“I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.” — Humphrey Bogart as Dixon Steele
There was this line he was working on in his head. He’d been chewing on it for a while, trying to get it right: “I want to be with you. It’s as simple, and as complicated, as that.” That was the line. It wasn’t anything special, but he thought it was pretty good, would get across what he wanted to say. He just had to wait for the chance to use it—or to send it. But waiting made him restless and he checked his phone even though he knew it didn’t ring or beep, and wondered what she would be up to, a grimace curling across his now darkened face. He whispered a noiseless incantation, “she loves me.” It was an effort in self-assurance, hard fought but lost. Because what he really thought was that something had changed, and more than think it he could feel it, feel it all the way down in his bones like he felt the pressure change when it was about to rain. He’d get his chance to say the line, that was sure—because if he didn’t get the chance he’d just say it anyway. What he wasn’t sure about, was if, at this point, she’d even want to hear it.
He sat down at his eggs but couldn’t eat, stomach wrestling a big, black, burning anxiety. Looking down at the scrambled mass before him, yellow liquid leaking from it, he could hardly even recall making it. Because he was thinking: if it was nine here then it was five in the evening there, and she would have woken up and made her Nespresso with cookies eight whole hours ago, eight whole hours that were now as hidden and mysterious to him as the bottom of the ocean or the dark side of the moon. Perhaps in a couple more hours she would have pizza with goat cheese and honey—her favorite; that’s what he was seeing in his eggs, French goat cheese. But it didn’t make him any hungier—it was, instead, making his stomach flutter like a hummingbird.
It made him think about that time they had ordered pizzas and when they were delivered, Fleur put them in the oven to warm them up, then came into her room into bed with him to wait together for the pies to get hot. They laid in the large bed in the small bedroom and watched ‘Nathan for You’ under a massive wrinkled Jacques Brel poster which stared across the room to a smaller poster of Johnny Depp in ‘Cry-Baby’ and a matching one of Sophia Coppola’s ‘Marie Antionette’. Next to the black marble mantle which held among its many scattered jewelry boxes and makeup items and hairbrushes and spiked necklaces the little pink bowl he brought back for her from Morocco. They laid in the bed, and it wasn’t long before they started kissing and touching and started heating up, so to speak. Getting really hot. “What about the pizza? How long’s it been?” he said, panting.
She rubbed his cock over his pants, straddling him, said “if you had to choose between me and your pizza, which would you choose?” and lifted his hands to her breasts.
“I’d choose you over the best pizza in the world,” he whispered, pulled her body down to him. Fuck it.
But when he was fumbling to take her pants off a few moments later she broke free, her eyes wide, “ah, NO, the pizza.” And ran from the room. Then he heard her exclaim some noise charged with a sense of panic. He leapt up, tucked up his boner (in case her room mate was around), ran after her.
She was in the kitchen, which was full of smoke, a scorched black pizza box on the counter in front of her. “What happened??”
“We were sooo close, like SO close to starting a fire. This was glowing red when I came in.” She pointed to the ashen lid of the pizza box. “What if we had decided to fuck? We would for sure have died if we had fucked.”
“Eh, it would have been worth it,” he said. And he started laughing so hard he grabbed out for her, had tears in his eyes. “Why did you put pizzas in the oven inside their boxes?? Is that how you always do it?”
She twinkled meekly, “well yes but usually it’s just with one pizza and I don’t have somebody trying to fuck with me and make me forget.” Two pizza boxes in a little toaster oven smashed right up against the heating element.
Back in bed, she said “I can’t stop thinking about if we had been fucking earlier. We would be dead. Oh my god, I feel SO dumb.”
“It would have been beautiful. I can’t imagine a cooler way to die. Wouldn’t it have been a great dramatic movie scene? Like we’re fucking, you can see neon lights through your balcony window, so everything would be like indigo and shadow, Miami Vice night kinda look, and that song from ‘Drive’, you know….?”
“Ahh, Kavinsky?”
“Yes thank you….that Kavinsky song from ‘Drive’ is playing and when the robot voice comes in the fire breaks through your bedroom door, but we dont stop fucking or even notice the room is on fire because it’s the greatest sex in the world.”
She was giggling “ouiiii, this is perfect. I would have to be on the top, right?
“Yes, exactly, with your head tilted back and your hair all falling down behind you.”
“And we don’t even care that we’re burning because the sex is soooo good.”
“Exactly.”
“This is SO funny. And so dumb.”
They laughed, heads pressed together, until tears mingled on their cheeks.
They had been minutes away from burning. Now there were times he felt so bad that he’d think it almost would have been better if they really had. If they had just burned up in a sexually dramatic—literal blaze of glory—rather than have to live apart like this. So dramatic! That was his big problem lately: this drama in his head. He couldn’t stop thinking about her and something in the atmosphere had changed and they weren’t talking as much and thinking about her was not making him feel warm and fuzzy anymore but all different kinds of bad. It was making him act a little bit pathetic.
So here’s what he does when he tries not to act pathetic: he turns on the tv, turns back the pages of the book his eyes read while he was thinking of her, and—he can’t help himself—checks his phone again. As if he could actually send what he thought and felt through the airwaves all the way across the world to Paris and talk to her. As if he could stare at her picture long enough to make her feel his gaze and think of him. ‘How can I be with her?’ came the question over and over in his mind, came the mantra which rang out in the tortured nest of his imagination morning, afternoon, and night. It didn’t matter anyway, though, no matter how much he thought about it: because she was there. And he was here. Nothing, now, could change that.
Had it really been three months since he’d left? It was strange how time had gone so slowly before, only to move so fast now; so that a month in Paris was a lifetime and three months back home was only a breath of air. Still, it was all ineradicably there, right there, on the front of his mind. He didn’t even have to close his eyes to see the exact moment she had appeared on the periphery of his beer-drunk, as he waited in line to fill his cup, outdoor concert blaring in the background. “You’re American? And you came here just for this festival?” She had overheard him talking with a girl (who turned out to be her cousin) who was trying to put a plastic diamond sticker on his cheek. He had been interested in and occupied by the cousin with her hands all over his face saying “you need to hold still,” when he looked over at this new voice. It came from a beautiful girl! With long wavy brown hair you could already see wrapped around your fingers. And deep, bright brown eyes. She wore a motorcycle jacket on top of an oversized red turtleneck, wide, worn black Levi’s, and classic Doc Marten boots.
He stared at her for a long time with a look on his face like he was trying to pop his ears. Really he was trying to think of anything but “wow she’s cute” or “wow I love her style.” Eventually he said, “yeah, pretty much. I don’t know, it seemed like super cool music and a cool festival!”
She might have been the prettiest girl he’d ever seen in his life, is what he was thinking about, and he struggled to concentrate .
