He awoke in the morning with an uneasy familiarity, deja vu for a place gathered like a mirage above the flat blue Mediterranean. The isle had a name, it must, but names were irrelevant in the experience, so he chose instead to fix a drawn out, lazy Sunday breakfast, eggs and fennel and toast with bacon, gin from the bottle he hadn't quite done away with last night, the bitter drops clinging to the green insides of the glass, opalescent in the sun. He put on faded khaki cut offs and rowed the little dingy into shore, the beach a million souls of crushed sea creatures, their hollow homes baking in the warm air. He had never seen a beach made only of shells, and he bent down close to the bleached, gritty surface so that his face was inches from it; studying the myriad shapes and histories of them. At one end of the little cove was a rocky protrusion out into the sea, gray limestone butting up against the azure water ten or fifteen meters high. At the top of this little precipice, suspended on rough wooden stilts, was a little red house, neat yellow trim around the windows and door suggesting the summer home of a modest family, a tax accountant in Marseilles or cafe owner in Nice. Clark approached the house at a modest clip, feet always catching a forward fall, the anticipation of the next step too much for gravity to counter. At the northernmost edge of the rock, right before it tumbled down into the sea, stood Guillaume. 'Oh Guillaume!" Clark thought with abstract joy, and ran full sprint down the remaining 50 meters of the white shells.
It was not Guillaume. The young man's features changed and became more angular, a trim mustache turned downward at the creased edges of his lips and an elaborately styled pouf of straight brown hair jutting over his forehead like the cliff over the sea. He was still, he said nothing at first. His expression was smug and content, a gambler who just played his best hand to the bewilderment of his opponents. As Clark speculated in panicked urgency on how to best introduce himself, an uninvited guest on a private island, the young man took off towards him like a derailed freight train, his smirk replaced by a gaping, manic smile, and before Clark knew it he was being wrestled into the soft sand, the dead sea creatures brushing uncomfortably on the day old sunburn on his thighs. He made no effort towards resistance, rather he let his body go limp the way a kitten might innately understand when its mother picks it up by the scruff, he knew somehow this too was an integral part of the experience, being wrestled with in the sand by a French madman on an island off the Cote D'Azure.
He felt the imperceptible pull of gravity, downwards and into the mushy, salty ground, and was resigned to his fate even before he knew the outcome. The young man's name was Julian, and he said he was sorry, but visitor's were not expected or necessarily welcomed. He said he might make an exception for Clark, and with this Julian led him up an old wooden staircase in a shallow cleft in the precipice, his steps bounding upwards like a small child climbing a lookout tower; boundless energy and exuberance. Julian was fucking crazy; this Clark had gathered quite sensibly from their first encounter. The rigid rules of society, even along the hedonistic Cote D'Azure did him no justice, and yet he ostensibly refrained from drugs or alcohol, Clark thought in amazement, walking around the barren cabin. By barren, he of course meant there were no substances to partake in; rather it was covered, from the prim whitewashed walls to the bare beams of the ceiling, with art of the most obscene and beautiful kind, photographs. Big ones, small ones, giant phantasmagorical pinhole apparitions on glossy matte: they were everywhere.
As Julian poured jus d'orange avec oullettes in the neat, rectangular kitchen, Clark of course broke the silence with the logical question of whether Julian was a photographer [he looked a few years too old to be an art student still?].
In broken English, fragmented bits of thought that were endearingly honest, he said he had studied photography and painting in Geneva, his parents lived in Marseille, and that work was not required of him right now, in the fiscal sense at least. His family came from old establishment, with lineage dating back to the suppression of the bourgeois in the Revolution, and the subjugation of Africa in the colonial days. He quickly followed this with the fact that by living on the island alone, painting and photographing nature and himself, he was slowly atoning for the sins of past lives, the inexcusable womb of privileged comfort he had come from, and was on his way to becoming pure, or at least aware. This sounded awfully pretentious and scary, Clark thought, and breakfast on the little yellow wooden veranda sounded much more achievable and rewarding.
