Big Man, Immovable Object

by Dian Bulfin Winder

November 5, 1969 - May 22, 1999

Ar Dheis Lámh Dé

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Jean rolls over in his sleep. He is dreaming Once again. It is an intense, Wild, viv id dream. "Wild" because of its Realness and clarity, and because it is an escapee from one of the deep closets of memory past:

-He is sitting in a warm coffee shop opposite a great Lust.. from The past. SoHhh !!! REAL it could B L 0 W your fuckin' 'ead off. There is a cozy,familiar atmosphere. Her looks are so good and fulsome that she seems, All-most edible. A frigid winter Lies outside. Intuitively he has to know this because, as each customer enters or leaves cold air licks the back of his neck and the almost bald back of his head. -Meanwhile,back in his apartment, his hand lolls onto the floor, locking the elbow. -The woman holds a tipped cigarette affectedly in her long, slender - even majestic fingers. She looks Perfect He moves to service her with a light leaden . They've obviously been having some convoluted discussion,about what - God only knows!? He can tell because of the gnawing exhausted feeling in his brain and the hoard of crumpled fag ends in the ash tray. Jean stares for what seems like an age at her white filters smothered in rouge. He has always found this particular combination disgusting but he cannot control this perverse fascination in the midst of a paranormal silver glow. He reaches forward for his coffee in an attempt to break free from the terrible ash tray. -Yet his hand seems So far away. Unconnected at all to his brain. So he stares at It instead; not in terror this time but in awe. It takes a super human effort of will to tear his eyes away from this distant member to her face. He wants to share this supernatural experience with another human being - and My what a BE UUTiful one! Jean has already forgiven her the torment of the ashtray - having also, the effective intelligence of a middling to backward garden vole. However, just to confuse things, he has the memory of a forty four year old man who, when he is awake and sober, is not at all dim. A bit maudlin betimes but not no; not at all dim. An iron will and caustic, ironic humour shores him up. He has the body of a thirty year old because latterly he has worked with it up to 70 hours a week. On managing to raise his eyes up to her face, all he is able to do is to give a quiet grunt of devotion. Ogling her, he admires her long, pink painted nails - he thinks: where could this GODDess have come from?? my God what a beauty! - As he laboriously forms these huge building blocks of thought - she fixes him with her ferocious look and says: I know you fancy me Jean but for Chis'sakes please don't STARE at me like a Bloody MONGOL." There is a passing moment, when Jean thinks he might actually reply to this unwarranted ... and obviously misguided attack by his queen. This faint hope is misguided. In reality all he manages is to force his mouth open, whereupon it stay wide - in the feeding position. The contrast between the pink varnish and her pale skin and blond hair is Just! Too much. The sumptuous doll
narrows her eyes in a most unladylike and not unintimidating manner before the little tigress is compelled to speak "Jean I do not know what your fuckin' problem is but.."

Fortunately; Jean wakes at this auspicious moment; the abusive diatribe his imagination was about to lash him with was the final straw.

He lies quite still. The memory of the girl is still strongly present. Yeah, even the very taste of her. His arm, empty, searches the vacant bedspace for the missing lover bedfellow for whom there is great yearning but who he, despite himself, knows is not there. Her smell. Jean distinctly remembers her perfume - a slight noxious burning on his palate, all-be-it for a moment, as it fades. He recognises it but there is a block. The ache for her is almost too much to bear. What was her name anywhere? It is an important name - maddening in its nearness. Why won't I let myself remember? Better to relax. It will come. I remember she wasn't the kind of girl to shuffle through life on hard work and brainpower alone! I wonder did she find her millionaire with a personality? At least she let me into her bed... maybe she wasn't such a bad girl, after all. A beauty buxom who puts out can never be viewed (totally) as a bad thing. Clearly, he remembers how his attempts to communicate some of the great intangibles of life to her had failed. Some people feel the need to share; particularly when they fear themselves falling in love with the wrong person. And then he says: "ICE MAIDEN": the sounds are pleasing to his tongue. 'Vengeance is mine sayith the Lord' but a little is no harm, as God inhabits us all. In a small way.

In the small way.

It makes him smile to have his little go at her but there is discomfort also... gone. His dreams of her have Ieft him with a painful hard on. His balls ache; he must have been having horny teasing little dreamlets for hours. Nothing like the real thing. The bed is empty beside him. And cold. His wife is not there, nor is his girlfriend, and what about that cheeky little one night stand with the nice bum.... No. Ne personne. None present and none correct. Ze ro. A big fat one.

He falls into a dreamless slumber this time thankfully. He has another soul destroying day of toil ahead of him - a little undisturbed rest is fair. Not too much to ask - please? It is the life he has chosen because he saw himself growing fat and opulent and opinionated behind a desk somewhere in France - his home country.

He is awake again. He knows the alarm will go off soon. He flinches before the terrible sound to come. His eyes open wide and stare at the ceiling, without the aid of which his hand fishes for the smokes alongside the bed. He grapples for them awkwardly, too lazy to lean over the edge and look. ...He has them in his hand and eventually, the slippery metalness of the lighter also. He smiles a grim smile one of many imaginary victories he will punctuate his progress through another work-a-day with. It is his Way.

the way for an intelligent man on a manual job.

As he's smoking, enjoying the rasp of the greyness - the first of the morning - he thinks of nothing. Vacant. He reaches over and turns the beep off lest it sound. The horrible thing. Watching arcs of smoke drift through the quiet air he thinks of nothing. Stares at nothing. Void. Pulling the cover to his chin he squeezes his eyes tightly shut, and stretches in a covetous good-bye to the last moments of sleep. Of rest. Of relaxation - but it is soiled with the waking knowledge of what must be done soon. Soon. All too soon. He opens his eyes wide now and flings back the sheet from his naked prone body. There are big whorls of dark hair around his nipples, belly, groin. He has often felt grateful that he hasn't grown the apish covering that plague some dark men however. He remembers clearly, how, as a boy he felt uneasy when his sisters and their friends would let out loud groans of disgust on sight of a truly Hairy man without a shirt on. Indeed - turning into a gorilla at puberty was one of many puzzles his charming, teasing sisters set for him. But he always knew he'd grow up to be a big and strong man like his father one day and all their teasing wouldn't do them fuck all good then! Would it? Peculiarly his father rather loved his daughters. They dragged Jean up with their skirt tails and nails. They are married now. Middle-aged. Children. Husbands. Security. Children. Children .....

Yet little jean is Big Jean now, all that is long over, and it is time for all good builders to arise and do construction. Worming into the centre of the large bed he lies perfectly still, dispelling rather than collecting his thoughts. Once more. Sub self- hypnosis. He doesn't want to think of the soul destroying work to come. He is summoning his insurmountable mechanical man once more. Clockwork, tinman, indomitable Jean. Over and again. He is preparing to go and bravely do what many men have done before. Not now will he be troubled by the intrusion of memories of what has passed. No - it is time for discipline and order and effort. Stretching his heavy slumberous arms above his head there is a pleasurable crack from his sternum. His arms still extended, toes pointed and with his heels above the mattress, he wracks himself until he feels giddy enough to faint. Hands by his sides, breathing shallow and even, Jean's day, has begun. Once again. Over again. Once again. And again. And again. I think i'll go mad. ...But that would be..... That would be delicious. No that would be..... That would be..... That would be... - too easy.
or would it?

Swinging his shanks over the edge of the bed, he sits with his chest flush against his thighs. It feels good. The solidity of his own muscles makes him feel secure. Tensing pecks and quads to bursting he feels the iron of coil. He is a man. He still has strength. Power. It is O.K..

'Push Missus.'
push.

The final act of meditation over, he unravels himself and stands to attention by the side of his bed. Literally. Flapping his wrists rapidly, he feels just a little less stiff. It will do. It will have to. If I was some chick - I'd be spread eagled on the floor right now, doing my aerobics to some stiff boobs ont' tele'. The mirth has zero effect; his early morning humour has not yet won conviction, however, it is an item of faith.

But it WILL! Win conviction.

When it fails he will be dead inside and life will be over. Believe it or believe it not. It is Who he is largely. Or who he has become. Who he has had to become. 'What' he has become in order to survive mill-drink-smoke-stand-crash. Exposing the long expanse of glass, live spears of light fill the room. The room vibrates - zinging with yellow energy. He turns his face and then his body away from the penetrating, low flying light of another sickeningly beautiful day. He feels like a bird in an aviary just after the blanket has been removed and starts to sing:

"And the Sunlight hurts my eyes,
And I know it's gonna be Another fuckin' lovely day!"' He does not sing well but it makes him happy.
and happiness is a very special commodity.

Only the mice can hear so he sings bravely, tunelessly to himself and mumbles and talks and cheeps. Am I sane? Who cares!

If you were down on the street and you were looking up you might see a deep purple scar from an old puncture in his belly. And surgery.

You might even be able to distinguish some of the fine tracery of other fading marks on his body. Marks you suffer and Ow! and carry on. He swings a large hand to the floor and scoops up his strides. As coins jingle in his pockets many small lateral rolls of flesh form and disappear across his stomach - indicative of good musculature. With his broad brown back to the sun he pulls in. He feels dressed properly with the stiff denim wrapped around his bare buttocks and thighs. And naval. Jean never wears underwear unless he's wearing a short skirt. Where
nails and scrues and juts have ripped the material, his broken skin has mostly repaired but the tears have not. Is he waiting for some woman to come along and mend them? They'll be discarded soon for fresh ones. More like. But the old ones are friends, They'll fast a little longer. New things aren't his friends. A little nostalgic. I suppose. He cares for them. Familiar. But they are getting rather shabby.... Note! Jean walks into the kitchen to make his oodleiscousness of morning resusitous coffee. Whilst smoking another, between some rubbing and scratching, he casually ravages bits of food that are about the place. It is not for taste but for fuel. Even though he is French. Wolfing down his second cupo', he has his first unadulteratedly pleasant thought of the morning: unless he is grossly mistaken; there should be more than half a joint lying unattended in an ash tray, somewhere in the flat. As he turns his head to tick the kitchen clock, he has an EXCRUCiating pain in the muscles on the stretching side of his neck. Searing pain burns down from behind his ear to the tip of his shoulder.
one of jean's friends is also awake.

