The mill owner's son was the one who told us about it. The mill owner's son was this tall, pale, skinny guy with a towering head, wheaty blond hair, and sleepy, watery blue eyes. His name was Daniel, I think, buy nobody called him that. He was either the mill owner's son or Rodriguezthemartian. His last name had been totally attached by the town's children to the only word we knew to best evoke the appearance of an alien, Martian. Even in Argentinean Spanish--where the spoken words of a phrase are not so linked to each other as in English--the nickname sounded like a long, complicated title: Rodriguezthemartian. His closest acquaintances, us, called him simply Themartian.
      Rodriguez's corn mill was half a block from the town's square, and-- after a long rainy night--on its long and wide, bushy, trashy lot it was as easy to find frogs to be used in our experiments as in the square. Themartian conducted the experiments with tools from a chemistry play-set he had borrowed from Pontalti, The Horse.
      Using the flat glass spatulas that came along with the chemistry set, it was extremely difficult to make the frogs swallow the concoctions that we boiled or mixed at the mill: More than once, in anger, we just gave up our attempts to feed the frogs our experimental blends. Instead, using a heavy iron weight from the mill's machinery, we just drove the animals to the bottom of the wooden barrel that held rain water for the flowers of the garden of the mill owner's wife. We would leave the frogs to slowly drown, die there: the ham in a sandwich made of wood--the barrel's bottom, and iron--the mill's weight.

      When we were not roaming the streets of the little town on our bicycles or improving our scientific knowledge at the torture-lot, we walked to Pizzetta's Pond to loiter about its banks, look for mushrooms to kick around, linger among the mosquito-clouds, throw stones and broken bricks into the dark and still waters.
      "Not too far from Pizzetta's Pond" Rodriguezthemartian told us. If we biked quickly through the Corn Refinery grounds, possibly we could make it there in time to take a look before lunch. No parent released any of us from the obligation of showing up for the familial meal at about twelve thirty tops. Themartian told us he had not seen any sentinel, and it would be not too difficult to run unseen to the Little School from the back of the Corn Refinery. The sentinels very seldom guarded the refinery's yard. But, we did not believe his story; there was nobody else to corroborate his information, and he was an unreliable source. Definitely, Themartian did not have strong enough a street reputation to be believed.
      Anyway, flushed and sweaty Themartian kept insisting that he had run into it by chance, while coming back from stealing oranges at Saía's Orchard. He said he--nervous and shit-scared of Saía's renowned salt-and-pepper shotgun--had run toward the wrong side of the orchard, every quick step increasing the distance to separate him from his bicycle. Pregnant with maybe a dozen sweet, big navel-oranges under his sweater, he had bent over, turned around, and crawled--belly up--under the razor-wire fence that set the boundaries between Saía's Orchard and No Man's Land: the wide prairie that had been decreed off-limits by the Army to all the town's inhabitants.
      On the prairie, the old edifices of the long ago abandoned Little School were not too distant from the razor wire, and it was to them that Themartian had run for cover, as soon as he had perceived his mistake. He had exchanged the menace constituted by Saía's painful salt-and pepper bullets for the unthinkable possibility of getting caught walking No Man's Land by a sentinel's binoculars. So, Themartian said, he had quickly scurried into the Little School. Impossible.

      We were sitting on the square's green bench, right underneath the enormous billboard of The General. Themartian kept describing the blurry details he had managed to make out while peering through the wide-angle lenses of the absurd peep-hole on the Little School's kitchen wall. We could not believe him. Nevertheless, we kept listening attentively, silently, stiffly. Then, a stone hit the billboard between The General's angry eyes, bounced, and went to land less than a yard from Themartian's feet. Terrified, Themartian leaped in despair. Pontalti, The Horse, came trotting towards the bench, laughing at Themartian's unexpected overreaction to his stoning of The General. The Horse was Lieutenant Pontalti's son. Nobody else could be more fit to be consulted about the characteristics of the Little School, we agreed. Even though he was not allowed, nor any other children (no matter the parents' military rank), to go to No Man's Land, maybe he could help us to confirm that Themartian was just bragging. So we asked Themartian to tell his story to The Horse.
      As Themartian spoke, The Horse stopped laughing. An expression that we did not know, nor could we identify, appeared on The Horse's face, to remain there, stamped. Themartian, then, finished repeating what he had seen through the peep-hole. The Horse said nothing, and when we started asking if it was a ridiculous tale or what, he looked at the clock--we all looked at the clock of the church's steeple--and learned that it was lunch-time. We exchanged some pushes; we shoved a bit, gave a few high fives, and some of us walked toward the trees against which we had leaned our bicycles. I rushed to the bakery to buy the three loaves without which I could not get home. It was the only reason, after all, for my being on the street at that hour. Parents had the choice of registering us either for the morning or the afternoon classes. Some children went during the morning, from eight to twelve thirty, but we were all pupils of the afternoon school, and had still to get ready for it before lunch. Thus, we all always ate hurriedly, nervously looking at the clock: class time was exactly at one thirty PM.

      Two O'clock in the afternoon. We are sitting in class, wearing our white smocks, scrubbed clean, with our hair neatly brushed, listening to our History Class. The teacher tells us about the Independence Campaign. He talks about the Military Glories of Our Past, and about the selfless heroism of the courageous men who gave their lives for our country in the many Fields of Honor; on how War and Death Are the Intrinsic Building-Blocks of Our Identity. But Themartian is not paying attention, and The Horse has missed school today. We know he is not ill. While I was stepping on the bakery's threshold, I last saw him; he was hurriedly biking in the direction of the Regiment.
      When the class is about to finish (we are all ears waiting for the bell) the teacher's voice is drowned by the rumble of the caterpillar tracks of an anti terrorist convoy rolling back to the Regiment. The school windows are grilled with iron bars, and framed with frosted glass, so we can not see the armored cars driving down the street. I manage to make out the shape of their turrets, the silhouette of the helmeted machine-gunners' heads, frozen and vibrating atop them. Their shadows keep passing by the windows, as if on TV; life-size heads of lead-soldiers sliding along the frosted glass of the classroom windows . . . Then, Themartian starts to throw up.

      It is late at night. The town is immersed in darkness and silence. On the town's streets, only the whistles of the sentinels talk to each other among the emptiness of the curfew hours. I can hear the TV downstairs in the living room: another speech by the Military Junta Chiefs. My parents are watching it. The monotone and threatening voice of The General is the predominant sound. Every once in a while, I hear short interventions by the Admiral. Once, I heard mother say that he always looks as if he were "on drugs." I don' t know what that means. The general keeps talking, and I remember the sound of the caterpillars: The General sounds like them.
      I know that it is WAY later than eleven; by now, we all should be asleep, but I cannot forget Themartian's stupid story about the Little School. I know all that is just a bunch of lies; he would NEVER dare to walk onto No Man's Land, much less into the Little School. Not even by mistake. But, I also know that all of us are still awake: The Horse is lying stiff on his bed, that strange expression still stamped on his face, the one he put on when Themartian started talking about the tiled walls, the purplish stains, the naked blue bodies, the chains, the shackles. Also on his bed, I know, Themartian is quietly shaking; tremors make his head vibrate like the machine gunners' helmeted ones. He is silently living his terror, and trying hard, real hard to reach total paralysis. He imagines that, if he does so, maybe he will be able to protect his parents, Rodriguez The Miller and his wife. Maybe if he manages to suppress or at least hide both his knowledge and his feelings, he will be able to protect them from the proximity of the Little School. He tries to puke a little more, even though his stomach is clean-empty. He stares fixedly at the dark, but he cannot avoid to keep seeing the sightless open eyes. The immobile heads. The torn-off teeth. The fingerless hands. And he still hears The Screams.
      Without believing Themartian's insensate story AT All --all the town's children, all of us, I know-- are right now sleepless, wide awake, staring at the obscure ceiling, unsuccessfully trying to make out the shape of the ceiling lamp, wishing somebody would turn it on. Wishing it were already tomorrow.

