Talk forty.
Las Vegas, Nevada, 07th March
- I know you didn’t feel like getting up so early in the morning but we had only one day to drive from New Mexico to Nevada. To Las Vegas. It took us a ten-hour drive without stopping.
- We were swapping at the wheel, weren’t we? The ride over the infinity of Arizona and Nevada and their deserts was rather monotonous.
- Before the twilight we were able to watch an achievement of the American technology of the thirties of the twentieth century - the dam and the bridge on the Colorado River[3]. The construction is impressive and very photogenic.
- Once again we stayed at the M6 motel which in Las Vegas[4] looked as if had something more to offer ...
- A flickering neon and the proximity to the main street can attract many customers. The price is different, too. That is, a lot higher.
- Is there anything else you can say about Las Vegas, that we all yet don’t know?
- Yes, there might be one thing: we did not win a fortune, but at the same time we were fortunate not to lose any money because gambling did hook us up. Didn’t you get hook up by the atmosphere in the streets and unimaginable kitsch of the created illusion for huge amounts of money?
- Nothing more, nothing less.
- Wasn’t it a big surprise this morning, when after a quiet and warm night with gambling, laxity, and other misconduct, a sandstorm broke out over Las Vegas?
- I was surprised at the drop in temperature, strong wind, and the clouds of yellow sand that the city got shrouded in.
- Apparently, it meant a change of the season. A dry, hot season was approaching.
- We’re sitting in our hotel and listening whether the wind was going to tear off the roof. In addition, I was getting depressed.
- The depression was not caused by the cash gambled away but due to the weather change.
- A bit tiring was that short visit at the place of your former student and now a teacher at the University of Las Vegas.
- What made you tired?
- Her story of a schizophrenic ex-husband of hers who is poisoning her life.
- So it is in failing marriages when a struggle for adolescent daughter’s custody is in the picture. Their marriage back Poland had not boded any good. I know a lot of the subject, but I don’t feel like talking any more about the tragedy of those people because it does not concern us.
- Fortunately, now she is doing fine. She rents a nice house, has a fancy car and enjoys her work.
- I'd gladly cooperate with her and send to Las Vegas students who are interested in language courses abroad.
- Szczecin is not a good market for such services.
- True. Anyway, I wouldn’t like to live permanently in the city of tinsel, kitsch, bad taste, and exaggeration in all the aspects. In addition, the climate there is terrible. A place truly in the middle of a desert.
- I have nothing more to say about the place!
- Let's talk about us since the weather is keeping us in the hotel.
- I remember that the decision of my "transferring" to Szczecin was made at the beginning of March 2000, in Gorzów, in an Italian restaurant.
- It was a late Polish Mardi Gras Day at the beginning of March. It was raining heavily.
- And you came with Lola.
- To that stylish restaurant. At your special request, we were allowed to come in with my little shi-tzu. Lola as usual was obediently lying under the table, and we were planning major changes on our lives’ roads. For me it was a very important and joyous day.
- From that time on, before I moved to Szczecin for good in June, we’d spent a lot of money on phone calls that were necessary to me, because with every one of them I’d become more and more convinced of my right decision.
- Is there anyone who wouldn’t feel happy receiving regular text messages and e-mails in which there were three important words with the comment: "… and that's all that counts!"
- At the end of March you took me to Wisełka to show a neglected piece of land provided for a summer house.
- I’d purchased it two months before I met you, only as some investment.
- And we decided to build a low-cost house.
- The consequences are ongoing... More about it later on. OK?
- At the end of March you went to a conference in Dublin, and I realized how much I was missing you and how happy I felt waiting for your coming back.
- I remember those welcome roses at the Tegel airport. And your words, "I'm so happy that you're back ..."
- We are getting sentimental.
- Exactly. When all that what had been happening between us, is to be put into words, it sounds not only sentimental but not any original, either. Just normal.
- And we thought that the world would have stopped for a moment out of shock.
- Out of seeing us so special, so happy and so full of joy.
- Somehow our heads didn’t turn with all of that.
- Some may have seen us so.
