I am charmed. Yesterday, I received that live Neko Case CD in the mail from my friend in France. Actually she is not in France anymore. She left a few days ago to go to Spain, Prague, Amsterdam? I cannot keep other people's schedules. This was her way of describing it:
"I've taught Fabien all that I could about sex, love, pancakes, and rock'n'roll music that I can, under the circumstances, and I need to hit the road. Starting in late April, I have some stupidly complicated vacations planned: Glasgow to Oslo to Bergen to Stockholm to Paris to Vienna to Budapest to Prague to Spain."
It was a nice surprise, so I'll write a short piece about J.
J. moved to France this past fall after having mostly blown off my paltry advances. Smart girl, right there. She has been sleeping on a cot in the high school where she has been teaching English. When she got to France, she put out ads for a bike and a typewriter. No bike showed up, but she soon acquired a 1957 30 lb. typewriter. That's what my letter was written on. An old typewriter. I can see her now, staying up late over her scarred industrial-style desk, in a strange land with French cigarettes and a bottle of wine to herself. J. and her typewriter. Writing to me. Explaining the blowing off. Explaining how people need to go off by themselves sometimes. Like I don't know. She was twenty-three. A writer. And if she reads this somewhere in a Barcelona cafe: I got exactly what I expected; exactly what I bargained for.