     "Adriano? Hello! You can come in, please."

     "Hi Allen. How are you doing? Thank you.

     "So, how have you been doing? Sit here, please."

     "Very well Allen. Thank you."

     Allen is overweight, has a round face, his head is bald on top, but curly salt-and-pepper hair falls shirt-collar length on the sides and back. His long beard has caused Mallory and Adriano to jokingly refer to him alternately either as the gnome or the elf. He wears John Lennon-style glasses, sandals, a loom-knit New Mexico-looking sweater, and beige corduroy slacks. In the waiting room, Adriano had distracted himself by looking at the bad paintings (patients' gifts?), and several framed newspaper-clips on Allen Malkovitch, The Comedians' Shrink. His attention had only vaguely registered the whisper-volume classical music that deafened the voices that could otherwise be heard from the office, thus defeating any possibility of eaves-dropping

"Would you mind if we wait for Mallory before we start?"

"Oh, not at all, it's all right . . . I want to tell you, though, that coming here again, for me, is not coherent. I always thought that it is impossible to know anybody in a real sense."

     "Oh, well . . . we would have to see what you mean with that of "in a real sense" but, if you mean what I, or anybody, would immediately understand from that . . . I'd disagree with you. I think that it is possible to know a person to a rather good degree. Of course, it takes a good deal of time and effort from the parts involved in the process, let's us say."

     This light, introductory chat, stretched itself to a slightly antagonistic general discussion that, anyhow, established the general lines of thought that both connected and distanced Mallory's lover, and Mallory's shrink. Adriano mentioned an essay by the philosopher Thomas Nagel on the in-transmissibility of experience: the only way to know what it is like to be a bat is by being biologically equipped like a bat: not even by hanging upside down in a dark closet would one get an idea of how it would be like to be a bat. The perceptions would always be the ones of a human hanging head-down in the dark, very different from the bat's perceptions and its reasons for doing such a thing, had said Adriano. Allen took a mental note of the extreme and dramatic example chosen by Adriano to make his point, as well as of its vaguely gothic character. Then, the bell rang.
     When Allen opened the door, Mallory was unfastening her overcoat belt. She quickly took it off, hung it on the rack, and picked a brown bag from the table: she had brought coffee for the three of them.

     "Allen, I'm here with Adriano because I wanted you to hear what I have to tell hin; I wanted to say these things in your presence.
     "I have been thinking during these last couple of months, every time with more and more intensity, that--even though my relationship with Adriano has always been so difficult, even though this would be the third or fourth time we try to fix this thing--I am sure that Adriano is really the man I love, and I want to try again. I want to be his woman. I want this man, because he is intelligent, because he is sensitive, because I know he loves me and I love him, because we share so many opinions in so many different areas. I know that we have this past; that things have always been very hard and difficult between us, that we have hurt each other many times, but I think that we, exactly because we have gone through all this stuff, are now ready to try what we always should have, in the way we always should have. I asked you to come here today, Adriano, because . . . I mean . . . we make our vows before the judges and deities in which we believe. I cannot imagine a person or a situation I respect more than Allen and my therapy. I know that it must be very difficult for you to trust me now. I have run away from you so many times. But I want to be with you; I want to live with you. I want to have your child. I have no other way to show you that this time I am being serious, that I really mean what I say. I thought that--if I brought you to my therapy to tell you this--you would listen . . . Will you?"

     Clearly, Mallory's measured tone intended to be reassuring to both Allen and Adriano; her delivery was devoid of the exaggerated tones that usually are a straight telltale of patients' actual enacting of their unrealistic expectations, Allen thought. She was not being overtly emotional, and sounded secure and hopeful. There was a strong degree of tenderness in the tone of her voice when she said "I want this man." The fact that she had started referring to Adriano in the third person, clearly addressing Allen, but that, at mid-speech, she had switched to first, thus addressing directly Adriano, was to Allen indicative of her commitment to both her analytical compromises and her own affections: Allen was satisfied. He leaned back in his chair, crossed his fingers over his belly, smiled his pleasant, non threatening shrink-smile:

     "See? Today you are a very different Mallory. You are a person who has a strong sense of self. You know what you want, you say what you want, and you make the necessary moves to get it. I am hopeful that you two have very good chances of working out your. . . hum . . . stuff pretty well this time. In the past . . . your sense of identity was so vague that . . . you could not ascribe to a minimum degree of involvement without feeling that you were disappearing within the relationship . . . hum . . . you could not even be sure of . . ."

     Adriano was no longer listening. Adriano's thoughts had flown away, to a morning in that very same office, some years before. On that morning, Allen had compared Mallory to "a tear-drop falling through space." Adriano had noticed that the description was too poetic, too heavily charged for a therapist's, but the moment was also heavily charged, so much so that the perception had immediately been buried by a storm of mixed emotions. It was all over. Sadness of a physically painful intensity had enveloped Adriano in a cloud of panic.

     "Adriano, you have to let her go," had said Allen. "Let Mallory go, for your own good, for the good of both of you"

     He had, then, left the office, and walked 72nd Street towards the park. A light snow fell, and the layer that had already whitened every visible surface, also cushioned all sounds. As soon as he had entered the park, he felt he had blended with the silence and lack of color of the landscape. The naked branches of the slimmest trees had been curved under the snow-weight, and the wind shaved these narrow, powdery cushions, creating a second, horizontal storm which issued frozen needles towards Adriano's tearful eyes and livid face. Wondering if tears would freeze on their cheek-tracks, he stumbled through the park, lost, aware of the now ridiculously meaningless plane-tickets in his pocket.
     In a desperate gesture, he had gotten passages to Tahiti, an insane attempt to create a rescuing heaven for the broken couple. He had never even had the chance to show them to Mallory, and Adriano had ended up flying alone. In Tahiti, he had stumbled along the sand, cried, and remembered that Mallory used to call her former lover either Lon or Gauguin (Why Tahiti, after all?). Maybe because Adriano knew that--in Mallory's personal mythology--Tahiti meant not only another land, but another planet, another dimension, a place of ideal, infinite possibilities. In Mallory's stories Tahiti had always meant a passage to absolute happiness. Chosen people's heaven. Strange set of weird coincidences: Marlon Brando was Mallory's only living icon; watching One Eyed Jacks was one of Mallory's constant rituals.
     The sudden silence of the room brought Adriano back to it. Then, he sipped some coffee, accepting Allen's visible professional pride over his patient just found constancy, Mallory's eager resolution, as an endorsing signature. Under Allen's warranty, Adriano accepted Mallory's proposal. He gladly dismissed for the moment his doubts and fears. Allen's physical attitude--he sat in a state of total self-forgetfulness, minutely rocking in his worn-out leather chair--led Adriano to overlook the sinful arrogance of Mallory's therapist. It also made him forget a 12-step program motto: Insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over expecting a different result. He would give it a try. Again. Secretly, through all the years, there had been nothing else for which he waited. She was back.
     Who was back, though?

