She loves fireworks. Eyes wide like a little kid, a beautiful nearly six foot tall 24-year-old woman, jumping up and down and clapping her hands in delight as the fireworks shoot out of the cathedral and over the bay. It's a beautiful night at the end of a beautiful summer. We spend nearly every summer here, in Sitges, a little beach town just outside of Barcelona, but we've never been here for the festival of the city.

*****************************

January, in Milan. She leaves early in the morning for a three day job in Turin, her diary open on the kitchen table, turned back to an entry from her trip to Amsterdam. I sit there having my coffee smoking a cigarette trying to shake the throbbing hangover, my usual morning routine, glance at the diary as I move to push it across the table and out of my way. I know better than to read those things, even when they are left open in plain view, because diaries are where you write your secrets, kept secret for a reason, I've got a lot secrets and nobody's ever gonna know that shit. I don't even want to know my secrets.

I know if I read that page I'm going to find out something I am not supposed to know, something I don't want to know, something that's gonna hurt me because secrets are always wrapped up with pain, yours, mine and everyone else's, but she's left it out there in plain view, open to that page, that page from 5 months ago, like an invitation. Knowledge is power. I love power, and as much as I hate it I live for pain.

She's been fucking Alberto. I'm cold. I don't have any passion.

And I've got three days to stew in it.

She's always wanted a sketchbook, one of those beautiful leather bound sketchbooks, the sort of binding that Florence is famous for. I've never been to Florence. I understand there are some beautiful buildings there, some great museums, I think I'm gonna take a trip to Florence and enjoy some art and buy her a goddamned sketchbook, the nicest fucking sketchbook I can find.

Write an inscription on the first page that tells her I know.

She's 5'11" but she looks so small sitting there in the little wooden chair, holding the sketchbook, head down, sobbing quietly. She looks up and I see in her eyes the same thing I pray that no-one has ever been able to detect in mine: fear, pain and yearning. "Hit me!" she screams, "Just go ahead and hit me! Hit me! I've tried to love you but you're so cold! Hit me!" But I've never hit another human being in my life, the thought scares me and being scared pisses me off so I grab my coat and my cigarettes and take a long walk, across the gypsy bridge to Garibaldi, wind my way through the junkies and hustlers who are desperately trying to drum up some 1 am action on a freezing January weeknight; I'm safe because I'm toxic with rage and nobody no matter how desperate is going to touch me.

The next day. We don't speak. The little apartment is freezing cold. I fuck her hard and rough. She cums hard. I fuck her again. We say nothing. We don't hold each other. I stand up and button my pants. You want a sign, baby? You want a goddamned sign? You want me to say some shit like I love you? It's just a fucking word. It means nothing.

I light a cigarette and open a beer. She goes into the bathroom to clean up.

"Marry me," I shout across the apartment.

"What? I couldn't hear you"

I lean into the bathroom. "Marry me."

"You serious?" A pause. I say nothing. She thinks about it. "Okay."

It's the biggest gesture I can think of, the biggest sign I can give her. It's a purely territorial maneuver.

She calls Alberto. "He knows," she tells him.

I arrange to meet Alberto that same afternoon in a bar. He's my friend. I'd just spent Christmas with him and his family down in Palermo. Sicily is beautiful and they are wonderful people. We sit down at a table together and order beers.

"If I ever see you again I'll kill you," I say. We shake hands. It's a deal. We finish our drinks.

*****************************

It's our first summer back in Sitges. It's been a sullen year and a sullen summer, but it's the festival of the city and she loves fireworks.

We have a little camera we found a year and a half ago on a train, left behind by a pair of German tourists. She grabs it and we head out to the beach for the fireworks, hoping that we can somehow rekindle whatever it was we had that is gone. I suppose it was love. We sit too close to the cathedral and something goes wrong with the fireworks, they are exploding directly above us, the sky is raining flaming debris, and in the stampede to get out from under it she drops the camera.

The camera we found on the train just before we got married, back when things were good; the camera that somehow contains all those precious memories. If we don't find it they will all be gone forever. We dig through the smoldering debris on the beach, our eyes stinging from the smoke and gunpowder; after half an hour she heads back to the apartment but I stay out there for another hour at least, burning my hands digging through ashes until I finally give up on everything-the camera, love, us-and head to a bar to get drunk.