Aaaaaaaagh aaaaaaagh aaa God FUCK That! As he bends over cradling his spasmodic neck, he sends a stream of foul curses down the cosmic telegraph to the driver of the car who left him with this after whiplash gift. He was rammed. One of Jean's little contretemps. Wincing and mad, he gets himself half erect. His mind is disturbed by the severity of the attack. He hasn't been bothered by the injury in years. He stomps, staggering carefully into the living room. The curtains open, half bent over, he can see the handful of people wandering about on the avenue below - in deep shadow; the sun will slip down the buildings quickly, making it a hot place. It will be at street level Soon. He tenses the muscles of his upper body his chest swells, his biceps and triceps inflate. Yes I am still strong. He turns away. His eyes close. Ten hours of heat and dust and work and THIS. Despondent. But we'll have that bit of an aul' joint first - eh Jeanny old boy. Shouldn't be smoking before work but just this little.... Cautiously, carefully he puts on a t shirt, socks, boots. What did I do to deserve THAT? Oh my neck. Bastaad! What a pain in the... I was going to say 'neck'. He takes the spliff from the ash tray, sticks it in his mouth and flops deep and soft into his favourite armchair like a God. Carefully. Better. He lights up and pulls the hems of his jeans down to the feet of his boots with a snap, keeping one eye closed - careful not to get smoke in it. He sits back and laughs. Yeah, we can do the business just one more time. But boy! What a start. I could kill... really. Turns the radio on, almost forgetting the pain and stiffness in his neck and shoulder, he thinks of that little French girl in her ivory skin. She had the softest most beautiful skin he ever came across. So incredible... like a substance from another universe. Golden fleece or Skin? God bless'er. He's gently hurting himself by biting his lower lip.

Sex.
love.

?

The blood is flowing heavily, slumbrously through his body. He feels sensual. Very sensual. Too sensual. He is stoned. Which exacerbates the problem. He rubs his hands roughly up and down his thighs almost scraping the backs of them and burning the palms. It does nothing to relieve this horny feeling. A presently unsatisfiable, annoying, horny feeling. The next few days will see him try and rectify this. He knows. Women. Gorgeous, sexy... wet. women. But he tries and puts it to the back of his mind. The memory of the girl is in fact extremely painful, bound up as it is in the past of choice. He stands up and tries to rid himself of the ache in his neck by rolling his big, heavy head and shoulders - having some success. Some relief. The memory of her and the ache seem to get bound together in the hash. He knows he will not be rid of the pain this day or the memories of a youth that actually Was once. Or the next or... probably. Have to try and forget.... He stops moving with his arms low and relaxed, his chin dipped to his chest, he breathes deeply, opens his eyes, raises his head and walks out scooping up his things off the coffee table. Minimalism. He gives a slight dip of the head as he passes under the lintel - remembering the monkey work on the scaffle to come. Jean double locks the door.
there are thieves everywhere.
and worse. one of whom is also awake.

He has an unexpected elated rush, so he helter skelters, booming down the wooden stairs. The pain in the back of his upper body feels almost good as he moves his thick frame at speed. Strangely enough. Today, amongst the echoes, in the darkness, he is eager to be out on the street. - In the warm sunlight. On reaching the end of the stairwell as his hand reaches for the latch; peculiarly, - he still has his large lock knife in it. The weight feels good. He looks behind him and up. you are not there.

He opens the outside door and goes through. Stepping heavily down onto the pavement, his knee locked, as his head snaps back looking for his pursuer, all the shock of his clumsy weight goes straight up to his stiff neck. Feeling like a steel rod has been rammed into the base of his skull, he staggers then wanders across the concrete, blinking the water out of his eyes, at the same time as trying to find his bearings. Jesus what a morning! Things can only get better. ?. At this time, his side of the street is just in the strong sunlight. The other side is cool and in shadow where he prefers to walk to work or where ever in the morning. He doesn't like the low sun in his peculiar amber eyes. In certain light they can appear very beautiful those eyes. He has excellent vision at night but he feels like a torched owl if he gets exposed full face to the Mediterranean Sun unless they've have had lots of time to adjust. And his brain. Today he crosses opposite an early pharmacy. There is the ubiquitous glance of pleasant surprise from the nubile assistant at the unusual foreigner. My aren't you goood looking - big fella! And coming this way. My way. Good. Goood. Once inside, Jean goes for a pair of wraps. He doesn't bother to look in the little mirror on the stand which is far too short for him anyway. Or at the price. They're built of completely transparent plastic, filtering the light to a very soothing hue. Jean doesn't buy clothes because of how they look on him normally but because they fit.

Not caring how things look on him is not some counter sexual statement learned from lesbians but merely Jean's essential pragmatism. Anyway, Jean likes to feel he can dominate conversation with his face, his eyes, his hands and powerful speaking voice even physique. And laugh. That and the fact that he knows things. Does things. Done things. Remembers things. Strolling over to the counter he's feeling good again after the pain has eased a bit and he's definitely more kindly disposed to the obviously attentive attendant. As he's trying to pay, she reaches up, and over the counter - to cut off the little tag which is dangling ridiculously down the bridge of his nose with her little pocket scissors. Ever so youthfully and sexily. He tries and fails badly not to look down the front of her silk blouse. I Love slim women who don't wear bra's Love them! He wants to say something nice to her for acting so cool when he came in. He smiles broadly at her instead. She understands - she dressed herself this morning with much pleasure. She stroked her naked chest before putting the chemise on, yearning for help and desire through rough alien hands. Even after donning the silk she stood for quite a long time in front of the mirror stroking the slippery material over her breasts. She even had to try and hide her erect nipples from her mother as she passed through the kitchen on her way to work late as usual. I wonder can he know how much I need a pair of calloused palms all over me? She rests her elbows on the counter and watches his butt going out the door. Jean can feel her. He wants her. He wishes it were the other way around him watching her ass walking down the aisle. But fair's fair.
sure after a certain point we are all naked. are we not.

He thinks of the high lines of her panties pure white, and thinks of stroking her firm young box and smiles. She'll be bored off her tits for another ten minutes until the next customer comes in for their sunscreen or their condoms. He is very pleased with his purchase. It is like it was new to him to buy things. Child-like Time is passing very intensely today... maybe it's the dope..? He doesn't normally have with sun glasses - they tend to irritate the bridge of his broken nose.
Strange. What possessed me to do that? He gives a tentative shrug of his shoulders almost dispelling the feeling, reminding himself once more how he has to be careful how he works his body today. This day. This day which will be searingly hot. Again.

Again and again.

Jean heads out onto pavement replete in his new eye-wear. His blue visor down; he crosses over to the sunny side again feeling unusually chill. There is a boy in Jean somewhere. Somewhere underneath it all. Underneath all the years. Things known. Things done. The sun warms his throat and chest and face. And yet the feeling does not, totally go away. A breeze is getting up over jean's graves. The question is will it die away in dissolution or is a gale immanent; or even is there a storm - black, brooding and heading his way from over the horizon. Heads up; he paces between the radiating facades of the buildings and the shade of small trees that line the roadway. He thinks of the senoritas, of the cold beer, of the crack and the dark sky that can be found here when he doesn't have to play at soldiers. Jean finds his beggar outside her bank. She is an early riser. She's wearing her black shawl again, couldn't be over six and a half stone. Sitting composed with her fingers interlaced and her hands folded in their lap, leaning slightly to one side. She sits with an almost quizzical attitude. Taking off the glasses he sits down softly beside his mother and waits. After a pause she turns to him She calls him by name. Her eyes have a thick film over them and have many cataracts. He has never believed that she could see him but she knows who he is. It is her job.

She even turns her head in his direction but not her shoulders which stay parallel to the path and the street. Her eyes must have been azure as these shades once - he is ashamed. Shame on you Jean for seeing her old. He finds her eyes the most beautiful he has ever seen - after a moment’s embarrassment, he remembers to see the 20-year-old eyes. She puts her hand on his arm and smiles faintly, only to turn to face the same section of street once more. Mama what keeps us here - us with the pale eyes? She turns her body slowly in line with his.

She will speak: "Why don't you marry, settle down and have children?"

Good God I wasn't expecting THAT! In the years I have known this old crone she has hardly ever said more than two words at a go and now this? FUCK SAKES! I think I'll go home and go to bed again before disaster strikes. Must I answer? Am I supposed to? It could just as easy been my Mother saying that. But I have run away from that home long ago.

She speaks again in a cracked, husky old whisper not wishing to embarrass him by her words being overheard by no one: "Sometimes I notice you looking up when I hear women's feet go by. But.... Did you have a bad experience?... or did you not have love with your mother? Did she die when you were very young? Were you brought up only amongst men?"

What can I say??

"You're not getting any younger... you should find a young woman and make a home. My young man died in the war... I never loved another... but you ... ?'

I died... no,no,no Jean not the old self pity again. I thought we had left that all.... Jean rises unsurely to his feet with a tight pain in his chest and blinks rapidly to be sure the stinging in his eyes does not turn into tears - he couldn't abide that. He tells himself it's just the shock of it coming from her but his loneliness and isolation assail him like vertigo. He has learned the way of temporary solutions but a wife ... ? He feels sick and desperate and afraid. He wants to run. To run far away. Fast. He slips a note into her gnarled old claw. Kisses the cheek she raises for him after all he has paid for it.
a strange sort of prostitution. peace for strained conscience with a kiss on haggard flesh.

They look at one another - still friends - the awkward money business over with, except that Jean must swallow hard, so that he doesn't choke on a sob and his voice break in good-bye. She makes sounds that mean a blessing on my Patron and fare-you-well. Jean walks down the path feeling empty but still, after another interview with fate. How could I be so immature that I let an old bag get to me like that? Old bag? She's one of your best confidantes. What does she know anyway? She's not my mother or my aunt. Jean has told this crone many things. What filthy alcove does she inhabit when she isn't taxing conscientious objectors to commerce? Jean has told her of the running battles and casualties that were his life. How does she move? Used to be life. Are her customers her only living relatives? He goes back to his thoughts of gullet and skirt - it is safer country on a full stomach. But with less relish. Less relish. More longing. More longing wandering aimlessly around hopeless realms of desire and alcohol softened edges of non-possibility.

