XL.
"What are you writing?" he asks her.
"My impression of the crows," she replies looking down.
She appears melancholic.
"I always remember one thing Derrida said when I saw him in Sydney many
years ago, that all words were an act of mourning."
"Yes, I guess so," she nods, "I write after I am, even when thinking of
what has never yet been. In fact that is why I write at all I spose,
writing makes a button in the flow of time, I materialize that way
in words on a screen."
"Is that all you are, words on a screen?"
"Maybe. How am I to know? I like to think of words being read some time
and evoking sensations in some body's present. Is reading an act of
mourning though?"
"Let us celebrate also my departure then," he answers,
"Please show me some places of your town today."
"When did you see Derrida? He's dead now, you know," she asks, but in
reply puts on her sunhat and adjusts it in front of a mirror, full length
it shows a young animal in a clinging dress of deepest blue.
"End of last century it was, '99 I guess. What were you doing then?"
"We lived in Detroit when I first came to America." She stops and inclines
her head, remembers the small apartment, the hallway, the old man who
looked like Che Guevara living next door.
They go down the stairs and out onto the street. The sounds of chanting
they hear through the open doorway of Testuwan's boarded up store on the
ground floor. Repeating the syllables mindlessly, meaninglessly until the
shape of the universe emerges.
Words can have power over us - one of them thinks this as they pass on
their way. Perhaps both.
"How about the highest and lowest tour?" she asks him smiling. "Both views
are equally wonderful. The tallest has moved in the last year though, so
it's a new high, so to speak - The Cooperative Society of America Tower.
You can't see the top on a cloudy day."
"What's the lowest then? The subway?"
"Oh, no, I forgot about that. Good views too, but a little cramped for my liking."
Later they jostled and scuffled in a large crowd holding each other's
sleeves so as not to be separated while they boarded the ferry.
"Do you take all your lovers to Staten Island then?" he asks her grinning.
"No, but master took me there when we first moved here. I like it very
much."
They made the return journey and caught a cab almost directly to the
airport, stopping in on the way to retrieve certain fundamental baggage,
after which Lynx went home to continue her way of life, her body smiling
out of every of its pores the waiting for a certain and unavoidable return
as to have happened already, the interval an appetizer for the entree and
subsequent sweet desertion of NYC which would follow. She does not
even know all of his names but Purrs to herself over and over a song of
contentment always arising, never ending.