it, devoured every last scrap of expensive leather.
There are a thousand stories, and I lie awake and try to remember them all, write them all. What I’ll do with the collection, I don’t know. Maybe nothing. Maybe it’s just for me.
She wakes up, sees me in the bed next to her, my laptop on my thighs, the screen glow lighting my face. Snuggles closer. Kisses my shoulder.
It’s taking more and more drugs to act normal.
We have a week left. I feel my body shutting down. I feel things beginning to fail.
I’m not ready, goddammit.
I mean, in terms of “wrapping up my affairs” I’m as ready as I can be. It’s all arranged, everything is taken care of. She won’t have to do a thing, after I’m gone.
Sometimes, when I do manage to catch a little sleep, I wake up and see that she’s watching me.
Once, after a long night of sex and wine and French TV, I fell asleep on the couch and I woke up curled on her lap like a cat, and she was stroking my hair, what’s left of it, and she was crying.
She knows.
But when we’re awake, we pretend this is just a vacation.
It’s what I need, and she knows it. She needs it too, but I’m not sure she realizes the depth of that, just yet.
I had to convince her to splurge on the shopping trips. She’s a naturally thrifty person, doesn’t let herself spend a lot very often. One time I wanted her to buy a Porsche, but she settled for an A5. I wanted her to get a Chanel bag, and she bought a Louis Vuitton.
This time, I insisted. It’s taken care of, I told her. So she did. Reluctantly at first, but when she saw the