Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Not One Day

once more, will be desire. The only question is that of the moment, of the movement, of the event that will begin the battle. It’s three in the morning; you take the elevator. Her room is two floors beneath yours. The door slides on its rails. The corridor is deserted. All that’s left to do is say goodnight. You see her hesitate to proffer her hand, leaning, it seems, toward a less formal farewell. Seizing the invitation, you embrace her. It lasts a while. You take the scene in, coldly, though the coldness saddens you. She wrests herself finally, stammers something like, no, I can’t. And disappears. You step back into the elevator, press the button for your floor, thinking how it’s all so strange and familiar, and a bit tiring, to play this game; to play it again and always according to the standard though implicit rules leaves so little to surprise. Who would dare to invent others? To thwart… Back in your room, you think while undressing that you certainly served literature honorably, these symposiums are decidedly exhausting and you conducted yourself with more tactfulness than you believed was possible, for after all, E* no longer has any reason to blame you— didn’t you grant her full satisfaction? You stood in your boxer shorts, toothbrush in hand, when the telephone rang. One might say it’s too good to be true, that your memory is playing tricks on you, reassembling the same shot in the film of that night. Perhaps. But why do you see, so clear and distinct, the blue stripes of the shorts you were wearing?

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