“Where in the U.S. are you from ?”
“Seattle,” he said.
“This is crazy! You come so far for just this tiny festival. Most French people don’t even know of it. How did you hear of this in the U.S.? I just want to understand,” she said.
“I’m sorta friends with a guy in one of the bands so I kinda made that an excuse for a trip.” He said.
“So cool! Which band?”
“Acid Tongue.”
“Oh I don’t know this band,” she said. “Are you only visiting France or will you go to other countries as well?
“Yeah, Paris for a few days before and after this and then I’m going to Lisbon. After that I don’t know where I’ll go but I have a few months to travel.”
“Ahh this is so cool I want to do this SO much!” she said. She was gushing. He blushed. “Sooo, what did you do in Paris before you came here?”
“Oh, you know, just the tourist stuff. I went to the Pantheon and the Eiffel Tower, and had to see Jim Morrison's tomb in the Pére Lachaise obviously. Lizard King lives!” he said, and knew it was a bad joke. “It’s right next to the place where I got a tattoo.”
She was nodding along and then brightened. “Ahh oui you get a tattoo! Where is it? Can I see?”
He told her it was on his thigh and that he’d have to take his pants off to show her, she blushed again. But he pulled up a picture on his phone instead. And as he held it out before her his arm came slightly around her and her body moved slightly against his. “I think this is really nice.” she said, beaming up at him from under his shoulder. “A really good tattoo.”
“Thanks,” he said, unable to suppress a juvenile smile, like a shy little kid getting his birthday sung to him. “It’s my first one. I’ve been pretty excited and nervous about it.” Suddenly he remembered himself, and stuck out his hand in awkward ceremony, “my name’s Raf by the way.”
She looked at him, laughed at him, and then offered her hand too. She had small hands with long fingers and a medium-length white nail job. “I’m Fleur,” she said. “Nice to meet you.”
He suggested that they go back over towards the music, since cousin Jeanne with the plastic diamond stickers had already left.
She waited while he bought another beer and they went over to the outdoor stage. The festival was hosted at an old viny farm with old buildings with old red tiled roofs in the countryside of Normandy and they walked in the mud over what could have been the bones and battlefields of both their ancestors alongside the festival’s namesake brick and plaster barn.
“So is this your first time at Rock in the Barn?” he said.
“No, no, I was here last year as well. I think this is so fun here.”
“It’s super cool. I love this old farm way out here in the middle of nowhere. It’s really beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like it before,” he said. “What did you think of the shows last night?”
“Ahh I missed them. I was so sad. I work last night so I came with my friends from Paris this morning,” she said. “Was it good?”
“Ohh noo, what a bummer! It was super good!” He said. “All the bands were way, way cooler than I expected. It was almost overwhelming,” he laughed. “You have to check out Lebanon Hanover, they were so weird and crazy, kind of a little bit like The Cure.” And then he paused thinking of what to say next. “That sucks you had to work last night. What do you do?” He hated himself for asking what might be the most boring question in the world, and one which he had found to be particularly unpopular among Europeans.
“Ah mhmm, I work in the music industry,” she said. “For a—I don’t know if my english is good—a record label.”
He swooned. “Whoa! What a neat job!”
“Neat?” she said. “I don’t know this word.”
“Oh it’s like a dorky”—she raised her eyebrows—, “or funny, way of saying cool.”
“Cute. And you, what do you do?”
“Right now I’m a fisherman,” he said. “I work on fishing boats in Alaska most of the time.”
“Ah wow, okay!” she said. “So crazy, I would love to learn about this. How long are you on the ocean? Do you go out far away?”
“Uh yeah, we go pretty far out, and all over Alaska. It’s called longlining because we tie lines—I mean ropes—with hooks on them together to make a really long rope that lays on the bottom of the ocean.” He held out his hands in ‘okay’ signs, pulling taught between them an imaginary string.
“Wow, and you sleep on the boat?”
“Yep, we’re usually out there at least a week?”
“A week!”
“Sometimes two.”
“This sounds so crazy. I’ve never met a fisherman before.”
“So, I’m your first?” he said.
She smiled big and bright, exposing the tiny star-shaped golden tooth jewel which was plastered to her upper left incisor.
He noticed it immediately. “I like your tooth gem.”
“Ah thanks,” she said. “You should get one! I think this would look really cool on you! No really, it would fit your style a lot I think.”
“Maaaybe, my old roommate had a heart-shaped one,” he said. He liked hers better but he didn’t say that.
“Oh! A heart! Perhaps he is—how do you say— a bit of a slut?”
“Yes!” he said, smiling. “He is.”
She shook her head at the thought of the boy-player with a heart-shaped tooth gem. She laughed, and then thought for a moment. “What I want the most—like so much—is a greel.”
“A what?”
“Greel? A greel?”
He shook his head.
She showed her teeth and pointed at her mouth “greel! Like a greel for your teeth, you know, like rappers wear. Is my english bad?”
“Ohhhh,” I said, “a grill. My bad. No, no, I’m just dumb.” He wished he could record her speaking a few sentences so that he could study the way she talked later.
“I think it would be SO cool looking. Not one of the big greels that goes over all your teeth, no. Just a little one for one tooth.” She posed and pointed at one of her canines.
He was mesmerized. But he snapped out of it in a sudden realization and exclaimed, bumbling, “your english is really really good, you’re way better than most of the other people I’ve met here.”
“Really? Are you making fun of me?” She looked almost offended.
“No, no! Not at all. You’re actually very fluent and you have a good vocabulary! Super good!” he appealed.
“Wow, ok! So nice. Thank you! No really, this means a lot to me because I worked so hard on my english. It was very important to me when I was growing up that I would be really fluent one day, because I knew that you just have to be good at english. You know? It’s really important. So, I always took my english very seriously, even as a little girl. Like I always studied the most for english classes and really tried so hard to do well in them. Moreover, I came to America to study in Massachusetts during high school.”
“Oh no way, that’s awesome. With a host family? Where in Massachusetts? One of my friends I came here with is from Mass,” he said.
“Ah, no way! Yes, I was with a host family—in Stoughton, do you know if it? The family was nice but it was kind of strange. They had a son who was a few years younger than me and became really, I mean really—what is the word in english, oh yes—obsessive with me. Like totally in love. He followed me around everywhere I went. On the way to school and when I was…ahhh so weird…..when I was in between classes. Even in the afternoons when I would go with my friends. It was SO awful.”
“Oh go-o-0-d, that’s sounds fuckin’ terrible. You must have been miserable! I’m so sorry you had to deal with that.” He reached out and cupped her arm, didn’t know the right words. “Nope, I don’t, I haven’t heard of Stoughton, but I can ask my friend. He grew up in a super fancy yacht club kind of town somewhere in Mass. I’ll ask him about it.”