     The first time he had talked to Mallory had been sometime during the late eighties at the Catherine Deneuve counter of Bloomingdale's old Parfumerie, on the Lexington Avenue side of the main floor, just across the beginning of B-Way, Bloomingdale's most important aisle. She was wearing a silver Montana thin-strap long dress. Her long red hair fell loosely on her golden-freckle shoulders. Her intensely blue eyes were fixed far away in space, in some immaterial point. She had a professional half-smile permanently frozen in her acute face. He, much later, had understood that she hated her job, but performed it as no one else: she was a great actress, this Polish American. She was the embodiment of Stanislawsky's actors' method put at the service of the money-greedy-eighties' East Side Temple of Fashion.
     Adriano was at at the Center Clip. The Center Clip was set outside the Parfumerie, affixed to the black marble column that separated the Giorgio and the Catherine Deneuve counters, both central and first location in the Parfumerie. Adriano, perfectly shaved, was clad in a black Versace tuxedo. His black hair had been slicked back with a generous amount of glossy gel. A tiny diamond shone on his left ear ("Left-is-right, right is wrong"). With his left hand, he held a Van Cliff & Arpel's First, Eau de Parfum tester. The center clip was a black lacca cylinder-shaped concoction on which top there was a couple of bottles of Eau de Parfum, a Lalique crystal vase with white orchids, and a black, golden-lettered First shopping bag with an origami-like eruption of gold tissue sprouting from it . Carefully disguised among the folds of tissue, there was the end of a plastic straw. Under the tissue, and hidden in the bag, there was a paper cup half filled with very strong coffee. Every once in a while, Adriano pretended to smell the orchids--and while at it--took a long sip. Most of the models worked high on caffeine, pot, or cocaine.
     From his native Italy, Adriano had brought--besides his liking for the strongest coffee ("give me two double espressos in a regular coffee cup, lots of sugar, please")--the habit of getting too close to people's faces to speak, even closer when speaking to a woman:

     "You know what? You don't exist. I've just created you," he had breathed in her face.

     Startled, Mallory had withdrawn her head back, thus establishing some distance between her face and Adriano's. She was several inches taller than Adriano, and Lon, her current live-in lover, was a 6.7 imposing presence, but she had anyways been shaken by the strong electricity which Adriano launched along his cryptic message. She had not understood the meaning of Adriano's words, but had been severely affected by them. That night, hearing the street noises, she had found herself awake, looking forward to her next day's work. Lon's body had weighed too much on his side of the bed. She had tried to pull away from that snoring presence.

     Jeff, the skinny aspiring actor from Lexington, Kentucky, is nowadays a playwright in Paris, but the morning after Mallory's sleepless night, Jeff was hawking Deneuve, L'e
au de Toilette, thus obstructing Mallory's view with his body. She did not want to lean over the counter to check on Adriano, but she did. At that very moment, the voice behind her said:

     "So, let me tell you something. the People and the Senate . . . that is, me, decree that you are the most beautiful woman on earth."

     Surprised, she turned around to find Adriano's eyes fixed in hers. Briskly, Adriano lifted his hand. He lightly touched Mallory's face and walked away, taking the up escalator. Mallory kept the sense of that touch through the morning, did not retouch her make-up until lunch time.
     Days passed and more events of the kind happened. The tension between them grew exponentially.
One day, during lunch break, Mallory smoked a big joint by the tramway.
     At 3:10 PM, Adriano was selling Eternity at the Arcade clip, next to the watches bay, by the Lex Ave. & 59th Street
entrance. Mallory got into the store through that door, and told Adriano,

"Can you step away for a minute? I Have to tell you something."

     They crossed the Gourmet Deli, turned left on the corridor that connects to the Lower Level elevators bank, Mallory leading. By the elevators, she stopped and faced Adriano. Immediately, Adriano took the proper distance to speak: too close. Mallory put her hand in his chest and firmly pushed him back.

        "No!, No! Listen to me now! Stop pursuing me! It was just a dream! I AM NOT what you want me to be! Do you understand?"

"But, listen, Mallory. . ."

        "No! No! You listen to me! Stop pursuing me! It's over! Over! Did you hear me? Over!" And she walked away.

     Adriano just stood there, He did not understand. What was she talking about? How could something that had not even started yet be over? So suddenly over? He did not understand, but he--for the first time--felt pain of a kind he could not identify because he never had felt it before. The traces of an also unknown fear contorted his face. Even less could he understand that this was, indeed, the first hint of what had just started. Disarmed, he went back to his clip, and endlessly repeated to the bypassers the name of the fragrance he was spraying.

        "Eternity, ladies. Eternity. Eternity, Eternity, Eternity. . ."

     The Mallory who came to Allen's office, and who decided to give her love for Adriano another opportunity, was a total transformation from the Mallory of the early years. Now, her hair was no longer red, and had been cropped in the nape of the neck to a crew-cut length. But, still, it was a highly styled haircut. It slightly quoted a Chanel-short, but, in reality, it was a sophisticated send-up. She did not anymore spend absurdly enormous amounts of money in couture. Now, Mallory purchased her clothing by closely inspecting the racks of Manhattan thrift shops, always after the miraculous find, that she,with her eye, her knowledge, her taste, and her luck always operated. No longer a model, nor an actress, she worked part time at different jobs, and studied film-making at the School of Visual Arts. Mallory had not left the world of fashion; she just had switched the philosophy guiding her choices. Now her hair-color was a natural brown of a hue that the Spaniards like to call pardo. She wore no make up, fed her body only with health food, but ate almost nothing. She was into power-enemas, yoga, and transcendental meditation at the Open Center. In her living room,the light was a natural green. It was provided by sun-rays filtered through the foliage of the many species of plants that crowded the sill of the wide window of her apartment overlooking Central Park . A framed photograph of the Dalai Lama--sided by two gigantic mirrors--stood alone on the naked walls that Adriano had, once, seen covered by Lon's (Gauguin's) paintings. Under it, there was a simple saucer with a handful of raw long brown rice ("long is more yang, you know?"). On the floor, and under the photograph, there was nothing but one of these phallus-shaped, batik-patterned, long cushions especially designed for Westerners who could not comfortably assume the lotus sitting position. With the phallus between their legs, they were able to finally relax, fall into a relative psychic oblivion, thus distantly-neighboring either the Nirvanic or Vedantic states. The photograph, rice bowl, and pillow constituted Mallory's altar. She liked to refer to the Dalai Lama's peace and peaceful smile as if she were one of his few acquaintances.
     Adriano had witnessed the burial of Mallory's acting career after one of her particularly rough sessions with Allen: She had come back home, destroyed her head-shots, resumes, and had canceled her subscription to both Variety and Backstage. She had decided that overcoming stage-fright, and pre-audition panic-attacks was a task that was taking more from her than anything her acting aspirations could bring. She was too scared to ever be able to become an acting-actress.
     More changes had occurred while she had been away from Adriano. He was being slowly filled in the details in their dating nights. They had decided that, at this new beginning, they would just date. In the meantime, until she managed to sublet her apartment and move in with Adriano, they would get to know each other's current circumstances. They especially enjoyed the Monday-night 50% off sushi at the Broadway and 98th Street Empire Szechuan Gourmet. It was there, between tekka-maki and uni, that she told him that she was now an expert in Depression Modern furniture, having acquired this expertise at the little store in Soho where she now worked. Indeed, she had discovered at the West 96th Street Salvation Army two quaint highly valued pieces. She had bought both immediately: a signed-in-silver-plate chair, and a narrow and long rosewood desk. She had paid for the chair just forty Dollars! It had been auctioned at Sotheby's, shortly afterward (Adriano was shown, later on, the color picture of the piece on Sotheby's catalog). Just for that small transaction, Mallory had pocketed in 4,600.00 Dollars. All the work she had to do had consisted in taking a cab from West 96th Street to her Central Park West apartment, and from there (on a different day, of course) to the East Side Sotheby's. The curved desk she had kept for herself, and she would, someday, have the Soho store employees restore it. Meanwhile, the desk--not too close to the altar--looked simple, beautiful, and slightly decrepit in Mallory's living room. On it, there were an amber lamp which emitted a faint, yellowish light, a phone, her Power Mac, and a long, slender, and translucent green glass vase with a single calla-lilly ("have you noticed that a calla-lilly is naturally an Art-Nouveau piece?"). There were bills, notebooks, pens, and coins in the drawers, but the desk also contained a secret.
     One night, after drinking much wine, and before making love, Mallory decided to make a display of her total trust. She pulled, and completely removed the top-left drawer. She, then, bent, knelt down, and put her long arm in the slot where the removed drawer ran. Adriano was a few steps away, sitting on the sofa. Only the Art Deco amber lamp was on, and Mallory, kneeling naked with her arm reaching deep into the drawer, composed an image which Adriano thought of perfect beauty. In order to reach further into the slot, she had tilted her head ever so slightly to the right and back; her long legs--unevenly positioned to keep the precarious balance that the forced posture required--transformed her in a perfect kneeling contraposto. One knee on the floor, the other supporting the elbow of her left arm. Her silhouette wasframed by the golden halo of the lamp. The dim haze of Central Park West street-lamps--transformed by its passage through Mallory's window vase-forest-- awarded Adriano the opportunity to experience a perfect blend between the intimist illumination of a Dutch painting, and the simple (but sensually charged) Art-Deco imagery of Erté. It was one of those magic moments that lasted only the brief instant of its perception. As soon as Adriano's mind acknowledged the vision, and even before it registered the ensuing emotion, zap! the image vanished. Mallory regained her balance, reached out, and extracted two plastic bags. They contained several thick wads of cash. This money, the real important content of the desk, came from Mallory's other job, a source of tax-free immediate money. Several nights a week, she was a maitre d', other times just a waitress, on chartered ships that cyclically sailed the night of Manhattan while diners ate and drank copiously. Adriano managed to learn the name of two of the ships: L'Raccounteur, and L'Entrepreneur.

