I've only ever known Axel as old. We met twenty five years ago when he was turning fifty. Like many men that age, he was improving. I never knew the angry young Axel. The man who spent his youth buying and selling homosexual nightspots in Berlin, Poland, Hungary, in fact the entire gay culture of Eastern Europe was at the mercy of his love affairs, his angry whims. I never knew any of that. But as he grew into middle age, Axel no longer fought his own existence, or that of his parents. His mission to squander his entire inheritance was far too grandiose. He was simply too, too rich. It couldn't be done. As this penny began to drop Axel began buying art. But not just any old art. Before his middle fifties Axel had amassed the greatest collection of erotica in the world. What is this..? I seemed to be paraphrasing my own book about him, Axel. A woman- stunning- short dark hair and the blackest of eyes was smiling at the ground as she walked past the table. In the fractional second- had I caught her eye? Undoubtedly, French women have the fastest eyes in the world. I imagined myself in her thoughts.Salut! Axel was beaming.

Keen reader, you will remember the day my book was heralded as the greatest feminist text of the Century? It was before I'd written a word.Yet, do our beginnings ever know our ends? Over the several months of writing,  the book slowly evolved, like a fish, or an unlovely insect, into what it's commissioner surely intended all along, a biography of himself. I remember saying I was exasperated by this turn of events, and insisted on re-writing it in the first person, but this was just a puff of anger. I can't say I was overly concerned. While I've had my moments with feminism, it was never my mission to advance the cause. No, Axel wanted me to write a book and, in plain sight, he'd bribed me.  Now when I am dead, I'll claim the accolade of having provided therapy for hundreds of unknown clients as well as having ghostwritten the autobiography of my friend, Axel von Raffenstein. Axel, himself a ghost.

I stopped walking, my mind peeling away, trying to appraise itself. I smiled, or imagined doing so. That was...a good thought...about the ghost. I continued walking.

I was walking the river path of the Vialonde into the village of Sauve. I was in Europe, in France. Like skimming stones into water, these thoughts never lasted. They bounced once, twice, and plummeted who knows where. Who knows where? I always seem to have my best ones as I'm about meet friends, colleagues, clients. As if my mind only functions when its' peace is about to be...devastated. And it was at this moment, feeling like a born Frenchman, I raised my head and saw Axel sitting in the restaurant garden, holding his elephant ivory stick. He was watching the waiter with the intent, or deliberation, of a an old, old man.

Axel!

I picked up a stone and swiveled round, as if to skim it back along the current of the river but instead, turned toward Axel and, smiling, slipped the stone into my pocket. It felt good. A few more moments like that might suffice. They could save a life. 

Salut!

He lifted a finger, along with his head, towards me. I loped over to his table, gently lifting his hand,  his elbow and slowly his whole body into a welcoming hug. I had written the life of this homosexual billionaire. I felt I was owed the chance to know what his body and bones felt like. Surely there was some truth in his physical presence? I clasped his shoulder and hit his back three times. His chin juddered on my shoulder.

It's my third night alone, and even the moon is full.  This Southern sun has warmed the skin, but my English bones are cold as rain. Rain and mud, and rain and horseshit. And yet, buttering my croissant this morning, I took a call from Axel. He would prefer to meet for lunch tomorrow in Sauve. Like an orphaned son I asked, will we be alone? I have no desire to be hauled into a glittering train of Teeth, accomplishment, and unacknowledged nepotism. But why even ask? God, I should grab my own balls. Firm up a bit. This could be a disaster.

To Montpellier.

I arrived and immediately felt oppressed by a warmth, a relaxed conviviality that neither my body nor mind could match, or even aspire to. A pipe of O, or even time itself would've  once eased me down into the rhythm, but I've forsworn them both. Still, there are other ways, and I'll come back to that.

Inevitably, Axel left a car for me at the airport. In a small gesture of self preservation, I made a point of not checking out the make or model of the vehicle. Suffice to say, the interior was so immaculate that I purred along the road to Nimes as if in slow motion. But it was this mammarian comfort that allowed my mind to wander and to consider why it was so necessary for me to be at Axel's incessant beck and call. Certainly, he'd published my book last month in Hamburg. But why had he decided to have the launch party in the South of France? He had muttered something in his native German, implying that there were geo-political reasons for the change of venue, reasons with which I need not concern myself.   At this point I sighed down the phone, loudly, because almost certainly we are in France for the convenience of the Boat Party. Yet he seems to want me on a very tight leash at the moment. He even suggested that I stay at the medieval chateaux of Robert, his American friend. I declined, politely, because, dear reader, I have every intention of being on my very worst behaviour.

Who wants truth? I mean, really. Truth is the sickly cousin of life. Frankly, who wants to visit him? In fact, who doesn't long for the day when he can finally scream at his mother, scream so loudly that he is nearly bawling  his own house down, screaming that he has always hated seeing cousin Truth. In fact, he hates everything about him, him and his funny, retarded ways which are just not normal. Him, him and his jabbering lip, his funny elbow. Ah, but don't take my word for it. I barely had a mother, and certainly no cousins. Even as a teenager I found the truth a bore. But I can tell you one thing about it, the truth is not the reason you're here....Is it, cousin? You see, cousin, what I think has happened is this. The old family gene pool has come round to my way of seeing things. They're just not into you and the Truth anymore. All that hankering for you and your deep ponds has gone. Oh trust me, it has. We're dancing in the shallows, old cousin, and it's never been such fun. Come on, come dip your toe. And so it was, with the stoned clarity of these insane thoughts matching my stride, that I put the key in the door. It was early, it was Monday morning. Passing along the hallway, I wondered if Gareth were in the kitchen, stirring his coffee. At the sound of my tread, did he still his spoon? Further down the hallway I could hear Helen's voice. There can be no change without loss...And so it was, with the strong, solid banality of that phrase in my ears, I was able to ascend the stairs to my room and begin another day on this, the earth.