All of a sudden! he is at the job. His heart sinks. His heart sinks so deeply he feels as though he is treading on it underfoot, in his boots. He walks under the scaffolding, the tight, green mesh of the netting, tunnelling him off from the outside. His nostrils sniff at the dust. They flare at it. The door is locked, so he produces his keys and lets himself in, giving a small snort though his nose at his men's tardiness. He kicks the door open - no standing on ceremony around here! This is business. Jean is the foreman, He whacks the kettle on and checks his watch. Beginning early, he is still early. He isn't late for work. Ever. Never not there. Always bushy tailed for his men, whether or not he feels it. He wonders at himself being annoyed at his men for not being early! Why am I such a crab? If I was too cool wouldn't they take advantage. Generally speaking, he doesn't like to toke in front of the lads because when they smoke they get lazy and stupid. They don't call it dope for nothing! Seriously though - it can be a dangerous job. Being too stoned on the buildings can be a warrant for intensive care. Or the graveyard. But there is no one else around... and what the heck - just one as it's a special occasion - that dream, some anaesthetic for my neck and her... and all those... Jesus I used to think it was all a game. So. Why not? I'm in charge. I'm the boss. I can do what I like. - Let's us have a J and a cupo'. Turn the radio on and take a load off. There'll be plenty of time for graft... later. Take it easy. Relaax. Chill! Delving in his pockets for the tools of the rolling trade, he's glad the men haven't come yet. He has fallen into a reverie about home now. He rarely allows himself the luxury of questioning wherefore he has come. Perhaps it is easier to take not being able to have everything when you've left home because you have given away so much when you board your train or boat or bicycle that you're filling in, not adding up. Remembering that girl does not upset him because he has lost her or because he has lost his country; it makes him morose because it reminds him that he has accepted and accepts, gaps in his life which make him distant because he cannot face the small print. And perhaps he's wondering if he'll ever have another one like her... I'm not getting any younger. The old crone was right about that. for sure. As he's getting his number together he hears a noise outside and thinks it must be one of the men coming in. Furtive. Damn!

Gotcha!

But it is not. He is relieved because he'd prefer not to set the timbre of the day by being caught seated on his arse with a big spliff in his gob. It shouldn't matter but it was such a keynote in his officer training during his service that they should lead by example, that he has used it in his capacity as an overseer to help distance himself from, where necessary, and instruct men. Jean went around again (more than once became a career soldier) - because he thought he was needed. What a fuckin' joke! a bad joke. It almost killed him - in more ways than one. He was perfectly primed for it, having idolised his father and desperately seeking after his loss, the reliance of other people on him and the repeated confirmation of his own manhood. He's finished his coffee and smoke. He doesn't look at his watch. He doesn't have to - they're late. Shit! Disaster. They are ALL late. All of them!
Where the bleedin' hell are they? This is not good. No it will not do. It is not good.
No - it will not do at all at all.

He waits. One small man - a squib in the innards of a giant. We could all do with the bonus if we finish on time. What ruddy messing - they were all out on a drunk last night - together obviously. Unless the bastards were struck down by the black death. Ha! Or a tunnel to the centre of the earth opened up and swallowed them all into its great jaws. But I would have heard about something like that. Wouldn't I? Or maybe I was stolen away in the middle of the night to a world exactly like the real one but filled with pod people - excepting my crew. Yeah there should be podstitutes of them too? But that chemist's chest didn't seem like the chest of a pod person. what does the chest of a pod person look like Jean? Irrelevant. Jean fumes clouds of smoke. He is Making himself annoyed. Tactics unintentional? If they were going to desert en masse, why couldn't they have let me know so I could have stayed in bed with Ann Marie? ( her name that I blocked out. Aha!, I remembered. Nice one.) Instead of having to drag myself down here. And for W'at? For nought. He sits glaring at space, picking the odd piece of tobacco from his lip. He doesn't want to abandon his dramatic pose by making a start because he wants to stare them out of it when they come in. If they come in? Sure that at least some of them will turn up he sits waiting to lay the guilt trip on his 'bad lads' as they arrive. It doesn't work, not because he can't sit and not because he can't glare, but because they have collectively gone A.W.O.L.. He recognises that it would be pointless for him to try and stay annoyed at them tomorrow for very long. He cares for them too much. And they know this. Sort of. So it's today for a proper bollocking or not at all. They probably made a pact as the sun was coming up outside some club somewhere, to do a bunk as one man. This does not cheer Jean any however, that his men are such a team. His feelings are hurt. He wishes he could be with them, if not at work - then where-ever. And a spare day can be a long day if your on your own when everyone has disappeared or is at work; Ha!
Especially if you've expected your time to be filled by the job. He is pissed off. He's kept them all in a job collectively for over four years now - and well paid too! They've prospered together and there is an intense feeling of resentment at being left high and dry by all of them. On his own. Jean is a minder and a worrier. He feels so insignificant to the building around him and dwarfed by the work to be done. The job is 'a few weeks' from completion - at least until the decorators take over. He wouldn't be having his money-no-object holiday in the cool of the mountains for a couple of years or more, if he was to go on on his own. This is not a serious prospect but it is how he feels. Theoretically, he could hire, if they were to desert indefinitely - the very thought of which makes him nauseous, as he remembers the hell he went though to employ men who'd do what he considers a day's in the heat.

Sitting in the dust of the vacuous foyer, Jean broods. Right up to his late teens Jean rarely attempted to voice the paradoxes that fed within him. Perhaps because his best friend and role model - diseased; melted slowly, disgustingly away in the house where Jean grew up. His decay was leprosy to Jean's soul. His sisters were old enough to catapult themselves into the arms of immature lovers but Jean just became as unobtrusive as the furniture would allow. like someone else.

Horrified by the death throes of someone who was supposed to be one of the immortals.

Jean's mother was not of the classic stoic mould inside and was simply awestruck by the acid rain which fell on her men. Helpless. Winded. wounded equally as much as little jean. distraught. freaked. She survived by allowing herself to be preyed upon by any affectionate man who had the decency not to ask too many questions. A very unfortunate option, but only which meant survival. She remained unpalatably beautiful to Jean's eyes into her fifties. When he would sit on the train from university he prayed that she would have become wrinkled and old. She always thought he begrudged her escape into the second class happiness of her affairs. How could she see that he could only truly feel love for her again when she was in pain, ill, dying or in the grave - where she belonged. They were a couple. They were supposed to share everything together.

Suti.

Jean didn't hate her for her flight into snatches of freedom but despised her her health. For her very Life.

And then a wonderful thing happens: Jean Decides that he really Is angry! Or in other words - he lets his go. He closes his eyes tightly and lets a massive shout out "YAAAaaaaa!", sticks a cigarette between his tight lips and rushes out of the building, almost snapping his finger off in the lock. An old friend - wandering the other way on the other side of the street, sees him tear up the road and thinks that the object of this man's upset had better hope they are a long way off for their sake. Jean doesn't notice him. He has decided that he will call to Phillipe's. Phillipe is also French. He speaks the native language as well as Jean and he's been here longer; not that Jean is afraid to give out to them, but he has decided that Phillipe will give the Spanish the bollocking for not turning up. Under orders. Phillipe is his second. The ganger man. The thought of this has brought a wide ingenious grin to his face. He lights his fag with great amusement and drags with relish. There is no way everyone decided not to come into work without Phillipe's complicity if he'd said 'no fuckin way am I not turning up for work and neither are You!', there would have been 'a' turn out, if only P.. So it is fitting that that spic lovin' cunt should be made to look the real Wally. Ha! In fact I'm going to make him pretend that I called into him on my way to work, as I sometimes do, and that I'm ignorant of his part in the rebellion. Innocent. That should make them indignant towards him. They might even suspect him of bugging out at the last, turning coats and siding for the French, and with the boss. Nice One! Perhaps this could turn out to be a fun lark after all! But what if he says no? Fire him? We both know I cannot do that. Maybe I can bluff him? Na. We'll see - I can be pretty convincing when I've got a head of steam up.

Phillipe's place is not the nearest of the men's (he knows them all, of course) to the job but Jean now has a Plan. Just as he's about to pass the chemist where he bought the shades - he remembers the girl who sold them to him again. Her sallow speckled skin in the white blouse is a cool thought in the warm sunny morning. And yes - there she is behind her little counter. Did she just notice me there? Should I give her a little celeb' wave? He is damp - he has been moving quickly. He stops to brush the sweat off his forehead and to squeeze the moisture out of his eyebrows between his knuckles. Walking into the chemist he almost stumbles over the shadow. When he reaches the counter - she's waiting for him - she's got her abdomen pressed against it, her small bosom leans over the glass where her hands are left casually interwoven. Jean sees her lick her lips. Which she does not do. Mind time. A severe looking Spanish woman appears from the neon lit storeroom where the very accessible battery of drugs is kept. Jean ignores her and says in a little voice - whilst looking straight at the girl: "the glasses you sold me this morning are Great thank you for Suggesting them". Or: I would like to scrue you.

She smiles. "My pleasure sir". Or: would you? It's a pity then for us that my wicked old grandmother caught you. Jean gives the senior woman a wry smile and beats best his retreat by bidding her good day in his best formal Spanish. As he's leaving the shop he's about to break his shite laughing. Was I going to say something to her? She's just a kid? With flesh I could just lick off her bones. And yes - he thinks of the newness to her of him penetrating her, and kissing her opened mouth. Delicious. He careers on off up the street anyway, thinking: are you getting a young woman fetish again? Some people would consider her only a babe-in- arms. She might be glad to have someone treat her like an adult. Though. To cross her ribcage with open palms, rolling the flesh under them. Skin and bone to muscle. Though! Like you, you know better don't you Jean! He is aware that people politely but quizzically take note of his passage - as he moves much quicker during the day than people do commonly. Where it gets truly Hot. - people use a gear that can be maintained without too much effort. There is a medium sized square up ahead off the avenue. There are small trees which provide some welcome, diffuse shade. On this plaza there is a bar which will stay open all night and all morning if there is a good crowd drinking. The owner is a nice madman. He is not a native either. He is very Italian, even though he has been living in Spain well beyond accurate memory. He loves foreigners - being an expatriot himself. Rumours say the Mafia moved him on - he did come with a wodge though, but he has never spoken of it to Jean and Jean would certainly Never ask. Never. Jean is anything but indiscreet. Perhaps this is because there are questions which he would avoid himself. In a place like this the quarry could be lodged Pissed. Stupid. What use would they be now except tantrum fodder? It's always the same... the day after payday. Not always. That is a lie. As it is on the way... Jean decides to take a shufdie. And an ice cold beer! The owner looks very well and offers a great welcome for his big French friend whom he likes nothing better than to consort with. Hence, he is a bit disappointed when he cops that Jean is just hunting his crew.

"- No. I have not seen any of them since they had the good sense to stop by for a beer at about two in the morning."

"Yes they were very drunk.

- And truly had put one foot over the edge of oblivion together."

- Yes, Mister Philip was with them."

