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After The Eliza Battle, I went to Berlin to recuperate, to nurse my pride I had been there many times at that point, since first visiting in 2005 when I was part of a group show, and it had become my place for retreat when LA started to feel monstrous, as it regularly did; I’d been part of several group shows over the years and then there was a major museum biennial thing in 2011; there were meetings with curators arranged for the months of December and January; and I was also supposed to see a few gallerists who wanted to represent me, had been inviting me for months, more fervently after news of this last show; I had friends I could stay with, and sublets of people out of town, the Berlin way, a city of transience, expatriates, refugees, and nomads, but I rented a flat for myself, in a different part of town than most of the people I knew; and in the cab from the airport, I started to fall asleep, head nudging the window, I hadn’t slept on the flight, it was nearing 4 pm Berlin time, the sky was steely; and I was able to make out the brown buildings with their box balconies, the typography of the street signs, the black coats being dragged around by little moons of grim faces, the Muslim women in their head scarves and long dresses that dusted the ground as they walked, and I felt at home   I hadn’t spoken to or seen Hanne in the month or so between the opening and when I left Cal had, as expected, texted many times, beginning on the night of the opening, wondering where I’d gone, if he could come over later, and something the next morning, ‘you were so radiant last night, lover,’ then the texts started to end in question marks, a flurry of them for a few days, but by the time I’d made it to the airport, they’d stopped altogether, and I’d already started to forget the features of his face   By the time I arrived at