A Second Chance in Paris

by Ziv Amit

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  A Second Chance in Paris

  Ziv Amit

  Copyright © 2019 Ziv Amit

  All rights reserved; No parts of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information retrieval system, without the permission, in writing, of the author.

  Translation from the Hebrew: Maya Thomas

  Contact: authorzivamit@gmail.com

  Contents

  Day One

  Day Two

  Day Three

  Day Four

  Day Five

  About the Author

  Message to the Readers

  Day One

  Gate C4, Early Morning

  Kate

  “Here’s to a wonderful vacation,” I quietly say to the man walking beside me, as I walk the small step from the sleeve to the plane. He doesn’t answer me and keeps walking, turning his back to me. Maybe he didn’t hear, I tell myself and show my ticket stub to the air hostess standing at the entrance to the plane. “Good morning,” the air hostess smiles at me. A quick good morning smile from immaculate lips painted appropriately, making sure to move on to the next passenger in line after me ever-so-professionally, not held up by the mumbling of my lips given as a reply to her.

  “One mustn’t be held up when smiling,” I think to myself, one also mustn’t ask how I am and how I’m feeling. If you were to ask, I would tell you, but there’s a long line here that needs to arrive right on time, an entire row of smiles to be seated precisely in the right place, otherwise we’ll get held up. So, I move forward.

  I hold on to the boarding pass firmly in my left hand, as if it were an incredibly valuable certificate, and I hand it to the next air hostess. She looks at it with yet another lip-smile while automatically directing me with her hand. After all, everyone walks towards the same seats and it really doesn’t matter what direction she would point to. But the truth is that I’m asking for a few more seconds to myself, a few seconds to stand in the entrance, a few seconds to breathe, a few seconds to give myself space before I sit down on the small seat next to the man everyone calls my husband.

  The man everyone calls Adam or “Your Husband” and I call “The Tall One” when I’m angry at him, is walking ahead of me through the aisle and ignoring me. He’s lugging his little trolley behind him, the one he carried loyally all through the duty free, and he’s busy looking for our seats. Once he finds the right number he lifts the trolley over his head and crams it nonchalantly into the small overhead compartment.

  “You see,” The Tall One turns to me as I sit next to him, “I told you there’s no need to check in a suitcase, a small bag is more than enough.”

  “Maybe for you, not for me.”

  “What do you even need to take with you?” he retorts with a disgusting and disrespectful tone. “What do you need to check in a suitcase for? Because of you we’re going to have to wait for another thirty minutes till your suitcase arrives, and that’s if it arrives at all and doesn’t get lost along the way, because the porters’ union just decided it’s their breakfast break, and then we’ll be starting our vacation with a fun hangout at the airport. Do you really love airports that much? How much stuff do you need to pack for five days? You women, you’re all the same.”

  “I’m your wife, I’m not all women,” I answer him and he returns to his silence. I hate it when he calls me “You Women” and not by my name, Kate. And I hate that he tries to make me feel small. For a while now he’s been painfully biting me and I’ve been repressing, sometimes I wonder how long it’ll go on for and if I’ll make it to the end point, is there even an end point to rock bottom?

  “Breathe slowly,” I whisper to myself inaudibly while my fingers nervously play with the fastened seat belt. I want to unfasten it but I know I’m not allowed. As it is, I feel suffocated on airplanes, feel like I’m running out of air, return to feeling alive every time a flight ends. The seat belt just adds to the feeling of suffocation, The Tall One‘s proximity to me does too. I always have to sit on the aisle seat and he always has to sit next to me, thus missing the view from the window and putting up with the middle seat. Eventually he’ll dump me and he’ll have all the view he wants. Breathe slow and deep, this thing is going to take off to your romantic vacation soon, romantic vacation, remember?

  “Take off already.” I look at my red nails, slitting invisible lines with them on the stiff gray seat belt strip that’s pressing my stomach. “You asked the manicurist for blood-red nails especially for this vacation, you wanted to be special,” I think to myself ironically. “You could have asked her for a transparent-pink or a lime-green color and it still wouldn’t have mattered to him.” You could have even not gone to her and he still wouldn’t have noticed. As it is, lately he hasn’t even looked at me.

  “Are you comfortable?” I ask The Tall One.

  “Yes.” He replies and returns to reading the brochures crammed in the seat pocket in front of him, doesn’t bother taking interest in whether I’m comfortable too. I turn to look at him, he’s immersed in himself, intently reading the laminated emergency instruction sheet. Slides here and here, exits at the front and the back, in case of a crash don’t panic and don’t forget to take off your high heel shoes, so that you don’t let all the air out. I so want him to tell me something nice and loving, but he keeps his silence.