- Indeed, he did seem to be in exultant good form. - Fairly whipping up the party I'd say. Putting on a real show. One of his best. And you know Mister Phillipe."

He would not hold out on Jean if he knew where they were because he likes him. And because Jean can get unpleasant when really upset. Really unpleasant. it is hard always to know when this will be so. He is a difficult man to read. People are always posing up to him being smart, as people will to obelisks who infrequently voice ground. He hit one guy who was being too familiar one night. It is undoubted that he deserved a punch but it is dubious whether Jean should have hit him as Hard as he did. Was this exemplary? Real brutality is quite rare in truly affable men. He remembers also, the competitive drinking that had gone on when Jean'd come to town first. He remembers the army of young bucks who tried to prove themselves by out drinking Jean and ended up under the table. Good business.

Very good booziness.

It was kind of sad in a way though for him to see people extend the arm of competition when Jean'd easily have preferred a more retiring an and laid back introduction to town. He's won respect though. Hombre.

Marco's professional hospitality is gratefully soothed when Jean expresses his desire to have a beer. There is also a choice of a dozen delicious snacks to go with it - complimentary. Jean strolls outside and sits down under a tree with the neck of the bottle hooked by his forefinger, slowly managing a fishy, tomatoey-type delight. It is a perfectionist's beauty spot on a searingly beautiful morning. This is why he is here. Really. Relax the head - if no one wants to work today there's nothing I can do about it. Don't want to be a party pooper! either. Not really.

Things have been going well. But when you're on a roll.... Perhaps if I sit here drinking beers until midday that Cute girl from the pharmacia will come by. In her proper, tight skirt; sexy in her little outfit. 50-50 split - she didn't seem the sandwich type to me. And even if she is, what batter spot to be eaten... what datter spot to be eaten in... what better spot to eat them in. Jesus! Whew! I'm glad we managed to split that one out! Jean you old dog..., you old perve you! ... And whilst she tries to explore my soul through our eyes I could explore her personality with my fingers. YEAH. But no. Allowing his mind to stumble about in reverie he remembers something Marco'd said earlier. Something about Phillipe whipping up the party. And he's seemed so nervy and uptight the last few days. He is an observant man, Marco. Jean fosters relationships with observant people. There is a name for it and it rhymes with gents. The trick is to enquire generally; never to be too obviously interested in any Particular part during a conversation but to remember it all verbatim and let all the relevant bits sort Themselves out, at their own convenience. Never question or attempt to confirm anything you Know. Sounds easy. Difficult? All you have to have is a particular type of memory and the courage of the most dubious convictions. Jean is suspicious. Yet he casually but discreetly rolls himself a one skinner. In a doorway on the square a crowd of young people are gathered. Their Jesus, and his girlfriend 'Magda' at the top of the steps are dispersing heroin through their kisses. It is an extraordinary performance Bizarre and dexterous. It would be subtle if their children were not so hungry. Greedy. HUNGER. Jesus's wife is very good looking - I wouldn't mind French kissing her myself. But one thing I don't need is a girlfriend with a serious Smack habit. I mean casually indulging in such things but.... And then, quid pro quo Jean remembers something he had forgotten, something he is without. Something he couldn't have remembered unless it is based on certain assumptions he has just made. He is annoyed with himself even still. Even though he is second guessing himself - back dated. Confused? Some things are a little complex.

Slowly finishing his smoke and his beer, temporarily enervated, he takes off in the direction of the final leg, to the oh so sweet guiltifying of Phillipe; but he doubles back and goes via the flat and dons a jacket and thing. Then turns north west. There was a small long moment though in the familiar flat when he felt that he would not go. To remain laid back, ignorant and cool. He moves now uphill, onto the deepening rubble that swathes the middle-distanced Sierra's feet. He takes long purposeful strides. Jean shrugs his left shoulder, like a bra strap that is carrying a heavy chest is biting into it. Shit. In his head run furious passages of dialogue, and scenes between himself and the reprobate, guilty foe. Jean is rarely described as eloquent when he has to play the disciplinarian. Be the disciplinarian. Generally in such situations he chooses silence as a weapon and action as a media. However, he can speak and he has a mind. When he does decide to share what he thinks, people who don't always choose what and when they are speaking, often find themselves idiotic. Small. He has the voice of command. You may be forgiven for not knowing what exactly this means. If you were instructed to do something you might think: 'I'd better do this'. But if you are told to do something: you do it and think 'I'm glad I didn't fuck-up' afterwards. See. So if someone yelled at you unexpectedly, you would think 'why arn I being yelled at?' If someone Shouted at you, expected or otherwise, you'd virtually jump out of your knickers and think: 'Good God what have I done?'. or not done. For Jean. Understand. Now LOUDER. or quieter.

When the foreman reaches the house of his No.I, the dull ache of his working jaws edges the unpleasant verbal salvo he's carefully loaded, but in vain. Phillipe is not at home to callers. There is a hiatus during which, the possibility that he might smash his fist as hard as he can against the door of the house might have crossed his mind in the past. Jean is just going through the motions. He knows that Philip has no intention of turning up for work today. Phillipe has done this kind of thing before. But not with they Entire work force. No, this is something special... big. Maybe. If my instincts have not gotten too rusty. Phillipe gave Jean a spare key but it wouldn't be fair to use it just to spy on him. In case of emergency he'd said, or in the very unlikely circumstance that he should lose his. The left curtain covers a third of its side of the window quite exactly. A tentative unfurling flag. Did he leave in a hurry this morning or was that yesterday? Or is it... a tell. So. What for next? Jean climbs part way up the drainpipe.
he looks for the other man higher up. who is not there.

It's well secured. He wasn't sure by the look of it. He is a building worker after all! Or has become one. Or has adopted it. By the time his sturdy boots have hit the ground Jean has already mapped what he reckons to be the quickest route to Phillipe's girlfriend's place. Not that he hasn't travelled it before. Most of his stage anger's worn off, leaving him disgruntled and a little ragged about the edges. playing the game. through. Playing the role. Turning back toward town and west again, Jean thinks of his mate's lovely, unpredictable woman. She is not dramatically beautiful at first but this allows time to look into her face without shyness. And then her thoughts come out to meet you. Jean remembers the heat of inquisition he felt within an hour of their first greeting. Phillipe must have understood very well Jean's predicament because he passed him a couple of knowing glances and tipped his tumbler to him when Leonora was not looking.
She is attainable and lovely. And unattainable. She is not so dark skinned as most Spaniards and she rarely goes out in the sun without one of her chique little hats. Chique big hats. Chique, big-brimmed hats. Superficially she is the kind of woman who is approved of by Spanish mothers. She is cautious and polite and proper - initially. But then there is her smile. Her smile, which gives away her mischievousness in learning and her knowledge of what is to be in people. Particularly men. Or so it would seem. Her paleness is off set against the long
raven's hair and intelligent, strict, straight black brows. He met women and girls vaguely like her in some of the French universities - the daughters of northern business and Old families. Jean privately rejected the claim that they were generally saving themselves for marriage, because he personally believed that they were searching for some kind or sort of answer or knowledge - just like everyone else. intellectuals are often the most irrationally dismissive of any potential competition. In those days there were more people searching some kind of enlightenment or reason or pattern, rather than purely means to endliness.

A brutal blow to Jean but one which he'd taken between his teeth, had been the mechanicalness of it all. Life. At university there were also smart ones - like Leonora, who sought the weapons, not the conclusions of academia to control malegos, attack problems, challenges and war. It was with one such, that he'd first learned some Spanish language and customs. Because he'd never officially studied when he left for the southern coast of Spain, few people realised that he left with anything other than his kit, the obligatory maps and a thick envelope. Builders always prefer cash.

No civilians knew that when he was contacted in, or contacted from Bordeaux, that most of his time was spent watching and worming in the Pyrenees and their western surrounds on both sides of their border. The Spanish anti-terrorist police had requested and received permission to ask for assistance of the French government, France being so close to the problem Basque region. It could have been viewed as a specifically Spanish problem but the French considered that successful operations by E.T.A. might encourage the agitation of their own Gallic nationalist claimants.

Having had her empire, her Franco-German wars, and having suffered as much as anyone under the red threat, however imagined, France's security overlords had won much prize. Not only, for example - would most regular armies falter against the French riot 'police' battalions in a straight infantry battle, but if the Nazis had taught French defence anything - apart from the importance of fire power which led inexorably to the tenaciously guarded independent nuclear threat; it learned from them the almost total ineffectuality and infighting of the resistance. They learned that effective intelligence networks do not happen just as, and when, and because they are wanted. Since the war, cross pollination between the police and military elements had become wholescale.

'Undesirables' - whether supported by national governments or whether anarchical to capitalist ideals or seeking separatism; in France, as with much of the world over, had excused, by the type of positive action they had to employ or had chosen to employ, in order to highlight their claims excused - a quasi-global summary justice system that never went to a vote. The line between policing and out-and-out military factions and their actions had become thin. This greatly relieved and pleased French defence. The army has and had to have something to do.

Jean has more cash now. For what, - who knows. What eventuality? And Jean is no miser he fosters many broke friends and acquaintances, much to the choler of certain others. No, Jean doesn't think of it as savings, but a stake. Force of habit.

Leonora: she is a rarity in the south - a paler version of Spanish. Not blonder paler. Standing at ease outside her house he waits to be admitted, partially apprehensive at meeting the changeable Leonora again. Snatches of their earlier encounters come back to him. Conversations. Glances. pauses. Nervous, half liking smiles. They make him feel like laughing. And yet there is the taint of delineated yearning. Touch no touch. It will be hard to be angry with Phillipe now, especially in front of her - Not! in front of her. no. The pretence would be too absurd. A woman opens a window on the first floor; catch in one hand, the bottom of the lapels of her untied dressing gown in the other, a huge length of jet hair failing. She Is gorgeous. Healthy. Young. Edible. Delicious and delectable.

