The Peach and the Poppy

by Caesar J. M. Kauftheil

  Gratification

  Poppy visited the Eiffel Tower and the Arc de Triomphe. She realized, somewhere along the way, that as much as she could appreciate the presence in magnitude these structures held, she truly had no passion for architecture. They were… nice, but if you wanted to see something gorgeous in Paris, she thought, all you had to do was sit down for breakfast and look across the street. She sat down at a restaurant for dinner, and it was good—she knew it was good—but the touristic activity had drained her. She called for the check shortly after finishing her food and returned to her hotel room. Tomorrow, she thought, she was going to take it easy.

  She phoned her mother when she returned back to her hotel.

  "I survived my first day in Paris," she said over the phone.

  Her mother asked her about her day, and she skimmed details about site-seeing, leaving out the part about the woman with the cigarette who still wouldn't leave her mind.

  "Do you have enough money for your trip?" her mother asked, for the tenth time. Poppy could already feel the slew of overbearing—loving, but overbearing—questions her mother was about to unleash.

  "Yes, Mom. Speaking of money, international calling rates are absolutely ridiculous," Poppy quickly interjected, "so I'll talk to you later, all right?"

  "Au revoir," Poppy's mother bid her, facetiously.

  "Au revoir, Mom."

  Lying alone in the queen sized bed, stripped down to a T-shirt and panties and nestled between the soft sheets and the puffy comforter, Poppy tried to fall asleep, physically tired from wandering in Paris, which was such a walkable city. She was mentally overwhelmed by influx of new things, but now that she was resting, her mind took the time to process everything from day's expeditions. Images of elegant Parisian women, of sultry smoking strangers, of delayed fantasies bounced around in her brain.

  She lay on her back, hands resting on her chest, and huffed. An absent-minded hand traveled over her breast, down her stomach, and under the cotton of her panties. After a day of exposure to so much that was exotic, she felt the need for a familiar gratification.

  A Small Adventure

  Sunday

  Poppy woke up the next morning to the sound of a pattering beyond the walls of her hotel room. She strolled to the window, opened the curtains, and saw the gray, overcast sky through streams of rain trickling down the glass pane. She tried not to see the rain as a dark cloud over her vacation and reminded herself that she had intended to take the day easy, anyway.

  She showered quickly to wash off the grime from the previous day's wandering and lingering traces from the night's release. She brushed her hair and let it hang about her neck. As usual, she wore her face au natural. She got dressed, donning a stylish red rain jacket that her mother had purchased for her over a deep-blue UC Santa Cruz jacket, turning up the collar to surround her neck, and pulled a pair of new boots halfway up her calves, knowing her feet would be soaked if she tried going out in her favorite, worn out sneakers. Resting a forest green umbrella against her shoulder, she made her way out to the moist streets.

  Her initial peevishness toward the rain vanished the moment she stepped out into it. Rather than dampening her spirits, the drizzle whetted a desire for small adventures. The problem, however, was that Poppy didn't know how to have small adventures in Paris. She decided she would do what she generally would do during her unplanned romps through San Francisco: wander around a store, examine things she had no intention of buying until she felt satisfied, and move on to the next one. She did, at some point, have to buy souvenirs for people back home, but that felt a bit like a chore.

  Absent-mindedly, she began walking the same path as yesterday, and as she passed the same brasserie, she decided to repeat her breakfasting experience. She twirled the droplets of rain off her umbrella, closed it, and stepped under the entrance's awning. Who knows, she thought, half-hopefully; maybe she would see that smoking hot stranger again.

  And, to her sincere surprise, she did. Sitting at a table against the wall, facing away from the door, Poppy saw the unmistakable bun of sleek black hair, and soft brownish skin of her neck and profile. Lithe fingers, ending in manicured but unpolished nails, made a fountain pen dance atop a page in a small notebook. Poppy struggled for breath as she passed her, attempting to seem casual, unaware the woman's presence. She approached the counter, ordered the same small meal as the day before with an added glass of orange juice, and took a table near the counter, directly in the line of sight of the scribbling stranger.

