They keep the windows cracked in most rooms so it’s drafty and the radiators don’t seem to work or they’re not on. The Moroccan rug Laurent pulled out of the attic for Lily is musty smelling and so is the sweater I left in the Schranke at mom’s for many months. Rocket drinks out of the toilet.

The painting is a scene from a countryside in Banyuls Laurent found at an auction and thought he recognized. When he posted a picture of it on Facebook a friend sent him a black and white photo from the 50s and said his grandmother owned the house on the far right, the yellow one in the painting. Then Laurent found a painting of the painter’s daughter and hung that by the one with the houses.

Mom explains where the song “Killing me Softly” came from, it’s Roberta Flack singing about what it was like watching Don McLean perform live. I never thought much of the song but imagining someone being so moved by a live performance changes my perspective. Then we listen to “The Day the Music Died” and look up the meaning of that song. All these stories nested inside other ones.

Laurent’s gratin is layered with slivers of butternut squash, slices of goat cheese, lardons, cream, salt and pepper, topped with grated Gruyère. It’s photo-worthy.

The look of Laurent and Nanou’s living room, the tall windows and leather couches, the way the light comes through and the detail on the ceiling is just how I pictured the room in the final chapter of Infinite Jest, the torture scene, so distressing but perfect in how it’s presented, how it leads to the protagonist’s ultimate recovery from his lifelong narcotic addiction (or possibly his demise, it’s unclear at the ending). They are playing Wings in that scene. To think he could write something so detailed and disturbing suggests what kind of psychic pain he was in. It’s not the substance of the scene as much as how moved he was writing it. Like he’s in the scene, it’s so real.

Everything is so perfect and unreal I feel like I’m drunk squeezing into the little bathroom. Have been coming here since 2012, the story of the wads of Deutsch-mark notes Laurent found hidden in the walls when they demoed the basement. All the wine and champagne we’d drink then, often with lunch. Driving back to Besigheim that one Christmas Eve morning when the brakes started going just as we came into mom’s village.

Lunch starts and ends late but who’s checking the time, it’s Sunday. The tires are low on mom’s car but Lily helps me with the machine at the gas station. There’s a black cat with one eye green and the other brown at the château and it settles in for a nap on Lily’s lap. There is no one else at the private bar but Lily and me and the music is like Muzak, but with vocals: soft jazz style covers of modern songs. From Spandau Ballet to Simply Red, Billy Joel.

It’s time I met Lily for a coffee and one last breakfast before we head back down the A8 to Germany. There was no one at the border coming here and hopefully no one going back.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, Travelogues

Tags: Addiction, Infinite Jest