The Lady was obviously asleep, observing, or working in the nude. Or maybe she was exploring her own body. or maybe someone else was. May be. She leans out and looks down on his upturned face. She pauses. The bottom of her belly is just exposed from above her belly button. It looks nice. Is that some hair. - A hint. Looking up - Jean's mind cannot help but be filled with the view between her cleavage and the swell of her firm breasts. A moment longer. Does she gauge him? Is she asking a question? Making a statement? I am a woman. You are a man. I am attractive. I hold sway? She leaves the window. He waits. If she wants to turn him on - put him on edge she could hardly have done a better job. The taint of sloppiness, in this, her appearance makes her seem that bit more attainable. Kempt she often is not. But on occasion when she dresses up or decides to look sexy she can be DEVastating. She opens the door wide. It is Leonora. Couldn't be over five feet. She beams at him - a huge artless grin. A grin which softens and begins once more the melting of the inside of Jean. Jean had forgotten how much smaller than he, she is. Once more. She is no more little than the average woman in Spain. Maybe the touch. But her character looms larger in memory than her physique does in life. Conceptually she is huge.
"WELL Jean Marsaud this IS unexpected surprise.
There you are now.
Won't you come in Monsieur."
"Hullo Leonora."
"Hello Jeanny. Come up. Do please. I'll be ready in a mo.

Lover.

At times Jean has allowed a niece - uncle tease propagate between them. It allows for the touch of sensuality and a physical familiarity that would not be possible if they stood on normal man - woman relations. It has been a familiarity with a woman he has desperately needed. He has not told her. His has been a need for feminine affection beyond will. A need for affection and the physical sexual presence of another, yet where a sexual gamble cannot be sustained. Yet it is a dry mental fuck that doesn't even get to the stage of holding hands. A desperation and a yearning for emotion beyond the common place; where even the humiliation of not owning to your manhood is acceptable. It can be acceptable because she has such life. Especially when he is particularly suffocated by being, finding himself grey. A tiny, very sporadic safe something, that is a lie. A bad secret. A muddling over a covetousness for a closeness within a friendship, tainted by Desire.

A tiny more than nothing that can never be anything.

It is easy to become desperate; - when dreams have turned out empty fantasy, purposes mired in a multiplicity of truths; when despite yourself you've let yourself admit the scale of the world in which you want to effect a change; and when the point to service is lost, so that it seems service for service sake.

Jean's interim solution has been to strive fiercely; on a day to day basis,,, whilst achieving what quotient of dignity a builder can. Respectability even. Although he'd laugh and wouldn't own to it. However, the interim has been going on for a very long time. Interims can last a fierce long time. A fierce And bitter long time. People die in interims. Regularly. To borrow a phrase: during interims it is easy to 'become old and cold and settled in your ways'.

But today he must be stern. With her. It was not a free choice for Jean when it was made. This toying flirtation. He doubted himself. Doubts himself. Doubts whether she would be really be interested in anything other than a short intermezzo with him, because he only shows interest int' job andt' pint andt' mates.

One in which he'd be sure to end up on the wrong end of it. But this is the surface. Underneath. It is the underneath that drives. It is underneath that mroils with the wants of the self, which ceasingly demand that I deserve something that will make me feel... I Wish these wants would go away. I wish this want would Fucking go away! But without this want right now would my blood ever accelerate, my head ever rise, because putting in the days has gotten so dreary.

The striving to stay sane on the job: when once big ideas and then massive duties weighed upon Jean, is strife enough now. He has gone from feeling special, to needed, to necessary, to lost. Despondent. But alive. He is a Christian without God who still cannot forgive himself enough to relinquish his cross. Not quite. Yet. a man whose Maya has gone up with the smoke from the pipe. yes.

He Tries not to take too much notice of her small bum as they're ascending the steps. It is impossible.

There is the almost imperceptible side to side motion of her behind and as it fills Jean's mind. Guilt invades. Half looking down, shyly wasting the fullness of the experience; - half looking fully hunger up - Jean could almost....

It is impossible.

... He could reach forward with his good forearm and encircle her waist, take her off her upper step and bring her into his midriff. Would there be resistance? He would hold her for a second after retiring her motion. Feel her assent, as her body moulds into his. And then feeling her hand on his arm, stride up the stairs with her just like that.

She would say his name: this you do man.

Perhaps.

I don't know why I bother? Why shouldn't I stare at Leonora's bottom moving, ... gyrating around in front of me! So close you could almost.... I don't think she would mind. In fact she encourages it in her own way. Bloody right she does! So close you could almost ... ? It is impossible.

Do I feel awkward like this because of Phillipe? Even though when he doesn't turn up for days at a time I pay him just the same and pretend he was never absent; when he returns. And he is darker. The nimbus of an operation weighs over him.

And she is... she is... so close you could almost..... what Jean?

Take it.

And now it appears he's gone on holiday and taken my entire workforce with him. And he can't even allow himself phone because he's so busy.

Touch it.

And you, Leonora, probably knew I'd be here, before I did. I hope it is just a holiday. Nobody ever tells me anything 'cause I'm the big bad boss man. I hand out the dosh and take all the hassle.

You get more pay.

And when anyone gets into trouble I'm the stooge has to front it up.

You have greater control.

'Yes. This man (slash reprobate) 'is of good character' (and would you please accept this grateful donation to the police fun fund). Please.
!!

And has Phillipe been building a unit? I know. And I don't know.

You have more control.

And I'm supposed to take myself seriously?! He follows her into the apartment a few paces behind as though he is expecting that there may lie in wait, someone he doesn't know. an enemy perhaps?

You Need more control.
He is entering someone else's sanctum. Temple. It has put him on the back foot.

It always does. Here. Here with Leonora and her curves. Here with Leonora's almost black eyes. He thinks to himself he is allowing Phillipe the opportunity to redeem himself by having the decency to appear dressed, or half dressed; if that is, he hasn't absconded after all. Here with li'tle Leo. Here with li'tle Leon. Here with little Leonora and politesse.

He always thinks of Phillipe as being young; a young man; but in reality he is only few years Jean's junior. He's really occupied by instinctive thoughts of the woman, where; and how she lives. As he remembers - he simultaneously re experiences her capacious living room. It is large and tall, two entire walls - floor to ceiling devoted to book shelves. Phillipe put them in. There is a ladder. Wood. She has draped two enormous, avant gardely dyed pieces of silk in front of the books which are held secure with hooks and eyes at top and bottom. Someone has dyed magic in those silks for Leonora. The books, they half show themselves through the partially transparent colours but the titles are obscured. It is a practical arrangement to keep the Sirocco borne dust off her treasure. Only special students are allowed under her sheets. Jean in his cautious way has never enquired where he fails. But perhaps he doesn't want to know.

He Doesn't want to know.

Perhaps also, the ignorance he has given Phillipe might be compromised by knowing too exactly, what it is that Leonora is actually, and in fact; researching. An experienced soldier would always be an added bonus. Another. When up against strong factions those experienced in confrontation are often sought. He knows she is a liar. But... But there is a tremendous weakness for her also. A deep weakness, even deeper than the man's belly. And Jean's got a good gut.

But no; she makes fun of him. With him. She can be girlish. Not old. But she sins. She runs a game. She can be silly sometimes, enough that even when it intends to embarrass it makes him grin. He knows she is a liar.
Let her lie for the three of them. And let not him have to do any further to himself.

Let her make smooth house. Let her take the duty of not flinching face, when there is friction in a house of war. And let him tell the ignorance lie. This is how it must be. Between them. He has retired from the intrigues he was involved in after his overt service. Tired from them. Counter insurgency man. The states' man. As was.

Now, the last thing he wants is to start accidentally-on-purpose seeking clues in Leonora's library for what she and Phillipe are up to. Involved in. She moles. It is sufficient.

Leonora's sheets will not be folded back. Her wardrobe will remain closed. closeted.

He knows, that if once he started looking; seeking, he couldn't help but become involved all-be-it in the fin as avant provocateur. For every move that officers make there are multiples of multiples that they do not.

Many nights they are not at home to friends. Ringing is normally expected. Jean knows she is near. This canter of theirs. Across the water to the homelands of the blacks. Some place. Where Jean and Phillipe were born, battling love cemented comrades can become. Became. Brothers of blood. Brothers of feeling for over long periods that you are surrounded generally by people who don't wish you to be there. Alive.
a couple of hooks is all it takes.

Jean will not know of Phillipe and Leonora's struggle. No. No! NO! He doesn't want it to happen. It shall not. It Bloody shall not! Jean has had his imperial mistress. Or rather she's had him. All his juices used up. Sanguine now to be a player without a play.

He can't abide the thought of knowing another enemy; empathise with another cause. No; it must not happen. He will NOT allow it. You have to hate interminably when it cannot be felt by the enemy and whip up fervour all around. You have to be an automaton to survive. Not human. Both things which require belief.

In the centre of the room is a long table - her work space . He can smell the cedar. Pungent. Unmistakable. He is a man forced by economics to work with materials he dislikes. He has good hands. He knows the shelves are teak. Amongst the papers, manuscripts and dictionaries on the table, are two, tall matching, sparingly painted vases full of fresh cut flowers. They are not seen much at the end of such summers. The vases themselves are so pale and elegant and slim and delicate, it leans to the thinking that there must be great works pored out and extracted on the perfect surface below. It creates the strongest sensation that those who circle this pristine centre, do so on matters of import. Appearance and reality. The most luscious flowers are imported especially to wilt over her work, to fall on her pages of cipher. Should he peruse them?

No Thanks.

But do they in fact contain some tell about P.'s whereabouts? His doings.

- No.

He will not look. No - sorry, hard cuboodle, - no.

He refuses and Will Not be drawn. He knows that the two of them have gone politico. Has heard them vilify the march of moneterism and the consequences of its commerce - capitalism today. Where the first hand out is the one in the biggest boots. This is enough. It is too much for his piece of mind; - the kind of people who they could be going up against are serious. Too much so for this couple alone. Do they have like minded allies? If so: who? And where to they intend to stick the enemy. There has to be a point.

By her window is a lovely walnut coffee table a very good scale down from the other. Good chairs fit the tables - no crap! Half a dozen ethereal watercolours surmount the window in an artistically matched block. A giant old master's epic demands from the ceiling where it is invisibly but securely fixed. It came from her home - her father 'said' he thought it ugly. The last wall with the door she uses as a blackboard, a screen and for her expressionist escapes from her texts.

He has seen her: barely sensible, dancing in front of a projector; him trying to keep his eyes on that wall and her shadow. Lust entered his heart then. Badly. But long ago. Uncommonly restrained lust.

Occasionally lapsing and studying her real body, her face; coveting an abandon, he has never truly known, and only seldom had the courage to observe when he has come upon it. And when he has come upon it. There have been moments. There have been many times in Jean's life when the most woman and he in a place have taken one look at each other and without either having to take the risk of a first move, they have melted, French kissing into each other often almost on the spot. (Or not always almost.) Increasingly these moments have become consigned to the past.

