20

HE CAME TO GET his things the next morning. The complex’s super let him in. He entered and when he didn’t see my car, he assumed I wasn’t here, so he and his friend El Piojo—the Louse—went to the shed where I’d left his things, but unhappy with the way I’d split them up, he came into the house through the window to get the books he considered his. I was in my room. I’d heard him in the shed while I was writing something and held onto the keyboard so I wouldn’t run out, but when I heard him and El Piojo inside, I did go, and when I saw his hands full of books, the covers of my books, I said fucking son of a bitch thief. He dropped the books in surprise and said they’re mine. And I said they’re mine. And El Piojo, livid, said it’s all good, kids. I said get out of here. And he said with my books. And boom boom boom. I leapt on top of him. I bit his arm, we got into a fight that not even El Piojo, who didn’t even have any lice, could stop, because like wolves or dogs or rats or two miserable people who love being together, we pulled and dragged one other, and he had my hair in his fists, and I had buttons from his coat in my hands. And we drew blood but stopped when we saw it. It was actually my split lip that had started bleeding in the tussle. For any of this to make any sense at all to me, this passion would have to take us to bed, like in telenovelas, but it didn’t. That didn’t happen. Exhausted, we separated, and he left crying. The boxes were left outside the shed and got wet in some rainstorm, and a cautious neighbor stored them again, but he took the disputed books. Book covers I love and won’t ever see again.

That day, after he left, I wrote something I’ll transcribe; it’s melodramatic as hell, but it’s also genuine.

August 12

He’s taken his things. I again feel like the end is a snowfall. My feet are cold and I’m shivering.

He jumped. I was afraid of flying (and fear acted). Could that be what all this pain comes down to? Nasty pain (it’s a compulsion, a moral imperative to think out loud. If I write, everything will be OK: it’s the fear of not being loved).