Light

Slip into a black, slim, sleeveless sheath dress, zip up from behind with a bit of inelegant contortion.

After all, who can see you in an empty hotel room? A room with zigzaggy orange carpeting, yellow faux stucco walls, and a view of the Eiffel Tower if you press your cheek against the glass and strain your eyes very far to the left?

Slide bare feet into high-heeled, peep-toed pumps, black kid leather. Regain balance.

The walk to the café is not so very far, and besides, in France, it’s expected that women will be able to walk in very high heels, and not to appear pained, even if they are.

Wrap body in khaki trench coat, lined, beltless, but cinched above the waist, a bit Empire.

Seems like the sort of thing Audrey would have worn, except with a belt around her waist, and extra belt to spare. She likely never worried about eating too many slices of foie gras.

Encircle neck with scarf, giant, silk, rippling Pucci design, vivid colors. Tie knot and pull the corners of the silk taut, elongating the neck as much as possible.

Every Frenchwoman wears scarves. Women admire the colors, the design, the beauty, the texture of the silk. Men dream of untying the knots and using the silk again to tie other knots.

Finally, cover eyes in sunglasses, oversized, black – despite the overcast skies, a must for that look of mystery, a bit of don’t bother me, I’m in my own world at the moment.

And I am in my own world, a world that is overcast, and in this world, I do not wish to be scrutinized by passersby. Luckily, in Paris, people on the street may glance your way, but they do not look you in the eyes. If they wonder why you look wistful or sad, they do not let on. They do not ask.

Grab best black shoulder bag, hard as a barrel, and aim for the door, one last check on the Blackberry to clarify meeting time at the café. I know I will be too early. Always too early. Yet at the same time, too late?

Down the elevator, nine stories, down to the street, pulling the trench coat a bit tighter around my body as I react to a chilly blast of wind. Is it really June? Only a block or so to the café, the café I have made my after-work haunt each night of the week spent in Paris, a café lined with photos of Chaplin, an American’s stereotypical vision of a Parisian cafe.

Yet I am too early.

I decide to walk for a bit, as it is Paris, and it is the point where afternoon turns into evening, and people are hustling along the street, leaving the metro station and bound for meetings with friends, drinks, dinners, stops at bakeries or little shops on the way home. I walk slowly, with no agenda or destination, just watching everyone pass by in both directions. There are trees lining the street, but as I walk beneath them, I scarcely notice their branches and leaves overhead. But I hear them rustling in the brisk wind.

I stop at a window. A real estate office. The window is papered with flyers advertising homes for sale or let. Chambres, fenetres, deuxieme etage, etc. I read the details, translating the words in my mind, and scan the prices. Not that I am looking for an apartment in Paris. How could I ever live in Paris? How could I ever find a job, rent a room, live a life, in such a place?

I know that this will never be a possibility, and I feel the sadness well up inside me again.
I feel the tears brimming in my eyes and spilling over, just a bit, enough to wet the skin at the top of my cheekbones.
Luckily, they are obscured by my sunglasses.
No one can see them.
No one will ever know.

I step away from the window, breathe the cold June Paris air deeply, and head for the café. I meet my friend, who is sitting at an outdoor table on the sidewalk. He is gregarious, excited to see me, wrapping his arms around me in a hug. He does not look around Paris and think about what he is missing – he thinks about what is present and drinks it in.

We order, we talk, we drink, we eat. Wine. Cheese. Bread.
Is this what French people eat after work at cafes? Or is this what we think French people eat after work at cafés?
I realize that he is on an uncertain path as well, one different from mine. Yet he faces it with confidence.
I feel ashamed, as I face mine with fear, uncertainty. I discourage myself.
I try to draw strength from his strength, light from his light.

He flirts, but without sexual overtones.
How does he do this so well?
He makes me feel hopeful and confident about the future.
Anything is possible.
He laughs and we comment about the French businesspeople passing by, carrying bags with baguettes sticking out of them, as if we were in a movie.
Are we really in this place? So different from our hot, humid home? Are we really in this café?
He pays the bill and then stands to hug me good-bye, a firm grasp around my shoulders and back, holding me for a second.
He can sense that I am in pain, that I am uncertain. He is trying to make me feel confident again. Confident about myself.
I hug him back.
I feel a bit uncomfortable because beneath my surface feelings of friendship, my admiration for my friend, there is a deeply buried seed of passion, one that would never surface.
This must be how one flirts without sexual overtones. One’s mind is so firmly in control, that one is aware of the presenc e of the seed, but wisely leaves it buried.
I say goodbye, and I turn to walk away, to walk back to the ugly hotel, to the room with the view of the Eiffel Tower if you press your cheek against the glass and turn your eyes all the way to the left.

