I sat down beside her and stroked the plum of her cheek. Her wide eyes opened, at first with confusion and the glow of love. I knew then we would never part.
“Clemente,” She placed her hand over mine, “Are you okay?"
“A little rough,” I laughed lightly, “but Callie—
“I’m not leaving you… ever,” With a burst, she sat up and held me tightly, as if she were prepared to never let go. I didn’t fight it.
“I agree,” I shook my head vigorously.
“I spoke to Marie,” She continued as I hadn’t spoken at all, “We can live like her parents, outside of Paris. You do your thing…” Her voice trailed off.
“As I said Callie, I agree.”
“You do?” She pulled away and looked me straight in the eye, a bemused expression in her dancing eyes.
“Yes,”
“Clemente, I love you so very much…” She kissed me deeply.
You can imagine what happened next. Yes, even in a morphine haze, Clemente can preform, very well indeed.
Chapter Twenty – Callie
All of this happened over twelve years ago.
It was hard at first. My family couldn’t understand why I chose to stay in France, and get married at such a young age. They wanted me home in America, safe in a woman’s Catholic University.
It took years, but they finally accepted my new life. Well, maybe not my mother, she misses having me around. She had always seen me of a mini-version of herself but with the opportunities of a modern woman. Opportunities never available to her.
However, my father took an instant liking to Clemente. I hadn’t known before, but my father had grown up around motorcycles and had hoped as a boy to become a MotoGP racer. My father and Clemente bonded over the sleek European bikes.
So many dreams unfulfilled for so many people in this world, but not for me and Clemente.
We live not far from where we jumped off the train. Clemente continued on with Enfer’s Vengeance for a little over three years and then suddenly quit. He sells rare motorcycles online to his captive world audience of customers.
He has a rare gift for finding bikes. That’s my Clemente. Resourceful.
We spend our weekends with Marie and Henri. Marie just had her first child, a son. She’s still as rough and feminine as ever. Henri’s been trying to get her to stay home more, ease out of the club. But she’s not having it.
Me? I spend my days taking care of our three daughters and slowly working on Masters in the field of Gender Studies. My dream is to teach at the Sorbonne one day.
And dreams can come true.
Savage – Cheval and Me
By
Marie St.Clair
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Introduction
It’s my 66th birthday today. I’m surrounded by my children, my grandchildren, so many friends. Life is good. Who would have expected that?
I’m spry, fun to be around, knowledgeable even. They tell me I retain my girlish good looks, as if sixty-six were ancient. It may have been when I was a girl, but it’s certainly not anymore.
Women my age, we’ve seen it all, we’ve done it all. We grew up in a time when skirts were worn below the knee, where modesty ruled. Our sweater sets, and pearls, elegance prevailed. We did as suggested with a smile.
It was cloistered experience, sometimes suffocating, but safer in a way. Our decisions weren’t made by us, the consequences of our actions certainly couldn’t be ours. Of course if something went wrong, our fathers or other men in our lives, would gently admonish us but know in their hearts that the fault lay with them, so it wouldn’t be too bad.
But then the 60’s jumped up and destroyed the natural order of things. We could suddenly wear what we wanted, go where we wanted, be as devil may care as we wanted. The consequences were our own.
Maybe I shouldn’t have phrased it that way, the consequences were our own. I made it clear until 1969 before I was ready to make my own defiant mark on the world. Before that I was as docile as kitten in my pleated skirts, starter pearls and cashmere cardigans. A dream daughter really.
But the kids surrounding me today, they don’t want to hear about that. They want to know what the sixties were really like. What is there to say to their tender ears? As I said I made until 1969 before I felt the pull of the era.
What do I know about Mary Quant, Carnaby Street and the civil rights demonstrations that were going in America. I was in Omaha and then quite suddenly I wasn’t there anymore.
The story I could tell the kids wouldn’t be fit for ears. I still can’t believe I survived it all, that I lived to tell the tale. I’ll tell them the censored version, the glossy edition. To you, I’ll tell the truth.
Chapter One
What’s there to say about Omaha that hasn’t already been said? I barely remember the colorless little town. Perhaps that isn’t fair. It’s only in retrospect that it lacked a spark. Growing up, it had seemed the whole world.
