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‘It was extremely uncomfortable,’ Richard tells me, ‘George made it weird.’ George is not his real name, but he looks so much like a Turkish George Clooney that everyone calls him that. George says, ‘I was taking care of you, Richard, you were drunk and throwing your money and your passport and cards everywhere.’ ‘Do you know how hard it is to fuck when someone is watching you, George?’ ‘She was going to rob you, Richard.’ There is languor in our voices. A silly pointlessness. It’s afternoon. I leave them and meet Allen, as arranged. We sit on the rocks by the Bosporus. A cat sits next to us. Only a childhood complex could prevent me from petting her. I pet her. We drink and watch the boats, unmoving on a surface of viscous green marble. The muezzin starts his thing and we toast to stillness. It is hard to believe in anything.
I can’t find Richard, but George is here because George works here. He brings me a beer. I look at the street. A potted tulip. A bar sign. I think about the Sultan who spent too much time with his harem, who thought and did nothing else and went insane from overuse. Underneath, alive and dead are yes and no. The convulsive incoherence of insanity is something else. From car horns and what I take for, ‘You too, buddy!’ in Turkish, we gather silence. Not silence as a lack, but silence as a note that is played by doing nothing. By looking at a street. The same potted tulip. A crouching street cat. The last breath of light, ravenous.
Drinking makes my sleep apnea worse. I wake to someone tapping me on the head at 9 in the morning. ‘Do you know that you snore?’ I say, ‘Yes, I know.’ ‘How many more nights will there be of this?’ ‘One more.’ You can sometimes deescalate an argument by saying, ‘It really sounds like you know what you’re talking about.’ I don’t think that will work in this case. I used to think a lot of people died in their sleep, but actually it’s less than 10%. Yet another distraction from happiness. He leaves. I google the word for ‘to snore’ (roncar) at breakfast and write it on my hand. E says she ate one of the giant ants they sell in baskets near the cable car. ‘Oh, I saw those. What did it taste like?’ ‘Like an ant.’
