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She will learn in time that she can lie, and the words will flow like wine, easily poured, easily swallowed. But the truth will always stop at the end of her tongue. Her story silenced for all but herself.
But it is a lonely thing, to be forgotten. To remember when no one else does.
A record made. The first mark she left upon the world, long before she knew the truth, that ideas are so much wilder than memories, that they long and look for ways of taking root.
She pauses at MEMOIR, studying the titles on the spines, so many I’s and Me’s and My’s, possessive words for possessive lives. What a luxury, to tell one’s story. To be read, remembered.
Addie turns, about to comment on the cat’s name, but loses her train of thought when she sees him, because for a moment, only a moment, before the face comes into focus, she is certain it is— But it is not him. Of course it is not.
doesn’t know what else to do, and he can’t bring himself to leave; it’s the only thing he hasn’t failed out of yet.
He gestures for Henry to join him, but Henry shakes his head, ignoring the pull, the easy draw of gravity, the open arms waiting at the end of the fall.
At his worst, they were a perfect match,
the differences between them purely g...
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So she longs for the mornings, but she settles for the nights, and if it cannot be love, well, then, at least it is not lonely.
Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered? It’s like that Zen koan, the one about the tree falling in the woods. If no one heard it, did it happen? If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?
“You look like a wilted flower,” teases Addie. Sam winks and lifts her cup. “Water me, and watch me bloom.”
She cannot seem to hold on to much of anything for long.)
“It was a mistake to curse me.” Her tongue is coming loose, and she doesn’t know if it’s the Champagne, or simply the duration of his presence, the acclimation that comes with time, like a body adjusting to a too-hot bath. “If you had only given me what I asked for, I would have burned out in time, would have had my fill of living, and we would, both of us, have won. But now, no matter how tired I am, I will never give you this soul.”
Addie sits forward. “You think yourself a cat, playing with its catch. But I am not a mouse, and I will not be a meal.”
You have grown teeth, he said, and Addie will show him how sharp they have become.
she realizes then how much she’s leaned on it, the promise of his presence, because without it, she is falling.
There will be other dark nights, of course, other wretched dawns, and her resolve will always weaken a little as the days grow long, and the anniversary draws near, and treacherous hope slips in like a draft. But the sorrow has faded, replaced by stubborn rage, and she resolves to kindle it, to shield and nurture the flame until it takes far more than a single breath to blow it out.
“Life is so brief, and every night in Rennes I’d go to bed, and lie awake, and think, there is another day behind me, and who knows how few ahead.”
She will use a hundred names over the years, and countless times, she will hear those words, until she begins to wonder at the importance of a name at all. The very idea will begin to lose its meaning, the way a word does when said too many times, breaking down into useless sounds and syllables. She will use the tired phrase as proof that a name does not really matter—even as she longs to say and hear her own.
“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”
This is what she loves about a city like New York. It is so full of hidden chambers, infinite doors leading into infinite rooms, and if you have the time, you can find so many of them. Some she’s found by accident, others in the course of this or that adventure. She keeps them tucked away, like slips of paper between the pages of her book.
She wonders if you can distill a person’s life, let alone human civilization, to a list of things, wonders if that’s a valid way to measure worth at all, not by the lives touched, but the things left behind. She tries to build her own list.
But this is how you walk to the end of the world. This is how you live forever. Here is one day, and here is the next, and the next, and you take what you can, savor every stolen second, cling to every moment, until it’s gone.
but that’s the whole problem, you’ve never felt called to any one thing. There is no violent push in one direction, but a softer nudge a hundred different ways, and now all of them feel out of reach.
If it’s normal to feel lost, and angry, and sad, hollow and somehow, horribly, relieved. Maybe it’s the thud of the hangover muddling all the things he should be feeling, churning them into what he does.
New York is full of beautiful people, actors and models moonlighting as bartenders and baristas, making drinks to cover rent until their first big break.
They fit together with the familiar comfort of a well-worn coat.
You want to be loved. You want to be enough.
“But that’s the thing, Henry, you haven’t been you. You waste so much time on people who don’t deserve you. People who don’t know you, because you don’t let them know you.”
