When I come back from fishing, I maybe go into town with Jorge for a beer and a tapa and some groceries to go with the fish if there’s fish, and then it’s time for siesta, and I take a really long one. Five, six hours because at night I only sleep for three or four. Then it’s back to the paseo for beer and tapas with Sandrine and one or both of her brothers or her daughter or all of them or just Sandrine. This is the life for me, son. Maybe for you? I don’t know. Could be. In the desert out here is where they shot all those Spaghetti Westerns, and I know you don’t care for Spaghetti Westerns, but you always liked that band the Clash, right? One of the guys from the Clash who is dead owned a bar here, a few miles away, out in the desert. And I know you like that French writer whose name is impossible to spell, starts with H, has a Q, sounds like Well-a-beck, and he lived around here for years or maybe he still does, I can’t keep it straight. Some armpit! If I want to live here, I should learn Spanish is the thing. I’m looking into that. Into classes. But the thing is I could do it in a way I could never in Paris. Live here. I talked to a real estate agent and it’s complicated because I’m American, but like I said, maybe Sandrine will want to marry me which would make it less complicated, but for now, no rush, I sound like a moony fourteen-year-old, I know, I’m not going to even try to buy anything for at least a few months, just renting an apartment starting next week, a luxury apartment with three bedrooms in Juliette’s building for 450 euros a month, which is five hundred–some bucks, and then, if I want to buy a place what I’m getting at is I could get one a block or less from the beach that is nicer than ours in Wheelatine, just a little bit smaller maybe but nicer, for something like a hundred thousand euros, and I might. All depends on Sandrine, not even so much on will she marry me but will she even want me to keep being here with her the way I want to, which I think that she will but am afraid of counting chickens and proposing so soon. I know you’re busy, and I will not nag you to come here, but I want you to know that I know I probably sound like I’m getting carried away and I know that I might be carried away, but same time I’m telling you that even if I go the opposite tomorrow and decide this place is lousy, you have to come here one day and see it for yourself, there’s nothing like it I’ve ever heard of. No one’s got guns and at night on the paseo at midnight, one in the morning even, you got kids eleven years old walking around together smiling maybe getting some ice cream or flirting with each other and it’s fine with their parents and cops don’t bother them. Last night I saw a couple pushing a stroller at 1 a.m. and it was normal. And same as in Paris, which I don’t know if I said, but same as in Paris everyone reads books like it’s the most normal thing and they hang out with people who aren’t their age and it doesn’t seem weird. They all joke around together. I miss you and am happy and am not completely embarrassed to tell you that my eyes are stinging for one of those reasons or both of those reasons right now. Levin sent Sandrine your book and she really likes it and she’s telling me things about it, about the story in it that I hate to admit it but I guess I never understood because I was too busy being proud of you to think about what I was even really reading, just every page I saw your name at the top and thought, “My son! He made this!” and I couldn’t pay much more attention than that, so I’m gonna read it again when she’s done, and I think I’ll be able to read it right or at least better here in ________, and maybe that’ll help us to be like brothers because that is the thing, son, the thing I keep thinking and the thing that is the reason I wanted to write to you about, that you and me, we’re both too old to keep playing father and son, we have been too old for that for a pretty long time, it’s almost disrespectful, we’re men, and we should be more like brothers, like I imagine it would be to be like brothers, because I always thought I’d make a better brother than a father, and I don’t think I was bad at being your father and I don’t think you think that either, I just think I’d probably be great at being more like your brother, not having to pretend like I knew about the way things really work in the world, and just instead making jokes about how totally fucking weird everything is, and I think you’d be better at it too, not having to think anything I say or do is important because I’m your father and so maybe that means you’re like me or that maybe if it doesn’t mean that it’s not an important distinguishment, because it isn’t, and that’s easier with brothers I think than with fathers and sons, it’s easier not to worry how the other’s coming off and what that means about you, you can just relax.
I think living like this, just having tapas whenever, and walking around and no one has guns, and sleeping through the shittiest part of the day without anyone thinking you’re lazy because none of them pretend that it isn’t the shittiest part, they all know it’s the shittiest part, and the worst can happen is you take a bad turn on a dead-end street and some Gypsies hold you up with a knife they don’t even want to use—they got Gypsies here like in the movies, roving families of them, I didn’t know they were real, I kind of want to be one—and they take your phone or your wallet or maybe even you fight them if they don’t have a knife and you feel like fighting them, but the main thing is the tapas and the walking around and how everyone outside of here thinks you live in an armpit so you, you, I’m saying, Billy, Belt, you and I, we, we could live here for the rest of both of our lives not like kings but like human beings who worry less than kings, who eat and drink and fish and walk and read and write what and when they want—we could do it with a lot less dough than I already have for the rest of our lives and you could teach me how to use these long dashes the way you do, which Sandrine keeps talking about, and your mom said something about once, also, and I didn’t ever really understand the big deal, and then explain to me parataxis because I’m curious about it still, I really am, it sounds like this strategy of simultaneous chumming and line-fishing that Jorge uses, and maybe you’ll like to come fishing with me, with no Rick and Jim, just Jorge and maybe sometimes Sal because he keeps saying he wants to come with and not waking up in time but he probably will soon, and I think you’ll really like him because everyone likes him and he studied philosophy and knows Arabic but still cracks funny dick jokes.
I’m sitting here smiling like a goon a little bit, son, looking at the sea, and there’s an older guy a couple tables away who I think I’m freaking out a little, and what I’m trying to tell you is, I don’t see this guy who’s getting freaked out by me and think, Fuck you, look away, I just think, Shit, I should probably stop freaking that nice man out, he’s just trying to live here, so I’m gonna unsmile my goony smile and pay and leave and mail this letter before I lose the nerve, and then siesta, and then tonight we’ll eat the fish I just caught, me and Sandrine and her brothers, and then we’ll take a walk, just Sandrine and I, and get a beer or ice cream and maybe I’ll ask her to marry me but probably I’ll wait a little because I know it’s fast but I don’t want to wait too long because I like that it’s fast, the fastness is convincing to me and romantic.