Something Eternal

by Joel T. McGrath

  Looking down and away, she beamed with flaming cheeks. “No, I mean, yeah, you look totally fine.” Emma tucked long, stringy, brown strands of hair behind her ear. “I can’t believe I just said that, what I meant was…”

  He interrupted by quickly kissing her lips. She slapped his face and then he backed from his bold advance. She turned, looking at the dress in the window, pretending as if nothing had happened at all, and so did he. Stunned by his daring move, she remained motionless for a moment, and the two stood side by side looking at the dress in the window together.

  “I didn’t take you for the shy type.” His cool did not waver, and his poise persisted. “Well, now that we got that out of the way, my name’s Killian,” he said with little emotion.

  Emma wanted to be outraged by this scoundrel, but his kiss had left her feebly craving another one from him. With a faint blush, she unconsciously mimicked his stance. Not able to hold her feelings in, she broke her silence. “Whoa, have you ever heard of boundaries?” she ranted, yet instinctual feelings darted a swift, inquiring look his way.

  “It’s your last night in Paris, no?” He got close and played with her stringy hair. “This is the city of lights and of love.” With his lips near her cheek, he said, “Your hair is as fine as silk.” He whispered the next words in her ear. “I can show you some things that aren’t on any tour guide map. Things that your friends back home won’t believe…things, I dare say…you’ll never see again.”

  She tried to be mad at him, but he was thrilling, attractive, and had a certain allure with a magical hold.

  “Oh, what the hell,” Emma said, leaning in for another pass.

  They passionately kissed along the crowded street, and Killian became even more desirable to the eye.

  “I’ve always wanted to taste France.” She ran her tongue over her own lips. “I think I like it…a lot. I’ve French kissed before, but I’ve never actually French kissed a French boy while actually being in France. Now that’s something to write home about,” she confidently stated, smirking, her eyes lighting toward his with thoughts of delight.

  Killian reserved his cool, only floating a single eyebrow in return.

  The rest of that day, Emma and Killian toured museums and gardens as they ate, drank, and breathed in the best that Paris had to offer on her mother’s five-hundred-dollar budget. He led her by the hand, occasionally twirling her toward him on a whim, dipping her in public, while they danced all over the city streets. She laughed, giggled, played, and devoured attention as she never had before. Killian wildly kissed her neck and caused mischief wherever they went, and she loved it. On several occasions, guards chased them out of galleries and shops for exposing amorous episodes.

  Emma had never felt so free from her brittleness. She hated her life back in Kansas, and she wanted to stay here with Killian forever. Emma adored him. She felt a natural attraction, and a longing to be near him always. However, Killian’s words did not match his gestures, and he remained affectedly nonchalant about her.

  There was something about Killian. There was something more than just his attractive features that both freed and corrupted Emma. Though she could not explain, nor understand, she felt as if they had known each other for much longer than a few hours. He helped her abolish all doubt, and side by side, they captured Paris. The ambiance of the city lights were now their lights. The lovers embracing on every poster became portraits of them in her eyes.

  The hours sped by like grains of dwindling sand in a bottom-heavy hourglass. Before long, as Emma had promised her mother, it was time to leave his company and go back to the hotel. With simultaneous confliction, her hand slowly slid apart from his, but their eyes remained affixed, long after they had stopped touching hands.

  The two of them hopped the next trolley. Once packed aboard the full and swaying ride, their passion dimmed. Cramped between strangers, Emma and Killian turned away from each other.

  Instead, they each silently grieved the beautiful city as tall lampposts blinked one after the other, announcing night’s fall. Emma watched while clinging to the trolley safety bar. Her heart now like sandpaper, Emma wiped a stray saline drop from her cheek as the sky broke open rays of heavenly splendor near dusk.