I did not realize it on that night, but I would never see him again. My friend. I would write to him and speak to him, but I would not see him. Only in that city would I see him, in Paris, at a sidewalk café, a café lined with photographs of Chaplin, where we drank wine and ate cheese, where we talked and where he reassured me, without saying anything overt, that I was on the right path after all. A path that would not involve him, but one where he would be with me.

And the seed would stay buried, but it would sprout nonetheless, beneath the surface.
Love does not need to always come to the surface, or breathe the air, or see the light.
It is the light.

Back in my hotel room, with the hideous orange carpet and yellow faux stucco walls, I walked to the window.
The night sky was growing darker.
I pressed my cheek against the glass, and turned my face and my eyes as far to the left as they would go.
And there, just visible, was the Eiffel Tower. I could just make out its narrowing, basket-weave spire in the fading evening.
Suddenly, as night set in at last, it was set ablaze with electrical illumination.
A tower of light, pointing to the sky, pointing the way.
There was light on that night.
There is light.

A Bridge

Cold air bit into my skin as I bolted out of the hotel lobby and into the street.
The city street was loud, busy, full of cars and honking and people rushing by.
Noise wrapped its arms around me and protected me from the voices buzzing in my ears.

[Not voices - laughter.
Two laughters.
Coming from his room, from the other side of the closed door.]

A panhandler stuck a cup in my face and asked me for change; I sidestepped him. I ducked into a coffee shop.

Starbucks. The McDonald's of coffee shops. I bought a cup of bitter black coffee and sat at a small table, and started texting furiously. To anyone who might respond and make me feel less along than I did in that moment.

[Why did I feel alone?
I've always been alone.
Even the night before, when I was with him, and looked into his eyes and ran my hands all over his body, a smooth body.
Even then I was alone, and I could feel that aloneness.
Not loneliness. Some other feeling - of being singular.
I also felt trapped within myself, as if I couldn't escape no matter what I tried to do.
And that night I tried quite a lot.]

I texted a guy I knew in New York. He always responded to texts.
He liked episodic texts: I did this, I ate that, I am drinking, I am climbing a mountain. He was well traveled and a snob; he'd offer me suggestions on what to do in this strange city. He responded to my text. He suggested the Art Institute.

I kept sipping the bitter, black coffee.
The same panhandler walked into the Starbucks.
He walked from table to table, asking for change.
I tossed out the rest of the bitter, black coffee and left, sidestepping him again, and out into the street.

The line at the Art Institute stretched for blocks.
I decided to go to the modern art museum, which was nearly empty.
I looked at Calder mobiles and installations about heartbreak.
I was not heartbroken; I merely felt alone.
I felt ashamed too.
Not because of what I had done, but because I had been a fool, naively overlooking the obvious signs that he'd been lying to me.

I decided to forget him.
[And her, whoever she was. I could guess who she was.]
I decided to spend the day - a stunningly beautiful, cold, clear day - with myself, to celebrate my aloneness, my singularity. Just doing things I enjoyed, by myself, conversing with no one, thinking, decorating myself, feeding myself.
All on this one street.

A long, magnificent street, a famous street, a street I had never really known or felt anything about before.
Today the street would be the place of my pilgrimage.
A path to the next place in my life.
A bridge.

I left the museum, lingering by an enormous Calder sculpture, and then back onto the street.

I ate lunch in an elegant, oak-lined restaurant. I drank wine with my lunch.
I walked through a giant department store, and tried on lipsticks, and perfumes, and scarves.
I bought a pair of black suede driving moccasins and slipped them on my feet.
I drank a chile-infused hot chocolate, served in a tall, slender glass.
I watched hundreds of harried shoppers walk by in their straining tracksuits and clunky shoes, their arms burdened with plastic bags.
I wandered through displays, stopping at windows to consider the merchandise.
I went to an Italian lingerie shop, trying on lace-trimmed bras and panties to accentuate the curves of my body, and purchased a set.

