Enough About Love

ROMAIN AND LOUISE

• •

Paris, October 3, midnight.

Romain, it’s late, you’re still working at the lab and I’m writing this letter on the computer while I wait for you, which is in fact my way of not waiting for you. It’s nighttime, I’ve put the our children to bed, they’re asleep. I haven’t written to you for a long time I wish I didn’t have to write you this letter. Maybe I’m only writing it so that I’ve written it, and I’m hesitating I don’t know if I’ll give it to you. When you leave a man, what’s the point of explaining?

I’ve met a man, Romain I made lo. I think what matters isn’t the person, but the fact that I could, that I wanted to meet him. I was surprised, surprised to feel so little guilt, so little shame. Just happy like a girl kid of twenty of fifteen on her first date.

We’ve been together ten years, Romain. I have so much affection for you. Over the years, you’ve become my best friend, almost a brother. But, of course, you can’t be a brother. That wouldn’t doesn’t mean anything anymore. Sometimes, at night, I lie next to you, I touch your skin, I want some intimacy, sometimes sex, without really wanting you. I’m forty years old, or will be in a few months. It’s not the first time I’ve been unfaithful I’ve wanted a man another man. In fact It’s the first time that there’s been nothing there to stop me, that I can’t picture for a minute not seeing him again.

Romain, I’d like I want we need

Louise closes the document without saving it, switches off the computer. She will never find the words to describe the abandon Thomas has brought about in her; it is crucial that she does not find them. She would like to venture an image — a window thrown open by a squall, sugar melting in coffee — but this is about bodies, nudity, desire, a stark, self-evident need, and she had no say in the matter. Yes, that’s it, she thinks. I didn’t have any say in it. Louise smiles to think how Thomas would interpret her choice of expression.

She is in love, she craves sugar, eats a dried apricot, another. All at once she is really tired. She will not wait any longer for Romain, and goes to bed. She is not guilty because, she keeps telling herself, thrilled, she had no say in it. She falls asleep immediately.