Wildcat and Wolf: a Christmas wail

It's been several days since the last I saw of her was her back when she walked out on the restaurant and on me. Had I been in her shoes, I'd have done the same.
I don't want to "storify" it, but unless I say something about this Christmas past, taliesin's log is dead.
Already the Kid's had two rough days of my dark mood, virtually without explanation. All I've told her is something very similar to what one of my friends told me. At 14, I can hardly expect her to understand, but she says she does.
Here's what he said:
"I never loved her more than when I was writing the letter to tell her it was over. And I still love her!"
It was that particular friend who helped me find the courage to end it face to face, thus becoming surer than ever that we are all multiple personalities.
The man the Wildcat had not wanted to watch tearing himself apart in the morning had by that evening become somebody far more assured, who had understood enough to know exactly what he had to say.

At the adjoining table sat a man, wife and daughter. When the Wildcat had left the restaurant, out into the thin driving rain, the woman turned to me.
"La vie est très dure parfois!" she said.
"Oh my God!" I replied in English. "Don't tell me you understood all that?"
"I'm sorry. I'm bilingual and I just couldn't help listening."
"If I were French," I said, "I might have done it with a little more grace."
"No," she said. "I really don't think so."
Meagre consolation indeed!
But what the waitress said when I asked for the bill hit my darkest sense of humour even when I felt like weeping: "I'm not going to charge you for madame's main dish. She didn't get what she asked for."

The next day at the Canteen, Sam said: "What's the matter with your eyes?"
"What is the matter with my eyes?"
"You look as if you've been crying all morning."
I hadn't. I've never been able to cry, not when it really hurts, but I had to leave the Canteen without dessert or coffee, partly because my appetite's gone and mostly because the radio would insist on playing songs about break-ups.

I still feel as if I'm betraying the Wildcat, just by telling you that yes, she did come Paris for a brief while.
Yet she has been so woven into this "experiment" -- as the greatest source of inspiration for so much that I've written in the past 10 months (even if she only read a fraction of it) -- that without her, it feels almost impossible to go on.

As to why I had to call a halt to what we had, it's one of the world's oldest and most banal stories, which I could only make less so by going into details that I won't ever write here, because that would be the ultimate treachery to a woman I adore.
And even if I didn't love her still, I couldn't do that to anybody.

In essence, this much I can say: guy loves girl, girl doesn't love guy but puts out mixed signals because that's just the way women are, some more than others and the most beautiful ones more than most.
Then when the crunch comes, so does the line about "just good friends".
When she assured me that this was all she'd ever asked me to be, I couldn't bear it.
She's the last woman I'll ever take that from again, because it's happened to me twice already, and the first to whom I've ever finally told the truth ... at least, my truth.
I can't do it. I know that the words I used to tell her this could scarcely have been more hurtful, but I can't reveal what they were, and I know that I'll be certain of them for the rest of my life.

I expect to be blitzed with outraged comments for saying it, but it takes a very perceptive man indeed to understand what a woman wants when she doesn't know herself.
And I've met very few women indeed who do know what they want, while it's a part of almost every woman's nature to be an expert in the art of manipulating men. Some of them just do it more subtly than others.

If ever it came to recounting the full story of what happened last week, the Wildcat would be far better at it than I can ever hope to be.
She's such a gifted writer, if only she would but find the confidence to follow her gut instincts and do what's she really good at, that she would turn this banal little Christmas tale -- if she so desired -- into something fresh and original, with flair and grace.
Several times she asked me, and she hasn't been the only one since I began this 'blog, to turn my hand to a novel again. But I know what I am and at last I know what she is, and of the two of us, she's the novelist.

Now I've written this, perhaps I can start eating again, get some decent sleep, listen to music and read.
Today, I dragged the Kid out into the wide world yonder. Mainly to get myself out and stop staring at the walls.
The Champs Elysées were appallingly crowded, but gift vouchers have been burning a hole in the Kid's pocket since before Christmas. I just loved the row she finally pushed and shoved our way to at Virgin Megastore:
'Trash - Speed - Death' and something else I've already forgotten.
But I'll never forget the Wildcat's face.
Ever.
But not the way it looked when last I wanted to kiss it.