Guess who I just saw? Two seconds later, it dings again: Julia. With those five letters, the kitchen starts to whirl, and for a moment I’m swirling in turbulence, unbreathing. It had been three years and seven months since she’d left the city for another life on the Bay of Biscay. We all knew she’d come back, because wherever you go, there you are, but when a few months later she remained in silence we gradually began to forget her. Well, not me, I had the tenacious memory of the deceived, I didn’t stand a chance. All my friends had reproduced by this point, but I was still dreaming about her – rolling in greasy velvet, in revolting desire. And now she’s back.
The summer is thrumming in the city, the swelter trapped between the streets, cherry season. Dangerous – like it could all go to hell at any moment. Although the clock says it’s getting on evening, according to everyone else it’s the middle of the day. The terraces are full, people ruddy with unabashed lust, my dick hanging half-hard in my pants. Back home I change the sheets (more than overdue), put an extra bottle of poiré in the fridge and pulled on the striped shirt I wore that night, the night of that last argument that boiled over. I head for the part of town where she always used to live, where I know I’ll run into her. The first four times I see her it’s not her. Right when I start to doubt the veracity of the news, the rumours of her return, I recognise them in the big window – behind the curlicues of Cafe Forever – her deep red locks. She doesn’t startle when I walk in – she would never.
You’ve changed, she says. She’s right, so has she.
We’re lying on my tatami floor, half against each other, bottle number two of the pear wine, till we’re down to our underwear. We don’t talk about what happened, or about where she’s been these past few years. We’re just lying here in inevitability, in distrust, in thrilling distrust. I watch her slightly sunburned breasts waiting restlessly behind the lace of her bra, how her nipples are all but trying to push through the fabric, like mushrooms through damp soil. She notices me noticing, asks why she’s still wearing clothes. I know why, so does she. Julia knows how the game is played. I close my eyes, I see her face, twisted with wanting, see her sitting up on her knees between my legs. There she is, sitting there again, routinely rolling my boxer shorts down my butt.
Of course it was a bad idea. Julia had always been a bad idea. I know I’m a moth to her flame, and yet I grab for it like a reflex. I can’t live without her nails, her butter-soft tongue, her taste of briny rosewater. She gets up, crouches to manoeuvre her wetness above my face. I’m swimming in the hypnosis of this glistening intimation, this invitation. Ever since I tasted it for the first time, I’ve yearned for it: langoustines with boudin noir and bisque. They say it takes just a few days for addiction to be flushed out of your body, as if it matters, as if your mind gives a damn about all the things you know. My tongue hungrily hauls my neck up. I strain forwards, hooked, landed, flailing. It was a delicious mystery – that salt could be so sweet. There was no one I could tell; I had to go through this alone.
They wouldn’t understand that I’m back here, that I let her in again. Julia had said and done things that, in theory, I couldn’t tolerate either. She was of a different order, she didn’t fit – anywhere. At the same time I couldn’t help it that part of me had to forgive her time and again. She was unavoidable for me. The more people she repelled, the closer I came. Half of what I say is meaningless. I was only thinking about the moment when everything would be different.
We are rolling around the floor, timeless, curtainless. She kisses me, I lick her neck until she has no breath left, she kneads me even harder than I forgot, kisses and sucks and whispers, telling it she’s missed it. I get up, pull her up to fold her over the kitchen counter. She swipes it clean, the pepper grinder explodes onto the floor, the Tellicherry corns are skittering around. I want her, need her, more and more, just as she wants me. After that I don’t remember anything. Except the sweat – we’ve always sweated. And how for a moment – a beat too long – I stared at the knife block when I couldn’t go any harder.
She’s back. She’s humming something as she wipes herself clean with a towel, I don’t want to know what. Just like I don’t know why she had to take this away from us, why she denied herself this – denied it to both of us. Of course I remember how she shouted at me that night that I was too much of a pessimist, that I wasn’t strong enough for her, that there was more to life than taste. More than taste? What more could you want than this heady rush? I think better of asking. She eats a cherry, doesn’t spit out the stone.