Everyday for two weeks I said “we’re through,” she always found a way to disarm me, I started crying again and we didn’t break up. One night, I started in again over the phone, but then “fine, I think you’re right, we’ll never make this work.” And she wouldn’t change her mind this time. I didn’t know what to do with my days, much less with my life. I didn’t know where to take Léonore on walks. I wrote: We didn’t dare, we weren’t able to strip bare one before the other. There. That’s what I believe. We were in a hurry to get dressed again. Now that’s that. We’re happy. I’m afraid you won’t like the reason I love you. I love you because you’re gentle, gentle, gentle. Because you throw pebbles for your dog on the beach. I never loved having anyone take care of me the way I loved having you take care of me. I love you in a way that no one has ever loved you. That’s right, no one. I’m sorry, I don’t have the right to say this. It’s probably not true. But I admit that I often think things like this. You’re going to tell me you know all this. Well then, fine, you at your place, me at mine. Each in her own home and the hell with it. I wasn’t worthy of you or you of me. We didn’t give each other the means, we keep them for others or for ourselves. Sweetheart, help me allow myself to get near you. Guide me, take my hand. Let’s stop. Tell me you love me, catch me. I should never have let you walk on the beach alone. That’s all. You’re aware, my love, that it’s difficult to be with you. You take back everything you give. Oh my goodness, what babbling. And all of it for a story that’s coming to an end. Don’t you think we should have managed better than others? What an admission of weakness and how I blame myself. And how I blame you, too. I love you. Everything I could never say to you, and still can’t, it’s all lost. Maybe I’ll be able to tell you them some day, a long time from now. That evening, I read the letter to her over the phone. She told me she’d think about it. She came to get me at the train station, we went off, it was wonderful. The letter upset her. She just called me back, everything is going well, she loves me, she’s glad she’ll see me this afternoon, no, no, I was wrong to worry, there’s nothing wrong, the line was busy, the call waiting signal sounded, it must have been someone leaving a message on the machine, she was playing tennis, she’d just walked in, no, no, there’s no problem, she’s looking forward to seeing me, she’s in a hurry, she’s got to meet someone, she’ll come right after. Aside from a few minor worries from time to time, it all went like that, she would look at the real estate ads and call me. We even went to look at a house. We took the freeway to get there. I saw a dead dog on the shoulder. I couldn’t get rid of the image. I tried to block it out, I didn’t dare mention it. After the house tour, we had a dinner invitation, I had to talk about it, I was forced to say “there’s an image I can’t get out of my head. —What is it? What, what, what? —There was a dead dog on the side of the road when we arrived. —The freeways, especially that one.” We changed topics. She said to me “the day you don’t love me anymore, tell me, it’s not worth it.” But she still went off to Île de Ré alone, without me, to see her cousin. When she called I heard her cousin’s voice “Marie-Christine,” in the tone you use when calling from the next room for something that belongs to you and that you need. Jean, with whom I had dinner yesterday, said to me “it’s crazy how pretty the name Christine is and how ugly Marie-Christine is.” She left, she wanted to be far away from me, to get some distance, she needed some rest, far away from me. I wrote her. “Marie-Christine, let’s be clear. You said you’d write, well, here’s my answer. I’m bored with you, it’s no fun, I never laugh, but worst of all, we don’t share. The conversations we have don’t interest me. When you came back from tennis the other day (your tournament), your skin was ———— and ————. And yet, I let myself be seduced by you, you weren’t like that, you’re never vivacious for long, you need easy targets to shine.” And me with my dreams. We’d have a house. We’d share it. Léonore would have been with us. Pitou my heart would have watched over her. “Most of all, there’s a cruelty in you. You fan suffering when you see it, you’re incapable of real friendship, of real consolation, in short, of real love. I know now, after this letter, that you won’t call me again. I’ll be rid of your lack of love.” At the same time, I took notes, for myself, in my notebook: She is: not attractive, ————, ————, hollow chested, I don’t like talking to her, her friends, etc., the animals, she’s her cousin’s lap-dog, etc., when you forbid human cloning, you’re obliged to reproduce, which is good. The telephone rang. I didn’t pick up. The answering machine turned on. It was her, calling from Île de Ré. I wanted to talk to you, to chat with you on the phone, before you leave for Turin. Well, fine. Okay, listen… I don’t even know what time you’re leaving. If you get my message, try to call. If not, I’ll call you Sunday night when you’re back. I wanted to tell you that I hope everything goes well in Turin and to send you a big kiss. “These last two weeks, to tell you the whole truth, even sex with you seemed dull. Desire responding only out of habit.” She even said so herself “last week-end you seemed on auto-pilot.” I dialed her number in Île de Ré. I let it ring three times and hung up. The phone rang immediately after. It was her, “you got my message? —Yes, I just walked in this second. I called you back, but when I heard the end of your message, that because there are men in the house, ‘the two of us are out,’ you and Nadine as a couple, I hung up, and besides if all you have to say to me is ‘I hope everything goes well in Turin,’ then I’m not interested in talking to you. —I wanted to tell you I was thinking of you, that I keep seeing things here that remind me of you. —And what are you thinking about me? —I want to let some time pass, I don’t want to answer right now, I’ll tell you when I’m back.” Just then, I hear her cousin Nadine, the actress, with her voice that carries, calling from the kitchen “Marie-Christine…” Having a lesbian in the family is very practical. Handy, available, clever, not prissy. “Someone’s calling you, go ahead.” If there were five of me, I could make even more, says a woman from Austin, Texas, when asked about cloning. All these remarks annoyed her when she read the manuscript. It’s too easy, I know. Always leaning on tangential things, drawing connections, since I began writing there have always been other voices, other texts, other things, another angle from which I try to show myself. Me and something else, always. Now I have to rely on myself, what is closest, most real, nothing much, what with the incest I can’t manage to feel like I’m anything much, my body, my life, the place I live, the scene I’m acting in for myself, with my anxieties, my crying fits, my telephone calls, my intelligence, etc., all my limits, to be at the very edge of my limits, to lean on it the way I lean on the banister of the stairs to the lawyer’s office. Let everyone see my insignificance, my nothingness, me as a minimal human being, the tiny little writer that I am. Trying, with shrewd remarks, like the one about cloning, to seem a tiny bit more clever than she is. Me: “I didn’t care for you at the party at your place. I didn’t like dancing with you as much as I used to. This all developed over the past few weeks. Before my desire was sincere, urgent, directed at you. My love too. I discovered beauty in you and then it became hidden, around the end of February, and didn’t resurface. In the United States we felt pleasure and had some good moments but no happiness. There should be some happiness after a few months. For a while I truly hoped to live with you, it’s not possible with you. There really is too little love. There’s too little of everything.” Yesterday I asked her “would you rather you’d never met me?” – she said that it depended. Would it be better for a child to be born cloned or not be born at all, soon there won’t be this kind of thing at all in my books. I hope. No letters either, I hope. Just my inanity, nothing else. It’s a little utopian. “It was no passion, it wasn’t love, it was an encounter and we used up all its charm.