  “She’s such an idiot, what was she thinking?” I overhear the conversation from the seats behind me. The scream of the engines from the plane taking off and soaring high up in the sky has ended, and I look at the land beneath us growing more distant and at the sun rising over the horizon. “I told her that’s exactly what would happen if she left him and they got a divorce, why did she up and leave?” The conversation from the back seats continues to reach my ears. For some reason I already have a feeling I can guess the rest of that sentence without hearing it, as if it was taken from a crappy movie with an obvious ending. She must have gotten sick and tired of him treating her in such a disgusting and cynical way, so one day she just had enough and decided she wanted her freedom, and not only did she want freedom, she had the audacity to act against her good friends’ warning, those friends who are now sitting behind me and gossiping about her. Of course, they were right, because they’re playing the part of the gossiping friends and they knew in advance that he wouldn’t engage in chasing her and that she’d remain alone. Now their friend is alone in the world without that nasty guy, she’s aging more and more each day, she can’t find another guy and she’s so broken up that she couldn’t bring herself to join them on the trip. They’re so right, it’s always fun to be right when you play the role of the onlooker.

  I shut my eyes and raise a bitter smile in view of the back seat chatter, wondering to myself about the one who should have known that this is what would happen, did she really know this is what would happen? Did she think that this is what her friends would say about her after her marriage had crumbled? Did she even try to save it? Perhaps, for example, by taking the initiative to organize a romantic vacation? The kind that would revive what they once had? Maybe she decided that she wouldn’t give up but didn’t manage it?

  “Don’t listen to them.” I keep my eyes shut and try to banish the woman from the back seat’s gossip away from my thoughts, “You have a few hours of flight time, you don’t need to fill them with thoughts about other women that you don’t even know.” You have yourself and you have Adam and that’s an entire world in itself. I give my
self a confident smile, try to empower myself, and place a hand wrapped in blood-red colored nails on Adam‘s thigh. He’s focusing on a game he’s playing on his smartphone and avoids looking deep into my eyes, just like he’s been doing all through recent times.

  “I don’t want to give up on us,” I whisper silently, mainly to myself, though I’d love for him to raise his head a bit and listen to my thoughts. But I might be whispering so silently that there’s no chance he can hear it, and if he does hear me then he must be choosing to ignore it. I can take the tweezers out of the makeup bag and pinch him a little, see how he reacts, say on the ear lobe without him noticing. In the past I’d do it to him and he’d laugh and grab my arms tightly, which would end in either tickling or fucking, depending on the mood. But I think that this time it wouldn’t get a warm welcome, this time I’m going to sit nicely, cross my arms and wait for the air hostess with the perfect smile to serve us breakfast. I try to shut my eyes again and relax, maybe even listen to the rest of the fascinating conversation from the back seat about the one who should have known, but I think they already suspect that I’ll tell her everything they’re saying about her, so they’ve moved on to whispering now. Or maybe they’re worried that I too will up and leave just like her, but they don’t know me.

  “Enough already with all these thoughts, they’re not leading you to good places.” Be positive, try to think of all the fun you’re both going to have. You booked a romantic hotel for you two, you’ll be eating in awesome restaurants with waiters who smile condescendingly, you’ll be walking around arm in arm together like all the tourists, you’ll be taking loads of silly selfies, buying yourself pretty clothes and making love in the hotel every evening.

  The noise from the engines is calming me down a bit and I manage to smile to myself optimistically. “It’ll be great,” I promise myself, but the lump at the bottom of my stomach, the one containing the reaction he had when I told him I’d booked us flights and a vacation, that lump isn’t dissipating. “Omelet or sweet-cheese blintzes?” I hear the voice of the air hostess standing near me at the aisle, pushing the breakfast cart, maintaining a perfect smile. Can’t wait for this flight to end so I can leave the plane, breathe and smile too.

  Luggage Conveyor at Charles de Gaulle Airport, Morning Time

  I’m making sure to keep looking at the wall in front of me, staring at a big billboard hanging on the wall, a happy couple running towards the sunset while holding drink bottles in their hands. “Will everything crumble for you guys too because of a book?” I silently ask the giant billboard, “I promise you that you’ll find that special something which will ruin everything for you, even if it isn’t a book, it’ll definitely be something.”

  Of course, The Tall One was right, and we’ve been waiting in the luggage hall for a while now, waiting for the luggage conveyor to show a sign of life and start working. I’m making sure not to look at him and I concentrate on the ads around me, but I know he’s walking back and forth at a safe distance behind me at the other side of the hall, tightly holding on to his gray trolley and feeling good about himself and also right. He’s probably thinking up new sentences that he can later spout at me to make me feel small. I feel guilty as it is, will another degrading sentence or two really make a difference? Do you think this is what’s going through the minds of all the women around here patiently waiting with you? What are their spouses going to blame them for?

  True, I took a big suitcase, that’s how I like it, I like to spend time every morning deciding what I’m going to wear. I have a pair of morning-time walking shoes, another brown pair, low-heel evening shoes - so that I’m comfortable walking on the stone pavements, gorgeous red suede boots for clubbing, if we go out. Two knitted cardigans and two sweaters, a coat, three blouses, two extra pairs of pants, two skirts, toiletries, makeup and a fishnet outfit which I brought to wear especially for you, in bed at the hotel, so that we can fuck like we used to with me on top and you full of passion.

