Connection, connections, are at the core of this story. “Jean-Claude Villeneuve is a necrophiliac.” An eccentric, an artist, an outsider, a being seemingly ashamed of his body or his entire existence. We meet our narrator at the moment of his death in a Paris nightclub while he pursues the woman of his dreams. Hard drugs and a heart attack snatch him from the world of the living and we get to observe and listen to what sort of afterlife is in store for him. The narrator witnesses the transportation of his corpse from the morgue to Villeneuve’s remote house where it, his body, is used for Villeneuve’s sexual desire, even if tender. And here the story turns or progresses and the narrator becomes the ear for all of Villeneuve’s troubles, memories, and secrets. If allowed a voice from the afterlife might one’s existential loneliness become more bearable or all the more alienating, pulling one deeper into the void.
Collected in The Return, New Directions, 2010
A Personal Anthology 