All’s well that ends well? When all of life ends in…death? Do I throw out a lifetime of memories because of all that ended not at all well?
Finally, just maybe, I get it. The key to the correct perspective is to recognize the dichotomy between the permanence of memories and the transience of the events being remembered. And to compartmentalize. So what if the greatest lover you ever had turned out to be…
“Look, I only killed a man once.”
Young and dumb, I waited to hear the rest.
“I was never that much a part of it, just peripheral. Used to paint pictures of the old dons in their dignity, with that bright, warm Italian sun still in their eyes. But they used me as a runner. They’d handcuff a briefcase of money to my wrist and put me on a plane somewhere. Once in Boston someone from a competing family got me in an empty hangar. At gunpoint he told me to turn around. I could see it in his eyes: he just didn’t want to have to look at my face when he killed me. I turned around slow at first, to give myself time to get my own gun out, and then lightning fast turned back around and shot him first. I felt bad for him and held him as he died. He couldn’t talk, but I read his last thought in his eyes, clear as day: ‘Why the fuck didn’t I remember to frisk you?’”
My legendary lover was looking intently into my eyes. His quick smile as he grabbed me again told me he could also see that I could live with that.
Only L.A. could have provided the insanity of the bikers’ haven where we lived. Attempting to counter things like the coffin in the living room…supposedly containing a drug overdose…my lover brought home a tabby cat who purred up a storm. But, not surprisingly in that place, it soon got horribly infected with fleas. I got a flea bath for it that came with some serious warnings about use, but my lover was sure they could be ignored.
He was wrong.
He was the one who found the cat dead and immediately produced something I had no idea he possessed, a gun, and turned it toward his own head. I suddenly saw through all his glib explanations of why he’d previously been incarcerated in a nut house. What followed was an incredibly ugly end of a relationship, including his turning the gun on me.
But I can still remember his lovemaking…