He told Julian they didn't have to talk if he didn't want to, which seemed to relieve him immensely, he communicated now in nervous, anticipatory smiles and quick glances over his shoulder, as if aware of the judgement of the seagulls and forest creatures. The isle was bigger than he thought, Julian informed him in matter-of-fact pride 5 kilometers long and 2 wide, it had been a trading outpost during the Roman Empire and later a small fishing community was built on the stone ruins of the Roman fort. It had ended up in the personal estate of a Jacques de Marquee, one of the most powerful and tyrannic land barons of the old world, his summer respite from the growing demands of the serf's in the late 18th century. The sun here was hot and luxurious, radiant in a way that justified the excess of spending and accumulation, Clark thought, and suddenly Julian's 20-something ineptness and life out on the island seemed more acceptable.
Clark thought he ought to tell Julian about Guillaume, not that he would care, just to air his thoughts in morning breeze before a similar soul, someone who might laugh and point, yet also might feel compassion, jealously even perhaps. Julian listened intently and then did precisely as he had expected; laughed and gesticulated in wild incoherent French and almost fell over in his chair, saying something to the effect that he was an American dealing with the French and this was so typical it wasn't even worth noting. This made Clark angry, yet also sympathetic, Julian was a similar soul after all, life had become so surreal. He liked how Julian was vulnerable and insecure like him, aesthetic and angular and filled with exploding ideas, but tired of being watched, being watched Goddamn it! By himself more than anyone he thought sadly. Still though, they were intrigued, because he presented an interruption to a life that was already resigned to predictable boredom, the flat spots in his collective experience their high points.
He remembered sitting in the library at Brown earlier in the semester, January it was, the wet snow coming down in heavy, globular thwacks on the old wooden roof. Across a table sat a black, curvaceous girl lost in the internal struggle of committing to reading or listlessly watching boys, and he noted with contentment that Brown was doing a great job creating a more diverse student body. Thoughts of how exotic she seemed compared to his blinded, bubbled childhood distracted him, and he looked up again at her to discover she was in fact not black, just had an awful, orange tan, the drooping edges of her lips hiding a lingering unhappiness. This was it though; Clark had this ability to look at people and stare right through them, the unchanging geometry of a brick wall or hedgerow more appealing than a stranger's face. She had watched him though, with nervous fascination, he wore a Kashmiri crewel coat adorned with bright swirls of color, and faded gray levi's two sizes too small, garish red thrift store penny loafers slid over green argyle socks. A bastardized hippy prepster, he must have seemed like, worse than those pretty blonde SDS girls in their Tibetan dresses and long scarves, hiding under layer after layer of cultural appropriation.
Julian could tell he was distracted, and led him arm in arm the way the French do down to the beach on the other side of the precipice, which miraculously was made of sand and not shells, the texture more pleasing to his bare, calloused feet. He had his camera, a heavy black Leica with expensive looked attachments and a long, rounded lens jutting forward like an eye against his hips. At the end of the little sand cove some smooth, flat ledges faded down into the shallow green water, and he sharply instructed Clark to lay down there, facing him with one arm propping his head up. 'Like a fucking mermaid', Clark thought, yet he complied without hesitation.
Julian took photographs as if he'd heard he might be charged for them one day; each click of the shutter confident yet apprehensive of consequence or misdirected intent. Clark followed his instructions silently, the shallow, repetitive waves and distant gulls framing things just right in the absence of words. Julian never specified what anything was for; rather it was inherently understood that he was a documentary, a biopic, a hurried trip forward that needed no explanation. Suddenly sex seemed so sterile and mechanical to Clark that his relationship with this new stranger became unburdened and platonic; still beautiful, yet free of the expectations of love. This wasn't to say that attachment wouldn't occur, indeed, Clark prayed in his hollow mind at the moment that he might know the fullness of spirit that came with selfless affection. The physics of love though, the material presence was so greedy and consuming, it gnawed away at him until he cried out in pain.
