#2

She walked up the stairs, to meet a man she met the day before.

He was sitting there, sipping occasionally on the coffee he had nursed for the last three hours.

She was wearing small black leather buckle loafers. Her ankles were covered with a white and simple pair of sock chosen out of boredom. She was wearing a black and white tartan skirt. And a shirt. With a knot, revealing her bellybutton. Her skin was a caramel eye-scream. 

They were on the fourth floor of a round down building on Pentonville road. 

The man, young, had a beard.
He was very handsome. She loved him the moment she saw him. 

He was this kind of man. Not a stranger to being the victim of a woman's sentimental confusion. 

Unfortunately he had the making of a seducer. 

But he did not know that. He thought he was a heart roamer. A knight errand in the lives of others. An enchanted parenthesis. 

He had lovers. He broke their hearts. 
All wanted to penetrate this dark room filled with his agoraphobic memories.
To know him.
He left. Each time because he was not to reveal himself to them.
To keep the mystery alive. To prevent him from dragging the thought that he might admit he loved them.
He did not have enough space in his heart to love anyone nor anything apart from his loneliness. 

But not her. 

She was the youngest. The prettiest. 

She, who came from far away, had lived more already than what her heart could bear. There was not much to break. 
He did not see that.
Maybe he walked unarmed into the darkness of her affection. 

They sat and spoke about meeting each other. How particular it was.
He talked about himself.

He apologised several time about his lack of confidence and his hesitation. She asked him not to. 

The next day they were engaged.

He made her happy. For several years. Until he could not anymore bear the thought of happiness itself.
He remembered one morning, that his faith lays still and intact until his lover trusts him.
He tried to break her heart.
So that she would go away from him because he knew somehow that he did not want to leave her.
But she stayed.
She really wanted to love him. She knew how to listen to him.
He had always been a receptacle for fantasies and did not see what she was giving him.
She was taking his worries and put them with hers.
She was letting him take whatever he wanted.

He could not bear it.
She understood it but it was too late.

He grasped her and broke the bones of her hands then her arms. He clutched her tight and hard so she could not breath.
She gave a last sigh and died.
He chose a room in his house and left her there, locked the room and added the key to an egg shaped ivory key ring.
He kept a memory of her but held in oblivion the instants of happiness they once shared.

Who said that happiness had to last. Its taste is worse than the taste of sulfur to a mouth that has feasted on sorrow for too long.
Happiness is more dangerous for the one who has a reason to be unhappy. Because it arrives always too late.

I saw this man sitting, alone, at a bar one day. He looked miserable but was so beautiful.
I looked at him and took a picture of him. The lights in the bar were over exposing his face. His forehead disappeared behind a cloud of smoke coming from his licorice cigarette.
I remember thinking that his beard would appear blue on the picture.

B.