  The gloomy mist atop the Eiffel Tower dissipated and a sudden warm torrent of light covered the sides of their faces. Two faces now half-dark, half-bright, half-sweet, half-sad, stared into the other. Meanwhile, the whole city transformed from gray into a glimmering, crystalline gold. A southerly breeze kicked up, invading the streets with rushing air. The swift gusts drove clouds in retreat. The sky opened for the first time that day, and stars clustered a brilliant show at twilight. A new moon left nothing to drown the stellar parade gifted above, ending Emma’s perfect day. Her heart all but eclipsed the breaking dawn of artificial sparkle, which Paris now buzzed. Lampposts shimmered white dots off the long river beside them, and combated the growing darkness taking siege over the city.

  People filtered off at each stop. Among the now less than half filled trolley, Emma broke the silence, turning toward Killian at the day’s last light.

  “You showed me more in the last few hours than I’ve seen in my entire life.” Emma’s bottom lip quivered. “I don’t wanna leave.” She rested her head on his shoulder and watched the lights twinkle and dance off the river, occasionally glancing up for a non-verbal response. “What are you thinking?” She tried to read his emotions, but she mistook stoic for distant when he simply put his arm around her waist.

  Killian said nothing. He was icy, without a trace of emotion washing over his surface. His carefree, cheerful manner was gone, replaced by a group of rigid, unconscious body movements. And as the trolley approached her stop, he still said nothing, but panted, moving air forth with labored compression.

  Emma gently pulled a tiny yellow flower from her hair, and thread it through Killian’s empty jacket buttonhole. With a brief downward peek, Killian tightened his lower lip. Emma prattled on about her life back home, sighing deep from her belly whenever her mother entered the story. As they neared the glitzy hotel, the trolley brakes made a low, hard grind and slowed to a stop at their regal front gates.

  Killian was staying on the trolley, having no intention of talking or looking at Emma again. “This is your stop,” he said, his voice chilly, his expression frozen.

  Emma shook her head. Her two hands wrapped around his limp arm. “You gave me a really nice day, the best ever.” With eyes asquint, her voice spun frustration. “Why are you being like this?” She dropped his arm.

  Killian flashed a radiant look, but forced a smile all the same. It was his first smile since they got on the trolley. “I’m a cad you know.” The driver rang the stop bell. Killian held onto the trolley’s bar with one hand, and with his free arm, he pulled her chest to chest and cheek to cheek. “You probably shouldn’t stay, but don’t leave.”

  “What? I have to.”

  “Maybe, but then again, maybe not.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Do what?”

  “Make me leave sad and lonely.” Emma hung her head with falling eyes and a sigh.

  “You’ve bewitched me.” Killian’s eyes gleamed.

  “I can’t…”

  “Fine, go then.” Killian withdrew his offer. “Your mother’s waiting.”

  Emma leaned back against the trolley’s inner side panel. She raised one eyebrow, while lowering the other. “I don’t understand you,” she said with a befuddled headshake.

  “What’s to understand?” He playfully teased. “You’re afraid for this to end. You’re afraid for us to end.” Killian deviously half grinned.

  “This?” Emma aimed her forefinger and thumb back and forth. “What is this anyway?”

  “Whatever you want it to be.”

  The trolley driver yelled. “Okay kids, wrap it up. It’s getting late and I have to get this thing
back to the station.”

  They were unfazed, neither detaching their affixed eyes from one another. Killian reached for her hand, caressing it with his soft pads. Emma faintly blushed.

  “Ya know…until today, I was always available, but unwanted,” Emma plainly said.

  Killian held a brief, intimate silence. “I’m a poet, and poets always want the best.” The back of his hand caressed her cheek.

  “You said you were a cad.” Emma smiled, closing her eyes and leaning into his touch. “What’s a cad anyway?”

  Killian held the back of her head against his shoulder. His eyes peered off in contemplation. “I’m both a poet and a cad.” He brushed his hand down her neck. “A cad is a man who wants to write the finest poetry you can take back to America and always remember him by.”

  Emma hesitated. “I can’t.”

  “Listen, after your mom goes out for the night, come back, and see me one last time. I still have places to show you.” He gently refused her no with a devilish smile.

