Current mood:	morose
Current music:	E Lucevan la Stelle - Tosca - Puccini

Death is not the perfect lie . . .
I'm working on a new story for The Perfect Lie.
Usually, I wait until it's finished to post a snatch up here, but I've hit a bit of an impasse and so thought that I would post a bit of it now, and then another bit when it's finished.
A bit down in the mouth at the moment.
I didn't get the job I was going for, I've made myself feel ill with coffee and cigarettes and my letting agents have decided that I do need a guarantor after all, and with my Dad refusing to do it, there's no one I know that I can ask. No one in full time employment anyway.
I expect I'll muddle through, it's just a little depressing is all.
Anyway, I'm not here to whine, so, well, here's what I have so far, the title is a working one and may well change.

Maria Message received at 3:32PM on Monday 12th February 2001 "It's raining now. I'm sure wherever you are, you can see it. "Such a cold, hard rain. Such a rain that makes the water shiver and ripple with its mere presence. I went to see Tosca last night. I don't know why, it just felt right. Like some distant, diffuse memory of you for me to cling to. "Didn't I tell you that it would be a perfect night? "Oh and what a perfect night it was. So clear and crisp and cold. Cold like drowning. Cold like death. "But today is not so perfect. Today the whole world shivers grey and palled with rain. All these beautiful people keep passing by the apartment on their richly decorated gondolas, sheltering from the rain under plain black umbrellas, dressed and masked so perfectly. Sitting and talking with such elegance, so many loose, expressive gestures in the face of such . . . animosity. I suppose you never realise just how much is conveyed in a flicker of the eyes, a twitch of the lips or a wrinkle of the nose until your face is hidden from all around you. And perhaps you shouldn't notice it. Perhaps you shouldn't know and should go on as you always have. But you don't. Somehow you know. Even subconsciously. So you wave your arms and laugh where you would have smiled, raise your hands to your face where you would have wept. "We were supposed to be going out today and enjoying the carnival, do you remember? "I think I must have meant to go, because I dressed myself in my costume and placed the mask over my face, but after that, I think I must have remembered that you weren't here, that going out without you would leave me hollow and empty, because I never even got to the door. I just walked to the windows in my costume and stood out in the rain, staring down into the canal and thinking of you. "I'm always thinking of you. "And all these beautiful men and women keep drifting past with this same, hazy, Venetian passing of time. Clad richly in their silks and their feathers, hidden so perfectly behind expressionless porcelain masks painted to look so empty and lost. "So beautiful . . . All so very beautiful. "I keep wondering whether you're out there, under all this silvery rain. Masked and costumed and watching me. I'd like to think I'd see you if you were, so I keep standing in the rain and staring. Hoping so much for the chance to make up for the other night. To see you wrapped in silk and china, perfectly painted, and know you as I didn't know you then, and take you in my arms and hold you. Make everything alright again. "Why won't you let me make everything alright again? "I'm cold and wet and shivering and the pain in my stomach cuts me to the core. "I cried last night as I sat in our box at the opera and watched Tosca. You were all I could think of. "I won't ask you to come home, my voice and my mind and my soul are exhausted with asking it. But at least give me a chance to see you, to recognise you, to take you in my arms. "Maria . . . Maria . . . At least give me that."