Julian was done for the moment with the endearingly French gesticulating and posturing, and he relieved Clark of his mermaid duties, abandoning the Leica in the pale sand and bounding half-clothed into the sea. Clark was hot and itchy from the sun, the sand and the smooth rocks, and he joined him in the surreal green liquid. It wrapped up all the unconsolidated stuff in the world, bound it tight kind of like the heavy wool blankets his mother tucked him under on family ski vacations as a boy. Cozy and safe in this little cove on the Roman Isle, Jacques de Marquee. The visions of past sin and excess came to him like the long, even sets of breakers against the gray limestone, and he longed for the pencil-thin memories of childhood, which waited only to be replaced. Julian had swam out a good ways, to a humbled little black ledge rising incoherently out of the water 500 meters distant, he stood atop it naked, proclaiming the sea as hid whole kingdom, like the small boy who first stands atop a peak, he knew no slightness.
Even submerged in the August sea, the sun was fiery and relentless, Clark thought. He found himself longing for the long northern twilight of his youth, the salty Maine coast that numbed the extremities even at midsummer's crest. Breathing laboriously and doing his best to disguise a frantic doggy paddle as an indifferent backstroke, he coasted up onto the little ledge, joining Julian. Hands together and thrust triumphantly overhead, they sang absurd, lewd melodies of their own creation, Julian ad hoc improvising in poor English. The yacht, the Stranger [it's given name, the 'Evening Star', was dull and unapologetic, he had decided] sat contently on it's mooring in 5 fathoms good standing, as the old timers might say, and he glanced around the little point at her, smiling knowingly. She was beautiful and demanding; forged in the humble good character all sailboats ought to be, he thought. He wondered, like the boat, how much longer he might get away with this minimal upkeep, the lack of plans both terrifying and liberating. 'Everyone was so fucking predictable anyways', he thought with sudden irritability, though this was completely untrue.
Julian had become part of the decor of the island; like a crystal or fossil, he could be shelved and catalogued in his mind, aesthetics to be admired later, now that he knew nothing was going to happen. He saw his aesthetics, his angular, arrogant jawline, piercing blue eyes were only evident in light of the mathematics of the situation; symmetry duly noted without pretense. That was exactly it though, he thought suddenly, he judged with such merciless precision that there was no compassion left over, over a soggy, half-formed opinion. The world was perfect and round when viewed from the sea; all the lookers and assholes and even the nice people were earth-bound and stationary, seen at his leisure from the circular vantage of the ocean. The things that pleased him were grand and austere; their presence never betrayed trust or shifted. He laughed at the irony most people seemed to find in his steadfast trust in the raw, unpolished elements of nature, the gulls and the wind. He supposed most people didn't want to deal with with, to truly deal, well, 'there were so many fucking layers to digest', and they left him for easier subjects.
Some memories, not even memories in the sense of boxed, dusty experiences, but living, animate things; well they were so sensory and perfect that all Clark had to do was channel this and everything fell into place. The warmness of truly relating to someone, the extension of one's own skin was alien at the moment, yet he found some solace in nature's permanence. He swam back to shore in a clouded, hazy paranoia; the awareness of the past he felt was a bit disorienting. Julian led him by the hand back up the dull wooden steps to the house, and yet his distraction still blurred things indecently. When they were bare and sweaty under the thin crescent moon, whose edges lit the windowpanes, only then did he exhale and smile without effort.
He was wrong about Julian, and the next few weeks on the island passed in uneventful bliss. The ineptness and luxurious time wasting of the privileged classes wore on him though, and soon he longed for the unrest and even rhythm of the open ocean again. Italy was somewhere off to the east he knew, with green olive and citrus trees on steep hillsides, and the continuity of the island became too much to deal with, so one night in fidgety sleeplessness he got up and left. He felt awful ,physically twisted in knots of regret and doubt already, as he left Julian under the covers, unaware that he would wake up alone. What it really came down to was a basic intellectual inequity, he though, a rift from which he didn't think they could recover. Julian was organic and emotional, prone to wild gesticulating and waving his hands over life's unsolved woes, and he felt alienated by Clark's infallible idealism and logic.
