Bret Easton Ellis and the Other Dogs

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‘It was Friday two weeks ago,’ Valentino told me on one of the days he drove me to school. ‘Alba Cambó and I met up at ten that morning and went for a spin in the car. They were playing Vivaldi on the radio. I had pushed the top back and it was a lovely day, the kind of day when the air smells of figs, salt water and sweet exhaust fumes. Alba was sitting in the same place you are now, her head against the neck-rest, looking up at the roofs as we drove through the streets and avenues. I recognised the music they were playing on the radio and hummed along to it while driving. I could never make love to Vivaldi, Alba said at that point. Vivaldi’s beautiful, don’t you think, I said. That’s why, she said. Imagine making love to the Gloria. Only saints can do that, and saints aren’t supposed to make love. Saints should be saintly. I thought about what it would be like to make love to Vivaldi. Maybe she was right. Maybe it wasn’t for people like us to make love to Vivaldi. It’s the sort of thing some people are able to do while others can’t. In any case it didn’t matter in the slightest at that moment. I had no intention of asking her to make love to Vivaldi. I was planning to ask her something else entirely. I was wondering how I should put it. I wanted to say something really big, something really important, only no matter how I tried to word it, it sounded banal. Since the first time I saw you. On the beach in San Remo. It sounded banal. San Remo sounded banal. It is a banal town, but that was where we met. Ever since I met you, Alba, it’s as though a bird has lodged itself in my heart and built a nest. It’s the bird of love. It’s you. That sounded banal as well, only then it struck me that the banal is sometimes what’s most true.

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