  “I don’t know…”

  “Trust me, if not for my wonderful poetry, then you need to see the catacombs under the city streets of Paris before you leave.”

  The driver leaned over the back of his seat. “Don’t make me come back there.”

  Still they ignored him.

  “What’s in the catacombs?” Emma peeled away, glanced down, and then back up at him. “Wait, wasn’t some girl just found dead in some place like that?”

  “No.” Killian scoffed. “Don’t believe everything you hear.” He raised her hand to his mouth, gently kissing it as he caressed her fingertips. “I have something amazing to show you, and I promise that once you see it, you’ll never be the same again.”

  Emma sighed. She grieved their parting, and even the relaxed luxury of the ritziest hotel in the city felt uncomfortable somehow.

  The trolley driver grew hot with anger. Emma looked up at the third floor window of the hotel. It was her room. She saw the silhouette of her mother peering down at her from behind the drapes. She quickly hooked her elbow around Killian’s neck, pulling his collar down, revealing his black and red scorpion ink, opening her mouth, crashing lips, and enfolding her tongue around his. She glared defiantly up at the silhouette. Unlocking from Killian, Emma jumped off the swaying trolley.

  Killian stayed aboard the trolley as it started rolling again, past the glitzy, majestic hotel. He sulked at their bitter departure, yet smiled at the sweet-tasting, tawdry laced kiss Emma planted across his tender skin. His eyes a daze, two fingertips slowly rubbed while his tongue extended for a lick over his own lips. Emma’s grape-flavored balm now smeared tastily, with an aroma of fresh bounty on and all over him. He watched her as she carelessly pranced and trotted away from him and toward the hotel’s main lobby.

  Just short of the hotel’s doors, Emma stopped, turned, and cupped a hand at the corner of her mouth, shouting, “I’ll be there!”

  Killian twirled one foot and one arm off the trolley, nearly falling off. He held a single hand on the bar as it drove away, while yelling back, “Meet me at the dress shop, ma chère.” He rode the side of the trolley as if he were windsurfing a rising tide of emotions. He waved with all smiles and Emma watched him until she could no longer see the trolley among all of the other traffic intermingled along the busy street.

  Later that evening, Emma lay with the top half of her back off the bed. With

  her head and shoulders upside down, her hair hung over the blanket’s edge. She anxiously flipped through the television channels in rapid succession. Her mother had been in the bathroom for what seemed like hours, fiddling with her hair, dress, earrings, and makeup.

  While curling the ends of her long, straight locks, her mother stuck her head out the bathroom door. “Honey, could you turn that down for a minute, I can’t hear myself think.”

  “What!?” Emma shouted, increasing the volume instead.

  “I said…could you turn down the T.V.?” her mother yelled this time.

  Emma ignored her mother, but she herself was keenly aware of the time. Her eyes were glued to her phone. Emma stared at the clock on her phone and the wall, and with each tick, angst and tension matured unbearably.

  Time appeared to both race by and stand still. Emma compulsively chewed on her thumbnail in expectation of seeing Killian again, spitting the tiny slivers onto the floor. Her heart aflutter, she could not get him out of her mind. She obsessed over his beautiful façade and fluid, uncomplicated movements. She knew he was different from any other boy she had ever met before, and yet, she did not know exactly why she felt the way she did. But, she also did not care why she did not know, for all it seemed she ever wanted now was him. Emma just knew she had to see him again, and soon, or else she would explode.

  Emma rolled her eyes toward the direction of the bathroom where her mother readied. “God,” she groaned, in quiet frustration, “what the hell is taking you so long?”

  The bathroom fan whirled, rattling an inconsistent hum from above. Her mother raised her voice, calling out. “Honey, could you come in here and help me zip up this stupid dress?”

  Irritated, Emma sat up, looked at the clock, and then tossed the television remote to the floor. She sighed longingly, and waited for her mother to call again, this time dragging herself, feet shuffling, forward into the bathroom.

