But if you want to stay alive that’s the way it has to be, I said as seriously and as flatly as I could.”
Without fully understanding me, I saw her nod affirmatively. I thought I heard some sort of echo of my laughter, so I stopped and listened carefully. I rushed towards her and took her in my arms watching in amazement as her eyelids fluttered slightly then her grass-green eyes beneath her looked at me questioningly:
“What’s going on, Pierre?” And I quickly put my hand over her mouth then, I helped her to undress her heavy suit: on her gorgeous body she didn’t have a single bruise. I was in a tub with pink suds and gold handles in the middle of an apocalyptic landscape: pieces of the shuttle scattered all over the red rocks, Pauline dead, and me a prisoner of absurd hallucinations.
