The Last Bullet Is for You Read Online Free

eyes. The final evening, before her return home, when everyone else had gone to their rooms to sleep and they sat up to finish off the bottle, the guide grabbed her, put his hand on the back of her neck, and pulled her to his side. His intentions were firm. He kissed her passionately as if his life depended on it. It went on all night long.
    The next day, the group ended up in a bar in Irkutsk to celebrate the adventure with a farewell drink. There, the guide introduced her to a very pretty young woman. In a soft voice, caressing her words and digging deep into her throat for her h’s, she said, “Hhhe’s my hhhusband.” The guide, Igor or Ivan or Boris, grabbed his young beauty, held her tight, and demanded a kiss. Laughing lasciviously, her eyes fastened on the psychologist’s as if she suspected something, the Russian masterpiece asked, “Pochemu ya?” Then she put her blond head on Igor or Ivan or Boris’s shoulder, and he buried his face in her neck and licked and sucked and nipped at that delicious flesh as the psychologist watched, helpless.
    My friend Constantine told me about one of his friends who for years had a complicated and passionate affair full of plot twists, a thriller version of life. The guy practically died of love, so besotted was he, and years later, he still talked about it, still a prisoner of the woman, unable to free himself from her charms. Some sort of Salomé, a Scheherazade who makes love last forever by making it unlivable, with death close at hand, waiting to be encountered, either the death of the lover or the death of love.
    I remember that man, born of Polish parents, with whom I briefly shared the front hallway, the living room sofa, and the dining room table of my third-floor apartment on De Lorimier Street. He’d gotten married very young to a Natasha who ended up leaving him for another man, after ten years of marital bliss, a candlelit ceremony in the Orthodox church, and three children conceived on nights when copious amounts of vodka had been consumed. As we were going at it on the sofa, he told me how he had found her leaning against a wall in the Moscow subway. She was an orphan, given to depression, with a sublime beauty worthy of Tolstoy. He fell in love with her and quickly became her saviour. She became an attentive, patient wife. She opened her arms wide when he returned home, happy she didn’t have to drag him drunk out of a gutter as was the custom in her country. He told me she was an exemplary mother wholly dedicated to her children, when they had some pain or sickness she would hold their bodies close for however long it took, until the hurt subsided. She never complained until, one day, she simply packed her bags. Out the door and gone. After ten years of married boredom, another man had conquered her heart, a handsome doctor who would look after her children. From then on, only one thing would count for her: the love of her life.

The night after you left for Prague, before I decided to end our story, I had a dream. I had been thrown into an arena with a lion. He seemed gentle and charming, nothing savage about him. He rolled onto his side like a cat that wants to get into your good graces. He made you want to stroke his fur, and bury your face in his mane, and look deep into his dark eyes. I came near, slowly, so as not to startle him. I wanted to tame him. He was a magnificent lion, a splendid circus lion, and I was Blandina, the little girl sent into the arena by Marcus Aurelius, and the wild beasts could not touch me.
    I was ready for anything, and now that it’s over, I have to mentally tie my hands and feet to keep from running back to you. Since I can’t get an exorcism or a lobotomy, or an amputation of the heart, I have to work from the outside. Pascal said that the more you pray, the more you believe. The more traces of your presence I wipe away, the less you will live in me. I will light candles, burn incense,