  She should have expected the orange juice to be served in miniature glass, but it still took her by surprise. She immediately emptied the packet of sugar into her demitasse, and found that the bitterness of her espresso wasn't so bad now that she had anticipated the kick and become somewhat accustomed to it. She even almost managed not to cringe with the first sip. She found a pattern of balance in the meal, combating the coffee's bitter with the sweet of the orange juice, and mellowing her palate with the savory of the croissant, and then repeating in a cycle of sips and nibbles.

  She kept her eyes focused around the stranger, trying to examine without seeming too obvious. At points she almost believed she saw in the peripherals of her vision the stranger gazing at her. Poppy almost considered approaching, but for lack of an unwanted cigarette to ask for, she relapsed into nervousness. Despite her pacing, the small portions didn't last very long. She waited for the bill, which seemed again never to be coming as the man behind the counter was occupying himself with a pair of scissors, clipping articles out of a newspaper when he wasn't taking and delivering orders. She considered ordering something else to give her an excuse to continue occupying the small round table and staring into the space around the glowing girl.

  Poppy's heart dropped slightly as she saw the woman stand up, and she froze as the stranger seemed to be approaching her. She almost pinched herself to reaffirm that she wasn't just imagining this. She walked up, stopped beside Poppy's table and… placed her hands patiently on the counter. The man who should have been there was presently carrying a coffee to a customer, and Poppy took appreciation of this small miracle. Being so close to the woman was still a titillating thrill, and she restrained herself from not ogling up the gorgeous form standing only inches away from her.

  "Hey." It took Poppy a second to realize she was being addressed, and she glanced over to find a pair of alluring narrow eyes meeting her own.

  "Hi," she responded, her mouth suddenly feeling extremely dry.

  "You're the American girl from yesterday." Poppy didn't know how to respond without making a fool of herself. She knew she was nowhere near smooth enough to pull off a line like 'You're that insanely gorgeous French woman from yesterday,' so she just nodded.

  "Enjoying your trip?" the woman asked with a casual elegance.

  "Absolutely." Poppy wished she could say more, something, anything to keep the woman lingering near her table as long as possible. The server had returned to the counter, and the woman requested a pack of cigarettes from the collection on the wall behind him. After a brief exchange, she handed him a ten Euro note, and he dropped a collection of coins in her hand. The man, seeming not to notice Poppy's empty dishes though they were right next to him, walked to a chair behind the espresso machine and disappeared behind his butchered newspaper.

  "Is it just me," Poppy said, in a low note, "or are the servers here really unattentive?"

  "How do you mean?" the woman asked, pushing her change and pack of cigarettes into a jacket pocket.

  "I've been here twice, and both times, I waited, and this guy never brought me my check…" Poppy was a little taken aback when the woman started laughing.

  "This is your first time in Europe, isn't it?" Poppy blushed and nodded, feeling suddenly very foolish. "You have to ask for your bill. People aren't constantly in a rush here like they are in the States." She then said something in French to the waiter, indicating to Poppy, and the man busied himself with printing a receipt.

  "Tha
nk you…" Poppy said as the check was placed before her. She hadn't felt this stupid in a while.

  "So, you're here with friends? Family?" the woman asked, graciously breaking the awkwardness.

  "No. I was supposed to, but… No, I'm here on my own. Just, you know, seeing Paris."

  "Well, this is the perfect weather for that," she said, without a hint of sarcasm, her eyes softening as they trailed to rain creating puddles in the street.

  "I sort of overwhelmed myself with doing touristy stuff yesterday… I think I just want to hang out today…" Poppy steeled herself for the challenge of keeping the stranger there, talking to her as long as possible, even if it was about something as mundane as the weather. Poppy wouldn't seduce her with idle chitchat, but every moment spent conversing sent off sparks of stimulation inside of her. "Do you know any good places to do that? You know, just hang out…"

  The woman spread her arms, indicating the cozy environment around them. "This is it." Then she paused, her eyes wandering up, as if entertaining a thought. Poppy noted to herself that contemplation had never looked so sexy on any other face she had seen. "I'll be here for a little while longer if you'd like to join me. I don't mind company."

