The Last Bullet Is for You Read Online Free PDF Page A

Milena, she had enormous light-blue eyes and long blond hair, the kind of Slavic beauty you can’t find anywhere else. She lived in Prague in the Mala Strana with her mother and grandmother, like all young people who don’t leave home until they’re married. He lived in Florence in his father’s house. He gave her a mobile phone that was to be used only for their conversations. They soon decided she would leave to be by his side in Italy, she would forswear the ballet and marry him. Her departure date was set.
    The evening before, the company threw a big party for her. Music was played and songs sung to wish her a fond farewell. The young ballerinas choked back their jealousy, but kissed her and wished her happiness. Milena didn’t sleep a wink that night, she dreamed of the man awaiting her in a new country, the green valleys of Tuscany and the bachelor apartment in San Gimignano, the Prada fashion shows, the cocktails they would sip at Canova’s on the Piazza del Popolo before going back to make love at the Hotel de Russie. Very early on the day she was to leave, her mobile phone informed her that a text message had arrived. She glanced at the clock and saw her suitcase by the door. She pushed the button and the message appeared. Her heart froze. “Wedding impossible. Sorry.”
    She immediately called Fabio or Francesco or Massimo, but no one answered. For hours, then days, then weeks, she dialed the number over and over again. For months, she waited for her lover to come to his senses and send word. In the evening, in the kitchen with her mother and grandmother, they agreed that the father’s authority was behind everything, he had thrown a wrench in the works of love. They ripped and sewed the story back together endlessly, evening after evening, wanting to believe that love was still there, untouched, and it was only a matter of time before Prince Charming would return.
    With her tail between her legs, Milena returned to the ballet, hoping to get her spot back. When she presented herself in the rehearsal room, the once-jealous ballerinas were delighted. They embraced her wholeheartedly, but they were chortling inside.
    Years later, the former lover surfaced. The mobile phone had long since disappeared, thrown into the Moldau in a fit of rage. The Italian ended up writing to her. Her mother and grandmother wanted her to answer, maybe it was better to believe in him than not believe at all, maybe there was a lot of money to be gained in the end. But Milena refused. She would have nothing to do with him.
    When I heard that story, I thought of the message I almost sent you one day when I was sick of your hesitations, all your I’ll-come-I-won’t-come-and-live-in-your-country that you repeated like a mantra, when the ups and downs of your moods were beginning to take up too much room in my life. During the months of purgatory that were a foretaste of the hell you would put me through later, I opened a window in my email program and typed these words: “A mandarin was in love with a courtesan. ‘I will be yours,’ she said, ‘once you have spent one hundred nights waiting for me, sitting on a stool in my garden, beneath my window.’ Which is what the mandarin did, until the ninety-ninth night. That night, he got to his feet, slipped his stool under his arm, and walked away.”
    I wrote those words, and read them, and read them again and, lacking in courage, I did not send them.
    Later, when you were living in Montreal, one rainy autumn evening when we were walking down St. Catherine Street on our way to the movies, I told you that story and laughed at my cowardice. In that tone of voice that could have been sincere or mocking, you said, “You should have sent it to me!”
    I looked at you, dumbfounded.
    In the end I figured it wouldn’t have made any difference; you enjoyed that intimate violence enough to keep making me suffer. Your provocation was