He left a hastily scribbled note, almost an afterthought to his sudden departure, something for Julian to ponder in quiet madness while he set a course South 60 East to Sicily or Rome. Julian would cry and tear the down quilt to little ragged pieces with a kitchen knife, his anguish simple and unrequited, yet the next day he would awaken stoic and resolute, memory brushed aside forever. He had this ability to slice people out of his mind, surgically and methodically, to almost involuntarily remove the imprint of someones soul. Like a quarter in a subway turnstile, memories were deposited and recycled into the great humming future. He didn't need food, clothing, or even shelter, Clark thought bitterly, just that goddamn black Leica, it's old leather strap clinging protectively round his sleek, strong shoulders. Mama used to say, take you time, don't rush to get grown, and he clung to this simple wisdom now like a life ring in a storm, though the sharp burn of the past few weeks still stung. It was best to think of the past as both a display case of static, beautiful things, and also a grotesque apparition, he decided firmly, and began to hoist the rusting chain links of the anchor out of the inky black water, the adrenaline of exertion drowning out the haze of loss.
It felt so damn good to work, work did make you free, he mused with delicious fatigue, and he decided in the light evening breeze he would hoist all the sail's by hand, veins pulsing with life. The Stranger breathed with collective relief as she moved easily out of the claustrophobic little cove and into the Inky black ocean, letting the little dull amber spots on the distant shore guide him north to Nice and the mainland. The wind kicked up into a healthy southwesterly as he moved out of the wind shadow of the little island, and Jacques de Marquee became a murky shadow, a reflection both warm and sad. The void of the Mediterranean swallowed him up quickly as he'd expected, and the trip regained it's forward momentum it seemed at last. He felt like the warm black water was the only thing he could stare at with singular intensity, or even just full awareness, and not feel uncomfortable. Alone on a boat there was no self-consciousness, no doubt, only action and consequence. He was tired and a bit sore from the vigor with with he'd attacked the rigging, and it reminded him of the playful competition of skiing or rock climbing, the weariness that only caught him when the intensity of the experience wavered.
The best, the absolute best, he thought, was the full body contentment, surreal and immediate, that came from total physical exhaustion. Everyone ought to work hard, to be tired, to be content. People were like those little black dots he'd seen in the north Atlantic on flights to Stockholm as a child; they seemed strange and fascinating from 30,000 feet up, but closer they were just boxes upon boxes, stacked compartments motoring along from point A to B. He wanted his path, the path of The Stranger to be circuitous, strange and unpredictable, and he willed it to be so, setting a steady course in light wind and quickly fell asleep below deck.
Below deck, things were quiet and contemplative as they ought to be, he thought, and the wind ran steady from the southwest at ten knots, propelling the Stranger north towards the dull amber haze of the mainland. He wanted another altercation, even in sleep, a chance to taunt the feebly grasp it seemed most people had on reality, but in the meantime the loneliness of the boat and the black salty ocean sufficed. Without pretense or expectation, a loud glancing blow deflected his shallow sleep and he woke with a deep shudder, expecting to simply be wretched from nightmare to calmness. Instead the thud became many rythymic, tapping steps, quick, assertive feet on the deck above and whisper's of bold provincial southern French.
A flashlight beam pierced the stale, warm air of the cabin and Clark smiled and held up his hands instinctively, as authority always chagrined him, mischivous and arcane. A rapid exchange of broken english and confused accusation followed, and Clark learned that a small, recreational sailboat much like the Stranger was rumored to be at large in the Medditeranean near Nice, carrying a hundred kilo's of cocaine and a dozen illegal immigrant's from Algiers.
