Hope Makes Love by Trevor Cole

Author:Trevor Cole
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Cormorant Books
Published: 2015-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Monday, April 27

THERE IS NOTHING LEFT of Adnan’s tarts. Even the foil that protected them has disintegrated. Each night I take the package from the refrigerator and peel it open, and another aluminum fragment tears away like sunburned skin. Inside, only shards of pastry and dried filling remain. I pluck away the infections of mould, break off the pieces that can’t be saved, gather what’s left. I scoop it up and press it together, hoping the warmth of my palms will knit this atomizing flesh, this unravelling memory. When I bring it to my nose now, it smells more of me than of him. He is apple and fig, tomato and onion, butter and flour, and he is dying in my hands.

THIS IS WHAT I BECOME now at two in the morning. It’s a fairly new development, and as I look at this page, while sunlight at the window defines the edge of a new day, it’s all I can do not to rip it out. Instead I leave it, and mark it. This Hope cannot be trusted. I will not leave important decisions to her.

Yesterday before lunch, Zep and I discussed in detail what he was to do before and during his next meeting with Emily. At the end he insisted he was clear on his instructions. He took notes, in fact, which he promised to study and memorize. I didn’t follow up to remind him to do this, because he tends to bristle at what he calls “too much minding,” and he made no contact with me for the rest of the day.

I spent the afternoon gathering supplies and making preparations. Buffalo may not be a large city, but because several sports franchises make their home here I knew that even on a Sunday it wouldn’t be difficult to find what I needed. By four o’clock I had passed a few twenty-dollar bills across two store counters and received small stapled bags in return.

Later at the hotel I called room service and ordered dinner, including what must have seemed a surprising amount of dessert for someone my size. The attendant on the other end of the line hesitated.

“Sorry, how many people in the room?”

“It’s just me.”

“So, one slice Boston cream pie.”

“No, I said three.”

“Three Boston cream pie for you.”

“Yes.”

He seemed unconvinced.

“I really like it,” I added.

He chuckled, in a troubled sort of way, and declined further comment on the matter of the pie.

“So, you don’t want the fresh strawberries.”

“Yes, I want those as well. With whipped cream. And three chocolate croissants.”

“Croissants. From the breakfast menu?”

“Yes.”

“Three croissants also.”

I asked if he had a small cardboard cake box that he could send up with dinner and I asked for an extra bowl.

“A bowl of what, ma’am?”

“Just an empty bowl.”

After dinner, I knelt at the side of the bed, spread a white towel across its surface and assembled my materials. I scooped the Boston cream out of the slices of pie and mixed this with small, measured amounts from my stapled bags.

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