     After her grass-break, stoned and stressed, red-headMontana-dressed Mallory, on her way back from the First Ave tramway station, had had an epiphany. Her fantasy-game with Adriano had grown out of proportion. Then, she also had found a meaning in Adriano's first words to her. His passion and his eye had indeed re-created her. She had suddenly lost the pleasure of being Lon's muse and goddess. Suddenly, the lifelessness of her almost non-existent sexual exchanges with Lon had become clear. Adriano had meant, Mallory finally understood, that he--from the moment he had uttered those words--would desire her intrinsically. He would want her with such a romantic drive, with such an absurd desperation, that he would shake her foundations and remove her from the statue-like immobility in which she was positioned. From far and out of herself, she saw a stone-cold fortress amidst the spiritual pollution of a spiteful life of pretense and fakery: Mallory and her parfum's model life.
     She had started to walk faster; the noise of her heels bounced against the elegant brownstones' doors, and she let the rhythmic sound become a pacing device to graduate the velocity of her discoveries. From the tramway, all the way to Bloomingdale's , she kept hearing: "You don't exist, I've just created you." "You don't exist," "you don't exist," "you don't exist." As Adriano taught himself to crave for her, he was re-implanting in her mind-perceptions, desires, and needs that she had resigned a long time before. She had interposed an iron door between her current self and her past's. She was terrified before the possibility of a reconnection to that past. The door had to be kept closed shut. She had to stop it right away. She reached Lexington and turned left, to Bloomingdale's 59th Street entrance. Without noticing the rap lyrics that the radio of the paraplegic beggar blasted, she stormed past him:

yo, whor'
gonna make you beg,
yo, whor'.
gonna make you bleed
yo whor'
gonna make you feel,
yo, whor'
gonna make you BE.

        From the door, she saw Adriano at the Calvin Klein's Eternity clip. Quickly, she walked up to him, and said:

        "Can you step away for a minute? I have to tell you something."

     After Mallory showed Adriano the values she concealed in the Depression Modern desk, she told him that she would spend a week at a friend's house in Martha's Vineyard. She would very much like Adriano to keep a key of the apartment, hang out in it if he felt like, and, please, please, water her plants. The keeping of Mallory's keys had been an ongoing issue between them in former times. Mallory's highly secretive life ("don't you ever come again unannounced!") had never been opened to him to the point of conceding Adriano a free access to her place. Just the fact that they had ever managed to get together, that Mallory had at last overcome her fears and preventions, had been--to her, in those early years--an incongruity with which she could not come to terms. They had been together in different faces of their lives, on and off, for nine years, but they had never lived together,nor had them ever exchanged the keys of each other's places. But on this last attempt, this final face, after the vows before Allen, with every other symbol and possibility already broken or lost, there were no other devices left. The key-ring would have to do.

     "I want you to feel free to come here, and stay. I want you to keep this key. I want you to keep the key for as long as I keep this apartment, which is also your place."

     Adriano arrived early in the morning. He opened the double lock and turned the lights on. It was a Sunday morning and Mallory was in Martha's Vineyard. Feeling some apprehension, he paced the apartment before daring to turn on the tuner to listen to some music. Adriano flicked the tuner's switch on and recognized Glenn Gould's heavy breathing and mumbling among the quick staccatos of Bach's Goldberg Sixth Variation. Adriano's uneasiness was mostly because he could not stop the feeling of the trespasser, the gilt of the intruder. He filled the pitcher in the kitchen and started watering the pots and vases by the window. He looked at the wooden clock on the corner; it had been built by Martial. Mallory had met Martial at a Hamlet workshop. When the time for Adriano to know that Martial had entered Mallory's life could not be postponed any longer, Mallory had told Adriano that she was infatuated by Martial because "he was very, very beautiful." It was just infatuation; she was not in love with him. But, some weeks later, she had started purchasing Starsky and Hutch heroin bags, and going into days-long snorting binges. The complete isolation, the complete completeness of heroin, had been the means--and had provided the hiatus--that Mallory used to remove herself from Adriano, and reach out to Martial. The next time Adriano managed to be admitted into Mallory's apartment, Martial's Gibson Les Paul was laying down on the sofa. A black suitcase was next to it. And that had been the end, for that moment.
     Martial-built clock was ticking 10:35 AM by the time Adriano finished watering the plants. The memories of the disastrous ending caused by Martial's invasion, reminded him that he could not trust Mallory. Was she really staying at Depression Modern's owner's Martha's Vineyard house? He had already been introduced to David--the owner of the Soho furniture store--and he knew not only that he was gay, but also that he had been for years the lover of a very old man, in the Greek ancient manner of the wise men and their lover-boys. Nevertheless, what kind of phantoms subsisted in the dark corners of both Mallory's heart and Adriano's mind?

