I just had two days leave. It was the Bastille Day weekend so I should have been pleased that I didn't have to do patrol, but the timing is bad; I just started my new position. My chief insisted I take it. Said I looked tired. Maybe they just wanted time to reconsider my promotion.
I don’t know, maybe I was tired. I slept straight through the night, which is unlike me, so yeah, I suppose I was. It was a heavy sleep filled with tedious dreams. In one, I was trying to get to my new department but kept losing my way over and over. It grinded on endlessly, and I woke up wanting to scream.
So I got in my car and drove.
I don’t know where I was going but I just headed south—through the city, then out of the city, then out of the area. I got on the Autoroute du Soleil and kept on driving. It was like a crazy itch. Get me out! Out of what or where exactly, I don’t know, but I kept on. I drove nearly three hours then somewhere near Beaune, I finally stopped myself. Where was I going anyway?
Back in Paris, my insides quiet again, it's clear now where I was headed: Marseille.
Marseille was the place I ran last time I was at a crossroads. That was a long time ago; I was maybe 25. It was a bad time, much worse than now. There was an ambush on my squad, but I don’t want to talk about that now. The point is, I got three weeks mandatory leave. My mentor, Bruno, arranged a place in Marseille through a friend, said the sea would do me good. I had never seen the sea before; never been out of Paris. I didn’t want to go, in fact. It felt strange, like I was being shunned. The mandatory leave, maybe.
I was miserable at first, but then I met a guy—a tattoo artist named Emile—and everything changed. He was a wild spirit like me and we fell into an immediate friendship. I have happy memories of those weeks, and a tattoo across my back as a permanent memento. It took four straight days for Emile to complete it—that needle digging in over and over. I didn’t mind the pain; it was physical and focused, and I could wrap myself around it, work out the deeper pain in my heart. After the tattoo was finished, I felt myself healed. I was all torn up inside and Emile sewed me back together with that needle.
I don’t know why I’m writing about this now, or why I needed Marseille again after all these years. Do I feel torn up? I don’t know. I don’t feel like myself, that much I know. Maybe I need to feel the needle again. The pain. Just so I know I’m still me. I’m still Luc de la Rue.
