Momentum :: 2. Separation :: Jack leaves (Patrick’s POV) It is too much. I am disassociating. I am reliving one evening in November, four days after he had moved in next door. We meet for dinner, at my place as he’s not yet found a cook. We talk about a hundred things on cigars and cognac-- G.B. Shaw’s new play, whose title is rumoured to be The Devil’s Disciple; the way Joseph Joachim plays the final fifteen notes in Mendelssohn’s violin concert on his Cuypers violin; developments of immunology after the death of Louis Pasteur. We fall silent. He stands up to go, stretches his hand in a final goodnight. I want to catch his arms, pull him to me, kiss him fiercely. I don’t, the sudden taste of tears up my nose.
The
gaping precipice of hell was but one step ahead, lethal and luring. How
can hell feel so much like heaven? :: Jack leaves; Jack goes to Patrick, or Jack leaves, Patrick goes to Jack |