Chateaubriand

My friend Leonore and I meet every Thursday evening to go for walks or to eat sushi or to drink sweet cocktails with silly Spanish names. She lives a couple of streets away from me, with her daughter Irma (7 years old), a pet rabbit named Tommy, and a female parakeet whose name I don't remember. Leonore used to be a journalist, but now she does stuff like ghostwriting celebrity vegan cookbooks. She's a very clever and sensitive person. Her health is fragile, and she can be slightly flaky, in a New Age sort of way. She strikes me as vulnerable, but also as quite willful and strong. She has prematurely grey hair and likes to go for weeklong trecks in the countryside. She cooks things with quinoa. Her aristocratic French grandmother was once the mistress of a Russian prince.

I like to tell her stories.

About my illiterate students. About old girlfriends. About how one day in the Spring of 1945, my grandfather just walked out of his prison stockade in Vienna, when he noticed all the guards had fled as the Red Army's mortars thundered in the distance. About not fitting in. About how the gnostics believed in a secret and distant God. About how Chateaubriand, despite being a slightly ridiculous self-important reactionary poser really was the greatest French stylist. About how my friend Emily once married a billionaire but then divorced him because she got bored.

Leonore used to read novels and watch movies and things, but now she finds she's too high-strung. She says she feels bad for the characters. They make her anxious. So instead, to pass the time, she listens to music and assembles elaborate puzzles. Then, when she's done, she always glues the thousands of little pieces together. This way, the beautiful picture that emerges never has to fall apart again.

Sometimes, we discuss our favorite kinds of dogs. I like pugs. She does not. We argue about politics. She tells me about growing up in Cameroon, about her family in Wales, about her illness, about wanting to open a vegan cooking school with its own organic vegetable garden in the French countryside. She muses that maybe there could be a couple of horses, you know, for rides... And also a falconnery. Because falcons are cool. I remark that the neighboring farmers might not take kindly to birds of prey circling over their chicken coops and rabbit warrens. She explains that there is a file about her with the word "hypermnesia" in it.

The other night, after a discussion about the benefits of Chinese medicine, I facetiously recited the "sound and fury" monologue from Macbeth over enchiladas at a Mexican restaurant on Wellington, because the candle at our table had gone out.

How lucky to have found a new friend!