About Collin Kelley

Collin Kelley is the author of the novel Conquering Venus and the poetry collections After the Poison, Slow To Burn and Better To Travel. He is a multiple Pushcart Prize nominee and a recipient of the 2007 Georgia Author of the Year/Taran Memorial Award. His poetry, essays and interviews have appeared in magazines, journals and anthologies around the world. He lives in Atlanta, GA.

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2012 Townsend Prize for Fiction Finalist!

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Remain in Light  by Collin Kelley

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Remain in Light by Collin Kelley

Remain in Light

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Remain in Light by Collin Kelley

EXCERPT


Thus it is that certain persons always reappear in one’s life to herald
one’s pleasures or one’s griefs.  – Marcel Proust, Time Regained

It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.
– The White Queen, Through the Looking-Glass


January, 1997

David,

I know you’re never coming back to Paris. It’s been more than a year since I left the key to my apartment so you could find the poems I wrote for you and the statue of Venus de Milo. I don’t know if you ever went there. You may not even receive this letter. Maybe your father will intercept it and throw it in the garbage.

 I am living with Irène, editing manuscripts for a publishing house and trying to move on with my life. Irène is my best friend, sister and second mother all rolled into one. You only got to spend a little time with her, and that’s a shame. She gives me unconditional love and support, has given me a home. She would have done the same for you.

I’ve been dating a guy who runs a bookstore on the Left Bank. He’s nice and wants to take our relationship to the next level, but I still think about you. I keep hoping you’re going to show up here on rue Rampon and we can pick up where we left off. Remember how happy we were those last days in Paris – walking along the Seine, making love, planning our future?

If you didn’t love me, that was one thing, but to deny who you are because your father threatened to cut you off is crazy. You’re an adult, and to let someone else dictate your happiness makes no sense to me. But you’ve made your decision and I have to live with that.

I told you once that I believe nothing is random. There is chaos all around us, but if you pay attention, listen closely, patterns begin to emerge. I call it synchronicity, but others call it fate, or destiny or divine intervention. I believe we were fated to meet, but perhaps we weren’t meant to be together.

I guess I’m writing this letter as a form of closure, whether you read it or not. I just needed to put the words down. I want to be happy, so I’m saying goodbye to you.

Martin

P.S. I still have a scar on my forehead from the bomb.



Prologue: Time Ticks

Hands in motion. Fingers fly over letters and numbers, type out a message, a brief history of self, of time, of need and directionless desire. The screen bathes those hands in bruised light, flickers on a face in the darkness. A face grown two years older, forehead scarred by a bomb blast often hidden by blonde bangs and more tiny lines around the eyes behind glasses. There is an unmistakable tattoo on the left hand between the thumb and index finger: two interlocking crosses, equal but opposite.

Here is how the monster is kept at bay: he surfs through pornography, lurid images and chatrooms, searches for the lowest common denominator. There’s a picture of a beautiful young boy, only eighteen, on one side of the screen and an open dialogue box on the other. 17 Rue Ferrandi, the boy types. I am Thierry. What is your name?

He types back: Martin.

He leaves the apartment on rue Rampon silently, makes sure not to wake his roommate. But she is awake. She hears the almost imperceptible click as the laptop switches off; his feet pad down the hardwood floor of the hallway. Then there’s the other click, the one that makes her mouth go dry with dread and disappointment. It’s the sound as the door softly opens and closes, a maneuver only she hears. Even the cat at the foot of her bed, with preternatural senses, sleeps through his leaving. These late night disappearances happen at least twice a week, and they’ve been going on for months. Every time he leaves, it’s still a surprise, as if it’s happening for the first time. She gets out of bed and opens the doors to the balcony.

It is late summer, the tourists have gone home, the city is quiet, but there is expectancy in the air, something or someone she cannot name. She feels it as intensely as when Martin Paige’s arrival was imminent just two short years ago. It is early morning; Venus is visible overhead. It rivals the moon for the sky. Irène Laureux leans on the balcony, the tattoo on her pale left hand in sharp relief against the metal railing even in the weak light. Equal but opposite – the same ink she shares with Martin. Irène looks up, summons the inevitable with words that have served her well in the past: Paris, Paris, Paris.

Conquering Venus  by Collin Kelley

In the summer of 1995, young American writer Martin Paige agrees to chaperone a group of high school seniors on their graduation trip to Paris as a favor to his best friend, teacher Diane Jacobs. Diane hopes Europe will act as a catalyst to lift Martin from his grief following the suicide of his lover, Peter. But the trip proves to be more than either of them bargained for. Martin finds himself falling in love with one of her students, David McLaren, who is unprepared to cope with his burgeoning sexuality. He also meets a mysterious Parisian woman, Irène Laureaux, who is debilitated by agoraphobia and spends her days spying on the hotel guests across from her apartment. Martin and Irène discover they have a logic-defying connection: a small tribal tattoo on their left hands that means “equal but opposite.” This is same tattoo that Martin’s lover and Irène’s husband had inked into their skin.

All the characters lives are irrevocably changed in a horrifying terrorist attack on a Paris metro station. Liberated by the blast, forced from her own self-imprisonment, Irène learns her husband’s death was not an accident, and dares Martin to acknowledge the role he played in Peter’s suicide. Diane, harboring her own secrets and a hidden agenda, takes a drastic step to force David out of the closet and admit his feelings for Martin.

From America to England to France, the globe-hopping story places fictional characters amidst historical events such as the Nazi occupation of Paris, the student/worker riots of 1968 and the terrorist bombings of Paris in 1995. Grounded in reality, Conquering Venus is a mystery, a love story and a journey of self-realization.

Conquering Venus

Video Trailer 

Special thanks to:

Video Producer/Editor: Tim O'Donnell
Music: "Heart of Wax" by Vanessa Daou, from the album Joe Sent Me.

Used by permission of Daou Records. http://www.vanessadaou.com

Conquering Venus