Beauuutiful girls have partied up to him, flirtations have been met, assignations made; and fulfilled, but Jean latterly has shied away from what they required in relationships. So much action that they perceived in Jean had to be geometry. So much emotive experience that should; would; could have been shared - beached; as Jean's inner self contemplated the next brown hill. He and his spiritual unit would have to bring to, and cross over; in his mind's eye. Too many times what they saw in his stance; his look; his way; was a construction.

Jean had been inducted into the almost sacredness of army chain of command. And didn't he do it well. Jean's desire to comprehend the world had been changed; metamorphosed into singularity of attention to duty and unyielding obeyance of the tenets, the orders of that same chain of command. The doubts, the questions fell into a well. Time as a unit commander had taught him to suppress his own emotions: especially his fears and previously great desire for open discussion, and to only consider the psyche, mood and readiness of his men. Having a shut mind helped whilst penetrating terrorist cells. Released from from overt command and that responsibility, but also co commitally from the symbiosis of being followed; looked to; needed even, he can often find conversation difficult, not because he cannot verbalise but simply what is there to say. He's just him. Big him.

He feels like an emotional retard when compared to Her sometimes. And a little sad for the walls he has built around himself.

More than a little.

The restraint and respectability of middle age can be as invidious a trap as any other. It reminds him of the young girl in the whorehouse of Kerouac, who none of the customers will touch, - including Dean; because they are too shy of her young beauty and who is consequently tormented by the other pro's because she doesn't have any business. Untouchable. No not untouchable. Untouched. Yet is it what she really wants? Is it what He really wants?? Untouched.

Leonora is also forbidden fruit. It doesn't matter. Phillipe would give her to him if he asked. If such things can be given? Which in this case they could. Or loaned. Phillipe might ignore a liaison between the two for a while, during one of Jean's particularly painful periods of loneliness. But would not the next period of loneliness not become the more severe and unbearable without.

The feeling equation. Tasting something gorgeous that you cannot or are not allowed to consume. It is the argument of the beaten, the defeated, the retreating: why slog up the next hill, we will be caught - let us turn here. It is the quandary of unsustainability. The quandary which Jean lives.

Don't get it wrong - Jean is not an unattractive guy, he is just one of those people who are permanently unable to find a long term partner. Perhaps there is just too much going on inside of him, of too great weight, to be borne by another. perhaps it is jean's preoccupation with what he should be, as for most intense of purposes he is finished doing. Perhaps it is Jean's unwillingness to burden a woman in a life with him, when he perceives 'lightness' in others which he can barely remember onetime or sometime having. Should not a woman find it in the end 'unbearable'.

Phillipe would give him anything. And that is why Jean is intensely guilt ridden and secretive about his desire for Leonora. Phillipe well knows from having been around Jean so much that he likes her, but not how Big a bite he would like to take out of her when she comes near on sometimes.

Jean rarely admits it in open thoughts even to himself, but it is there despite the exercise of his will; - a whispering gremlin gnawing, taunting, gn-awing away. For all the taste and beauty and affluence in her apartment, and he loves beautiful things, he cares for a blank wall most. It is the only part of the apartment with which he can fix his want for her; without also, feeling straightened. It is strange, for he has created and hated so many - so many walls - physically and spiritually and in inteligence, - that here, amongst such luxury, he finds a plain wall comfort and friend and secret memory. Friends can be hard to find, but the undulled memory of upwelling unguarded femaleness is an enough that can fast the desertified a big swathe. And now, shyly at his own childish emotional set he begins a crooked, more than a little, wry smile. It is an expression which satirises Jean's own reserve. The bitter more than the sweet of the way the world is arranged. But also to be fair to him - without doing any harm or anyone noticing that it was missing, he has stolen, and cloistered away, a little piece of loveliness and a little piece of life. by the way her people do not spend sleepless nights over lost shillings. or had we guessed?

Perhaps you think he should rob some of her underwear and have some of that keep him company, but his want for her, has many hatches battened between it, and doing anything so demonstrative.

Jean, on quietly entering the room stands with his hand laid on the firm table at his side. He turns his head slowly to look where he heard Leonora go. Bedroom adjoining. She is quite far away from him - across two large rooms. She has her back to him. He looks at her and has the same feeling he has had about viewing the whole ensemble. The woman - The table. He has contrived to feel this way. It is a construction. Another lie.

The lie of: I do not feel this.

The lie of: it does not hurt.

Even the lie of: even though you matter to me, it does not matter to me that i do not matter to you. Which he does. It is a clever man who can make himself feel the way he wants. Under duress. Or a stupid one. Jean has had to adopt this technique to survive. When her robe starts to slip towards the floor in a silence, he does not have the courage or the abandon to take of her what she will let him have. Approach.

But it would be a long walk. A walk once made that would take away the last vestige of what keeps Jean just at bearable peace with the world. His honour. some men once having accepted a sabre or a hand are debarred from grabbing certain other chances that are offered, just the same as true believers are.

The secret hypnotic moment of staring at something you cannot; will not have, he finds the window compelling. He compares the vistas from the two apartments. Hers' and his own.

- Just add the cap and Jean is staring out over a river valley with a loose knot of sergeants and lieutenants Phillipe and Kurtzer toting automatic rifles in a broken arc around him.

Gone. Over.

Only now that he has turned his face away does he view with thought; - the fine lines of her buttocks - just; the gap between her toned thighs and smooth tapering legs - just; the shallow panels of muscle flanking and dipping into the elegant valley of her spine; the crazy curves of her hips.

It must be 'just'. Can Only be; - just. Too much and it will be real.

Contemplating, he prefers his own vista, - the town is older there and he likes his elevation. He especially adores the yellow ochres which cover the ancient plaster works and the red - brown tiles on the buildings of the back streets behind where he lives.

He has woken many times in the relative cool of his back stairwell; a half finished, now warm beer propped between his feet, after spending a tired evening slugging and watching the shadows grow and the sun die on the part of town that he adores. Evenings when he couldn't summon the bluster to be with his bar buddies or to be honest when a fatigued old soldier prefers to be alone with his memories. Christmas past.

He looking away. - In another life he approaches her bare back. Her lithe, vulnerable, virtually irresistible female nakedness. Touches gently the skin of her shoulder. The lightness of the touch belieing the unceasing magnitude of his physical Need for her. - Buries his mouth in the hair at the crook of her neck. SMELLing her. Wanting Her. Envelopes her breasts in one, two hard hands.
Would she turn then and kiss him with her tongue; drive her fingers through his cropped hair, her nails across his scalp, pull and tear at his clothing, drag him down on top of her to make love on the floor? Or would she only turn partially; kissing; encouraging him with her lips and taste out of the side of her mouth, to take her from behind? Would it give her wry pleasure to feel the power of her sex over him through the pain of her skinned knees and the soreness of the heels of her palms?

But it is not to be in this one. This real life. The life where Jean could have a well Full of succour from making love to that body, knowing that it is Leonora.

- Whilst he finds the woman almost unbearably attractive now, he makes it create the same mood as she'd swept the papers from the sweet wood without making a single sound. Art. He is still staring outside when she emerges again; dressed And in a little tiny, light summer dress all flowers and cleavage. Her body looks so sexy, bursting as it is through the delicate fabric. The thin cotton outlines her body. Jean has to do a double take of her before he can remember how to circulate his blood properly. His head does not move however. He will not allow his eyes flicker. Even then, it is difficult to look at her too directly or for very long. He looks but he won't see.

And he wants to. He wants to say: 'I Am worthy (of you) and (I) am strong.

This man would be good for you.

This man would be good to you.

Please make some sign that it is O.K. for me to.. (love). You. And hold off because if you taught me to want you any more it could destroy me. My... my invulnerability which I've had to build is employed because of great need.

It is a fact that the greater the strength the greater the brittality even of, especially of steel..

And oh how brittle I am.

How could I live with only a little slice(s) of you; when I have a bleeding crying yearning all the time. Being close to you - one that i cannot have, beyond a certain point only pulls the sutures and drives my inability for you, wicked, narrow arrow point, that is my want, deeper.

'Did you watch me undress Jean'

'Of course not.' How could I help but for a moment? and what a moment. What today, would in a moment not I have promised to be another man here with you, and you not minding being approached by him today.

I don't like this game. What did you expect? what do you expect. Is this your game again today Leo? It's not fair. It is Not fair. How about a nice game of strangle the cat? Eh.

You want me to tell you how I feel about you so you can stick a finger in my eye and say 'Ha! I knew it all along.' No dice Bitch. You do not belong to me. I may be lonely for love and pathetic with it; but that doesn't mean you have to go and pick on me. I know I'm pathetic. What is more, you do aswell. So what is it that you seek to learn? Or are you a torturer? You Are a torturer.

in the small way.

I've seen you wander up to me at parties and we weren't That drunk and you would look up into my eyes all silly like and implore me to say or do something that would amaze you. And some part of your attire would be falling maybe and you'd be so fuckin' sexy. And your young laughter even though mixed with endearments, would seem directed at the fact that I was impotent to find the words to engage your flitting greedy attention.

and i never have. how could i?

Even though I have directed many men, many times, and in my own right been the centre, or first orbit many others; to do that thing talk to you I never have been able.

What you don't know fully, and it is the thing I will hide from you at all costs, is how sick and sorry I feel that i never have. I have never even begun to try properly. Because i have always known that if I ever did, it would instantly declare myself. And I simply will not allow that to happen. You would crucify me with the open knowledge that not only do I want you, but that you can make me do tricks for you aswell. - 'Sit!' 'Beg!' I have done enough of that for the deputies on earth. Thank You very much.

What do you seek to learn? Or are you sounding you're potential hold over me? Would it amuse you to know for sure that I fancied you? How can you not know? It is so obvious the way I avoid you. i remember one moment, when, because we were left alone and everyone else was busy, we came close physically. Neither of us made waves of distress, we both Knew. Just a simple common sensation - passing is all. Once afterwards when I came close, you looked away, I said to you 'Is it that you don't want to talk to me.' You said 'Yes'. - I will tell you nothing. I do not like this coyness. Why should I declare myself, if you have rejected me off hand already. It is possible that you believe you haven't, but you have. So why should I let you investigate me? Interrogate me. I Will Not become one of your little games. A toy for you to scratch and maul and bite. A "Thing".

"Do you think I'm brazen Jean"

Yes. Shameless, devious. Is it fair to make me out a prude so that I will say what You want? "No.

Why?