     Dear Mallory:

     Don't you ever worry. I do understand. You have pushed me away. You are slamming your door shut. You do not want to know what I have for you. You do not want to try it. You are too scared. It was not just a dream; it was just a game. Now, I have come to understand and know how it feels to know that I won't have you. And it is a feeling that I am not willing to bear. I do not know you, but I do know you; I know you the way nobody else does. As I told you, I have created you. If it is difficult "to meet your creator," it is even more difficult to have your creation.
But, never mind. I do not need you, if I decide not to. If you are my creation, perhaps I could even--I am your Blade Runner's Tyrrell--destroy you, which I won't do. I will, instead, un-create you. It will not be very difficult: I will not ever look at you again. I will not ever talk you you again. I will discourage every single thought that could remotely be related to your very recent birth; I will un-birth you. And you'll become nothing; you will never be, nor will you have ever been. You were just the mere creation of my imagination. My imagination, and the memory of my imagination, can just as easily be either a creating force, or barely an abstract and faintly emitted wave. It vibrated in a dimension which holds no connection with the emotional history or the past memory of unrecorded ideas. It will all be forgotten for the benefit of non-existence. You slam your door shut, I do what Nietzsche did with Heaven's door.
Adriano.

     Not more than 24 hours had passed from Mallory's and Adriano's rough and short exchange by the Lower Level elevators, and Mallory shook and trembled in the 2nd. Floor Ladies Room, to where she had walked to read the letter that Adriano had put on her counter, strangely without looking at or saying a single word to her. In the following weeks, Adriano's attitude had been exactly the same with which he had dropped the letter. She--to him--no longer existed. Had she ever? Sometimes, Adriano had even been inches from her, in the Parfumerie, with customers or other models, and his voice and intonation--captivating, charming, and warm--simultaneously included and welcomed not only his interlocutors but also every single person in the premises, one of his extraordinary qualities. There was, though, something invisible and intangible that was directed to and perceived only by Mallory in Adriano's address. Without explicit gestures, looks, words, or any other physical devices, he explicitly and exclusively denied Mallory's existence. He had a way of attracting everybody's attention in such a fashion that Mallory was left out and alone of whatever happened within any space that simultaneously contained both. Whenever and wherever Adriano was present, Mallory disappeared. She felt that she turned--as he had written--into a non-existent thing. After a few days, the sensation of disappearing started to linger even after Adriano had himself left. She started to have longer and longer periods of non-existence. In a few more weeks, she started to carry her non-existence home. She had to do something about it.

Bloomingdale's Model-Placing Card.

Store: 01 Manhattan.
Department: Fragrances.

Date: March 27, 1988.
Event: Beverly Hills' Theodore's Spoiled (Launch).
Location: The South Clip.
Model: Adriano.
Goal: 2,000.00
Hours: 10:00 to 7:00 PM
Lunch Break: 2:00 to 3:00 PM

"So, You will not ever talk to me again, then?"
"Excuse me?"

"Oh, come on, Adriano. . . Are you going to talk to me?"

     Adriano still refused to look at Mallory's eyes. But, as she came closer and closer, enveloping him in the Deneuve cloud that permanently existed around her, he lifted his eyes from the Spoiled tester on which he had fixed his eyes when he had perceived her approach, and saw her. Her hair was tightened with a black velvet bow on the back of her head; she dressed in a black Azedim Alaia silk mini-dress, had white stockings on, and black patent leather Manolo Blahnik flats. She wore elbow-length satin gloves, and a strange looking cabouchon silver ring on her thumb. Adriano had on the standard Spoiled uniform: a white double-breasted tuxedo over a striped black and white sailor's t-shirt, a thin black silk neck-bandana, and white loafers.
     They locked their eyes for a considerable time, then Adriano said:

     "Look, Mallory. There is nothing that we have to talk about here. If you really consider that we have to talk, is because there is something that we have to do. We can discuss it after work in Aló! Aló!"

     "That is just fine with me. I will come to pick you up at seven o'clock, Adriano."

     "See you then," said Adriano.

     He lifted the tester and sprayed fragrance on a very old and thin lady. She was entirely dressed by Chanel. Adriano paid special attention to her black Chanel wide-brim straw hat. It looked like a very expensive reconstruction of Monet's straw hat.

     After Mallory came back from Martha's Vineyard, she started to change rapidly and evidently. Again. Adriano had to acknowledge and consider his serious doubts that things with Mallory could ever work out well. He had always had them. He was having trouble sleeping, and--when they were not together, something that was happening more and more frequently--could not avoid noticing that Mallory was calling him less and less. She had already started to lose her desires of going out. No movie was now interesting enough to drag her out of her apartment (a serious symptom), and she was growing more and more silent when they were together. No more 50% off sushi. The sublet of her apartment was not happening, and there were no conversations about following up on the plan to move in together. She was avoiding any concrete reference to any plan that included both, and she was slowly returning to her role of the acting Mallory. He felt as if he were trying to grasp some of his Mare Mediterraneo dark-blue waters with the help of a Sicilian pasta strainer.
     He had invited Mallory to have dinner after work. He would pass by Depression Modern to pick her up at eight. After all those years, he still worked in Bloomingdale's, but--no longer a model--Adriano was the business manager of Donna Karan. That night, Adriano sported a Donna Karan light gray pied-de-poule wool suit, a gunmetal Armani overcoat, and a bright colored African loom-knit cotton scarf. Both the white silk and linen shirt, and the wide plain burgundy tie were by Issei Miyake, and he also wore a dark gray Stetson fedora. The black shoes had been made in Milan by Prada. Slowly, he inched his way down Broadway. It lightly rained, and the water played optical tricks on the windshield. It made the Broadway lamplights skid and run absurdly up the glass, tearing down the windshield whenever Adriano stepped on the brakes. Traffic was heavy, but Adriano was not in a hurry. He had grown to both desire and fear his moments with Mallory.
Depression Modern was already closed, and Mallory waited at its entrance. She had a black vinyl raincoat on, and a closed umbrella on her hand. When she saw the car, she opened the umbrella and approached the curb. She got into the car without more than a "hello," and Adriano drove to Mapamondo, an Italian restaurant which was located where it still is: right on the point where Hudson dies and Eight Avenue is born. He could not avoid noticing the irony of all these details, e il mondo gira e gira.
     They dined feeling and acting as if this were a first date, a very different first date from the one they had had, many years before, at Aló! Aló. Mallory said she was depressed: her old friend Christopher was alone and dying of AIDS in Maui. In November, she would fly there to be with him. Would they manage to spend Thanksgiving together? Adriano asked. She was not sure. Mallory talked mostly about Christopher, past happiness, lost love, loneliness, and about death. They walked the few blocks to The White Horse Tavern and had shots of Scotch whisky. Adriano felt like having a cigar, but he had none. Instead, he smoked Gitanes. By the time they drove back, they were very drunk. They hugged, held hands, and walked the blocks from the garage kissing. Mallory asked Adriano to stay over, but said, "we are together now, anyways. Tomorrow will be another day." Now she was the one who was cryptic. Later on, they made love with the lights off. Mallory held Adriano really tight, and asked him to come in her. Adriano knew that she had her diaphragm on the bedside table, and she could be fertile. They talked about that, and made plans as if everything between them were well. They even chose, before falling asleep, a name for the child: Blake. Almost asleep, Mallory said that it was as good for a boy as for a girl. Adriano thought that Blake Manzoni was indeed a strong name, if a little odd. When they woke up, both the alcohol and the dreams seemed to have evaporated. She never mentioned Blake again.