- Even if they did, they still willingly accepted your invitations to dinners, drinks, and other social events that you didn’t skimp anybody.
- I did my best to keep a group of people around us, so that we didn’t become alone with our mutual happiness, because we could quickly have got too much of it.
- On various occasions it used to be very nice to drive to Warszawa to see Andrzej and Janusz or spend time in Szczecin with Alek, Marcin, Kinga, Tomek called "Uncle" and a few other couples. For me they were a kind a background of all the situations that were happening between us. The truth is that I felt good, easy and stress free only with you around me.
- Did they influence you badly or did they behave badly? Did they ill-treat you or did they look at you with animosity?
- I experienced a little bit of all of that.
- Naively, I didn’t notice anything.
- Because I didn’t see any point in making a cause out of it. I wanted to deal with it myself.
- In early April we kept exchanging e-mails and in one of them you assured me: "I love you, Jacek, and I do not intend to change that."
- I wouldn’t suspect myself to have been so ... emotional.
- Are you ashamed of it now?
- I was only twenty four years old.
- I was a bit older though…
- You had a lot on your mind: a running business, problems with dozens of teachers, a Tax Office and Social Insurance Company’s campaigns against you. Well, and me on to of all of that..
- That's why I wanted you not to go crazy. From my employees I couldn’t expect much support.
- I think that from the time I showed up at the office, you became more indifferent to them. More and more, they would take you only as a guarantee of the employment, or cash.
- Employing friends or becoming friends with the employees bore its fruit. I wanted good for them. Giving jobs to Kinga, Alek, Uncle and Marcin I supported them financially, so that they could study.
- They wouldn’t let me into their group because they were afraid that I would be your eyes and ears.
- Did they have anything to hide?
- I didn’t want to cast any suspicion. I didn’t want even to quote our political classic: "I know something, but I won’t say what."
- There were a few things that I did not like in my staff’s behaviour and I wanted to have a friendly conversation with them about what needed to be changed.
- You didn’t make it on time to do this, did you?
- I didn’t want to do that before our ceremony which was getting ready for the nineteenth of August, 2000.
- Before it happened, you’d left me for two weeks and flew to South America.
- The year before I’d planned that sentimental journey to Chile after re-establishing my contact with Veronica - the daughter of my host at whose place I had been staying long ago in Santiago.
- You already described it in Taming the West.
- Oh dear, I hope I’m not repeating myself. The trip was a total failure because, unfortunately, with Veronica and her family I did not find a common language. They could not offer anything to make my stay in Santiago have any meaning. For my part, I thought I should spend this time with them, so I didn’t take any initiative.
- So, it was boring, wasn’it?
- Enormously. And I was missing you. I somehow survived it thanks to your e-mails. It was Easter, so I decided to fly to Buenos Aires to see Gabriela, my friend who I’d met in New York in 1998.
- You’ve got friends everywhere, haven’t you?
- Do you envy me, tease me again, or ask seriously? If you’re serious, I'll tell you that one of my features is the ability to maintain friendship once bound. I try not to lose valuable contacts with people.
- To take advantage of them later on!
- Mainly sexually! And then dump them! Jokes aside. The balance sheet shows that perhaps I give a little more than I take. But let the others assess it.
- I’m of the same opinion.
- My talks with Gaby, who is a film prop designer, always are vivid and full of life optimism. This was my second stay in Argentina, so most of the time I devoted to being with the friends, rather than running around the city which I’d already known.
- Afterwards. you came back from the cold Chilean autumn to the Polish spring and extremely hot days.
- Almost straight away from the airport we went to Zakopane. None of my coming back from the trips abroad was so looked forward to. And great at the same time.
- It was my first hiking in the Tatra and I really liked it.
- You got a good school right there on the trails in the mountains. During the following trip to the mountains you didn’t drink water from the river stream, which together with the apple pie at the Ornak shelter, had made your stomach upset for two days.
- You see, I’m so delicate by nature.
- I’m leaving it without comment.
[1] Las Vegas Dam
[2] Las Vegas
[3] Las Vegas Dam
[4] Las Vegas
