Tamara and Breavman graduated from college. There was no longer any framework around their battered union, so down it came. They were lucky the parting was not bitter. They were both fed up with pain. Each had slept with about a dozen people and they had used every name as a weapon. It was a torture-list of friends and enemies.
They parted over a table in a coffee-shop. You could get wine in teacups if you knew the proprietress and asked in French.
All along he had known that he never knew her and never would. Adoration of thighs is not enough. He never cared who Tamara was, only what she represented. He confessed this to her and they talked for three hours.
“I’m sorry, Tamara. I want to touch people like a magician, to change them or hurt them, leave my brand, make them beautiful. I want to be the hypnotist who takes no chances of falling asleep himself. I want to kiss with one eye open. Or I did. I don’t want to any more.”
She loved the way he talked.
They returned to the room on Stanley, unofficially, from time to time. A twenty-year-old can be very tender to an ancient mistress.
“I know I never saw you. I blur everyone in my personal vision. I never get their own music….”
After a while her psychiatrist thought it would be better if she didn’t see him again.