     After a few months their conversations started to become increasingly charged with anger, and a deft and mute hatred loomed among the walls. They had several arguments. Adriano had rented their future apartment in Mallory's building, on the same floor, and had moved into it. This seemed to have incensed their moods to an explosive degree. He had managed to get a bigger and better apartment than Mallory's, and he could barely afford the rent by himself. But Mallory just ignored the plans to move together. He felt that his moving into the building had chronically angered Mallory. She made him feel like an unwanted neighbor: The intruder, the trespasser, the invader.
     One night, Mallory called him to see the special edition tape of Pulp Fiction, which she had just bought. It included several never-seen-before, edited-out scenes. They discussed at length the one in which Vincent meets Mrs. Wallace for the first time. On the edited-out section, Uma Turman's Mrs. Wallace, came down the stairs with a hand-held video camera and subjected John Travolta's Vincent to an impromptu interview: To Mrs. Wallace, there were only two kinds of people: Elvis people, and Beatles people. She would ask a set of questions, and--from Vincent's answers--would diagnose to which of the two groups Vincent belonged. The joke was that Vincent was--at first sight--the embodiment of the Elvis man. He had just injected himself with heroin, wore a black half-tuxedo, carried a permissive belly, had an unruly, unkempt-but-ultra-cool hairdo, and refused to relax before Mrs. Wallace's intrusive camera.
     In the relationship of forces between Mallory's and Adriano's personal history, the Elvis scale leaned to Mallory's side: promiscuity, drug use, commercialization of and experience with sex. She would--under any jury--always be awarded an Elvis status. Adriano asked her to remember that under her current circumstances, the incense and Dalai Lama apartment, the look of her shrink--a Comedians' Shrink--plus her natural living, her present dress-and-behavior choices put her decidkedly among the Beatles crowd.

     "What? What are you talking about? Adriano, come ON! Adriano, give me a break! . . . You even LISTEN to the Beatles."

     "Oh . . .Yeah! yeah! yeah! " Adriano said, not without sarcasm. "So let me tell you something, to quote a Beatles guy: Socrates once said that before a jury of children the pastry chef would win as the paladin of health, and the doctor would be executed! I do know your real soul, Mallory."

     "Oh, yeah? Adriano . . . you are so fucking wise! You know SOOO MUCH! about me!"

     "I AM an Elvis man: High cholesterol, overeater, drinker, smoker, anxious, obsessive, aggressive. Jealous, sometimes tacky, uncool, suicidal, I AM AN ELVIS MAN, O.K? It doesn't matter what I listen to; I listen to the fucking Beatles and you listen to whatever you want. I listen to Charlie Parker, Rolling Stones, Stravinsky, Bach, and you listen to what the fuck you want. I am an Elvis man. Proof of that? I have fucking YOU for my woman! A fashionable fuck-up from post-modern Soho!"

     None of them perceived the high decibels of their voices while they argued over this absurd triviality. The Beatles/Elvis night ended with Adriano, furious, storming out of the apartment, and declaring it all over and finished between them. Terminated. It was over. He slammed the door of Mallory's place and went to his: Two doors away.

     Aló! Aló! disappeared in the early nineties. It was owned by the Brazilian entrepreneur Ricardo Amaral and the Italian producer Dino de Laurentis. It was on Third Avenue, one block North of Bloomingdale's, and the store models got drunk there with the help of equally expensive martinis and Brazilian caipirinhas. Mallory and Adriano's first drink together was a wordless chain of caipirinhas. When they had drunk enough, they took a cab to Adriano's upper Broadway studio. As soon as they walked in, Adriano lay Mallory on his bed, lifted Mallory's mini-dress and pulled down her stockings. He drank from Mallory' body, and, for the first time, got sublimely drunk. After a while, Mallory turned around and let Adriano sink his face between her perfectly shaped buttocks. Later on, Adriano heard for the first time the intensity of Mallory's orgasms.
     They woke up knowing that Lon's time with Mallory had come to an end. Problem was: those were not Mallory's ways of dealing with men. Rule: In Mallory's Life Men Always Overlap. While they talked over coffee, and made up excuses to arrive late to work, Mallory--already oblivious to the ruins of the fortress, of the stepped-over iron door--started to talk, and talked without interruptions through most of the morning. She talked about her childhood's shrinking Jewish Lower East Side, her threatening mother, her powerful, successful brother, her hateful sister. She talked about the night her sister's boyfriend raped her while her sister pretended to sleep on the other bed. She told him of her long chambermaidship in London hotels, the cause of her back pains. She, then, talked about her experiences on x-rated movies. Adriano then learned of the sex-shows she had mounted with a lover/partner in Amsterdam's red-light district. She told him of the casino-hopping trips around Europe with a professional gambler. She talked about her father's death, her only love, while she was far away: The Reason For Her Return To The States.
     She talked, and talked. Adriano learned of her lost friendship with Madonna. They, together, had waited on tables in a night club of West 14th Street, when Madonna was still nobody. At last, they had found a providential loft in old Soho. Madonna owned only a sleeping bag that caught fire one night when Mallory fell asleep while smoking. They laughed together at the idea of Mallory burning Madonna to death. Madonna often borrowed money from Mallory, and Mallory never collected it from her . . . Madonna was always broke, and they were always together. In the village, they called them M & Ms. ("The guy who owned the loft gave room only to beautiful girls; he fucked them all, but, I mean ALL OF THEM. You know what I mean? Exception made of Madonna. Even at that time, she already knew what she wanted. She was out to get only what she wanted.")
     Adriano's knowledge of Mallory had been nothing. His perception of Mallory was crushed, smashed, and swept away by Mallory's torrent of words. Mallory took a tiny bottle from her purse and cut some lines of coke for both. She had removed the bathroom-cabinet mirror, and Adriano admired the dexterity with which she handled the blade. Her lines were just perfect, as if traced with a ruler. While she cut, she remembered and told Adriano about the poor girls who worked as blowers in the porno industry, giving the actors a good hard-on before each shooting or alive performance. Even worse, some of them did the lengthy blow jobs that readied the studs for the money-shot (Had Mallory ever been a blower? What was the role for a starting porno actress? She was no Madonna).

     Adriano woke up, hangover, feeling an unsurmountable headache and a total awareness of the insensate absurdity of the night before. It was not over, it could never be over. Not like that. Over a Beatles/Elvis argument? What had they been talking about, after all? It must have been what Allen had once referred to as meta-language. Most likely, they were saying something which contents--for whatever reason-- directly overflowed from the unconscious or subconscious, and spilled to their mouths with changed symbols: neither of them had been talking about what they had been talking. He vaguely remembered some Raymond Carver's story. He picked the phone and called Mallory. He got Charlie Parker's Loverman, and Mallory's voice "unable to come to the phone." He left an apologetic short message and asked her to call back. He made a second phone call: in-sick. He would dedicate the day to decipher the riddle, put together the puzzle, pick up the pieces, recover Mallory.
     He realized that he had no idea where she was. He started the long research of her possible working places. The ships' central at the World Financial Center's pier; The New York Stock Market (sometimes, Mallory catered breakfasts to the stock brokers), Depression Modern (Laconic, David said she was not there "today"). He could not call Allen; he had already done it many years before, and all had ended with his walking through the snows of Central Park with a ticket to Tahiti. And besides, it was interference: Allen was his girlfriend's therapist, not his. Between calls to other numbers, he kept calling Mallory, and getting instead Charlie Parker.
At 1:40 PM Mallory picked up:

     "Hello?"

