Travels Through Love and Time
Page 6
Only after I caught the woman smiling and looking in our direction out of the corner of my eye did I realize that I was doing all this for her benefit. She got up and went inside. I felt some relief, as if during an intermission. Her book was still there. She came back very soon and, as she returned to the terrace, I saw she had taken off her sunglasses. She looked at me very briefly. Unbelievably, she was smiling in my direction. She did not look like Marie in the least. Her expression was soft and bright, and she had huge green eyes. She sat down, put her Ray Bans back on, and picked up her book again while the waiter brought her another café-crème.
My heart started pounding and my mind was racing all over the place. Unthinkable … it was unthinkable that I would have these feelings here, here in Paris, in this café, in the company of people who would not understand anything of me and my life. Unbelievable … right here in the land of my stilted youth where I had only been a good daughter, friend, and occasional lover to a jobless actor or two.
George and Francine were getting ready to leave. I got up too, as if in a dream.
I am in love, I thought. Just like that. This is ridiculous. There had been nothing seductive about the woman, no stealthy approach or meaningful glance full of sexual undertones. There had been nothing but a light smile and a square look. This was precisely what attracted me. Saying goodbye to my friends, I was looking behind them to remember everything about the woman. I took in the white collar, grey sweater, beige oversize canvas handbag, tight black pants, and white running shoes. I think her shoes got me especially because in the entire city of Paris, this woman and I were the only ones wearing athletic shoes and not actually jogging or playing ball.
I was tempted to stay at the café and talk to her, but I had already told Francine and George that I had to be somewhere else. We were crossing the Rue de Babylone to go through the park, when Francine realized that we had forgotten to pay. We came back, and the woman this time did not look up.
“It must be something in the air…” Francine said, apologizing to the waiter.
Then, before I knew it, we were gone. We were walking through the park amongst myriads of running toddlers, old people, nuns, and shady characters, all hanging out in the same sunny garden.
We said goodbye again, and I rushed into the Metro station, secretly hoping that the trains had suddenly stopped running, so I could come back up and see if the woman was still there. But the next train arrived promptly. I hopped on and, lost in my thoughts, started flying toward Solferino.
Panic … No other word can describe the chaos that was taking place in my brain. The insane, absurd temptation of going right back to the café was grabbing me and telling me to stay on the edge of my seat, ready to bolt when the train reached Solferino so I could run to the other side and rush back to Sèvres-Babylone.
On the other hand, the infamous cold and oh so arbitrary voice of reason was telling me to stay right there, glued to the moleskin until my final destination on the other side of town. Besides, every woman in Paris who doesn’t walk around in men’s clothes and slicked back short hair is usually spoken for by at least one man.
What would I say to her if I were to return to the café, after already making two exits in a row?
“Hi! I see you like Marguerite Duras. I’ve read all her books. She is très amusante!”
By the way, I automatically assumed the woman was French, which would also make me very uncomfortable. Only people who exile themselves voluntarily can understand this sentiment. In a foreign language, you can get rid of the very shame that shaped your being, and give yourself new pride in a world where everyone is willing to address you as an adult.
For the first time since losing Alison, I was interested enough in someone or something to be tempted. For a second I had thought she looked like Marie and it had sparked my imagination. It was all for a reason. Everything happens for a reason.
But still … if the woman was in any way interested, and if things did happen for me, what would I do? I was here to visit family and friends who did not know anything about my life. So what kind of mess would I get myself into?
* * *
Here I am, fantasizing and making a big deal out of nothing. This is the craziest daydream I have ever had. This is nothing but a romantic delusion born out of hell fire. On the other hand I can’t spend my life loyal to Alison in thought, and getting battered constantly by her lack of interest.
Maybe I am attracted to the woman because I don’t know anything about her, Alison style. But what if she is a friend of somebody I know? Shudder … What if, what if?
Chapter Two
The train, after an excruciating wait at Solferino and an endless journey through darkness, finally pulls into Sèvres Babylone…I am walking very fast … not running, mind you, but pressing on. Up the stairs … No. The escalator will gain me some time. If I go slowly, she will be gone. If I hurry, I’ll run into George and Francine. Up, up, out into the sunlight. God! This street is crowded … I am walking on the park side of the Rue de Babylone … The café is in sight, I see the waiter bringing stuff, but I still don’t see the terrace facing Le Bon Marché … Ten more steps, here it is …
She is there!
Oh dear! What do I do now? Hidden behind her sunglasses, she is reading the book, with an empty café crème in front of her. She does not look up. I walk past her and go inside the café, pretending to make a phone call.
Downstairs, it is dark. It smells bad and Francine has warned me that the toilet was a Turkish toilet, so I can’t even use the restroom. I can’t aim properly in Turkish toilets (how do real people do it?) and it would not do any good to come back up with wet shoes, athletic or not. Besides, if I wait any longer, she can leave anytime. I come back up. She is still there.
