Asphalt by Carl Hancock Rux

Author:Carl Hancock Rux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: SOC035000
Publisher: Atria Books
Published: 2004-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Hippolytus

at Versailles

… There are fools

Who hang close

To their original

Thought …

(I mean I think

I know now

What a poem

is) a

Turning away …

From what

It was

Had moved us …

A madness …

—LEROI JONES, “Betancourt”

She kissed me on both cheeks, she’s happy to receive me. The red car hurls around corners barely missing dogs and their walkers—my luggage, slapping up against my chin at every turn and bump. Mme. Marignac attempts a smile. She and Phillipe’s father are divorced now. Phillipe called. He will be happy to receive me when I arrive in Lyon. First I must see Paris, yes? I am a man now, she says. She beams with joy, laughs at how she still remembers me from when I was a kid. Shy. Quiet. The most beautiful complexion of red dirt after the rains.

The red car pulls up to 20 West Guynemer, Garches, near St. Cloud, just outside of Paris. A little gingerbread house in a little gingerbread town. She jumped about to get my luggage, with the energy of a rabbit on amphetamines, and I thought to myself, as she turned on the lamps in her living room, she’s probably uncomfortable—this man in her ostentatious living room, this man who was a boy the last time she saw him. And now, he’s completely unlike anyone else she’s ever met. Or she thinks I’m completely ordinary, common maybe. Perhaps there is nothing portentous about me at all. Claude Luter plays “Down by the Riverside,” from her record player. Transparent hospitality drizzles over politely seated bodies, fills the lagoon between us in her flowery little living room, decorated with statues of angels, with armor and spade, handmade quilts and dolls. The walls are painted lime green, plastic beads … peach, turquoise, jade and yellow, hanging from the ceiling, two huge front windows, covered in thick black velvet. Seven-day candles on shelves and tables and against the walls, there is a cat. The cat is a fat iridescent blue, stalking about … watching over her master. She curls around her legs, stares at me. Claude Luter and Pavarotti play from the small record player near an arrangement of dried flowers and freshly picked vegetables. The cat is uncomfortable. Phillipe’s mother looks the same. Blond hair parted on the right side, black at the root, cut in a sharp angle just short of her ears. She looks older. She shows me to my room, another small flowery room of green and yellow scattered across pink, French doors that open out onto her vegetable garden.

It’s been some time since you’ve seen Phillipe, yes?

Since high school.

Yes, you had some problem, yes?

…

You mustn’t think badly of it. My husband was very fond of you, Racine. He thought highly of you, we all did. He was very angry—

Yeah …

I am so happy you finally responded to Phillippe’s letter. It was such a long time before you responded, yes?

He sent the letter to … to my foster mother’s address in the Bronx. I’m not living there anymore. I only got the letter recently.

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