Grand Tour of Our Disintegration
BERLIN
We stay in the apartment of a Croatian couple, husband and wife,both in love with our friend M.,a professional flautist, long-fingered and heron-legged. They’vegone to Zagreb to witness a mother’s death.For the duration, my husband and I walk their mutt, Streetboy,in Tempelhof Field.My husband hates Streetboy. Streetboyon our pillows. I forgive Streetboywithout hesitation. I pity Streetboy like I pity anyone entrustedto my care. If I were virtuous,Streetboy’s bladder would have lasted the five flights and threeblocks to Tempelhof.My husband reminisces about when he lived here a decade ago.One winter darkso insistently that on the first day of real spring sun, he wept.Yet he maintains he was happy. He keeps describing happinessas Streetboy lunges for a bicycleand almost dies, which wouldn’t have been my fault, truly,however much it felt like it.All my husband’s happiness lives in the past. And this, the afterlife?Paradise is a club in Mitte where I’ve never danced.The couple returns. They pay us in drugs for our trouble. It turnsout it was the husband’s mother.It turns out Streetboy’s name is Stribor.How apt! I think. When a shared hallucination of a name is a gooddescription of marriage.But it means surprisingly little to set word to action. If you evenmanage it.Like: Once, in Manhattan, we slid dollar-store rings ontoeach other’s fingersas the officiant barked, Look at each other! Don’t you knowwhat you’re doing? Okay, say it.
