Sometimes I like to imagine Hemingway in Paris, sitting in some cafe near the Seine, sipping a coffee or something stronger, putting pencil to paper, licking the tip of that pencil for whatever reason writers lick pencils before writing, licking it again because he’s not ready to write (inspiration has not arrived), checking his pockets for matches, finding nothing but change, which means he’s lost the matches somewhere (probably in the hotel since he last used them–the hotel where he left some woman he’d met the night before in a bar, a woman who told him he reminded her of an uncle she’d lost in the war, and he’d said, “Which war?” And she said back, “Does it matter?” But he’d anticipated her response as if it were a cliche among single French women trolling the Paris bars, which is why he had a retort for her comeback and said, “It does matter. I might have killed him.” Zing! And this, of course, turned her on, which led her back to the hotel with him where they did things he felt guilty about later, strange things like tying his right foot to his left hand then trying to fuck like that–perverse, sacrilegious things like peeing on a Bible), and so he has to get more matches, though he doesn’t want to go back to the hotel.
Mostly because the Bible is still there and no doubt reeking of pee. I imagine he regrets it all-especially the dig about killing her uncle.
That’s just cruel.