I sit down on the terrace at the same table where I was with George and Francine, but this time I am sitting next to her and not facing her. She still has not looked up. I was wrong. What do I do now?
The waiter comes, asking me what I want. He does not seem to recognize me, which is good. I’ll have a café-crème. Copycat. It’s time to try liking things I never liked before.
* * *
<
She spoke to me. In French, as I feared, but she spoke to me!
<
<
The time … I did detect an accent. Maybe she wasn’t French after all … I flashed my new watch with a purple mountain range on the face, and said <
<
“Well, I sort of designed it,” I said in French. “Someone gave me the face as a present and I bought the band, where I live, in California.”
“Oh! Are you an American?” she said in English.
“No, I’m not,” I replied in English also, “but I have lived there for twenty years.”
“Well, I am. I am from New York. My name is Linda.”
She took off her glasses and put down her book.
“Linda” I said in pure American ritual, “I’m glad to meet you.”
I introduced myself to her.
“Hi Christine…”
Her smile was absolutely devastating. She did not look like Marie at all. She was beautiful, warm and maybe a little sad. I remembered she was reading a book in not so evident French.
“You speak French beautifully,” I said, “and you can read the most obscure French books without any problem, yes?”
“Oh, this … I am reading it for my job … Fortunately, it is very short. This man and this woman meet in a café, nothing happens, and it’s the end.”
We laughed together, an easy, cheerful laugh, freer somehow than what had gone on earlier with my friends. The conversation flowed very easily, and I was not nervous anymore.
Her name was Linda, she was from New York, and she had lived in Paris for three years now. She had a job as
a production assistant for one of the TV Stations. It was pretty hectic and disorganized, but it paid well and it gave her a visa. Right now, at the beginning of June, there was a lull in the programming, and she had a little time to do some research ahead of schedule. She had just broken up with a boyfriend (OK … I get this … ) and she was staying at a friend’s apartment in the Rue de Nevers. The friend was traveling around the world or something for a few months, and she was trying to decide whether to stay in Paris or go back home.
Taking my turn, I explained my situation, my failed music career and my current stressful job for a movie theatre chain. My eyes started stinging when I described how hard it was for me to work with someone I had once been involved with, and whom I still cared about a great deal. Alison again … I could not believe the pain was so very much alive after all this time, all these attempts at eradicating her from my mind forever and ever.
“Working with men is hard enough to begin with,” Linda said, “let alone working with the ones we love … ”
She could identify with my predicament. Then it came, fast and easy, with no warning, no preparation, no calculation. I said: “Oh, Alison is a woman … Not that it makes it any easier, mind you.”
Linda smiled, simply, gloriously, and shook her head, looking into my eyes without a trace of discomfort or avoidance. “Men, women, it’s all the same, really … ”
“No kidding!”
We laughed, and I felt so comfortable that I didn’t even resent the fact that the conversation started rolling on safer subjects like movies and books. I had not yet stopped to take a reality check. Here I was, talking with this stranger about the most intimate subjects. I let myself be carried away. The street, the pigeons and the department store had disappeared from my consciousness. I think the waiter came and we both ordered sparkling waters, but I have no real recollection as to when or how, and as to who paid for what.
I was sobered up by the fact that she had a boyfriend. Maybe by opening up to her, I had made a new friend. New insights about relationships were always valuable in order to heal this poorly sutured wound of mine, define it, open it up to the air, and let it close naturally when the pain would not be needed anymore. I wanted to understand everything and come out of it all happier, wiser, and kinder. Any help was welcome. I looked at my mountain watch again. Four forty-five.
“Do you have to be somewhere?” she asked. I noticed a shade of disappointment in her expression.
“Not really. I was supposed to go visit a friend, but instead I’d like to make the 5:30 show of this new movie I’ve been dying to see.”
I said it half-heartedly as I realized I did not want to go to the movie anymore if it meant losing precious moments. I had been brave, I had come back to the café, I was not about to throw it all away …
“What movie is it?”
I explained about Thelma and Louise, about Ridley Scott, and how I liked most of his films, how he created the character of Ripley, or the woman who managed to be proven right, strong and true, and still not die a horrible death in the end. Ripley used to be Alison’s favorite hero and role model. Courage, intelligence, compassion … These days, she seemed to have jettisoned them from her own personal space ship Nostromo.
“Were you going alone?”
“Yes, I go to the movies alone all the time.”
She looked at me with an air of defiance. “Can I go with you?”
I was taken aback by the request. Yet a feeling of excitement almost like deep happiness came over me. It would be quite all right. I managed to add how delighted I was to take her with me to the movies. She smiled. For a second I felt some unexpected emotional current surging between us, but I was not about to believe that women like her could ever be turned around.
We took a cab to the movie theatre which was a very fancy one on the Champs-Elysees. I had not taken a cab through Paris in years. It was very exciting and I felt like visiting royalty. My host was very sweet, talking excitedly about the Musée d’Orsay which used to be a railway station. Where did the train tracks use to be, she was asking? Well, the ground floor was probably a safe bet.
