COLD SKIN IN PARIS 1985

January Paris 1985 A top-floor room. A maid's room. Rue D'Uzes. The only window open to winter

January slashed my bare skin. No heat. Mirabelle had stolen all the covers.

My hand reached over the mattress I pulled over the covers over me and rolled closer to blonde mannequin

Her skin cold as Paris' gray dawn

Below freezing and I imagined her dead

Making love to the dead

My penis hardened to steel on her frozen flesh

The aristocratic junkie drew a shallow breath

I parted her legs.

She liked it from behind

"I feel like I crawled from the grave."

Both of us."

We fucked

She moaned at the end like a beautiful corpse regaining its breath.

"You think I look like Nico?"

"Different."

Every schoolboy in the 60s had fallen in love with the Velvet Underground's ice queen.

Pop stars too.

Jim Morrison, Alain Delon, Lou Reed to mention a few.

Mirablle was beautiful, naked, and next to me. Dangerous like a cold fire and I said, "You are my Nico."

"Show me."

I shut my eyes and Nico sang I'LL BE YOUR MIRROR in my skull

I didn't need a mirror with my eyes shut

Mirabelle was Nico was Mirablle was Nico and winter was warm under the sheets with Mirabelle.

Especially since she looked nothing like Nico.