Suddenly, she looked over her shoulder as a haphazard procession of concert-goers migrated away from the outdoor stage and into the barn. He looked too and suddenly noticed that the crowd was no longer around them and that the band had left the stage, taking the chance to continue talking aimlessly with them. Now, the ongoingness of their conversation became impossible to ignore. Unease crept into the open space around them. “I think the next show is about to start,” she said. “Perhaps we should go over there?”
Holy shit. He’d fully expected her to say she had to go find her cousin so she could disappear from him forever.
“Yeah, sure, let’s go check it out,” he said. Casual. No pressure.
So they walked the fifty meters or so (which Fleur had estimated the distance to be) over to the barn. As they stepped into the large doorless entrance they could see that the barn was already pretty full of people, the band already aggressively engaged in their set, ancient straw and raw timber in the roof reverberating with the clang of guitar and the eruption of drums. Conversation impossible. He looked to her and her to him, then back to the stage, church-going in their reverence, and like a pair of marionettes moved forward together into the crowd towards the stage. The two of them moved and nodded their heads side-by-side to the drum and guitar for a minute or so. He pretended to pay attention to the music. But to no avail. He couldn’t help himself— didn’t care about the band at all—he looked down at her, but as he turned to look he caught her mouth swinging into his, her arms reaching out for his shoulders. Lightworks. Kaleidoscope. Soft, full lips. Finally he had a fistful of that beautiful thick brown hair in one hand tilting her head back, the other on her lower back pulling her close against his body. The music faded away into the background until all that was left were her lips against his, her faded perfume mingling with stale beer and the scent of sweat, and hands, and heat.
The rest of the night was no longer about music, and became an indistinct fugue of kissing Fleur. They went from one stage to the next, to stand and sway before the collision of drum-machine—as the night transitioned to more of a Euro-techno sound—or sat off to the side, anonymous in the crowd, alone in their embrace. An older man heard them speaking in english back inside the barn and was curious as to what was going on. She explained the situation to him in french. He looked at them for a long while and seemed very drunk and his dirty black crewneck looked soaked with beer. Then said to Raf in a thick accent, “you are an American,” he paused, “here,” he pointed at the barn floor, “and you met a french girl?” He raised his eyebrows, lifting along with them the small orange beanie atop his hairless dome.
“Uh yeah, I guess so,” Raf said.
The older man grinned and nodded approvingly, making Raf and Fleur uncomfortable.
Soon they forgot about it and kept on dancing.
When the music was over they sat in the muddy grass among the tents with the straggling few who remained awake to drink and smoke whatever was left to consume, and to take with it the last good energy in the fading night. She spoke in french to another guy who sat beside her. And Raf suffered in his attempts to understand what little french he had learned after so many years of study—middle school, high school, college. Eventually he abandoned his manners which instructed him to wait patiently for them to finish speaking and touched her arm, “you want to go walk around a bit?” he asked.
“Ah oui, yes let’s go.” She bounced right up.
They walked around a tall tent and instantly embraced in feverish kissing. “I want you so much,” she whispered in his ear.
“Where can we go to be alone?” he asked. He was sharing a tent, and the others were already sleeping in it.
“Ah, I know, this is just the problem,” she said. She paused for a while, then said, “do you have a condom?”
His legs nearly buckled, and for the first time in his life, he genuinely prayed: ‘dear lord,’ he thought, ‘please let this happen. Please don’t let me fuck this up.’
“Ohhhh fuck” he said, thinking hard. “No, I don’t buuut….”
“Ah it’s ok, we can still have sex if we find somewhere we can go, if you want to. Just no penetration. You can fuck me if you come see me when we’re back in Paris.”
He didn’t push it, only looked around desperately. And there, bright under the lights in the distance down the field, saw it: “we could go in one of the showers in the trailer over there,” he said, “that might be the only option.”
“Yewwww,” she groaned, “but they are so dirty. No, I don’t think so. I don’t think this is a good idea. But Jeanne is at the private afterparty with the bands, perhaps our tent is empty but I don’t know. We can go see I suppose. But I don’t know where our friend is. If he’s inside I think I will have to just go to sleep.”
“Ok, let’s try.” Again he solemnly appealed to whatever power it was that governed him, ‘dear lord, or whatever the fuck you’re called, please let that tent be empty and I swear I will change my vicious ways.’
Her tent was much farther than he would have expected. She explained that because of her various ‘industry connections’ she was allowed to camp among the band members in a separate area. It took maybe ten minutes for them to walk there through a small path in tall grasses, in silent, boiling, hopeful, expectancy.
They finally arrived at the tent, saw it illuminated before them like a Guadalupe by the light from an adjacent farm structure which seemed to burn all night long. They were utterly alone except for the captive shadows imprisoned there past their time by that little light. “Ok, wait here just one second,” she said. And approached, cat-like and surreptitious, opening the tent door zipper with extreme care, inch by agonizing inch. He waited and watched and prayed some more. After what seemed like eternal minutes, she stuck her head inside and turned back to him with a big, excited grin, “it’s empty. Ok, let me just text Jeanne. But I think you can come in for a bit.”
He looked up into the cloudy night sky and nodded a silent ‘thank you,’ proceeded with her quietly towards the tent, quaking with anticipation. His legs felt weak and his stomach felt like he’d swallowed bees. She reached for the zipper to open the door the rest of the way and stopped, turned back to look at him. “No penetration, though, remember,” she said.
His body sagged slightly but he said, “that’s ok. I don’t care.”
“Ok good.” She disappeared inside. He almost fell over in his urgent struggle to kick off his mud-encrusted shoes. And then dove into the tent and started rolling around with her.
First, he took off her leather jacket. Said, “I love your jacket, you look so cool in it. Like a girl James Dean.” Kissed her deeply.
She had her hands rubbing all over his pants and stomach, panting. She said, “thanks, it belonged to my grandfather, my sweater as well.” So the sweater came off too.
“That’s cute….and hot for some reason.” He said, feeling again like a typical dumb American.
It didn’t take long before they were fully naked and kissing each other all over, their whole bodies twisted up together in a big knot. Legs with arms, arms with legs, on top of clothes and pads, and bags containing makeup and toiletries. He put his head between her legs and his arms around her thighs and reached his hands up to her breasts. Like a dog at a well. Until she pulled him up, rolled them both over, and knelt, kissing him down past his waist to put his cock in her mouth. But there was a problem: there was hardly anywhere to get water at the festival and both their mouths were so critically dry that it was inhibiting them from any serious engagement in these, their non penetrative options. Ended up they were in a missionary-type, not-so-dry hump position. “Arrête,” she said when he rubbed his cock gently between her legs, ever-so-slightly against her clitoris. “What are you doing?” she breathed.
