#219
Before we met for dinner at one of our usual spots, I was walking through memories along the canals and stopped past the Peggy Guggenheim to see if I could find something new, just as the light was dropping in the not-quite-midwinter sky and illuminated the tops of the buildings to the east. I happened to be standing on the patio, which faces the Grand Canal, wondering many things, having just landed what seems like an hour before.
After dinner, the city, quiet this time of year, felt like it was ours to take. The calle were empty as we walked to the usual vaporetto stop where we’d share a hug and a goodbye, and you’d go your way, and I’d go to the other island where I stay these days. I don’t know if you cry on your walk home, but if you do, you tell no one. I sit in the empty boat back across the lagoon, and when I get to my bed, a depth of sleep that I wish would come is instead replaced by the memory of the day, by the sound of the church bells, by my inability to give up.
But back to the after-dinner walk. In mid-conversation, suddenly, from the left, a police boat came roaring down the canal with its lights and siren on, a sight I’ve not seen before - usually the police here are casual, but it is a reminder that this is a city that has its problems and that sometimes, people commit crimes that need their presence. But at this hour, it must have been a murder for the riot of noise and light it was giving off. We both stopped, and I said something like, Wow, the police boat, and you laughed, seemingly reminded that, yes, actually, it is a police boat.
But anyway, what we didn’t say to each other was any of the deep thoughts that we both felt, that we both hold close, and don’t allow many, if any, to access, reserved for private times alone, or, for me, with the dog, who holds them. I keep a small lock and key in a desk drawer for that one day in the future when I’ll want to open the little chest of memories and remember and think and live again in the past, a place, you refuse to acknowledge or consider, but that I know, its your way of protecting yourself because in reality we are both fragile people and perhaps the only way for two of us like this to survive, as you said, is to do it alone.