Should I?" Is it necessary that I should feel so weak so that you can feel strong? This is your home, you are entitled to do in it whatever you please. Anyhow, I am not by nature, a shy person." (Lie - I am worse than shy, i'm afraid.) Unless of course there is some advantage in it. Like if by not being shy someone takes the opportunity to embarrass and mortify the shite out of me further. Not of course meaning to suggest that you would stoop so low - cow.

"That is not an answer. I said: 'Do you think I am brazen?"' As Leonora says this she sticks her head a little forward on her elegant neck. Is she trying to provoke Jean into a rash word or act. It certainly makes him want to punch her quite hard in the face. You see, sometimes Jean jumps ahead of her in the queue with Phillipe and she hates it. And I mean REALLY doesn't like it. There is a love there, no woman can touch. Laughs when they were youths and captured a joke of carefreeness and swayed back with arms taking full weight of each others' over their shoulders. And also then a tremendous sense of shared responsibility.

Vive La France!

Do calculating and manipulative come under the heading of 'brazen'? What do you expect me to say? For fuck sakes this is ridiculous! I should get up and leave but that would be rude, even though there seems to be an interrogation going on here. Again. I cannot let it be taken as said that there has been some insult flying about. When Phillipe gets back he would know straight away and might consider that my being here is probing and crosses the line between business and relationship. Certainly might. Letting Phillipe off taking a holiday with the lads that easy. God forbid that I should have approached her. And you have obviously figured out that my equanimity in relations with you is absolute propriety - SLUT. I'm sorry did 'moi' say SLUT? Please excuse me I really can't say what came over me. It must be the company.

"If you really want to know, what it all boils down to is intent. Life, relationships, perception nudity it's all the one"

"So it is not important whether or not I take my clothes off in front of you Jean but why I do it and how you view it.

- So, if you look away, you either find the sight repulsive or you question my motives or your feelings?"

Clever Girl. You win a prize! Go directly to the top of the class, pass go, collect £200. No one ever said you were stupid Leonora. No one ever said THAT! "Yes."

"Which is it then?"

"Which two of them."

Swine. You tricked me into telling you what you wanted to know, as you always do, because you know I would not give you the satisfaction of making me lie. You see too clearly, you'd probably only guess anyway. And IT not give you the satisfaction. No rules in love and head fucking boyfriend's best buddies. None what So Ever! No. However stupider than you you make me feel, I don't think I’d have it any other way. Your behaviour gives validity to a reason other than weakness for not making a pass at you. Which would be fateful. I suppose. Anyway you intersect only a tiny part of my world, which bugs you I know. You don't know where I have confidence in strength. Loath though I am to believe it, I think you believe it to be deeper than yours. It is the wonderful thing about sleuths they are always looking for that extra clue and are always prepared to believe that there is something they may have missed. There may be no more to me than the clothes I stand up in and the bars I drink in, but you cannot leave it at that, because that doesn't adequately explain P.'s devotion to me and if it does, - where does that leave you? I don't believe in clues - I merely try and cover as many bases as possible and wait. We are different. I know a variety of stoicism. Perhaps. I will always have what really I want because I employ an infinite timescale.

Yeah, even if that timescale runs into the time during which I am dead. You are so impatient that you might actually overlook, what behind it all you really wanted, or actually misplace it having found it. Your world is so plastic, so dynamic, that you cannot admit of lasting satisfaction. My fascination at the shear enormity of the fact of my calmness and persistence in the face of my knowledge, is of such magnitude, that it dwarfs your disbelief.

I must say though you'd make a fine exhibition in an anatomical museum. Did you ever think of offering yourself up to science? But what would we call the exhibit? Something simple STRATEGIST, genus: female.

"Jean do you like my back?" I wanted to see how you would react to my nudity. Or: how attractive do you think I am. I wanted to see how it would make you FEEL. I want to use the restriction you place in relations with me to make you squirm. That aura of yours which is six feet across; even though I'm sure you wouldn't admit it to yourself, you assault me with because I am in cahoots with Phillipe. You punish me constantly. Because you've given up fighting for having lost Your sense of purpose, you have disdain for those who still struggle. particularly me.

He doesn't reply. Ignores. Acts as though the question was not aired.

So: "Jean.

Do you Like my back"

Incredibly. Very much. I think it's beautiful. Ah come on. No fair. What's the story? That's like me saying 'hypothetically speaking, what would you think about a nice scrue?' OBJECTION the solicitor is badgering my client. SUSTAINED.

What does she want?

yes.

I would do things to your back that even you wouldn't believe.

But that's where it starts.

You would know the depth of my desire, that it was not just a lay and that would be bad.

"O.K. Leonora you win, I question my feelings." I may question my feelings but I don't Trust yours.

I AM a man and you taunt me like I am a child; I could take, ruin or crush you, and your only defence is that the last thing I have learned to want to do is to destroy blossoms - however poisonous. That is for other men to decide. Now.

"Have you seen that Boyfriend of yours - Phillipe. You know - French bloke - comes around, watches you dress, undress, that kind of thingT' Fucks you up the ass. You know - Him.

"No. Not since yesterday morning anyway." And - yes Jean, he did a real good job on me. You should have been here, you would have been proud of him.

"...Why, didn't he turn up for work today?"

Ah poor Jeanny. Did Phillipe not come out to play today? And what is Jean to do without his favourite playmate? Her voice contains it all. The conceit and the triumph. But she's not a bad girl. It's just Jean makes her this way. His stalworth facade she does not believe. Any time she meets him, she chips away at it - trying to tap the anger, the reaction that she believes must lie within the man. He doesn't though, as a point of stance. Get shirty. Angered. And yet despite herself there is a shy liking for his patience, forbearance, even his equivocal honesty.

You're seriously asking fucking me if he turned up today!

Liar. DO you think ]'d come around here if he had come in and proceed to ask you such an inane question? Do you? "Didn't mention taking off somewhere, did 'e?" There could only be one reason that I would come around here if Phillipe was in work, in which case, I'd hardly bring him up in the conversation, now would I.

And I would have approached you when you were prone.

o god i would love to have approached you. 20 years ago i would ... i would
have I would not have needed you so..

(but juliet, it grows cold.. what is it this life that i have drunk.. spent ... spent so foolishly.. these walls.. these terrible fortifications which the fear of your family made me build; i am surrounded by myself and cannot now remember the way out.)

This stupid conversation would never have taken place if I had approached you and many other questions would have had their long awaited and indeed, overdue answers., IF i had approached you.

"No Jean he didn't mention anything like that. He never tells me what he's up to. You know what Phillipe's like!"

Liar. Liar. Liar. He practically lives with you!

"Off with some other woman maybe. Sornewhere?"

"May be." What do you think?

Liar. "You see no one else decided to appear either. It would add up if Lover boy took them globe trotting wouldn't it?"

I'm pissed off Leon. Real pissed. "So if he does break silence you WILL let me know.", as Jean says this, the tone of the meeting changes. In a room full of people you wouldn't notice but with just the two of them looking at each other in the bright light, the unspoken is obvious. Bright light. Undeniable. He has played her little game - straight, and he is insulted because she is holding out. If she accidentally-on-purpose let something slip, it could lead him to be able to continue with his life again, finish the job and escape. Escape. Escape. Escape. Escape. escape. the figure 6.

She will not tell him anything. He knows. This is theoretical grounds for grievance but they both have their reasons for not saying certain things. Until this moment, when he has met a physical obstruction to his progress he hasn't realised how the role he plays irks him. He's angry and off his cake. He actually feels violent. Frustrated. He wants to tear HER work up, force her and say 'How do you like that?' Same difference.

She would foil him though by not letting it be rape. Jean couldn't force Leonora. And that would be the most frustrating joke of all. Jean will be a passionate man under duress. But such thoughts are a sham. He feels tired. Redundant. He will have to wait until his sheep come home, flapping their ears behind them. Only thing to do now is put on as good a face as possible and kill time. Time. Time. Time. A freezing, gushing stream waits - high up in the hills for him to find. It gurgles and gushes and fails and splashes - a cascade in his mind, his ears driving him almost over the brink of the insane. Just now Jean realises he is still stoned. He will fish the stream maybe. Or just to sit up against a dwarf tree besides and blow some smoke and whilst listening to it, let it fill his mind and rush away all the thoughts that clog up his brain. It will be O.K. for him to be cowardly - afraid of his life then, with no one around to see all the things on his face that yearn away inside him forever and interminably, and which would take over completely, if everyone (anybody) knew; in reality how weak and small he is. But it is far away. Far, far away. Today further away than an unremembered dream. And even his dreams are Far from being a solace to him. The dreams of a soldier in and out of battle.

"They're all grown men Jean and they're entitled to with hold their time if they wish.", Leonora.

Indeed.

....

It's gettin' late man. Didn't get to bed 'fil late last night.

And in answer to your question, I wasn't out carousing with P. either.
He did that all on his own.

- If you care to know, I spent the whole evening working here on my own Monsieur Inspecteur." She almost turns away as she speaks the words to him in a deadly calm voice. You have had invitation to join us before this. Not now. You will wish only to fuck things up. Scuttle the op.

... "Can I cook for us?" Propriety. Shift. Break. Welcome break. Accepted by both.

"Yes Leonora.
Please." Thanks lads. Peace. All is forgiven. Or actually pax.
But I'm fucked if I'll tell you that. I must accept so why not be sanguine. And thank you Phillipe for this time with your girlfriend whose time you shepherd so closely - and all night long. I - we can relax for a while now. But I hope for all your sakes that you turn up tomorrow! The fencing is over. I hope. Please let it be over. I just don't have the energy... I take her seriously... I know I shouldn't... but she's so pointed. She knows I'll never give away a flicker to any jibe... come to think of it, I'm not even here unless she decides.

A hollow consolation for a lover, an escapist, a striver. But a consolation all the same. The company of an attractive woman. Tonight maybe something the Gods will put in my path. Tonight. Please. She has made me feel this way. I have no Leonora. I rarely ever do have any.... When I do ... ? Is my wife out there somewhere? It's not that way perhaps. Is there one out there for me? yes there is but i am not what you expect. also fate can be wound up with the capricious god of love.

It would be nice if... to think... oh God! STOP Jean just stop turning all that shit around your..