“Don’t worry,” he whispered, “I promise I won’t, I’m just teasing. You can trust me. I promise I won’t.” He went on, hoping beyond a hope that she would lose control of her desire and allow it to happen. They both began to pant and moan slightly.
“Arrête. Arrête. It’s too much,” she said after a minute or so.
“Ok.” He stopped.
Then they lay there in the tent, nakedly entwined, him on top of her. And blurted out random thoughts: “If you could only eat peanuts for two years or bananas for three, which would you choose?” he said.
“Uh neither, I would die. That’s disgusting.” She was laughing. “Can I eat things with bananas in them or just bananas?”
“It has to be just bananas or just peanuts,” he said.
“Ok, yeah, this is dumb,” she laughed.
“Weeelllll….if you could wiggle your toes and go anywhere in the world right now where would you go?”
“Hmmm, ok, this is a better question. But so hard! I never had a chance yet to travel the way you do. Attends! Attends. Ok. I would looove to go to South America, all over, and also to North Africa, perhaps Thailand or Vietnam as well. But I think I will go to South America first. Right now, I think maybe Peru. Jeanne, you know, my cousin, she is leaving to go traveling for a year just a couple months from now. I’m so sad she’s leaving, but I’m also so happy for her. I think I will try to travel for a long time too, perhaps in the end of next year.” He moan-grunted his approval, laid his head down on her bare chest. She ran her fingers through his greasy hair. “Where is your favorite place you’ve been, it seems like you travel so much.”
“Hmmm,” he thought about it. “Right here!”
She delicately scratched his back along the length of his spine with one long fingernail. He shivered. “No really, your favorite.”
“Really! This is it.” He looked into her eyes. They twinkled up at him with a radiance that made him melt into a big puddle. Smooched her. Put his hand on her big soft cheek.
After a while she said, “I think I must sleep soon.”
He had no idea how long they’d been in the tent. “Yeah, me too, but I don’t want to leave you.”
“Mhmm, me either.” She squeezed him tight where she held him under his arms.
But it was time to go. They both knew it. And moved slowly apart. Sitting up slightly, he noticed the tent door wasn’t completely closed, and the tiny gap at the top allowed a spotlight beam from the all-night-light outside into the tent. It fell perfectly across her stomach and over her slightly protruding ribcage onto her left breast, up her little neck to the ridgeline of her jaw, and ended on her face. She was stunning. It made him feel dizzy, gave him this funny sensation way down in his belly like whatever moving parts were in there had gotten confused and worked themselves into a knot. He thought that she really was probably the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen. And, seeing her like this, naked in the half-light, wondered what he could have possibly done to deserve getting to spend any time at all with a girl like Fleur.
He held her chin and kissed her one last time, said “okay, good night. See you in Paris. Sleep well.” Pulled on his muddy shoes. And with one final look at her, stood out the door and zipped it closed. Walked away and couldn’t help turning back to look at the tent sitting there brightly one last time, right where he’d left it with her falling asleep inside, already wishing he was still there with her. The walk back to his tent felt like a dream. It all did by the morning.
And it still does now. Like a dream he can’t wake up from, but can’t fall all the way back into either. Because try though he might, and close as he may get with his intractable imagination, he still can’t get himself back into that time with her. And even though he can hear her voice, and feel her touch, he’s still only sitting there alone on his couch, waiting for a text—missing her from halfway across the world.
Missing her wasn’t going to bring him any closer, but he couldn’t help it. A black cloud followed him everywhere he went, raining the name Fleur into his head. It was making him lose his mind—and his appetite. He gave up on eating breakfast, pulled on his jacket and put on his boots, turned off the tv, went outside to start his truck so that it had time to warm up, and shook his head when he saw that he may not have enough fuel to make it the whole half mile to work and back. It sputtered, rattled, stopped. He started it up again. “Stupid old piece of shit.” Kicked it. A woodpecker and a chickadee made their asynchronous music in a tree nearby—bass and hi-hat. He looked up at the chickadee as the white-gray exhaust billowing from the truck enveloped and swirled around the trunk of the tree. “I wonder if you have a girl somewhere faraway too,” he said to it. “If you do, how come you just keep singing your song in that tree? Why don’t you go after her?” The chickadee went on chirping without rhythm, muffled by the noise of the truck. “Guess you don’t have a choice,” he said. “Me either,” and turned back to the door. The bird quit singing, and he looked at it from the doorway for a long while. And he wondered why it was that a bird shouldn’t be free, and him any less.
Walked inside and let the dogs back in, made a lunch—a sandwich with leftover falafels, a cheap version of those kebab sandwiches he’d bought that day for the two of them to eat on Fleur’s lunch break in a little park near Montmartre. Those sandwiches were good, and he had been so hungry and lovestruck and enamored and stoned, that he’d left his phone sitting on a park bench when they walked away. Only to realize and find it missing from the spot a few minutes later. How Fleur had called the phone and convinced the two nice teenage boys to bring it back to them. And begged him and tried to make him promise to put a password on it afterwards—he refused, preferred the simplicity and the ease of access: “You’re SO lucky!” she said. I can’t believe it. What if they had been bad people and wouldn’t bring it back, and with no password. I think you are crazy for not having one. They could have stolen all your information. Raf, really, you are so lucky.” she shook her head, and actually was a bit angry with him, even though she still couldn’t keep herself from smiling. “You’re so lucky.” He was. Her eyes shined something incandescent up into his, the kind of thing that bad luck and mistakes bounce right off. A few minutes later they were kissing in an alley a block away from her work and she was late and her coworker walked past and said hello and left them there giggling. It was a great lunch and had made him feel so good that she wanted to see him on her break.
Today he would only have a sad little falafel on rye and he would eat it alone.
He cleaned up, grabbed his tool bag, walked out the door. Then drove the long two minutes to work, to the house he was helping to construct, the whole time waiting impatiently for the song he wanted to hear to load on Spotify—it didn’t. Pulled into the muddy driveway in a silent cab and parked off to the side next to the other big truck. “Mornin John’,” he said as he climbed out.
“Mornin’. How you doing, Raf?” John, the builder, said.
“Oh, you know—what’s that one? Oh yeah”—he made his voice raspy and assumed a hoaky accent—“just hangin’ in there like a hair in a biscuit.” .
“Ha, nice,” John said. “You have a good evenin’?
“I did. Hung out with a couple of my buddies and we watched this Korean thriller. John, the Koreans have been putting out some crazy shit, as far as horror is concerned they’re on a completely different level from what they’re doing in Hollywood. They really have mastered the tortured love story—and know how to exploit it in evil ways. I mean, this…this, this had was the most shocking and appalling movie twists I’ve ever seen in my life. And the cinematography was fuckin’ insane,”— he began to ramble—“great acting, super unique story, horrific violence, a sense of humor. Incredible. You gotta watch Oldboy, John.” He paused. “You have a good night?”
