Uncontrollably Torn

I knew he was gone before I rose from the bed. I pulled out bureau drawers and opened the closet, only to see what belonged to me, nothing that belonged to Val. I took up my robe and wrapped it around my shoulders and tied off the sash. I padded out to the study. There, on the top of the desk was the damning document. I looked down at the top sheet, and saw my own handwriting.

And then back down to the square in the twilight after dinner with those fairy lights in the olive trees around the fringe of the stone café terrace, and, in that soft light and twittering laughter of the Mediterranean men and wisps of strong Turkish tobacco drifting up, eyeing and being eyed until I got the certain look from one I fancied and took him back up to the villa and let him fuck me in long, slow, sweeping strokes on the terrace under the stars.

I was sure I had not left that out on the desk for Val to see.

I moved into the studio, hoping that I was wrong, that I would find him there, happily painting on our portrait. But, of course I wasn’t wrong. The only evidence of Val still there was the painting. I went over and stood in front of it. It took me several moments to really see it, to realize what he had done to it. The painting was finished now, but it no longer was a painting of Val and me at the table, saluting each other with raised glasses of wine. Where his figure had been was now, once again, a lushly painted trellis with a fruit-heavy grapevine winding up it. Val had evaporated. I knew then that Val irrevocably was lost to me. I sat alone at the table in the painting now. Had I really looked so sad in that painting all along?