We will be through
And so will you
— Diversion
Claire's apartment was my first stop, when I got back from L.A.
I came because I needed to see how she was getting by, without me.
I was angry at myself for letting her go. I know our deal was for one year, but I could have convinced her to stay. And I should have.
Breaking in was easy. I'm not even good at picking locks and I managed it with ease.
Fine, I hired somebody to do it. Feel better knowing the truth? Come on.
I searched the place. It was filled with everything I bought her. The clothes. The furniture from her room in my house. The books she only pretended to read. They were just for show, to make the marks think she was smart.
"Nothing can bring you peace but yourself," she said, and I cursed the thought, but I was impressed with her for having thought it, until she said it was from a book. Ralph Walter Somethingorother. Of course she got it from a book. She never had an original thought in her entire life.
Had she found peace? Within herself?
The only thing I find within myself is anger. Just thinking about her makes me angry.
I found her diary. I couldn't read it. Except for the parts I did. I caught myself mumbling a few times as I rummaged through it.
I found a poem she wrote a year ago, right after she met that writer guy. She named it "If Oh You Knew."
It said:
I am the girl wanted in bed
I am diversion you would dread
If oh you knew
But when you do
We will be through
And so will you
I am the lust within the loins
I enable gotten coins
My siren song
Our ping to pong
The game is long
I will be gone
Look at that. She fucked up the rhyme. Do you see it? That bit at the end. Girl can't even rhyme.
There is no ping.
There is no pong.
I decide what's right and wrong!!!
That rhymes.
The last line though. Hers, not mine. "I will be gone."
Ouch.
What a bitch!
Is it true though?
Is she gone?
Not til I say so.
I decide that, because the game is long. She said so.
Last time we talked, she said, "Life is the real long game. So, you have to ask yourself, 'What am I doing this for? What do I really want?'"
I want freedom, and freedom isn't cheap.
Freedom is the real long game.
Freedom from want.
Freedom from judgment.
Freedom from those who think they've set themselves free of me.
The freedom to have it all and not feel guilty.
Don't you fucking judge me. You don't know. You couldn't possibly understand. You haven't been there.
But Claire has. Yet she judges ME?
And, really, how much is enough? Claire said, "Enough is when your heart is full."
That girl was full of shit.
Her heart was made of shit.
"I will be gone," she said.
Well, that was it.
That was what I came to see.
She thought she didn't need me anymore. She? Didn't need ME?
I needed to leave.
I couldn't stand the sight of what she'd become.
She'd become ordinary.
She said she wanted less?
She'd become less.
I found her lipstick in a drawer, next to the diary. I put it on. I went into her bathroom and kissed the mirror, right in the middle of the thing. I had to climb up onto her sink to do it.
I needed to make sure she knew I'd been there. To make sure she knew I would always be there.
"I will be gone?"
Never.
Fuck you, Claire.
I made you. I'll always be there.
"Get your fucking words out of my head! I wish you were dead!!!"
She never wanted this?!?
Any of this?
Could've fooled me.
"THAT'S BUTTERSCOTCH, BITCH."
I left twenty bucks on the counter, just like any of the men who'd come before.
Before me.
Before I freed her from all of that.
"I will be gone," she said?
I thought, "I will be gone too, but only because I have somewhere else I need to be." And the hour was getting late.
I slammed the door on my way out.