John nodded along, “you know, I can’t say I’ve ever seen a Korean thriller movie. But I’ll take your word for it.” He stopped to think. “What did I do last night? Right, Leslie made some kind of—oh, I don’t know what you would call it—borscht maybe, it had a bit of everything in it. But I have to say it did not suck. I think I had three bowls. And then we watched this movie….uh it was called Eternals. I thought it was fine, entertaining enough. Leslie got all offended, though,” he made air quotes, “‘as an artist,’ and said it was terrible and formulaic and the acting sucked and the story was shit. I tried to tell her that these movies are not art, they're just entertainment, all you have to do is watch the cool effects and not think about it. And, let me tell you, she was not very happy about that comment.”
“Oof,” Raf said, “mansplaining?”
“Yep,” pop, “and being an idiotic male.
“Ah, man. You blew it!”
“I know it, Raf. I know I did.” He crinkled his eyebrows, looked up, shook his head slowly. “Things don’t exactly get any easier, man. I’m telling you, if you think married life is just all fun and games, you’re in for one. I mean we can be sitting there right fucking next to each other—like two feet away—but sometimes it feels like we couldn’t be further apart, like there’s nothing that can cross the space between us.” He stopped himself from saying any more. “Woah, that got weird. What the hell am I talking about, you don’t wanna hear me complain about my old guy married life. You’re just young and single, living it up. Speaking of which, I gotta run and get some flowers before the store closes later today. Shit!
Okay man, today just got even busier for your buddy John. Get to play contractor today. I gotta run in a second here and go talk to the sheetrocker at Sasha’s. And then go deal with those fuckin’ yokel siders down there at Mike’s place. And then,” paused for effect, “go back to Sasha’s to tell the plumber we gotta take that tub you and me grinded down to get into it’s spot last week and put a new one in because that’s what she wants now. Oh yeah.” He raised his arms in the air and dropped them heavily. “Fuckin’ goat show today.”
“Christ,” Raf shook his head, spit on the ground.
“You want a tub?”
“No, thanks,” he chuckled. “That is fucked though.”
“Mhmmm, mhmm, I’m already resisting the urge to open the bottle of sake I got in my truck.”
Raf just laughed.
“But! If I could get you started laying out that plywood to protect the gypcrete, that’d be great. Try to keep as many whole sheets as you can. I left my makita saw over there for you, you fuckin’ left-handed weirdo. And I brought up that set of sawhorses from my house this morning, you can use those. Don’t tape it down yet, I want us to do that part together so I can make sure you didn’t get all funky with it first.”
“Alright, man, sounds good,” Raf said.
“You got everything you need?”
“Yeah, John, I’m all good.”
“You wanna get stoned real quick before I take off here?”
Raf laughed and shook his head, “I’ll pass on that one. You’re an animal setting me loose on the saws and then trying to get me all stoned first thing in the morning. I know you get the expensive stuff too.”
“You may be right, you may be right.” John said, and produced a small wooden pipe from the pocket of his Carhartt vest, took a long, old school, hold-it-in hit off it.
He coughed quietly through his nose upon exhaling, then folded violently, his hands to knees, his head turtled, the veins in his neck bulging, and coughed two or three times with his whole body, making sounds which more closely resembled something between a sneeze and a retch than an actual cough.
“Holy shit,” John said as he straightened, and shook himself, stretching his back around. “Alright, I’m out like a trout. Don’t cut your fingers off.” He turned and hopped up into his lifted F-350, drove off very slowly.
Watching him pull out of view, Raf stood there in the muddy driveway and let the loneliness sink in, a cold wind whistling through his ear ring. There was a chickadee in the tall cedar in the driveway, and he wondered if it might be the same one from his house. And if it was why it could be here and not somewhere else. He reached for his phone and stopped, instead grabbed the skilsaw and tried to focus on his work. Then he set it down—useless, he’d only picked it up because it was the first thing he saw—and started taking measurements for the first cuts. He put on his knee pads, grabbed his tape, jotted down a few notes. Then hauled the plywood in through the door with care, one sheet at a time, started measuring and making marks.
But the distraction didn’t even begin to take hold. His mind was still fixed on her despite his sincerest efforts. What happens when an unstoppable force meets an immovable object? Nothing. So he kept on thinking about how with Fleur it wasn’t quite love at first sight, even though it was close; it was either love at third night or love after fifth sex.
Or was it fifth penetration? Back in Paris, two nights after the festival, they met for some drinks in a punk bar with big candles and a taxidermied goat's head on the wall. He wasn’t sure if it was going well until she went to the bathroom and then a minute or so later he finished his drink and went too. But found her waiting in the little space where people smoked (the same where they would smoke and fall to kissing and where he would lure her into the larger of the two bathrooms to fuck a few months later) between the bar and the two bathrooms. She wore a pearl necklace, a black tank top, worn blue Levi’s and her Doc Marten boots. Irresistible. He kissed her hard and pressed her up against a wall and then he knew that it was going well.
When they left the bar, they walked up to the top of Paris’ only hill and sat up at the Sacre Coeur with the worst and sweetest bottle of wine there ever was and looked down on the city without any awkwardness between them. Then they Ubered back to her place. And almost immediately had sex; as soon as they were naked she grabbed him close and slid his cock inside her, no question of a condom. It was incredible, he didnt know if he’d ever had sex be so good before, where he felt so comfortable, and their bodies fit so well, and it felt so fucking good. They stayed up late fucking and smoking pot and listening to music on her tiny little third story bedroom balcony.
“Is it my turn to choose,” he said.
“Yes, okay,” she said, and passed her phone to him.
She’d made fun of him for his last selection of Neil Young “See the Sky About to Rain.” So he put on ‘Moonlight’ by XXXtentacion. “Do you like him?”
“Mhmm it is tough with him. Yes but also no.”
“Because he was such a fucked up dude?”
“Well yes, and because he did not treat women well.”
“Yeah, you’re right. Sounded like he was kind of a monster. But his music is really good, ins’t it?”
“So good. That’s what makes it hard.”
“But don’t you ever think,”—he’d thought about it a lot and rested firmly on a belief in the stark division between art and artist—“that no matter how bad a person was, if they made good art, that could be the one good thing they did, you know. Now there’s more good art out there, and I think people should be able to appreciate it without having to read the artists’ Wikipedia page. Good art is just good art. So it doesn’t really matter how awful a person they were, because the art is still good. Don’t you think?”
“Mhmm no, not really,” she said. “Because there are some, like people who have raped women, or beaten them, or something like that, I look at their painting or I listen to their music, and all I can see or hear is that horrible thing they did. It makes the art bad, for me. It ruins it. Because I can’t see it for what it is anymore.”
