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Page 22.
 They walked in silence a minute or two in a gentle drizzle.
“We’ll get used to each other,” he said with mild, affectionate sarcasm.
“It will take some doing, but mon plaisir.” She tugged on his arm, comradely fashion. She wrestled her arm through his, and pulled him tightly close to her.
He felt a wind of stars, of love, of mountain highs, closed his eyes, and pulled her tightly to him as well. If he wanted to say je t’aime at that moment, the words would not have gotten past his quivering lip. His eyes burned with tears of passion. A good hard sniff made the momentary emotion go away.
She reached around with her free hand, palmed his face gently, and kissed him on the other cheek closer to her. He inhaled the fragrance of her skin, the fine waxiness of her lipstick, and the oddly ocean-like tang of her hair. Was she a mermaid, a sea-nymph, an angel of some sort come to earth? They walked awkwardly but slowly, so close that they could have been a four-legged mythological chimera—the fabled love centaur or something, which has all four legs in a row opposite of travel direction.
They laughed as their bones banged together. They could have taken the Métro a few stops, but the stations were usually full of a rough crowd, and it was so much nicer to have their first taste of privacy and intimacy, just strolling along the brightly lit streets and over the Seine bridges at the Islands.
Somewhere under a street lamp on the Right Bank, in a faint fog issuing up from the Seine, they gave up and stood in a tight, hungry embrace, deeply kissing. Traffic whispered past—and then an emergency vehicle roared in close, a SAMU ambulance with flashing blue lights, awash with the fierce beauty of its raging Martin’s Horn sirens. The ambulance slowed at the corner to ease into traffic. Emma burst into laughter. “They’ve come for us.”
“They understand our urgency.”
She laughed in a bright pealing sound. “There is no hope.”
He laughed as well saying: “There is hope now. I was about to throw myself under my lawnmower, and then you came along, an angel sent by heaven.”
With grasping palms, he treasured the willing curvatures of her behind as she thrust her pelvis against him to take her, to enjoy her, to partake of her, while her hands strayed up and down the length and strength of his back.
“Lawnmower,” she whispered, nipping his earlobe with her teeth. “Grass slayer. Let me be your grass.”
“I’ll be your lawnmower,” he intoned while holding her face between his palms and kissing her puckered lips. Her eyes were closed, signaling deep acceptance. “We’ll make smoke together,” he whispered.
She giggled. Her deeply closed eyes (was it the raise of her face?) signaled the end of a drought, a Provençal sunflower rejoicing at sunshine and a light rain.
Arm in arm, loosely swinging, they strode off to California.
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