|
Page 13.
Chapter 3
 Marc and Emma sat by a rainy, runnely leaded-glass window in the rear room of George and Harry’s, an English-style pub like you’d find in a university town, Oxford or Cambridge. G&H was about two blocks from the Seine on the Left Bank near the Saint-Michel Bridge leading to the Sainte-Chapelle with its gorgeous, dreamy stained glass nave on the Île-de-la-Cité. That is also not far from the famous Shakespeare & Company bookstore frequented long ago by great expat poets and authors from James Joyce to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, to name just a few.
It was Sunday. So they were here together after all, and this train would rush to its destination. This drama would find its climax one way or another. They were each on board to see what their next stops might be in this metaphor. Already, they were holding hands and holding their foreheads close, all the more easily to whisper endearments, and stare deeply into each other’s eyes and souls. Nothing else mattered right how. Time stood still for them, around them.
He thought: The clock that ticks now ticks all so soft and far away.
Dribbles drummed on lead gutters outside. The narrow street, framed by high neo-Classical university buildings, glimmered in a greenish half-light. From a music conservatory, nearby, issued complex but neutral piano studies. Some anonymous person was pensive and dreaming over the keyboard. Tentative notes complemented ivied walls and drowning spring blossoms crushed in a film of water covering the street, while more water dribbled obscenely out of high eaves and splattered along rust-stained walls.
Marc Fontbleu felt a bit embarrassed. All week long he had yearned and schemed toward this meeting. Now she sat by him and he had nothing much to say. It was too early to say he loved her, though he did. He’d known love enough already to recognize it when it came swirling around his heart. And in this wonderful city of history and art and culture and love.
Paris, my Heart…
She sat with her back to the window. Her hands retreated to the pockets of her open raincoat. Her blue-jean clad legs extended on sharp high heels under the table. Her head tilted expectantly while her blonde hair hung down into the windowsill behind the bench back. He sat askew in a corner, one finger in the mouth of the beer bottle he’d finished. It was an ale bottle, brown as amber, in which light glowered amid slowly falling foam resembling rain—or sea water. He alternately studied the worn mouth of the bottle and the white buttons spaced in a generous arc on her blue shirt.
“I didn’t know if you’d come,” she said. Her eyes flicked toward the ceiling beams full of worry and determination.
He leaned forward and soccered the bottle between the palms of his hands. “I was afraid you might not come.”
I was afraid I might not come.
She sat tensely but let him move close so he inhaled the essences of her hair, her skin, even her tea breath. His eyes fell to the soft salient which pushed her shirt way out, and what quivered underneath. He was surprised to see her sharp breaths, her trembling breasts.
Her finger felt icy with fear when he touched her hands. They were not those of a young girl. If she were a charcoal drawing, he could have washed her to a glowing blur and she would have passed for the essence of a very equestrian, sapphire twenty-three (his age) or even a preppy, pristine seventeen. Hinted rilles and faint, dry cross-etchings were as yet only a preliminary design or intention of time and the universe, beyond her ability to change anything—over her knuckles, at the corners of her mouth, near the orbits of her eyes.
Seeing his look she did not protest. “You don’t always.”
“Always what?”
“Older women.”
|
This generous program allows you to read half the book free. If you like it, you can buy the whole book safe, secure, and quickly at Amazon (print or e-book). The e-book is priced about like a cup of coffee (painless, fun). Thank you for reading. If you love it, tell your friends. Please post a favorable review at Amazon, Good Reads, and other online resources. If you don't care for it, please do no harm; easy refund, and just move on. Authors need your support! Thank you (JTC).
|
E-Book
|
Print Book
|
TOP
|