It took all my energy to stay connected with the environment enough to pay for the tickets and reach our seats. Once we were seated, our conversation became a little more substantial.
“What happened with your boyfriend?” If we could be friends, it was better than nothing, I might as well find out the details.
“Oh, it’s simple,” she said. “Julien and I were together for two years, then he met this Italian model, and now he is with her.”
The details were slim, but I could definitely identify with her on that one. “I know the feeling,” I said. “It’s no fun. Do you still have any kind of relationship with him?”
“We’re trying very hard to be friends, but it’s very recent, and things are not yet very clear between us. Are you friends with Alison?”
“Not really. Sometimes, it feels like we could be lovers again any minute, and sometimes I think she makes a point of demonstrating how little she cares about me.”
The houselights were fading down. We had fortunately missed the endless string of commercials that show in French theatres, and the film itself was about to start.
When the lights dim in a theatre, the onset of darkness produces a delightful feeling of anticipation. I loved going to movies with Alison, and we went all the time. I always felt very close to her and we would hold hands and smile at each other in the dark as the opening credits started.
The film was good, violent at times. The screenplay was compassionate, but not sentimental. Linda seemed to react and looked at me every time there was something particularly funny or difficult. Sometimes she smiled softly, the way Alison used to. The whole experience was strange. It was a little bit like being with Alison again, but in a situation that was not blocked or preordained, and where anything was possible including friendship; including love.
At the end of the film, the two women find no way out of the world around them and jump to their deaths in a green T-Bird, in a flash of sunlight that looks like Heaven. It was sad, but also exhilarating and empowering. I almost followed an impulse to take Linda’s arm as we walked out. She was serious and a little bit shaken. “I loved it. Thank you very much for letting me come along.”
Needless to say, the gratitude was all on my side. As we walked out into the still sunny street, she grabbed my wrist.
It was only to look at my watch.
“Oops, it’s late. I have to run. I’m having dinner with a friend, and I’m already very late.”
She shook my hand formally, said “So nice meeting you!” in a hurried tone, and rushed down into the Metro.
By the time I returned her goodbye, she had already disappeared through the swinging doors.
I stayed frozen in space for about five minutes. It hit me: how would I see her again?
We hadn’t made any plans, I did not know her last name nor exactly where she lived. How stupid could I be? Was it possible that, once again, I had made something good happen in my life and then let it go, stupidly? Was I never fully awake? Damn!
I ran down into the Metro trying to catch up with her, but it was too late. The platform was empty and the trains had already left.
How could I have lost her so soon?
Chapter Three
It was very difficult at home to keep my attention on anything. I watched the news on TV with my mother for a while, and then some program which happened to be about a man and a woman who meet in a café. Like 'Moderato Cantabile', they meet, nothing happens, and it’s the end. Did the book ever mention the stupidity of the person who lets it all slip by out of somnambulistic paralysis?
Alison, in my view, was always passive and did not believe she could play a real active part in her own life. Now, for once, I had vanquished my own passivity just to drop the ball again.
Why, why did I let this go? Why didn’t I have the nerve to ask when I could see her again? What could be th
e danger?
My friend Ruth always said “if it’s on your mind, honey, it’s on theirs too!”. This had usually been true in my life so far. These days however, I could not be sure of anything.
How could I still love Alison after all the hell I had gone through? If someone doesn’t love you, doesn’t appreciate you, let them go. Loving them can only be an exercise in self-destruction. Deep down, though, something was telling me that Alison still loved me. She was the one who was self-destructive in not recognizing that. On one hand, I was trying to convince her to be with me, like a traveling salesman pushing some household cleaner. But on the other, I was also fighting to avoid a sea of unreality where love had turned into meanness, cruelty and indifference.
When Marie left her, a move that seemed to surprise nobody but Alison, she and I started having conversations that were very powerful and intimate. Like clockwork, the next day she would contradict her previous statements and catch me unprepared. Hell, I should have kept my distance. Marie and I were competing for Alison’s allegiance in a tug-of-war, and I was bound to lose every time because I was available, and therefore undesirable.
Maybe this was what had stopped me from asking Linda if I could see her again. Be remote, unattainable, and you will have everything. If to get something you have to not want it anymore, what’s the point? How could I wiggle my way through these traps of destiny and bad timing and end up satisfied with my life? Was there room in our world for ease, pleasure, and uncomplicated love?
Sleep was eluding me. It was hard to get my mind away from Alison, and I hated myself for letting Linda go. Letting Linda go … Listen to me … I did not even know the woman, and we had gone to a movie together. No big deal. I could see her face, Marie-like nose and all. Her smile electrified me and told me I could conquer the world if I wanted to. But why would I want to conquer anything but her?
Could this woman avenge me for all the pain I had gone through? Yes, I can still fall in love, and some people do want to be with me!