He looked at her with no words presenting themselves to be spoken. He felt like a moron; struck totally dumb. He’d made his whole separation between art and artist rant a hundred times over the past years, to co-workers and classmates and even to professors, and felt like he was big-braining when he did. But with just two simple sentences, stoned in the middle of the night, Fleur made him see that he had been wrong the whole time. There were things, some things, that should not—or could not—be ignored. “I don’t know how I never thought of it that way,” he said.
They were both beginning to fall asleep. He looked at her laying in the bed next to him, trying to soak in every detail he could, trying to remember every word she had spoken to him and every particle of her close-eyed face. Eventually, “do you want me to turn off the light?”
“Mhmmm,” she squeaked, without opening her eyes. Then propped herself up and grabbed her phone, “do you want us to wake up with time for coffee and perhaps chill a bit? Or do you want to get more sleep?” she asked as he got under the covers and wrapped an arm over her waist. “Mmm coffee and chilling,” he said. “Okay, good,” she set the alarm, nuzzled her warm ass against him.
In the morning when the alarm went off, he shook her gently, whispered in her ear, “Fleur, Fleeeeuuur, it’s your alarm. Time to wake up.” She rolled back toward him, burrowed into his chest. They fucked again and then drank coffee with cookies. Three times. She had to go to work, so they dressed and went to the métro. And rode together for six or seven stops, thighs close tight, her head propped on his shoulder just below the purple love bite she’d left on his neck. Until she reached her stop, kissed him and departed, left him with nothing but her lingering smell on his shoulder and her old copy of L’Étranger which she had given to him as a keepsake—along with the hickey.
The rest of that day, for Raf, was a blur of exhaustion. But by evening he had recovered, gone to a show at a bar that had free live music every night—and overpriced beer. And Ubered back to her apartment to see her when she said that she was too tired to go out but still wanted to see him. When he got there she suggested they walk down to the little island in the Seine near her place—Swan Island. They brought beers and walked down, sat on a bench on the quiet path overlooking the river.
“What’s your shirt?” she said, leaning against him, her fingers tracing the album cover design on his chest.
“Oh, it’s just an album I like.”
“I don’t know it. Can you show me?”
“Yeah, okay,” he said.
The album cover was The Late Great Townes Van Zandt, a favorite of his for many years. He turned on ‘Fraulein,’ felt it fitting for the moment—at least in subject matter:
“Fraulein, Fraulein, walk down by the river
Tonight when those stars start to shine
By those same stars above you, well I swear that I love you
For you are my pretty Fraulein.”
“Do you like it?” he said. “I don’t think most people in Europe like country music.”
She laughed and said emphatically, “oh no, no, no. We don’t listen to country at all.” Then she sobered and looked at him with that burning look again, “but I like this.” She turned away, looked at the river, and her smile became a grin, “even though it’s SO American. Like so much.”
On the way back he made them stop a minute in the middle of the Pont de Grenelle under the métro rails, because he wanted to look at the lights on the Eiffel Tower, and almost disrupted a newlywed, and obviously American, couple who had hired a violinist—poor bastard—to play ‘La Vie en Rose,” over and over again.
And then, they walked the few blocks to her apartment and repeated the night prior. Smoked pot on her cute little balcony which was just big enough for the two of them to sit down with their knees touching. Fucked two more times. After the second time—or fifth total penetration—he rolled them another spliff and they went out to the balcony, smoked it and then sat there quietly, playing with each other's hands. He scooched forward, his knees moving past hers, his arms wrapping around her bent legs, rested his head on her knees. She put her arms around him and leaned down and kissed him on the top of his head. They held each other, held tight against time there like that for a long time. They hardly knew each other. They were hardly more than strangers. But sometimes touch and feel and smell all seem right. It was just so comfortable. It felt so good. He released her reluctantly, said softly, “I think I have to go soon, my flight is leaving in a couple hours.”
She sniffed, “ok.”
“Ahh, but I don’t want to go.”
“I don’t want you to go either,” she whispered.
“I’ll come back to Paris to see you before I go home, I promise.”
“Ok,” she said. He didn’t know if she believed him but he really meant it. He would come back to Paris just to see her. He promised himself as much as he promised her.
After a while, and well into the middle of the night, he finally called an Uber and got his shoes and pants and everything put back on. The air felt heavy and glum. For a moment they both sat at the corner of her bed and stared at his phone and watched the Uber making its slow progress towards them on the map. “This is dumb. We’re wasting our last minutes,” she put her arms around him and kissed him.
It was that leaving her, even after just three nights together, not knowing when he would see her next, was so hard that made him know it was love. They dragged it out, the leaving, hugged and kissed and stared at each other through the open doorway to her apartment. She blew him a kiss and shut the door and left him standing alone on the hallway stairs on the other side feeling empty all the way through.
Love at third night: he thought that sounded better than love after fifth fuck. He looked at his phone again. Still no response. “I want to be with you. It’s as simple, and as complicated, as that.” He wanted to say it. Instead typed the message:
‘Hope you’re having a good day my dear !
Miss you.’
It was only a slight variation from the text he had sent her the day before. ‘I sound like a pathetic little weiner!’ he thought, despairing, ‘it’s like a note a mom would leave on her kids’ school lunch.’ He was only fishing for affectionate platitudes. He knew that she didn’t need to tell him she loves him and misses him every day. And he didn’t need to tell her. Because what they had was genuine bona fide true love. True love. That doesn’t happen for too many people in life. He knew what he had to do was just buck up and go on with it every day until he could find a way to be with her again—that was all he could do. ‘I’m only making her think that I’m a weirdo by acting this way.’ He nodded to himself slowly and solemnly—like “this is the way.” And then, without hesitating, looked at his phone again. And was dismayed that she was active on Instagram and still wasn’t responding. Felt it in the pit of his stomach.
But why! Texting wouldn’t make them any less across the world from each other. He felt insane, wanted to slap himself in the face; did, in fact, slap himself, but not hard enough. He thought of pouring a bucket of water over his head but—of course— the house didn’t have water yet. He cursed the plumbers. Brought his hands to his face, then clenched them into tight fists right out in front of it and lifted his head to the sky. “Snap out of it man!” he yelled.