  Yes! Poppy screamed in her head. Yes, yes, yes! Maybe there is a god after all—Yes. "Uh, sure, why not?"

  The Polyglot's Notebook

  The only thing convincing Poppy that she wasn't walking on a cloud as she followed the inviting vixen back to her table was the soreness in her feet from the boots that she hadn't thought to break in before she left for her trip. The woman sat on the far end, and as Poppy took the seat across from her, knees practically brushing against one other's from across the shallow diameter of the table, the stranger slid her notebook toward herself. Before it was placed under the saucer of an emptied demitasse, and the ink-marked paper was obscured from sight, she noticed lines of text that seemed, at a glance, to be formatted in stanzas of poetry. Cautiously, Poppy refrained from asking about the content.

  "I'm Rochelle, by the way," the woman said, holding out a hand in a gesture of formal pretense. Her skin was exceptionally smooth and her grasp airy, but not infirm.

  "Pippa," Poppy said, and immediately wanted to shove her fist in her mouth. "I mean, that's my birth name. My parents were, you know, hippies" she added, now fumbling with her words. "Poppy Foster. That's what people call me. Call me Poppy."

  "All right, Poppy. I do like Pippa, though," she said, her voice so full of charm and composure that even Poppy liked her real name when it came from this woman's lips. "Does it have any meaning?"

  "I don't think so," Poppy shrugged. She felt like she was blathering, but she couldn't stop herself. "My mom just liked how it sounded, I guess. It's not as bad as my older sister's, at least. My parents named her Aquarius." That garnered a slight, confidence-inducing chuckle from Rochelle.

  "Rochelle isn't my real name either," she admitted. "My parents named me Momoka," a distinct East-Asian intonation accentuating her name.

  "What does your name mean? Your real one. I mean, your birth name," Poppy fumbled, and Rochelle silently slid her notebook in front of herself, opened to a blank page, and deftly drew three large characters on the leaf. The way Rochelle used her fountain pen reminded Poppy of the skillful strokes used in calligraphy.

  "Momoka" she said, pointing to a character with each syllable. "It means Peach Tree Flower. My mother would tell me when I was young that my name arose from her memories of peach trees blossoming in the town where she was raised in Japan."

  "So you're Japanese?" Poppy asked, as Rochelle flipped the notebook back to the page where she had been scribbling, and placed it back under her saucer. I knew it, Poppy thought to herself.

  "Half," Rochelle responded. Fortunately, as Poppy was too shy to ask, she added, "Filipino on my father's side."

  "Interesting," Poppy said. No wonder she couldn't place Rochelle's ethnicity. "So you were born in Asia…?" Rochelle shook her head.

  "Canada. My parents were both born overseas, but they met in Québec. Which is why I speak with a Québécois accent… though you probably wouldn't notice that since you don't speak French." Poppy shook her head.

  "So you speak… four languages?"

  Rochelle tipped her head to the side, and gave a small smile."Both my parents spoke Japanese, so I grew up trilingual. Now I speak…" Her pupils floated up to the corners of her eyes again, the look of contemplation that made Poppy melt. "Six and half languages. I studied Spanish and Italian in high school, and I learned Chinese in college. I picked up some Tagalog from my father, mostly swear words, and with my Spanish, I'd say I'm conversational, but nowhere near fluent."

  Poppy stared at her in amazement. "Wow… I just know some Spanish from high school, but I've honestly forgotten nearly all of it…"

  "I'm a bit of a polyglot, I suppose," Rochelle said with a shrug. It took Poppy a moment to recall the meaning of the word, which she knew she had read somewhere. 'Polyglot', if she could recall correctly, was someone who spoke a lot of languages, or something along those lines. "I do have an affinity for the Romance languages, though. I've been trying to learn Latin, but I don't quite have the pedagogy to be a self-teacher, I suppose."

  Rochelle's adept use of a wide vocabulary left Poppy feeling at a loss for words. "You really speak English really… well," Poppy said, correcting herself before she let the word 'good' slip, scrutinizing her own speech as to not seem uneducated.