The French naval police were easily satisfied by Clark's profession of innocence, and the conversation soon turned to friendly banter over the weather and the superiority of French to American girls. He relished at first the warmth and simplicity of interaction with others, the isolation of the boat and Julian's hold on him melting under hot sun and recognition. Soon though we wished be was asleep again and blissfully unaware of the aloof pirates nearby, as the police clearly had fulfilled the day's agenda and now were content to bullshit and linger on the boat. They had tied up their little escort motorboat next to the stranger and throw a hasty anchor down, so Clark, relieved of setting a new course in morning grogginess, thought he ought at at least pour some drink for his new friends. He measured even portions of sweet vermouth, cheap gin, and a half-empty bottle of Campari into a large pitcher and stirred mildly till the liquid shone brilliant orange-red in the sun, and passed around Negroni's for all, which prompted their leader, a man called Benoit, to compliment his good taste 'for such a young man."
He wanted to tell them he was an old spirit, a person half-realized and translucent, but thought better is inflicting his bizarre idiosyncrasies on them, even as the alcohol dulled his senses. Benoit, as his arrogant little metal nametag announced, turned out to be a fine fellow, from a poor farming family in the Champagne Valley to the north, and not much older than himself.
His aesthetics pleased Clark, his smart, angular jawline ever so slightly forward, his eyes set beneath deep sun creases and filled with kindness. He pictured them sweaty and fatigued, picking grapes on his family's farm in Champagne, the relentless sun driving them towards love or attachment. Clark always projected, always anticipated, always theorized... his life was like a child's Christmas Eve restlessness, drawn out 23 years. Benoit, he couldn't have been older than 30 or so, he was now reading from his lengthy mental archive of past sexploits amongst the university girls in Marseilles and Nice, his tales carefully crafted to hide the obvious lies, not quite well enough. Clark yawned; his vivid style and sharp inflection betrayed him and he knew Benoit was like him; open, confused yet certain, seeking love from everyone. His little group seemed to know this as well, yet they followed politely and egged on his masculine folly, mentally comparing their own record to his bragging. A few hours passed languidly, and as the ball of yellow fire eyed them obliquely from above, the critical time for departure and travel seemed to have arrived. Clark informed them of his plans to take leave of the Stranger for some time, to explore terra firma and the culture he admired and they seemed to deride.
Benoit told him to follow them into Cannes, some 20 kilometers distant, where he could tie up for free for a few weeks at him friends marina. He agreed gratefully, following the fast little police boat at a bounding clip across the now growing whitecaps and foaming sea, the storm clouds to the west looming and ominous. Clark deftly reefed the mainsail and brought it in on a close haul, the keel leaning hard to starboard and shooting out over the static plane like a greyhound after a rabbit, it's eagerness sincere and singular. Propelled by nothing but thermal gradients and ambition, he thought of himself as a modern Huck Finn, the naivete of childhood at ease with the physical constraints of adult life. He pulled into a sheltered cove and the marina just as the sun violently extinguished to the west over broken chalk cliffs and half-silloutted palms, and Benoit suggested he hop into the police boat for the ride across the bay to Cannes. Clark felt the sharp pinprick of anticipation, the reluctant exhilaration of a 16 year oldout for a drive with the cool seniors. Benoit was a cool 27 and apparently knew all the best discoteque's in Cannes, and made promises of things that seemed absurd and perfect.
They left the little grey boat at the police station docks and walked briskly along the faded cobblestone quay of downtown Cannes, and the rest of the party, apparently married and settled, declined the invitation politely, heading up Rue St. Catherine home. Walking along beneath the busy, neon signage and humming nightscape of the waterfront with Benoit, Clark felt painfully self-aware and transparent, his dull, torn levi's and striped navy shirt actually a new direction in style, unbeknownst to him. In reality he was watched and admired, envied, or otherwise noted, an aesthetic transient blending in with the cool kids and washed up old folks alike; everyone wanted the same things in life, the expressions were just different.
