i wish i had died before i ever loved anyone but her. a moveable feast, ernest hemingway.

oh right, paris. it was wonderful. picked up hemingway’s “a moveable feast” at shakespeare and company and read it during my stay there. it was a damn good book to read about paris, in paris. and i am very pleased at rediscovering hemingway who i had previously considered overrated.

i stayed at the frenchman’s apartment in the latin quarter, a 5 minute walk from the luxembourg gardens and a 15 minute walk from notre dame. his mom is a pleasant, once-beautiful but now grief-stricken aged widow…who i thought didn’t like me at first but the last morning i was there came into my room and woke me from my sleep by gathering me in her arms and kissing me on my forehead.  i liked her, her name is michele (ma belle). while the frenchman and his mother were in nice taking care of family business, i stayed in the apartment with his little brother alexis who is 16 years old. he is taller than the frenchman and cute and well behaved. every morning at breakfast he practiced his english by repeating quotes i had written on his chalk board.

i count myself a lucky girl. a friend from college who now lives in paris picked me up for dinner and gave me a nice tour of the city. i took the trains only twice, and only once by myself (to versailles). the rest of the time, i hung onto the frenchman’s tiny waist as we zoom-zoomed across the city in his vespa. all of it was great, we had dinner at a restaurant in the louvre in a drawing room straight from my adolescent dreams. he held my hand all the time, we made love secretly. we took the eurorail to london where we stayed in bloomsbury and i got my nails done. we got drunk and were too tired to make love in the morning, we plotted ways to be together but when i believed, he didn’t. when he believed, i pulled back…and so it goes.

got back late tuesday night to receive a letter from my doctor indicating some bad test results. “could lead to cervical cancer” but “we are very far from that” and “you should see a specialist as soon as possible.” i’m not that worried, and i’ve talked to the doctor (the one i fuck) and he is not that worried either. but it was weighing on my mind wednesday morning when i came into work and at 9:03 am the cco called me into his office, smiled and then stood up to close the door because he was very sorry to inform me that during my vacation the firm was dissolved.

and i have until november 30th. which is a long time away. but before i could let this all sink in, the cfo (the one i used to fuck, but i dumped very quickly and meanly once i figured out he was sort of desperate and a little stalkerish) called me and asked to meet me in the conference room. there, he proceeded to act like he was my knight in shining armor and told me he was buying out his group and he would like me to come on board. riiiight because i am so well-versed in…whatever he does.

my friends say to take his offer. i do not think he is trying to sleep with me again. i think he feels guilty, i think he wants me to like him, to think he’s a good guy because i think he thinks he really loved me. whew. the frenchman, ishmael, huiru and joyce say, “fuck whatever this motherfucker thinks. fuck his motivations. set your boundaries, take the job. go to graduate school. the market is bad.” and this is no time for honor or pride.

(which are arbitrary posts we set for ourselves anyways).