Yasmina Reza

Who knows what murky, and perhaps long-ago, confluence of circumstances governed the business?

My anxiety attacks had exhausted me and the party loomed like a punishment.

that look of delight entirely gone now, the way he probably was just before I turned up.

every time, that smile when he would catch sight of me, the yellowed teeth and their overbite, dazzling in its way.

I felt finished, out of the game, fit for putting together little suburban parties with family and ultra-conventional folks.

o, Elisabeth, go on back to your place my dear Elisabeth, I’m crazy, you should leave here,

I felt insanely sad for him, huddled like that, his hair a mess,

On the other side of the parking lot the building was entirely dark.

As I had hurled myself far away, so far, from my parents. It’s not the big betrayals but the repeated tiny losses that make for the melancholy.

He had left me all alone. Unsupervised.