     "Mallory? It's me! I am so sorry about last night! I don't know what happened to us. . . I mean, I don't know what happened to me. It's not over, you hear me? It's not over. I love you . . . I love you Mallory."

     Suddenly, he simultaneously perceived--not without pain--that he almost never had told her that he loved her, and that there was no response from the other side of the line.

     "Hello, Mallory? Are you listening to me? I love you; it's not over. I am sorry. Where were you? I called you everywhere."

"Where I was? Where I was? You are asking me where I was? I was at Allen's, Okay? I spent the entire morning at Allen!!"

     "Oh, My dear, I am so sorry. Forgive me. Were you in pain? Did I hurt you? Let me come over and we'll talk, O Kay? I will be there in a second."

     "No, no. I am the one who is sorry, Adriano. Maybe, inadvertently, you have put me in a place where I should have been since a long time ago. You rejected me; you told me things that sent me someplace else. You cannot come here. You cannot come here anymore. This is the sickest moment of a very sick relationship, and I cannot be in it anymore."

     "NO, no, please, please, Mallory, let me come to you and we'll talk it over! I am sure we can work it out! Let me just come over for a second!

     "I cannot see you, Adriano. It is not good for me . . . It's never been good for either of us . . . Don't you know it?"

     "Mallory, What are you talking about? This sounds very much like therapy! What happened at Allen's? I do want to have a child with you! I do want to live with you! I do LOVE you! Did you hear me? I love you, Mallory.
Listen, I am willing to do anything to save this. . .please, let me talk to you anywhere you want! . . . Even at Allen's!"

     There was a long silence coming from Mallory's receiver, and Adriano spent that endless time running the film of their life together: It had never been good for either of them. Quickly, Adriano turned the projector off, and forgot the film. Instead, he listened to his powerful and fast heartbeat, and to his breathing. He imagined that Mallory was quietly listening to both his heart and his lung-set through the receiver. When Adriano was sure that the earth had stopped rotating (ma, il mondo gira o non gira?) Mallory's voice came back:

     "OK, then. I will make the appointment . . . and I'll let you know. I'll see you at Allen's."

     On Monday, November 18, 1996, Adriano rang Allen's bell for the last time. Mallory was already sitting in her usual place, and Adriano was ushered by Allen to what--he had come to learn--was the guests' arm-chair. There was a brief silence, then Allen nodded to nobody in particular. Adriano started:

     "From the moment I got Mallory's message confirming that I was to come here today, to see you , I have passed through several states of mind and moods. At first, I thought that, because I said the things that I said to Mallory, things that I know you already know, I had to come here as my attorney. I thought that I had to come here to tell you, and Mallory, why I behaved the way I did, and defend myself. Most important, to explain why I said that everything between us was over. I thought that I had to talk about the time when Mallory lived with Lon and would come to my place to have sex. Of how she always went back to him afterwards, leaving me sad and alone. The many times that Mallory rejected me and denied in public what we lived in private. Ah! And about the episodes Uin which she rejected me, apparently in a definitive manner. I thought I had to justify my anger, my frustration, and my past shame, my never mentioned pain and humiliation when I found Martial's guitar and suitcase in Mallory's apartment. How couldn't I have buried angry feelings, if I had to witness her letting another guy move in with her, after I hadn't been allowed even to ring the bell without calling first to let her know I was coming?
     "Then, I thought that it would be better if I came here to make a complete confession, to express a mea culpa, ask both of you for forgiveness. I thought it was my obligation to come here to recognize that I was guilty of insensitivity, that whatever had been and happened in the past, there were vows made here in the name of sanity, and--in hope of a different life together--should have been Orespected. I thought I had to come here and say: 'I am sorry, I did something terribly wrong, but now I now that I should have never done such a thing,' and promise I would never do such a thing again. I would come here to promise to love, respect, and honor Mallory, and the children that could come along in the future.
     "Lastly, a few hours ago, while I was getting ready to come, I think I understood the purpose of my being here. I think I found a justification for it. I am convinced, Allen, that is is my last chance to accept the compromises established here months ago. Because I, then, saw Mallory's seriousness, and her commitment to this place and to you, Allen, the only course left is to request your help. I know that we are again in pretty bad shape, that the relationship is again in threads, but I know that I love Miallory. When Mallory asked me to come here before, it was to tell me that she loved me. I want you to counsel, assist, and maybe guide us, so as we can do what we have been trying for so many years without success. I want to live with Mallory, be the father of her children. Please, help us stay together. Please."

     Adriano picked a tissue from the box and dried his tears. He had said what he had to say. Mallory's tears ran down her cheeks, dropped on her chest, formed small wet spots on her beige cotton blouse. Allen remained serious and quiet. His hands stood immobile, forming upside-down cups that perfectly fit on his knees. He was not rocking nor was he swiveling in his chair. He took his Lennon glasses and carefully cleaned them with a paper tissue. He put them back on, and drove them up to their proper position. He pressed the frame arc with his right middle finger against the bridge of his nose. He cleared his throat, passed his hand down his long beard as if obliging it to rest on his sternum, and motioned as if to turn towards Adriano, but in reality he did not move:

     "Look, Adriano. You have been quite unable to see Mallory. You have been unable to see how Mallory has been deteriorating through these months. You do not only seem unable to see her, but you do not seem to understand that Mallory's condition prevents her from being in this relationship. Mallory cannot be in a relationship at the present moment."

     "Wait a minute! Allen, why are you saying that Mallory is in such a terrible shape?" I do not see her in any terrible shape. We have some problems, yes; she has some problems, yes. I have some problems too. But, Allen, I do not think this is a reason to call it over. This is not a reason, I mean, the fact that we argue, that we have argued often, is not a reason to say that this relationship have no chances. I am here telling you that I am willing and ready to come to do couple's therapy, or whatever you want to call it. I am ready to do anything, and I am here asking you for help."

     Allen, immobile and serious again, took his time. He looked for a while to the wall, as intently as if the wall had a hidden hieroglyph which only shrinks could see, discern, and interpret. Adriano alternately switched his eyes from Allen's direction, who kept reading the wall's hidden oracle, to Mallory's, who had just discovered a new and total fascination for the back of her hands. Allen made again his immobile motion, this time towards Mallory. Alternating words and sobs, she said:

     "It's just that you don't understand, Adriano . . . You don't know how it feels to be me. How it is to work and work and work and come back home and stare at the emptiness and feel that I am dying at every hour at every minute at every second . . . Maybe you were right when you said, many years ago . . .do you remember? . . . that I did not exist. I don't exist, Adriano. I don't exist and I cannot be with you . . . because there is nobody here to be with you . . . You cannot see me as I am, nor feel the way I feel, or understand the way I feel. Oh! I really cannot take it any more . . . I cannot take this anymore!"

     "Wait a second! Wait a second, here! Where did all this stuff came from? We have been together all these months; we have talked about everything, and never anything like this came out of your mouth! Why are you talking like this? Tell me, Allen! . . . Do you really think that she is making any sense? No! No! Wait! I don't mean it like that! . . . I mean . . . I don't mean that she is not making sense! What I mean is that she is not that lost. We are not lost! Listen Mallory, we can work it out! We can do it! Believe ME! Is just to keep trying! It's gonna be all right! We can still be happy together! Have Blake! Listen, Allen, listen! How come we are saying these things now? And you told me . . . you gave me your guaranty that--if I gave Mallory a chance--things between us had very good chances of working out Okay?"

