Just Us

As she lay dying it came to her that she had to write a letter. Her friend suggested they do it together; the letter would be better that way; their collaboration would be the work of their joined spirits–a third person who would write a better letter. She looked at him, quizzically, and then submitted to the experience. The letter was better. That was his dream, always, to make this third person with someone, someone who was greater than either individual. Sometimes, looking at programs about David Bowie, say, and the years he spent touring with Iggy Pop, or living with him in Berlin, making music, he would remember that feeling–of creating the third person who wrote better than either individual. At night he would close his eyes against the break up part of that experience, the memory of it, because he wanted to see that third person, always, as whole and pure. Before the flowers of friendship faded friendship faded. And then it came back.