Adultery

JACOB! He’s just risen from the dead and sends me a message inviting me for coffee—as if there weren’t so many other interesting things to do in life. Where is the sophisticated wine taster? Where is the man who now holds power, the greatest aphrodisiac in the world?

But most of all, where is the teenage boyfriend I met back when anything was possible?

He married, changed, and sends a message inviting me for coffee. Couldn’t he be more creative and suggest a nudist run in Chamonix? Maybe then I’d be more interested.

I have no intention of answering. I was given the cold shoulder and humiliated by his silence for weeks on end. Does he think I’ll come running just because he gave me the honor of an invitation?

After I go to bed, I listen with headphones to one of the tapes I recorded of the Cuban shaman. When I was still pretending that I was just a journalist—and not a woman frightened by herself—I had asked if self-hypnosis (or his preferred term, “meditation”) could make someone forget about another person. I broached the subject in a way that would allow him to understand “love” as “trauma by verbal attack,” which was exactly what we were talking about at that moment.

“That is a somewhat murky area,” he replied. “Yes, we can induce relative amnesia, but since this person is associated with other facts and events, it would be practically impossible to eliminate someone completely. What’s more, forgetting is the wrong approach. You should face things head-on.”

I listen to the whole tape, and then try to distract myself, making pledges and jotting down a few more things in my calendar, but nothing works. Before I go to sleep, I send a message to Jacob accepting his invitation.

I can’t control myself, that’s my problem.