Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Camille Laurens

the board in capitals, in capital punishment, I woke with a start, my heart pounding at a hundred miles an hour, and there were those words, now here you could make a note, get your pen, this won’t be in the file. No? Don’t you have to write everything down, even tiny details? Aha, listening! Big Brother ’s listening! Well, the dream reminded me of something in real life. One evening I called Joe in Lacanau, I often did to keep things going — keep our love going, what was left of it. He mostly didn’t answer but that evening he did. He’d been drinking or smoking, both probably, either way he was hazy and aggressive, he complained I was checking up on him, calling him only to be sure he was there, to monitor him. And then — and this is something he did if he was bored with a conversation, sometimes in the middle of the street with a random passerby — he handed me to someone else without any warning. Suddenly, in the middle of a sentence I heard a different voice, an unfamiliar voice saying hi, then calm down. It was Chris, I realized afterward. I complained, got angry, this habit of Joe’s irritated me, even if sometimes it really made me laugh when he stopped complete strangers in the street. . .But not this time, the guy on the other end wasn’t funny, talking to me like we knew each other, his voice slurred and patronizing, Don’t you think you’re a bit old to be jealous? he said. I got real mad, I asked to speak to Joe again, She’s so not cool this chick of yours, he

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