     This time, Allen responded immediately, in a calm and almost inaudible voice:

     "I am sorry. I made a mistake. Mallory cannot be in this relationship."

     What? You are saying you are sorry? That you are sorry? That you made a mistake? That you are sorry because you made a mistake? Then . . . what am I supposed to do, now? Leave this office again, as when Martial showed up in Mallory's life? Slush through the immaculate snow of the park ... alone again? You received me here to listen to Mallory's proposal; you endorsed it with your presence. I remember the pride you exulted before Mallory's performance. I remember very well! And now, when the first problem appears which is serious enough to make us come here again, you wanna close the door? No way! Don't you remember what I told you when I came here? I'm gonna say it again. I told you: 'I don't believe it is possible to know anybody.' But, now, you say you made a mistake! Allen, don't you see? If you think that you made a mistake when you were so sure that it was possible to know somebody, is it not possible that you were right then, and that you are wrong now? Maybe your mistake is saying that Mallory cannot be in a relationship! Maybe your mistake is having told her that she cannot be in a relatinship!

     Now, Allen was quieter than the Buddha. Without looking at anybody, he said:

     "No, I don't think so."

     "You don't think so? You don't think what? You don't think that you are right now? Or you don't think that you are wrong now? And, what do you mean you don't think? This is a serious matter; you either know what you are talking about or you shut up. To say that you think or don't think is not precise enough when you about to destroy people's possibilities."

     "Adriano, calm down. I am sure I am not mistaken. Mallory cannot be in a relationship."

     "You are sure? You are sure now? How come you did not think you were mistaken when I was here the last time, and now you are so sure you were mistaken? What are you, the Pope? Have you been gifted with Papal infallibility? What a bullshit!!!"

     "I think we must stop this now. This is not therapy; you are too angry. It does not help anybody."

     "Help? Help? I asked you for help and you are slamming your door in our face! Of course this is not therapy! This is real life! I asked a woman to be my wife! A woman asked me here to be her husband, and you come here to get in between with your therapy to call it over!" You have no sense of reality . . . there is a life out of this office!" Mallory, tell him! Tell Allen that we still have a chance! Come with me! Let's leave! Let's leave this place, Mallory, please."

     Mallory kept sobbing, pressing a crumpled-up tissue against her mouth, as if she were containing herself, preventing her mouth from uttering the magic words that could either save everything or destroy everything. Adriano had left the chair many, many words before. He stood quietly, in mid-gesture, as if waiting for something miraculous to happen. Allen was also on his feet, standing next to the door. Then, the image completely froze; only the soundtrack continued rolling on its wheel: Mallory's compulsive sobbing. Slowly, the main reel started moving again. Allen's hand slowly reached for the door-knob, and the waiting-room light and its music filtered in. Absurd: it was the Pastoral Symphony. He left.

     Thanksgiving: Adriano is having the 60.00 Dollars Thanksgiving Special Dinner at Il Violino, Enzo Aretino's restaurant of the Lincoln Center area. Several musicians from some Eastern European orchestra eat, chat in a Slavic sounding language, and laugh.
Adriano listens to the laughter but makes no connections with possible reasons to laugh. Above him, also Pavarotti is smiling from his framed, autographed picture to caro Enzo. Adriano dines alone. Sitting at a table by the window, he looks at deserted Columbus Avenue. He is drowning his lunch in excessive Chianti. While he eats, imagines Mallory: She is alone and lost. Walks the Maui sands and is still sobbing.
     Later on, Adriano walks under the frozen and windy evening, all the way from Lincoln Center to his Central Park Apartment. Words and images keep coming to Adriano's mind, angry words and images that are all for Mallory. When he arrives, he opens another bottle of wine, and sits to write his farewell to Mallory. He would only need to slip it under Mallory's door. In a frantic pace, Adriano writes:

Read Quickly, Beatles Girl!

Beatles Girl,
Archetype of Sanity.
Go pour into your guru’s ear
Your little truths.
Go work overtime on Holidays
To properly overstuff your desk with cash.
Cancel the family reunions
Where I could meet your people,
While I, an Elvis man,
put myself in plastic-money promises and debt
because life runs fast.

If I, too, Overworked,
Overdrunk, Overstoned,
Badly Fed,
Drugged by the chemistry of the system,
to feel Well-butrin
Or just plainly mad--
Have a FIT
and,
Momentarily Challenge, Reject, Renounce
Or in any fashion question you to the end,
Run to HIM; confirm his prejudices,
and reject me again.
Hung up on me (Good Job!).
Use that voice that you have for those moments
In which you tell yourself you are right,
To say adieu, I gotta go,
And choose not to live
Whatever there was there to be lived.
But,
Please, be my guest, attain perfection alone.
Maybe Gary Nulls can help on that too.
(What do you pursue there anyways?
What Do you wa
nt?
More years of life?
Reject everybody?
Since nobody is good or Sane enough for you,
Exception made of the incestuous professional
Who you secretly think
--common fantasy, ask my sister--
SPECIALLY cares about you?).

Is that your secret talent?

Go, Beatles Girl:
Cancel all appointments that include me
To the Tropics,
To Some Semite Household,
To the Household we’ll never build
To the Future,
Family,
Even our unlikely,
never-born descendant.

Save quickly all the papers
In which I prove Who I am,
An Elvis man,
To take them to the very well paid professional
Who fakes income tax and insurance forms,
so you can oblige a little less
of the currency that holds the wood from
The Salvation Army
and he can anyways earn the same.

The only one who really cares very much
About you.

I do not really care.

Ride high
On your Freudian Horse
That you were pretty ready to dismount
A few days ago
In order to save
your incipient
Heart of tenderness
For me.
Go ride, Beatles girl,
I’ll see you on the way down.
You’ll be there soon.

I dare you to take these papers
To The Shrink (The Sphinx?)
So you can show him
How right HE was and how wrong you were,
And he can prove you, he saved you again.
(Can you not take life as it is by yourself?)

I will meet you on your way down
Beatles Girl;
Maybe I will never be able to love,
Maybe, as you said,
I cannot really love anybody,
But,
Can you Do It?
While nights and Days pass by
And you grab your pata-pillow real hard
And roll on your bed?

Embrace it, Little Beatles Girl.
I offered you a life that was real and imperfect,
But you chose solitary perfection.
435 Ivory Tower #2F Thank You!
I go back to my #2A Cave
To SIN again,
To be an Elvis man of the moment,
Living one day at a time,
Boiling my pasta,
fucking my life away ("The horror! The horror!").
I, again, dare you to do analytical skirmishes
With the help of the suddenly reinstated elf;
Take these written sheets
And discuss my disease, please,
With the elf of the divan.
Prove him right, you both need it badly.
Beatles People.
Maybe He will drive security into your head.
(In MY TIME they used to call it brain washing)
He’ll reinforce your decision (his decision)
To drive me away,
The sickest character
In a very sick story
That you and I could not work out
By ourselves.
When it was finally at the moment
(Very close, very near)
To be very right, and s a n e .
I’ll stay by myself,
Doing my crazy stuff,
Thinking of the waves
The mountains
The sounds
Smells
Colors
Places
Emotions,
The Life
And the life to continue us,
That we were about to live,
And create.
But that you
in your sanity
Beatles Girl
Chose to exchange
for a life by yourself.

Go, take care of yourself,
As you said.

Show your shrink you are doing well.

(You know I mean it).