This is Durban's post:
Something In Her Way.
I thought it then, knew it when she disappeared. This bird I knew when I was in Amalfi. Jennifer. Don't know her last name, didn't think to care. All I remember, her face, something in her stare that bled me. It ripped through me. All I remember, being inside her, watching her shake, feeling her quiver. Those eyes. Those fucking eyes. I was electric. For 2 weeks, we paired. In cars, in alleys, in bedrooms we would never leave. She was electric.
I didn't know anything about the pills we took. I didn't know what had brought me to the Italian coast, but I was driving, fucked out of my mind and she was screaming at me and I couldn't hear a word of it. Nothing was processing. I was winding the coast in an old Alfa Romeo - topless - trying to hit a hundred miles an hour, screaming back I want to die I want to die I want to die. That much I remember. The cliffs were high. I wanted so desperately to miss a turn, drive through the guardrails and fly away with her. I wanted that to be it. I wanted to fucking end it and at every last second, I'd pull away - some guardian guiding my hand, pulling me back to the road. I think she was egging me on. She wanted me to do it. I wanted to do it. Something in the pills, something in them bringing out something in the two of us, something vicious and exquisite and we both knew...everything too much.
We stopped. We had smashed into a cliff. Blood was running through her hairline, running through her dark strands. Two days later, I would learn three of my ribs had cracked. The car was fucked. We fucked. Her blood and my pain, everything so sobering and clear. She told me then she loved me, the first and only time I had ever wanted to hear it in my life. We hitched a lift to Positano, got a room and stayed there, in bed, our hands and bodies twisted as the rain fell against our shutters and I thought that was it, our apologies and the end of me and anything I had ever thought I needed.
When I woke, she was gone. No note. All I had left was the dried blood on her pillow. Fuck her. Fuck her, all I could think - I would kill her if I ever found her again. Those words, those fucking words how dare she let slip. I would kill her. I'd take her back to Amalfi and show her my might, that it could be done, that I could put an end to everything - and be content, being with her...I'd tell her it was all for her - kiss her as we fell until the end found us. I thought of the things I'd say, the things I'd do to touch her again, to have her there again knowing I'd never let go. To tell her I'm never going to let go.
But I never saw her again. I knew I never would.
-- From my friend Romero, a friend of travels...that I received today --
"Durban. I love you man. Know that before everything. I'm sorry. Jenny's dead, found her this morning. It was her. Her. Nothing we could do. Nothing she left. I'm sorry. We all miss you. Come back soon. I'm so sorry."
...
I shot back through my pictures, my records of travel, certain I had something of the two of them. I remembered her. How could I forget. All I found was this, from Pompeii, likely just before Amalfi, fitting...