My family were firmly middle class. Good Catholic stock, church every Sunday. My mother was pious, beautiful in her own way. My father was lonely, the provider shunned by his wife who had chosen Jesus over him after her long labor with me.
I didn’t think about it as a child, only as an adult, long after I had left my small town. The coldness of my mother, what it had meant for my father. But it wasn’t the era where people spoke of such things. We all had our parts, and we played them well.
I could not have been a more dutiful daughter, right down to the way I wore my hair. My hair was a chestnut brown, silky, it seemed to thin at the time. I wasn’t quite aware that the lankiness was desirable. The hippie girls with their long silky hair so much like mine, worn with tribal headbands were far from my worldview. When the time came, which I didn’t ever anticipate, I was quite happy with my safe life, I would visually fit right in. In fact, I would become something of a local style icon before my real life began. I’m jumping ahead of myself.
I’ve never told my story before. Please bear with me. It’s a swirl in my head and so many years ago.
The clichéd sheltered life I lived as a girl was fine, happy even, until it suddenly wasn’t anymore. I had graduated from high school, first in my class, thank you very much, and had big plans to go to… secretarial school. Yes, that was what the era wanted for its best and brightest women.
They wanted us to be servile, bring the boss coffee, smile when pinched on the rear. It wasn’t the life I wanted for myself, but I didn’t question it. I would live with my parents, who loved me very much and work in an office until the day came when I married the man of their dreams. It seemed like a good enough plan.
If I hadn’t watched the news that night… If I hadn’t seen the almost colorfully gauze covered boys and girls with long flowing hair around my age in San Francisco protesting… I can’t even remember what they were protesting. Spry as I am, my memory sometimes fades.
That’s not the point though, the point is something in the way they moved as one, as if dancing, their passionate peacefulness, woke me up.
I didn’t want to be woken up. I was to start secretarial school the next day. My mother had taken me shopping the day before for a new sweater set. It was periwinkle, and I never got to wear it.
After the news was over, I dutifully got up from the sofa, where my mother and father sat on either side me, kissed them gently on their cheeks and went upstairs to my American Dream-style bedroom. I had matching mahogany canopy bed, book shelves and desk, the wallpaper was a soft pink embossed with tiny roses. It was a dream bedroom, absolutely cozy and beautiful.
By the time I opened the door to my room, I wanted to burn it down. All of it, everything, the whole world if I could. I crossed myself and said a quick prayer.
It didn’t help.
I didn’t burn my room down, or anything like that. Instead, I went to my well-organized closet a
nd neatly folded many of my dresses and sweater sets that I knew I would never want to wear again, and put them in to my chartreuse patent leather weekend bag. I placed the bag on my bed, stared at my room, wondering if I were really brave enough to do this, to face the new world.
I was.
I took my savings, a little over three hundred dollars (which would be about 2000.00 today), and my prayer book (don’t laugh, habits are hard to break), and climbed out my window. It was July, the night was warm. I walked, with a spring in my step, to the bus station.
I hadn’t really thought about where I was going. The bus to Los Angeles was leaving the soonest. San Francisco would have been my first choice, but I needed to fly away in that moment. It felt urgent.
So I left.
The exhilaration died a little in the twelfth hour of my bus travel, but not much. I was eager to live. I didn’t worry about a thing. I had the foolhardy confidence that only a nineteen year old could possess.
Thirty-seven hours later the bus doors opened to Hollywood Blvd. A procession of dangerously handsome men roared by on their Harley-Davidson motorcycles. My heart pounded with fear. I had only ever seen such a thing in movies before.
Shakily, I walked out on to the street. The sight of the new world, the new world I craved, overwhelmed and comforted me. Thoughts of crazed biker gangs left my mind.
I didn’t see it as a sign of things to come. I really should have…
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About the Author
Marie St. Clair lives with her family by the beach in Los Angeles. When she's not taking long walks, she likes to writes sordid and tortured stories of people in love. She loves her family, writing books, reading books, and dresses.
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Savage - Clemente's Last Run: A Biker Romance Page 6