His liquid confidence, his cool, placeless aura, it all distracted them. He felt aloof and without worry, and the evening spun involuntarily into sharp corners and narrow buildings as they took turns from the gin bottle, encased in cheap, dirty conversation and delicious silence. Benoit was a neon prophet surrounded by uptight Lacoste polo's and tweed jackets, having made it a priority to stop at home and change into his 'disco clothes' before they went any further. Night's out with strangers were unidirectional and spontaneous, he thought, like a rocked kicked down a cliff over the sea, the course was random but the destination certain.
As the night seemed resigned to pointless distraction and wandering, Benoit arranged a last minute rendevous with his friends from the University in Marseilles, the wealthy young white kids at their family beach homes for the summer holiday. Clark was uncertain of himself for once, unaware of the environment around him, and content enough to be static and watchful around these new, bright faces. The Cote D'Azure was a white stucco and red brick jungle of ancient fortresses of privelidge and inequality looking out across the ocean to Africa. Clark thought of Africa, the real jungle lush and impenetrable, filled with dark shadows and violence. The subtle neo-violence of these social classes and parties, the houses where the cool kids slept bored and fitful; it was all insignificant to the 3rd world, the real world, the world of exotic spices and smells and colors.
As it was, the smell's and color's and young people of Cannes was enough to distort the surroundings, and he walked briskly next to Benoit, like a young boy determined to keep up with his mother but look casually separate from her watch. A group of 4 university girls, their breasts rounded and taunt beneath rakish stripes and revealing lace, joined them in a fit of giggles and cigarette smoke, and suddenly Clark snapped out the social apathy he had felt. He played his card's smoothly, making conversation in casual, broken French and instigating more nervous eyes and laughter, and soon they had decided, or Benoit had decided that they would start at LaRoy, a trendy resteraunt and bar a block east.
Laroy was packed with people young and old, Parisian's, Berliners, Londonites, all ecstatic and high on the humid air of summer freedom, vacationland replacing their programmed, work-obsessed daily lives. The respite from routine Cannes afforded meant people were open, spontaneous, waiting for the fantasies they played in their heads alone in bed at night or on the 6AM train to work, the hedonistic lifestyle and people-watching of the coast. The reality of course was a compromise, a night out on the town ending in bed with a usual lover, a husband, a wife hated for 30 years too long, instead of that local who made brief, delicious eyes with you earlier.
He liked the style and ease of movement the europeans seemed to have, the acceptance of fate paired with sharp, stinging humor, the distaste for mediocrity and dull moments. The girls had obviously done this before, and he got the impression Benoit may not have been bluffing when he claimed to have slept with all of them at various times. The boldest and most aesthetic, Marie, was 22 and hated everyone and everything except the beach and her car, a lime green 63' Mercedes with meticulously detailed, angular pieces of chrome and steel stitched into a luxury bubble. Much like her, Clark thought ironically, the nosebleed's and week-old bruises couldn't hide the past and the present, a monster of her own making that threatened to consume the details of her smiling face.
Her smile was smug, knowing, radiant, he wanted to see it in his head when slept at night, and he playfully tugged at the mauve edges of her skirt when the drinks arrived. She responded with subtle creases of her lips, smoldering ideas of the evening that lay hidden to Clark and Benoit, men caught in the conquest of the moment. Her accomplices, 19 year old Natalie, shy and out to prove herself amongst these alpha females, sat on a narrow stool beside Julie and Carine, each an indestructible 21 and overflowing with flesh and ideas.
Youth was so tame, a sheltered harbor in the storm of career and identity that would inevitably follow, yet Clark also saw the limitless austerity of it, the horizon line unbroken and forward. The undertow of doubt and consequences taunted him even at his most radiant moments, times like this suddenly pleasing evening with five beautiful partners in the August humidity, the air sweating like sex and 5th floor walk-ups with no air conditioning. Marie was about to enter her last year of university, studying archeology and anthropology with a minor in pornography and cocaine, and seemed to exist of the delicious fringes of Marseille bourgeoise society, a transient by choice and popularity. Vaguely inebriated from a third vodka tonic, she told Clark about her recent trip this past Christmas to Papua New Guinea, where she spent 3 weeks living in Asmat with one of the world's most 'primitive' tribes, who form the sound of it had a better handle on reality than anything produced in the post-happiness first world.