  "Thank you," Rochelle said with a humble smile. She held a hand out to the server, who happened to be passing by. "Deux cafés, s'il vous plaît." The man nodded, and hurried away. She turned to Poppy again. "I'll be back momentarily," she said, walking across the brasserie to what Poppy assumed was the restroom.

  While Rochelle was absent, the waiter swung by wordlessly with two fresh cups of espresso, placed them on the table, and removed the dirty dishes. In doing so, he had uncovered the notebook that Rochelle had previously stowed under a saucer, and temptation filled Poppy. She tried not to look at the lined paper, though it hung there conspicuously at the bottom of her peripheral vision. Her pupils grew restless, dipping and flitting back up, hoping to catch a word or two from what seemed to be writing in verse on the page which, on the far side of the small table, was still at an easily readable distance. Restraint quickly diminishing, her eyes plummeted, and to her mixed relief and disappointment, she found it was written in French; Poppy's curiosity wasn't entirely satisfied, but Rochelle's privacy was secured. Though the lines were undecipherable, Poppy did recognize one word in the title: Blonde.

  Her eyes widened and she stared into the space before her. A coincidence of timing, Rochelle appeared back into view just as Poppy's eyes travelled upward. She sat again at the seat across Poppy, and pushed one of the demitasses toward her. "Oh, you didn't have to…" Poppy said, feeling a tinge of guilt.

  "I invited you to my table. I believe it would be a poor reflection of me to act as an ungracious host," Rochelle said, leaning back, one arm resting on the back of the chair, a coy smile on her lips.

  "Thank you," Poppy said, mixing sugar into her cup, and preparing herself to control her face for the first sip. She lifted her cup a foot above the tabletop. "Cheers."

  "Santé," Rochelle responded, sipping from an unadulterated cup. They sat in silence for several minutes, but it was a content quiet. There was coffee, company, and the gentle sound of rain from the street several yards away. This was the kind of pleasant lull that Shannon would always uncouthly try to disrupt and fill with vapid, mindless chatter. Poppy made a slight frown—this was not the time or place to be thinking about her again.

  "So, what do you do for work?" Poppy asked, trying to steer her mind away from unpleasant thoughts of partners past.

  "Linguistic endeavors, mostly, for a large corporation. Aiding in communication, translation: matters in that domain."

  "What company? Is it French?"

  "JBP Corp. There's a Paris branch, but it's global. They have me travel
ling frequently."

  "So, do you live in Paris?" A small part of Poppy wanted her to say 'no,' to say she was only here on work and lived in the United States… and find out they only lived a few streets away from one another… and…

  "When I can," she said, with a faraway look. "I spend about a third of the year away from my flat."

  "Where do you go?" Poppy asked, again privately hoping "United States" would be the answer.

  "Everywhere," she smiled. She glanced down at a gold wristwatch. "Speaking of work, however, it is about time I returned home to put some hours in on a project."

  "I suppose I should get a move on as well," Poppy said, rising from her seat, unsure again of what her day would entail. She remembered seeing a line of tourist kiosks near the Notre Dame Cathedral—she could probably knock off a few gifts at one of those.

  The rain had broken, though moisture hung in the air and the gray sky suggested more was to come before long.

  "Are you headed to the Metro?" Rochelle asked.

  Why not? "Yes." They walked together briskly in silence. Rochelle walked with her hands in her pockets, a collapsible umbrella hanging from his wrist and bouncing against her side with every step, the same eyes-forward determination and coldness that Poppy had noticed in nearly every person on the sidewalks. Together, they descended the steps into the subway station. Poppy stopped to stare at the train map, hoping to recall the route she had taken the day before, dreading the thought of consulting her guide again.

  "Where are you headed?" Rochelle asked, politely standing by her side.

  "I'm trying to remember," Poppy said, with a nervous laugh. "You?" Poppy realized, immediately after asking the question, how weird and creepy that might come across.

  Unfazed, Rochelle pointed out the white circle that was her destination on the map, and traced the path back to their current location with her finger.