  True, I too am to blame for what happened between us, true, it happened because of me, true, I was wrong. But I’m here with you, isn’t that enough? I’m starting to understand that maybe for you it isn’t enough. I can’t handle this thought right now and I prefer to turn my gaze towards the static black luggage conveyor. Wish it would start working already.

  You didn’t even want to go on this vacation. You explained that to me a number of times, hinting slightly as well as more firmly, you didn’t bother packing anything for yourself either, you just ignored my requests. If I hadn’t filled your trolley the night before the flight, you’d probably have arrived at the airport with a plastic bag and a pair of underwear. You’re being very romantic right now, walking around behind my back and making me feel bad about myself. If I weren’t full of guilt, I’d probably give up. All I’m trying to do is fix what I’ve broken, trying to stop feeling guilty. Don’t you make mistakes too sometimes?

  The man in charge of the breakfast committee for the airport porters’ union has decided I’ve had enough of the torturous regret at the horrible act of checking in luggage, and so now the black conveyor has started spouting out bags at a steady pace, causing a crowd of people to tightly gather around it, rejoicing and mumbling words of excitement. “Don’t cry, my dearest suitcase, he’s not really angry with you, it’s not your fault, it’s my fault, I’m the one he’s angry with.” Never mind, soon enough we’ll get to the hotel and start this vacation.

  Hotel in the Latin Quarter, Room 314, Before Noon

  “What should we do now?” I ask Adam, after I finish peeing in our small hotel room’s toilet. I’ve been holding it in for an hour and now I’m looking in the mirror again and smiling, surprising how a clean toilet can do wonders to a woman’s mood.

  “I don’t know,” he snaps at me, “You were the one who chose the romantic program, so you choose, I’m only here to decorate your conscience.”

  It’s also surprising how fast a woman’s smile can reassemble into a lump of sadness. He’s probably been planning that sentence ever since I informed him of the vacation, slowly sharpening it into a fine singular arrow ready to be launched precisely at the right timing. Like a hunter who knows that justice will always be at his side and that he must end the battle with a winning strike, he kept silent and still till the moment of launch.

  “You may be tall and I do love your body, but you’re not just here for decorating my conscience, you’re also here for communal enjoyment.” I’m trying to soften the arrow’s blow, it having wounded the lump in my stomach. But I think that after such a massive achievement, he’s not going to give up that easily. It’s been a few weeks already that he’s been lugging his frustration around, and now everything’s coming out and we’re already here, and it’s not possible to turn back time, I wonder if it’s at all possible to turn back time. “You really are a little bit naïve,” I whisper to myself.

  “I don’t feel like walking around the city, there’s nothing interesting here,” he continues. I know he’s just saying that, it’s clear to me he’ll love this city just as much as I do. What have I done to deserve this?

  I look at the open window of the hotel room, it’s draped in dark and heavy hotel curtains. But the curtains are drawn to the sides and the city’s houses are peering at me through the gray light of clouds and morning, beckoning me to them. I want to go out to her, after we had already had a little taste of her earlier when we walked over here from the metro, me with my big suitcase and him still not volunteering to help me. I’m trying to concentrate on the view of the houses from the window, thinking about whether to continue the conversation or remain silent, feeling the lump in my stomach debating with itself whether to transform into a block of indifference or to climb up to the eyes and begin accumulating into tear drops. The tears always flow out of me eventually, and when they do he always tells me that he doesn’t understand what it is I’m crying about and that I’m using crying as a manipulati
on, I hate it when he tells me that.

  I stop the argument and turn to the suitcase. It’s big and it’s loyal, and it satisfies all my needs. I use all my effort to lift it onto the bed, I have no desire to ask him for favours, I prefer to busy myself with dispersing its contents into the closet and the bathroom, maybe in a few minutes he’ll change his mind.

  “After I finish unpacking, I’ll walk around our room and discover all of its secrets,” I promise myself. How much is there really to discover within this room? It’s charming, but it’s tiny and as of right now I’m not certain that we’ll manage to cram both of our egos into it, especially Adam’s, which has recently inflated to alarming proportions. He’s trying to stand his ground and so he takes on the observer position, as he usually does, choosing to stand by the window with his hands in his pockets, wandering with his gaze between the outdoors’ inviting streets and the indoors’ room containing the woman who took him on vacation. The same woman who’s now busy with hanging her skirts in the little closet and organizing the sweaters on the shelf. Adam’s little trolley has been left orphaned next to the front door without him touching it, and I wonder whether he’s simply waiting for a moment of distraction on my part, say while I turn to the closet, so that he can run to the door, grab the trolley and run away from me and from this room. “I don’t think so,” I whisper silently, I think he’s just enjoying his win.

  “What did you say?” he asks.

  “I said maybe you should bring your trolley over and give me your toiletries, so that I can put them in the bathroom, and then we can go walk around the city.”

  “Why did you bring us here? Do you think we fit in here?”

  “Yes, very much so, loads of romance, love, cafés, we fit in.”

  “Yeah that’s so us,” he answers back with sarcasm. “We’re an island of mistrust, sorry, not we, you’re an island of mistrust.”