Still, everything reminded him of precious memories with her. Water—sharing glasses scattered next to her bed—, coffee—getting made fun of at a cafe for ordering café creme when she got espresso—, pink—her favorite color—, mud—their shoes at Rock in the Barn—, everything could be brought into connection with her. Sure, it would have been much easier to just focus on the things he could reach out and touch—that skilsaw, or that plywood, for example—but he couldn’t help himself. She was always on his mind. Even though it wasn’t really her anymore. It was the Fleur he had formed in his mind, the Fleur who was not composed of soft skin and slender bones and brown, multitude-containing eyes, but of a name with a heart next to it which appeared on his phone accompanied by a special beap, a particular component in the dull routine of his new dreary life. The real Fleur, the one he actually loved, didn’t want a boyfriend or lover or soul mate, or whatever they were to each other. She had fallen in love by accident. How could he forget how she told him that? How she was recently out of a really long relationship and then had jumped quickly into a bad one, and now had a crucially busy year of work and school, and didn’t need any American boy coming in and gumming up the works. Even though he had done it. And now he’d forgotten about all of that in his suicide mission to get her to text him more affectionately.
He had forgotten. And he had made plans, radical plans, in his head—plans he shouldn’t have made—about how he would move to Paris and what their life would be like there. And continued to try to goad her into saying she missed him. Because if she had said that she wanted to see him as soon as possible, and that they had to work something out to be together—which is what he felt so desperately—he would have been on the next plane to Paris. Nothing could make him give up on Fleur.
Even though that wasn’t entirely true. Because he had sort of given in to the hopelessness of their circumstances when he got back from Paris, just like she was doing these past few weeks. “Oh Paris was amazing, I love it; such a beautiful city. It was probably the best month of my whole life.” Blah blah blah. “But, I’m not sure I could ever live there. It’s just so far from nature and so big and so busy,” is what he’d told people who’d asked him how were his travels. And he’d really believed those words he’d spoken for about a month and a half. Maybe two months. Yet he continued talking to her and wishing that he was with her all the time. He thought that way, that it would just be impossible for them to have any future together, at least in the back of his mind, in fact, until she’d become distant via text a few weeks before and then said suddenly that she wasn’t planning on visiting him anymore and that she didn’t want to talk as much as they had been, that it “just wasn’t who she was.” Since she said she didn’t see how they could possibly have any future together. Since she had stopped calling him “my dear” and “my darling” and “mon coeur” or saying she missed him and “bisous” every night before bed. In that absence he’d realized the importance of what he had with Fleur. Felt his very being withdrawing with her. It wasn’t impossible for them to be together, he realized; it was impossible for him to go on without her. This was different from any love he’d ever had before. And he knew that he had to move to Paris, that he couldn’t leave what they had started unfinished.
Until recently, that’s what he would have done, though—leave it unfinished—what he was already doing. He kept texting her, and thinking about her, knowing in the back of his mind and in his heart that being together would require sacrifices neither of them were willing to make. Would be impossible. And as much as he joked about how one day he would marry her, that he could never let his French love go, that they were meant to be together somehow, he never really let himself believe it: rationalizing perhaps as a measure of self-protection. Until now.
Because now the curtain was falling, he could feel it. Now he was dreaming as a means to survive. He saw that nothing could possibly be more horrible than to fall in love and have to run away. It was like winning the lottery and losing the ticket. No, it was even worse. It was being happy and then choosing to be sad. Now he felt it could have been the greatest mistake of his whole life to leave Paris that day—that it was a decision he would grow old regretting and about which he would always wonder the great big “what if”. He was terrified that he would have to ask himself forever what would have happened if he’d only stayed in Paris; what would have happened if he hadn’t left Fleur. He just couldn’t throw it all away. The fear of losing her had, like a near death experience, adjusted and clarified the things that were really important to him. And work, and money, and even friends were no longer it. It was love. It was Fleur.
Though money, he had to remember, had been the reason he left.
Or it had been why he thought he had to leave, even though now he thought he’d only said it because of the way that crazy fever made his blood all hot. That double-edged sword of a fever. When Fleur got it first, she’d been sick for a weekend. But not so sick that they hadn’t had a good time together. He took care of her, made her coffee and tea during the day and pasta for dinner. They spent the entire weekend in bed, with her in and out of sleep close beside him while he watched movies on her laptop. She made little snorting snoring sounds that were almost inaudible, and at times he didn’t even watch the movie at all just so he could watch her sleeping. He still kept the videos of her asleep on his shoulder on his phone—though they didn’t make him smile the same way when he watched them now, now there was a sadness in it. But it had been a great weekend, a beautiful three days.
The only time they left the house was when Fleur made a doctor's appointment in the morning, and he decided to go to a boulangerie to get them things for breakfast while she was with the doctor. They were gone for an hour. She returned with sinus medicine, and he returned with bags of quiches and pain chocolats and escargots, and made them eggs and a big Parisian brunch plate they ate while they watched a Wes Anderson marathon and smoked on the couch. He stood up to put the cutting board away and she said, “I’m so comfy and high and full I think you’re the only thing in the world that could make me get up. Like if you just stay right there and don’t touch me I would have to get up so I can touch you.” He stood in front of her legs where they dangled off the couch and held his arms out like a cartoon pronged magnet and she reached to him. He leaned to pick her up. “Nooo!” she said, “you have to let me!” She groaned and concentrated and little by little lifted herself up into his arms. They did absolutely nothing for three days. It was one of the best weekends of his life. One of the happiest times of his life.
One of those nights he told her he loved her. He was nervous and unsure about saying it after so little time. But he just couldn’t help it; it had been trying to jump off the tip of his tongue for days. Holding her in bed, with her face in his hands, he looked at her, and it just came out: “I think I’m falling in love with you. No, I am…I mean, I do….I love you. How do you say it?.... Je t’aime, right?
She nodded.
“Je t’aime.”
“Moi aussi.” She said it reluctantly, like she had to think about it. Like she was trying to figure out if she could believe what he was saying. It wasn’t that she didn’t feel or believe the words she spoke, it was that she was trying to convince herself that she didn’t. The way her eyes became bright incendiary rubies when he said those giant little words made him sure she meant it and just didn't know how to make herself say it. Was trying to protect herself. Because she didn’t want a boyfriend, and he would inevitably leave, because it didn’t make any sense for the two of them to fall in love.
But they did, in spite of everything. In spite of themselves and the world and everyone in it and the whole idea of love at all.
That was only maybe a few days before he got sick. When he’d started to get sick, he’d of course ignored it and continued walking around all across Paris in the wind and the rain and the wet all day while she was at work until he’d become really very sick. So sick that she let him stay in her apartment when she went to work, made him stay in her apartment. At one point, after he emerged from a fevered sleep, he smoked some pot, felt like death was dragging him down to a place even worse than hell where it wasn’t hot but very very cold, and he crawled back from her living room couch into her bed, wearing socks and pants and sweater and jacket, and awoke hours later to an Ipad screen playing a Game of Thrones episode he didn’t give a shit about and a series of panicked messages from Fleur—who thought he might have died or something. She was right to worry. When he checked his temperature it read 40.8 degrees celsius. He thought it seemed like a big number, and fell back asleep.
