The Anomaly

by Hervé Le Tellier

Dear André (what else can I call you?), I’m writing to you from the Drôme. I’m going to stay here for a while, and you can stay in my apartment, your apartment, in Paris for as long as it takes. I’m attaching the complete email exchange with Lucie from when we returned from New York. If you read them, you’ll understand. I wrote a lot, she didn’t reply much. You see plenty of “I don’t want to hound you/pester you in vain,” which were all lies because I wrote again and again, pointlessly. And that last email, which goes on forever—Jesus, be brief—the one that ends with the pretentious thing about walking “the longest of possible paths, together.” I was by turns bombastic, insistent, tearful and plaintive, and even after she’d evicted me from her life, I still tried to get her to backtrack. I’m not your enemy or your rival, or even an ally. But I have my past in my mailbox, and if you don’t want it to be your future, do something.