Sort my laundry. Shall I wash the towels first or the gym clothes?
Organize the dresser drawers. Listen to Italian lessons on the i-pod. About damned time I learned the language. Every time I walk past Massimo's shop, he scolds me for not knowing the basics.
Pizza Thursday. Fileto pizza. Grazie. Non lo so. Mi dispiace. Vorrei capire ma ho bisogno di provare meglio. God, I LIVE here. In Italy. How lucky should that be?
I feel the tension in my body, flexing in the back of my mind. I make a stack of clothes I'll never use again and put them in a paper sack. Put my "Africa Gear" into a separate box after a half-hearted attempt to iron. Dry cleaning in another bag. And the tights away for the season.
I fight. Everything. The alarm. The traffic. The Command. The contractors. Pathetic little girls with their limited minds and unimaginative inner lives and greedy fingers. An ignorant leader has cancelled Eve's contract and her advocates are too stupid to support her or keep it going. This kills my program. And I lose my friend. I will be alone here.
I ate Dutch brown bread for breakfast. With coffee and Dutch cheese. And thought about that first time Hans made me breakfast with cheese and rucola. He scooted his chair next to mine so that our legs would touch. And he looked at me. I don't think a person has the right to get that twice in one life.
Do the dishes. Grocery shopping. Grapes. Onions. Peppers and smoked salmon. More mint-chocolate chip ice cream. Diet root beer. I put them in the freezer. Fridge.
I gave Sjors my memories. I wish I had not. Now they have left me. They used to live in my soul. Refugees. Poor battered things. We kept each other warm at night. Until the police came with their searchlights and guns and started banging on the storage containers and still I protected them. And then, when I thought they had gone, left us alone, there HE was standing in the dark, looking like the man I knew and I gave them to him. Offered them up on the altar of "Please God, let him still exist". And now they are gone. "Tread lightly for you tread on my dreams" and "cast not your pearls before swine" co-exist in awful poetic juxtaposition in my self-aprobation. Eve says, "You get to keep the memories". But I don't. The sweetness is gone. The tenderness. I might as well have sold my soul or my body. There is only bitterness and sorrow where he was once.
There was once a superposition of states: the reality of my life without Sjors and the alternate universe where we had a life together. And now the other life is gone and I am in this life.
At work, I am a machine. I analyze. Ten reports and one academic paper in six months. This is all I do. I should do something else. Chances are good that nobody listens anyway.
Emily tells me, "write about what happened. Write about your detective work. Write about MIVD fucking with you and how you fought them."
But I lost. In every possible way, I lost. Would it hurt them more if I wrote about them - made them look like the asses they were? Called into question every decision they made - and the decisions he made. God, he KNEW it was real - as much as I knew it - and he still lied. Distrusted me. Left me alone. Fought against me. Believed he was the hero while he did it.
He told me he had protected me - that there were things they wanted to do and he had stopped them. I wish he hadn't. Don't do me any favors. Let the bastards come. I'll eat their hearts out.
I can't even look at my memories with Hans. They cut me too much. His picture brings a pain that cannot be soothed.
I bought an antique writing desk today. just like that. It had so many beautiful drawers and a secret latch to release another drawer. I picked up the painting I bought for my friend. It is wrapped and ready to send. White boats on a blue sea.
The baobab on my porch has so many leaves. And spider webs between the branches.
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