Constantine’s live is a constant repetition: it is either everyday rehearsal before the grand nights, when Samantha comes home and cooks him a meal, he then talks in a little boy’s voice, which is his beautiful flaw, as his woman says, or his life is a routine.
Everything he does is as simple as breathing: he lets the day in, and then, at nights, everything, every fail and miracle, every minute detail of his walk to the university and home, gets out into Samantha’s face. She listens to him very carefully. She says that they are both ok.
Constantine is yet a wonder. When he was a child, he and Samantha would stand in snow, each would hold a finch that they found while playing hide-and-seek, they would count the stars, look at each other and shout as loud as they could: ‘We do not believe in planets, no. We are sorry for that! ’. They believed in a coincidence.
Everyday Constantine swears that he will ignore time, this chronic disease, as he calls it. He wakes up and kills the alarm clock. He stands motionless for a while, he approaches the window as if ready to jump. But no. Eventually, Constantine looks around his room, picks a new alarm clock from a box under his desk and puts the little pretty red apparatus on his nightstand. The dead one is somewhere under the bed. Yes, Constantine’s clocks die, otherwise time would kill them. It’s a chronic disease.
Eventually, Constantine leaves the apartment. He stays there only during holidays and the days when it snows. Then he remembers how Samantha once told him to let the finches go, but he did not do that. He put one of them close to his chest:
‘Here, take another and do the same. Hurry, Sam. ’
‘No, what are you doing? ’
‘Hurry, mine is already getting in. ’
‘You are crazy, Constantine…’
‘No, I am…’
‘… You are constantly doing strange things. I am going home. I will not come here tomorrow. ’
She left and it snowed so heavily that day. The finch, yet, was peacefully sleeping inside Constantine’s chest.
Every night is the same. As a ritual. Samantha is a hunter, an owl, she comes back every night and Constantine says to her:
‘No woman is like you. ’
‘Every No Woman has her own No Man, Constantine. ’
‘Do you believe in planets now? ’
‘I don’t know, Constantine. ’
‘Well, I think about it everyday. The finch…’
‘There is no finch, Constantine. ’
‘There is. I hate your coincidences. ’
‘You hate them because you repeat them everyday. ’
‘There is no repetition then, Sam. ’
Late at night, when they sleep, Samantha wakes up, she puts her ear next to Constantine’s chest. And she cries. She never says if she heard something or not.