I went to Portugal and Spain and all across Morocco and Algeria and Tunisia, rode camels for days and nights in the Sahara, climbed to the top of the Atlas Mountains, and crossed the Mediterranean on a fishing boat, and every day I thought about Céleste.
I made my return to France in Marseille like the Count of Monte Cristo, and went up the country on my way back to her in Paris. I wasn’t sure what would happen when I saw her again, or if I would see her again at all, so I kinda put it off and went to Annecy and Lyon. I went to Annecy because Céleste told me it was beautiful there, and in Lyon she gave me a number to text so I could buy weed. And from Lyon I was going to go to Strasbourg. But I missed my train.
The train I got rescheduled on stopped in Paris. I thought about it the whole ride and really struggled with it internally, but when I got to the station in Paris and smoked a cigarette I knew that there was no way I could get on the next train.
I couldn’t be in Paris and not see her.
Céleste had her mom and her brothers in town visiting her though, and I couldn’t see her. And then the next night all the metros were shut down from some strike so the city was in chaos and Céleste was with all her friends because it was a crazy night.
I rode a Lime scooter for an hour all the way across the city to the Supersonic. I was far away from everything because I’d picked the closest hostel in Paris to Céleste’s apartment and there’s nothing to do at night around the Eiffel Tower if you’re alone and you like doing anything interesting. I rode the scooter for an hour in sadness, and watched a concert and rode back to my hostel for an hour feeling like an idiot. I’d structured my whole trip around seeing her again and now she didn’t even want to see me.
But she did want to see me, she told me the next day. She was free that night at 21h.
I wandered around all day with perfume reveries buzzing around in my head. I was so excited to see her. But I was super bummed she wouldn’t be free till eleven. That was kinda late for me normally. I didn’t know what to do until then, so I went back to the bar with the goat head and got some beers.
At about nine thirty, I’d just bought another beer, and I realized that 21h was nine o’clock and that I had made a terrible mistake. I started panicking and immediately texted Céleste to explain my foolishness. She thought it was funny and told me to just come to her place and that we could get a drink at her neighborhood spot. I chugged my beer, and half-ran to the metro. I couldn’t believe I’d wasted such precious minutes.
It was all fine when I got there though. She came out of the door of her apartment building and met me on the sidewalk and we had a big long hug, one of those where you rock back and forth and swing side to side a little. We started walking to the restaurant, l’Abreuvoir, up the street to grab a drink. She grabbed my arm and leaned into me when we walked. I was so happy I had to stop to kiss her.
I grabbed her face with both my hands.
We kissed each other like a couple of raccoons on a jar of peanut butter. And then we remembered that we were on the sidewalk and we stopped. We wiped our mouths and we laughed and she took my arm and put hers around it and we didn’t say anything.
We kept walking up the block to l’Abreuvoir with big childish excited grins on our faces.
Céleste smoked at our table out front under one of those typical Parisian awnings and asked me about Moroccan birds.
The waiter brought our drinks.
I kept trying to fix my hair, I was sure my hair looked weird.
I said, “I can’t remember seeing a single bird the entire time I was in Morocco. Besides maybe gulls on the beaches. There must have been birds but I can’t even remember seeing one anywhere in the whole country..”
“So there aren’t any birds in Morocco,” she said. “This seems a bit sad to me.”
I crossed my legs and leaned forward and rested an arm on the table so that my hand reached way across it close to her hand. She moved it ever-so-slightly.
“Do you think you would like Paris better or worse if there weren’t any birds here?” I said.
“Pffff, I don’t really know. I love the idea of having lots of birds around me. Like lots and lots of birds that are always singing and are making everything more beautiful. But I don’t really like the birds we have here, I think. They just poop.”
“That’s it?”
“Yes, they poop and then nothing else.”
“What about the birds where you grew up? Were they always singing and making things beautiful?”
“Ah, in Amiens? Oui, the birds in Amiens are a bit nicer, I think,” she took a drag on her cigarette and ran her finger across her upper lip. “And you? Are there many birds in your home?”
“Yeah, yeah, there are lots of birds. Woodpeckers and chickadees and stellars jays and crows and robins and things like that. All kinds of birds. In the summers they’re always singing.”
“This sounds so nice. I don’t know any of the birds you said but I think they are really nice. I would love to see the place where you come from.”
“You should come,” I said. “You’re always welcome.” Her hand that didn’t have a cigarette was still resting on the table next to mine and I’d been looking at it for a while. I grabbed it. I touched my fingertips to hers and I lifted her fingers up really slow and put mine in between them and held her hand in mine. We were both looking at the cluster of our fingers, and then we looked at each other’s faces. Céleste got all red and so did I. She was giving me that burning look again.
The waiter came up and interrupted us and we cleared our throats and he emptied the ashtray and asked if we needed more drinks. Céleste did all the talking and translating for me. “Do you want another one?” she said.
“Do you?”
“Maybe not, I think. We can just go to my apartment if you want.”
“Yeah, okay.”
She said something in French to the waiter and he nodded graciously and went away.
Then he came back and said something in French and Céleste said something in French back and seemed really happy.
“What’d he say?”
“He said the drinks were on the house, ‘for the lovers’” she blushed. The red on her cheeks spread up all the way to her dark brown eyes. She kept getting more red. Redder and redder like she was glowing.
She was burning a hole in my eyes. The way you burn them when you look at a flashlight and then you have a light stuck in your eye after. There was a big bright Céleste in the middle of my eyes and I could barely see anything else. I tried to look around but I couldn’t see anything else.
I didn’t know if I was home, or back on the ocean, or if I was still in Paris.
I didn’t know if it was winter or summer or if there was money in my bank account.
I didn’t know what day of the week it was.
I didn’t know if there were days of the week or people to record them.
All I knew was all I could see was this girl named Céleste and the only thing I wanted to do was spend as much time with her as possible.
We went back to her apartment and I didn’t leave for a month.