“The only revenge left for you then will be to steal from life the pleasure of firm and passionate flesh—a pleasure that evaporates faster than good intentions and is the nearest thing to heaven you will find in this stinking world where everything decays, begining with beauty and ending with memory.”
I read those words and felt a searing rush of blood creep up my face. Her words, spoken solemnly and appropriately, echoed to me from a time I had forgotten but of which I was continually reminded. As I sat on a park bench facing the cobblestone rat trails of Rittenhouse Square, the memory resurfaced as sharply as a red-hot poker. Oh, how many more were there? Beginning here, I thought, beginning today, I would find them all and piece together the life that was taken from me. I only hoped that when at last I unraveled the mystery of my self and stood before her again, I would be able to resist her power and to exact my revenge.
These were her taunts, her vindictive jabs at what little remianed of me, hidden today in the type of a book I had been anonymously given just moments before. A young boy came up to me as I sat contemplating two fidgety pigeons that landed on the stone statue of a lion. I had been waiting for the clouds overhead to once more combine into the kind of cover I would need to continue under. He was dressed in a little black suit with short pants, black knee-length socks and shiny black shoes. He had dark hair and even darker eyes. Impossibly black eyes piercing out at me from behind alabaster skin and excpetionally long eyelashes. “Here,” he had said meekly, “this is for you.” Then he turned and skipped away as though the sun were shining under his airborne feet.
She knew I would read the book. She knew I would find those words and they would provoke the one memory she wanted me to remember, just as she had done so many times before. The time before this it was a poster at the bus stop: a pretty girl with long blonde hair, a short skirt and a bright umbrella dodging a puddle in high heels while two smiling and jocular young men watched on from around the corner of a building. I forget what the ad was for, the shoes I think, but there she was. Taunting me. “No, you're never gonna get it!” Song lyrics from nowhere. I remembered nothing of the song except that one little snatch of chorus. Clues, still they were clues. I followed the clues.
But today came the book. Her first mistake. Now I had it in writing. Now I could remember the sound of her voice as it bored deeply into my psyche. I would never forget it again. I had her voice right there on the page and if I kept my patience and just followed the clues, I would soon see her face and exact my revenge.
I closed the book with a thump and a grin of glee. Yes, today was going to be a very good day. The rest of my life began today, the life that had ended such a very long time ago at the hands of a mercilessly cruel woman. I looked up to the sky and and saw the darkening clouds begin to gather. I had my red umbrella at the ready. I smiled and waited for the next one to come by.