He turns his head and looks at her. She feels twice naked. Jean has come to her out of some deep seated need not to feel useless. It is not intended as an insult. He would come and visit her under other circumstances when Phillipe wasn’t around except for his shy sense of propriety. She created it when she chose to chip away at his apparently invulnerable friendship with her lover. She wanted to expose some great flaw in Jean, but all she’s succeeded in doing is to repeatedly hurt and embarrass him. It makes her feel kind of small and a little jaded, like Jean. But this doesn't last long as she's soon quick to go back to blaming his uncommunicative nature and his blocky intransigence. Jean would never say or do anything to alert Phillipe, but the apparently insensate brute holds deep reserve about her willingness to adopt rather menial measures to have her way. She rather resents this knowledge but she knows it is not unfair, on the rare occasions she accedes to her thinking of it. People don't. Jean is still warm and friendly most times and a little vulnerable, which is a gateway to friendship; if she could only Stop herself from trying to provoke him. She is still searching, by trial and error, to find the point of greatest resistance in him. And when she does she will flop on top of him and say'Now I know you too Jean Marsaud! Now we can be friends aswell. Bestest friends.' This is a delicate process. She has made many mistakes and there is the chance he will eventually retreat from her completely and irrevocably. This is always a possibility but she has no patience. If Phillipe ever... he is the one thing.... But she must have power over him first - the power of knowledge - before she will accept him for what he is and his relationship with Phillipe. There will be no more female caprice. (Or so she thinks.) Let's just try and be normal people for a while. He takes a cigarette from her antique silver box and a French one from his trousers pocket. It's a bit crushed. Must have got stood on or something. The contrast suits him. Incongruous. It makes him smile. Seeing him smile, though she isn't sure why, it makes her feel easier and she smiles quietly too to herself whilst cooking. His deliberate silences make her uneasy after a while sometimes. She has even less idea where he goes than she thinks. At her university they think her a bit of a swat as she senses they did him. But that umbilical has been severed away from him so long in terms of the intellect, that she has little clue where he may have drifted in fantasy - in logic. But that's a crock of shit anyway! He gives her lighted cigarillo to her and smiles - at her. Kissing on the mouth crosses his mind. Hello! Taking glasses from a special cupboard and vino from the fridge, he opens the bottle. Jean knew there would be some. She drinks. He's seen her. He has observed her translate in multiple foreign languages whilst quaffing back glass after glass of strong wine, during a decent sized riot which raged in her flat. It helped that her wander lustful, aristocratic parents carted her around Europe - in search of something... extraordinary. Not the way they wanted, she was infected. She is but young still, the changes within herself merge with those she wishes to effect. Handing her an elegant glass he grins. Watching the potent liquid fall - it fascinates him. It always has; simple things like that do. Fills his glass, raises it to his dry lips: "Here's to the work ethic and all who drown in her", and slowly tilts, it empties the cold tasty liquid past the back of his throat and down, down. It will be nice to have lunch with someone who can converse in his native tongue apart from P. for a change.

unfortunately, it easy to call a casual lay, casual, only if it is, casual.

Thinking of Phillipe again Jean has a twinge - is he sitting down to lunch with the woman who is getting ... has gotten? P. into deep shit trouble? Is Jean wearing a jacket to hide something ... in this heat because he is a paranoid freak? He thinks not. No Leonora, by virtue of her influence is a dangerous lady. Jean is wright to be ready and willing to be suspicious of Her. Prickle. Jean knows too, having been in the business, that seek and you will find. Not necessarily what you want but some. There's pots of juicy trouble to be found - if you want it. Bad enough.

Once again Jean has the sentiment that it's funny to think that Leonora is pursuing post graduate studies, in the same university, as that first girl who introduced him to Spain, exchanged from long ago.

I've often thought of asking could Leonora have known her. Chance in a million. Or two. It is like being on a boat, there are many lines to follow but not an infinite number. But it's better not to mention other women if there's any touche of attraction flying around. Women will be insatiably and illogically jealous - if you give them a chance. And it's not always possible to know which ones they will be or with certainty whether or not they fancy you. And even if you're absolutely certain they're not into you, they may decide that they are, as a matter of territoriality, if nothing else. Like female 'friends' soon get piqued, even if you've mutually decided to share the secrets of your lives, especially if you're at all promiscuous or highly sexed. Jean is. Highly sexed. or had we guessed? and if you're not having it off regularly - it can be a very tiresome predisposition.

Jean has directly challenged her loyalties. He has made the issue of Phillipe's absenteeism a personal matter between them, because his tolerance and laxity in the past has directly benefited her private life and now; Phillipe has taken what Jean rightly considers a Diabolical liberty. So he is calling in Phillipe's marker which extended to Leonora. But it is not the facilitation of their private life that Jean is concerned about now, but what exact type of investigative journalism or (industrial?) sabotagelespionage that they have gotten Phillipe involved in. Something which he has strenuously tried to ignore in the past. Something he has learned to regret - more than partially. But he has played things this way ...his way. He has made his bed and will lie in it. How so ever uncomfortably. it is easy to regret. and useless. largely.

She is trying to rebuild the balance of their relationship with some propemess. Lunch. If he suspects that she has betrayed his honest and fair appeal, he will treat her like a wet fish when they meet again and for a long time probably. (Or not. Diplomatic ignorance/memory loss is quite common amongst people who think a lot... Especially in them.) Whether or not she feels there was anything she could do about it he may play the distance shuffle. She knows this, but what can she do Phillipe is her lover. Leonora knows that he'd go spa, if he copped that she'd ratted his whereabouts or intentions to Jean. If she knew them? Yet they need him. He is generally so accommodating and deliberately blind. I hope he doesn't think that we're taking him as a chump. Phillipe has left her to pacify their best friend and ally without infringing on their own tense relationship. Delicately does it. But will it wash with Jean? How can it? The fucker's a mind reader when he's not playing Little Big Stone Wall Face! Maybe going on holiday with the whole family was asking too much patience of friendship? Perhaps he needed cover for some reason? Phillipe must do these things. It is his style. He has his reasons. Jean has very little style, it's all technique with him. I mean wearing a jacket on a day like today; what's he looking for - a funeral? I can't strip off into a bikini as I'd usually, in case he thinks I'm being sexy. Again. I have been. (it's 35 Centigrade outside now and will probably hit 40 in an hour or two). Well fuck this tact shit: if he's gonna pressurise me, I'll have to turn the tables on him and see how he likes it! It is very hot inside Leonora's thin little dress. And getting hotter. And hotter in her head. She is bursting to get out of it. She may be going to do or say something rash. Jean thinks: crazy. I admire her. Always have. And now I'm pressurising her. She will be angry she will not understand. They never do. (They?' Who they?)

the future has come to pass.

Leonora is preparing to throw a brick through the proverbial shop window. She ain't going to tell me nothing! Jean thinks: after all it's only money and My holiday! I'll be a slob to them for a while. Maybe a row is all. I can't fire Phillipe and Leonora knows it, even though she doesn't. I'd miss the Pain the job would be no fun without the messer. Anyway, men work harder and longer and complain less with a good comedian or two in the crew. Everybody knows that! But there's still Paco. I wouldn't swap Phillipe for all the brick layers in China - to be true! Leonora saw straight through P.'s fool-act - straight off. It took me longer but I smile when I think how sweet it was to discover the man behind the joke. I was harsh with him because it wasn't always necessary - his nihilism. Or was I jealous of his freedom? Phillipe is Very smart and as sure as.... he'll have his mistake. I won't be around to pick him up after an adrenaline trip sours. Will she be strong enough? He doesn't take me with him, I'd only cramp his style now... after all these recent years of the outfield. The park. But I have Chosen I have given all that up. How could I take the same risks he does, as I am now - I've been used to making decisions for groups of people for so long again. Anyway, how could he take me with him, the way the board has been arranged? She is so relaxed, most lovers would go nuts if their partner pretended to be an air hostess when they're supposed to be a builder who works down the road!

that is why she knows. she does. and i must forgive her her complicity as i forgive him.. it is hard but.... i don't want to forgive her as it helps me distance My desire for her. but that is not fair. Necessary but no, not fair.

She valiantly tries to keep the timbre friendly and he praises her cuisine in the middle of promptly dispatching it. There is a moment after Jean pushes his dish away and leans satisfactorily back against his chair, when unintentionally, they end up looking straight at each other over long. They have no choice but to look down and away as they both know. Leonora thinks how bizarre it is that because there is a taboo or two between them that it completely stifles any real chance of conversation. We are intelligent people! You are the kind of man that some people narrow their eyes at behind your back - simply because you're a prototype of the stand-up guy. But in your silence and your separateness where do you hide? I know, women who say that you are emotional and waylayed. I know men who say that you will be devious and hard if you choose. Phillipe says that when you were in the army - senior officers were disturbed by you because you were too close to your men. But he believes that they feared the orders that they might give you. You were never involved in an unnecessary military blood bath but he says that you were the kind of soldier who might easily decide to step into one, even though you knew what it was and also a way 'round. Is that true? Did you court death? Are you wanton? Deep, deep down inside. Brutal? A killer? Immortal? Invulnerable? In love with me. Could we ... ? Could I ... ? Could I hold you both? Down. Would you break my heart because you wouldn't always be failing over yourself to put your woman first?

Is that why he loves you more than me - because you're not playing like he is, or is it just because I'm not a man? You sit their like a huge baby and yet earlier on you gave me an order. Which you know I must disobey if ‘I’ am to survive inside. And yet you did it anyway. Just so that you can lump me in with the enemy when it suits your will; even if we became lovers after fooling Phillipe was dead or gone it would be the same. You would look for fault in me and and when you made sure you found it, it would be betrayal to you. The same naive idealism and consequent nihilism you find so amusing and endearing in P., you'd find absurd in me and you'd hate me for being so ridiculous. Hate me, and all I want is for you to Like me. Respect me. Trust me. Confide in me. If he finally disappeared you couldn't leave the wife/girlfriend of one of your men unseen to though. Could you? You think you make an impression but all you do is answer equations from a little circuit board welded to the inside of your thick skull! You have a clever little working definition of who I am and ignore the masses of things which contradict it or which might infract the thousands of little rules and axioms you crash around in in your daily life. And I'm not sure I couldn't love you as much if not more than I do P., but you can't know me because all you see are reasons why Phillipe is into me and a set of characteristics, that you can pin down, so that you can predict how I will behave in a given situation, so you can be there ahead of me, apparently without the expenditure of a drop of sweat or the ruffling of a slick feather. And you sit there contemptuously and not a word out of you! What I'd really like would be to throw a plate of food in you're smug face. Jean laughs loud and hard and for an indecently long time in his head. In their modesty, they've avoided each other's gaze for a long time. They ate in silence broken by the chatter of two like birds.

Jean caressingly rolls the after lunch spliff, revelling in the Doing of something. There was a time in school, sure he knew mor