helene came over.
she brought half a bottle of white wallaroo trail wine. i cooked her perogies with basil and set them up in a circle with a dot in the middle. she tried on my winter coat and it fit her like a glove; i put on my red dress with no goal in mind. the white wallaroo trail wine came and went. i sent a message which lay in limbo, unacknowledged. she did the same. i poured her leftover huntley vineyard wine which i hadn’t yet added to the row of empty bottles on the counter. we concluded that wallaroo trails are better than monkey trails because wallaroos are considerably nicer than monkeys. we layered up and walked to the dépanneur across the 51 stop. we bought dessert—chocolate cookies, an oh henry candy bar and another bottle of wallaroo trail wine. we ate the chocolate. we drank the wine.
i burnt three sticks of incense that night (one amber, two fantasies), with a side of tobacco and carbon monoxide.
we forgot that the purpose of our meeting was for us to go shoot a video with paul until paul called us to remind us that it was over; only we didn’t really forget, we chose to forget.
i dropped gala’s resting soil all over the kitchen counter and in my study. (i cleaned it up.)
zsa zsa pouchkine knocked over helene’s glass and it shattered into a million pieces. (i cleaned that up too.)
we talked about you and you and you and you and mostly how you and you affect me and affect her and affect us. we commemorated you.
at the end of the night, helene said: “remember when we went to the dépanneur?”
and i did, i remembered—i smiled at how long ago it had been.