A night or two later, as he struggled to spend time with her in his delirium, and suffocated trying to kiss her through a hopelessly stuffy nose, she said, “what will you do this weekend? I want you to be warm and rest. But I have to go visit my mother this weekend in Rouen, I forgot to tell you.” It was Tuesday.
“You do? Oh I was really hoping we could have one more weekend together before I get my ticket home.”
“Me as well. But I made this plan weeks ago, and I didn’t know you would still be here then. And I cannot do anything about it now.”
Money was running short, and days were wet and cold with nowhere to go. A weekend without her would be torturous. And he was so sick. And so tired. And hadn’t been home in so long.
“Its okay, I understand. Maybe I’ll just get a ticket before this weekend then.”
He didn’t think about it, he was high, and feverish, and delirious. It was Tuesday. He bought a ticket right then and there on his phone for Thursday morning. And then let it sink in that the next day would be his last day in Paris, his last day with Fleur. He had this empty feeling way down in the center of his belly, like there was a great big block of ice that had settled there to melt slowly. The next day he walked around getting last gifts for people back home. All day that block of ice stayed where it’d settled. And his body didn’t know what to do with it. He was either sweating with guilt and rage, or he was shivering and feeling like his guts were getting all frostbitten with sadness. He got gifts for people, gifts that didn’t matter, gifts he didn’t need to give. He was so busy getting gifts to bring home that he didn’t even think to get something for Fleur.
When he was done, he went back to her place, and bought some more pot so she wouldn’t have to buy more for a while after he left. Then he walked down under the Pont de Bir Hakeim and watched the sun low over the big white horizon of Paris rock all around him. And he cried to himself that it had to be this way. And punched the wall that ran along the Seine beside him. Looked at the Eiffel Tower through his slowly falling tears. He knew that leaving now was the absolute wrong thing to do, was the worst thing to do, but he didn’t know what options he had to choose from. It was nearly Christmas and he had to get home to see his family. Still, everything about it felt horrible.
They met outside her apartment when she came home from work just after the sun had set. And had drinks at the restaurant down the street, L’Abreuvoir, with her roommate, Felix, as a sort of final adieu—last waltz.
The rest of their night was just like any other from the past month. Except that a bitterness had snuck into him and hidden somewhere. The bitterness tried to make him annoyed with Fleur, and find all these different reasons why she bugged him. It was all just noise and distortion though. Like he was looking through those old blue and red 3-D glasses, everything looked angry and out of proportion. It was a coping mechanism that was transparent to him as those colored lenses had been, even as it was happening. He hated it nevertheless. He was grumpy and his last night with her was tainted and it was his own fault.
They had sex one last time, but part way through she stopped, pulled away from him. She was crying. “I don’t know if I can finish,” she said, “I’m just too sad.”
“I know,” he said, “me too.” And rolled on his side and held her there. And soon slipped back inside her. They came together, at least, he thought they did. And then turned on some movie or show, it didn’t matter what it was. He fell asleep right away, with her spooning him from behind. Until he awoke, soaked in sweat, in a panic in the middle of the night, the wind rushing out of him and the cold pain killing all the organs in his belly. He turned to her incoherently, grabbing out for her in desperation, “Fleur, Fleur, come here,” he said. And pulled at her. He’d woken to the awareness he wasn’t holding her and wouldn’t have the chance again. She half awoke and moved into his arms. When the alarm went off in the morning her face was wet against his. They did what they always did every morning: sat in bed and drank coffee and ate cookies and kissed and cuddled together. Except that every other morning was good, and this was the worst morning of his life.
She didn’t make any particular noises or any kind of emotional scene. But when they held tight to each other and pulled close, and put their cheeks together or kissed, he felt the cold and slightly sticky wetness on her cheeks and around her eyes. And it hurt him. Terribly. Pressing her tear-soaked face against his brought though him an indescribable pain, like that block of ice was getting bigger and bigger and going farther and farther down and sending shards that stabbed out. He hadn’t even known that he was deep enough to hurt that far down. It just felt so wrong to leave, so completely wrong, but he knew he had to go. Or he thought he did. Now he wasn’t so sure.
“Je t’aime, je t’aime. I love you,” she said, as they embraced outside her bedroom door, his packed backpack on the floor beside them. “You actually said it,” he said. And while he was excited that she loved him enough that she no longer had any reservations about saying it, he felt even worse. Once again they hugged a long and sad farewell in the open doorway of her lovely little apartment, and held on as tight as they could. They tried again to hold so tight that time couldn’t move them. But it did and they had to let go. He did first, peeled her off of him to say that final wretched goodbye. And as the door was closing with her standing there in her blue flannel pajama pants and oversized Michael Jackson t-shirt and he tried to be strong and turn and just go, he felt something rip out of him, a visceral tearing of flesh and bone. He walked down the stairs with his chest torn open and his blood all spilling out.
He got in the Uber and cried and stared out the window in empty silence the whole way to the airport. All he could think about was how he would do anything just to go back there and stay with Fleur in that apartment. Now he had to think why he didn’t have the driver turn around.
Or do anything else. In the last months he had relived this moment of leaving over and over. His chest was still open and each time he thought of it his exposed heart pulsed and squirted blood everywhere. Because he didn’t know why he should be here and not there. He should have come home for Christmas and gone right back to Paris, right back to Fleur. That’s what he should have done. And not this texting for months on end, talking about hypothetical visits but never planning anything seriously, talking about a future in a different world in another time.
He typed the words, “I want to be with you. It’s as simple, and as complicated as that,” but he didn’t send them. What would be the point? She hadn’t answered his texts in days anyway. And he wasn’t sure she ever would. Not since he’d told her about how he wanted to move to Paris so they could be together, and argued for it, sending long text after long text, and frustrated her, until he could tell she was pretty mad at him, and wouldn’t say much beyond “I understand how you feel.” Not that he could blame her, for he knew he was acting like a lunatic. And he was so bad at texting and never said the right thing, so he couldn’t even tell her what he wanted to say. He wanted to tell her that what they had was—well, beautiful. That if he lost her he didn’t think he would find anything like it again. But he didn’t say that. Like a badger fighting on his back, he was just lashing around in frantic death-rattles. He was desperate; he would do anything. But, he knew, in the end, that anything was not enough, and nothing would be too much to bear. It had been over the moment he left Paris. He either had to move, which she didn’t want him to do, or move on—had to face the music.
He heard a truck pulling in the drive and looked up from where he sat on the edge of the raised concrete carport, his arms crossed over his knees with his head cradled there on top of them. John hopped out the truck and said “what the hell, man. You’re just sitting there?”
He lifted his head up from his arms and looked at John, tears on his face. A chickadee lay dead in the mud before him. “I don’t know what to do, John,” he said. “What do I do?”