The Asmat made love to whom they wanted and possessed none of the sexual taboo's of western culture, it was common for a young man to have several male lover's as well as a wife with whom he had born a child. The justification for their anti-societal hedonism was simply that no justification was needed, if it was in the spirit of love and partnership, connection to the natural world of waving Sago palms and tannin-infused rivers, then all was blessed. They believed we all share a common, interconnected spirit, that the jungle breed's wild animals and violence just as it breed's compassion and virtue, and all living things ought to be worshipped for their own identity. Marie's eyes dilated and her pupil's fixed absently on a distant barstool as she explained this to Clark; it was clear the experience was still very much a living, breathing entity within her, and even here surrounded by the familiar luxuries, she longed for the jungle again. Clark was entranced, lost in the poorly-lit haze of greater-than-this-moment bar bullshit, except this wasn't just bullshit, it was real because it had touched Marie; she flushed the coke down the toilet and told her heavy-handed boyfriend to fuck off and get a job, and she was here now, for the better it seemed.
Marie had this singular fascination with the foreign, incomprehensible edges of society, that which eluded her sheltered childhood, and Clark thought himself much the same, resigned to exploring the safe and familiar. The other two girls had gone home with boy's they met that evening, their expression's during sex glazed and disappointed, as if there was something more to being young and easy and bored. When everyone bore's you, Clark thought irritably, then life is reduced to quiet madness, steady compromise and tedium. He thought of his early childhood in suburban New York, the circuitous chains of commuters snaking towards the city, content to let their soul's wither in aluminum and steel boxes for a few bucks each day. Money was obscure and hypocritical; easy to judge and abstract when it was of no immediate concern to him, yet it was the bane of most people's existence, the reason and the reward for discontent.
Marie was distracted and distant, her eyes playing out future scene's of love making or drug taking, and Benoit had apparently left without plan or warning; his drunk restlessness pushing him to roam the streets a bit. Clark kind of wanted to roam the nightscape a bit too; the dirty black walls and seedy corners of the bar had compressed inward with sweat and stereo bass, and the cool, dark evening was enviable. He hated the awkward expectation's of departure, so he summoned his best indifferent smirk and politely asked Marie if she wanted to go back to her place and fuck, and she replied with a single, exhaling note, "oui". It was fun enough, Clark rationalized; she was another wild child of the modern jungle, she fussed under the covers and kicked and bit like an untrained puppy, and he wished they had all been this fun.
He woke early, with the dull neon edges of the sun barely waking shadow's across Marie's 5th floor townhouse on the quay. He could never sleep naturally in another's bed, as if trust existed only between inanimate things and nature. He liked the consequences of bet's against the wind, the sea or a mountain, and people, even perfect, shining Marie, had somehow become repetitive and indistinguishable. He wondered where he would be in 20 years, still wandering the street's at night or escaping reality on some mountain, while his colleagues and family dug roots into the comfortable confines of midlife society, jobs and children and mortgages taking the edge off reality. He could never settle though, never buy into the system of trading adventure for security; they had to be mutually exclusive in a way. He thought perhaps he'd run up to a storefront and lick the glass in a mock embrace with commercial barriers, the exchange of paper shit for plastic shit, to become lewd and rediculous as a way to love himself. Marie suggested expresso and a croissant at a little patisserie down the block, and he agreed easily; what else were they going to do? Lay in bed and discuss politics or sex or relationships? Certainly not; Clark didn't open up to people like that, or in that kind of timeframe, rather.