  Emma clenched her teeth and quickly grabbed the silver zipper, tugging it forcefully upward on her mother’s short, overly formfitting, tight red dress. The zipper was stuck. Biting her tongue, she tussled with the zipper, pinching her fingers with white knuckled grip.

  “Geesh, Mom…put on a few pounds since we’ve been here?” Her eyes stable, they focused on the silver zipper, tussling to pull it up. “You better lay off on the truffles if you ever want to get in this dress again.” Emma huffed, smirking behind her mother’s back.

  “Stop it! Don’t be rude. You stop those horrible comments right this instant!” Her mother wiggled her body forward. “And be careful with the zipper or you’ll break it.” She reached blindly behind, awkwardly trying to grab the zipper away from her daughter. “You don’t talk to your friends like that and you shouldn’t talk to me like that either. Besides, I work out five days a week. I’ll just work out more when I get back home.”

  “Whatever…or maybe you can just get Dad to buy you some more liposuction.”

  “Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!” Her mother slammed her pink hairbrush on the sink, cracking the brush in half.

  Emma knew her night with Killian was only possible if her mother went out, and at this rate, it was almost a total wash. Emma instantly changed her tone. For her mother to go out, she had to feel good, and Emma wanted her mother to feel just good enough to leave.

  “Say,” Emma asked with a slightly interested nature. “Where are you going tonight anyway?”

  “Oh, stop being patronizing!” Her mother snorted angrily.

  Emma said with a sincere tone, “No, I really want to know.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, you’re my mom and my best friend, and I want to make sure that you’re safe, too.”

  The two shared a laugh and a hug. “I’m going to this really nice restaurant with a friend,” her mother said with a relaxed ease.

  “What friend?” Emma put her hand over her mouth, her eyes open wide. “You didn’t tell me about any new friends.” Emma pretended to giggle, while pulling straight the coarse top fabric of her mother’s short, tight red dress. The zipper loosened, releasing its way, and sliding with one relaxed tug up to the top. “OMG, you’ve got a date, don’t you?”

  “Maybe.” Her mother smiled, pulling at the bottom of the red dress, smoothing the lines and bumps on the fabric, after which, she pushed up, with both hands, under her bosoms, until she looked precisely how she imagined.

  Emma stood beside her, putting her arm around her
shoulder. “You look beautiful. Say, whatever happened to ‘don’t trust men,’ you know, after you and Dad split?”

  “This is different.” She twisted away from her daughter’s arm. “You’re going to wrinkle my dress and mess up my hair.” She fluffed her hair upward as she continued to talk. “I’m just going out to have some fun. Ralyo makes me feel young again.” Her eyes swelled with the mention of his name.

  Emma tilted her head down and pretended to vomit. “You’re making me sick. Will you just go already?” The corners of her lips quirked upward, but the rest of her face did not smile.

  Still, her mother saw only what she wanted as she contoured the final touches of color to her cheeks. She hummed a song while applying eyeliner, after, standing back a step, gazing at her own lovely image in the mirror. “Just because I’m a divorced single mom, doesn’t mean I can’t have some fun.”

  Emma knew her mother’s self-absorbed sureness was intact again, and that was a good thing, so she went back to her bed, and started flipping through the television channels and just waited. She counted the seconds as they loudly ticked by. She synced the clock on the wall to her phone. Time drove her mad, so she impulsively threw her phone across the room. Emma then scrambled to find her phone. Her stress level rose until she dug it out from under the dresser, after which, she put her phone in her back pocket.

  Her mother unexpectedly walked out of the bathroom, threading her earring as she passed Emma’s room. Her mother stopped, looked in on Emma, and narrowed her eyes, giving a quick look in at her daughter, but soon continued walking toward the closet to choose an evening coat.

  “So, who were you talking to down at the trolley?” her mother asked from the other room.

  “No one, and besides, ever heard of privacy?”

  “Nothing’s private between friends.”

  “Stop being so controlling!” Emma shouted. “Ugh!”

  “I’m your friend,” her mother meekly replied. “I’m not trying to control you.”