Maybe someday he'd live in Boulder, Colorado or Laurel Canyon, Los Angeles and drive a Range Rover and have two medicated, crazy little children whose lives were full of surrogate activity for simple love and running around outside, and a wife held onto ten slow, painful years too long, but wasn't it the American Dream? He didn't know what he was mad about, why he couldn't just hug himself and not want to let go or distract other's into false security, and Marie sensed this distraction and bought him a triple shot expresso and a huge croissant with lox and green and moutarde, which at his surprise she said was to "stop your ribs from showing!" It was true he thought sheepishly, his ribs did show a bit, he couldn't gain weight despite the ungodly caloric intake and junk he consumed, his metabolic rate must be tied to the business upstairs, he figured.
Suddenly, the quiet hum of the cafe was interrupted by loud, mournful wailing, ragged breathes and shallow gasps emanating from a young woman who had the classic look of someone who woke up in an unfamiliar location and stumbled there in last night disheveled clothes, her dress rumbled and stained. "Julie!" Marie cried, and Clark realized it was the girl from last night, the one who had eyed him suspiciously and inquisitively as Marie put the moves on him across the bar. She was completely beside herself and now whispering rapid, slurred French in the embrace of Marie, whose face had turned white and ashen, her eyes vacant and locked on a distant horizon line outside. Benoit had committed suicide last night, a group of boys out fishing along the beach below the big steel suspension bridge that crosses over the canyon on the edge of town had found him mangled and still warm at seven that morning, a note clutched is his left hand reading only "happiness is only real when shared.'
Clark felt ill and dizzy, he fell forward a few feet and caught himself on a table, and slowly, deliberately staggered outside, vomiting cheap gin and bits of breakfast on the cobblestone patio. "jesus fucking christ, that could be me that could be me that could be me", he thought of the miasma of drunken, hopeless, lonely nights that filled his memory bank, the times things seemed beyond repair. Benoit seemed so confident, so easy around these sly panther's of the bourgeoise social scene, his body language even projected austere resolve against the loser's and the washed up, the boring people and little kids, everyone not worthy of his obsession. He needed to leave, this place was toxic, the grand white villa's and their ornate stucco details and brick roofs suddenly melted and coalesced into a foul current of inequality, and he vowed never to return to Cannes; this place was dead, Benoit was dead, hope had left and gone out to sea. He stifled tears and fought back deep, choking sobs as he hugged Marie, who was still in shock and static in her chair at the cafe, and ran down the steep, narrow street to the docks, the Stranger waiting there, humble and beautiful in the morning fog, she was all he needed.
He boarded hastily and began to ready the rigging to set sail, and instantly he calmed and swallowed the acrid bile that had begun to build in his throat, the boat was always there, always the same, ready to love and expect nothing in return, and he turned the heavy wooden wheel with tender affection as she slid deftly out of the little marina under power at 5 knots south by southwest. He wanted music, he wanted art, but really he wanted aural, visual, peripheral stimulation without loss, and the warm, teal ocean swallowed him up once again and shut out all the other bullshit. Now 10 kilometers out to sea and set on a broad reach towards Corsica, he filled leaky plastic bucket's with briny water and scrubbed the wooden slats and fiberglass hatches along the deck with vigor and determination, his forearms bulged with exertion and the little marlin twine bracelet he wore on his left wrist tightened deliciously. Blood flow was adrenaline realized; a steady respite from weariness or too much thought. He wished for the classic, visceral redemption of the hero, the part of the film where the audience had seen enough injustice and rallied for a happy ending. This was the experience though, that goddamn spontaneous, evolving situation that could never be too easy, otherwise it wouldn't be real.
He chastised himself for how easily he'd been lured towards affection, human after all he mused, to cling to strangers like the family he'd forsaken at home, whose lives kept going forward without him, now a memory distant and abstract. The land to the south of sad, dead Cannes, that was what he needed now, and the long white beaches and high limestone cliffs of the islands, ancient myth's of Atlantis and the underworld wound into the landscape, made human tragedy seem small. He wanted to tell Marie he was sorry, sorry he was an asshole and didn't always love himself, sorry he couldn't stay even another minute, or the shiny chrome railing of the suspension bridge might taunt him as well, might beckon him to inspect the void between it and the sea.
[To be continued!!!!!]