On the street, I walked slowly, deliberately, almost rhythmically, swinging my bag of lingerie with each stride.
I took big steps, devouring the sidewalk with my feet and drinking in the wind with my body.
I felt the wind course through my hair and slip its fingers inside the opening of my blouse near my neck.
I looked up at the sky - brilliantly blue and unmarred by clouds or smog - and turned my face toward the warmth of the sun that penetrated the cold of the wind.

There was a bridge before me.
A wide, mighty bridge.
Flanked by tall monuments of stone, undulating stone carved in the beaux arts style.
Their arms and curves, and the towers all around me, made shadows on the river below, and in the sunlight that splashed on the surface of the bridge.

On the bridge, I stopped to stand before the river and think about the past and the future, and where I might be going from that point on.

I have always paused over rivers to think about such things.
I have thrown coins in these rivers, wondering where they might wind up, if they might flow across thousands of miles to settle at the feet of someone and bring a message to this person from me.

People scurried around me to snap photographs and chatter to their friends.
I did not pay attention to their voices; their voices were white noise.

Then I heard someone say that the river flowed backward, in the wrong direction, and that someone had made it so, men had made this so. They rearranged nature to make the river flow the other way, for their own purpose.

On a bridge over a river,
A river that flows backward,
A river whose course was changed,
I stopped to think about my own course,
And threw a coin in the river.

I was not alone, the river was with me, and even though I walked away and left it behind me, I knew I would come back again, and find my coin at the feet of someone, someone who would hear my message.

He will flow like a river.
He will be a bridge.

In the City, Alone

We drove for hours, through miles of sameness, rolling hills, dry air, scrubby banks, blue skies and blinding sun.
The wiry man whose fantasies of love and glory led him on ridiculous quests perched atop several peaks along the highway, along with crumbling heaps of castles he may have stormed in his dreams.
Between these, nothing much. Growing things were rare, not plentiful as the winds that blew.
And then, not even hills and scrub, but flatness, an arid stretch - desert.
The air grew colder as nothing blocked the wind. The day died slowly, and night took over, and the moon, flashing starkly in the sky.
And then, suddenly, out of nowhere, miles of nowhere, I saw it - a city. A huge, urban, loud, bustling, teeming city, its buildings and bridges and streets and buses bursting straight up from the arid stretches.
We entered the city and were amazed by the activity, the wide avenues, the people rushing around and in and out of shops and restaurants, buying gifts for the holiday, drinking beers, pushing baby strollers with plastic lids so the babies stayed warm and snug inside.
The city was as busy as noontime but it was late at night.
In the shops, we talked with the clerks although we could not understand each others' languages.
The language of shopping is universal, an esperanto.
Everything was cheap and beautiful.
We found our hotel and headed for the bar, where we sat in upholstered corners and ate (not drank) cups of hot chocolate so thick they were as pudding.
Hot, rich and thick - eaten with a spoon and a surreptitious finger.
We slept despite the stuffy heat of the rooms and the late-night noisiness of the streets below.
The next day, we dutifully toured the castle, swallowing all of its anticipated features with our eyes and noses and ears - moat, quartered gardens, richly decorated walls, pointed arches so finely carved they were like lace.
We toured the cathedral as well. We admired the frescoes. We gazed respectfully at the shrine. We selected brochures.
We walked through the streets near the cathedral, where the local people walked purposefully, on their way to appointments, or to meet friends for lunch, or to buy gifts, or to push their babies in strollers, more plastic-lidded strollers.
We entered a shop. A glove shop. The sort of shop they don't have in America. The perimeter of the shop was lined in drawers, possibly fifty or more drawers, small drawers. Each drawer held a different style of glove. All of the gloves were made locally, by craftsmen, out of the softest skins.
In this shop, the customer didn't select her own gloves to finger the leather and fondle the lining. There was a shopkeeper, a glove seller, and she selected the gloves for you.
She examined our hands and considered the shapes of our fingers, the tone of our skin, the length of our wrists, and she selected gloves for us to try on.
I did not buy any gloves. My hands always feel confined in gloves. I like to feel the air on my palms and in between my fingers.
We left the shop, and then we all decided to split up for a few hours, to wander around without the agendas or the influences or the chatter of our companions. We picked a time and place to meet again.
I walked down the avenue where the glove shop was located, and found my way back to the square where the cathedral was located.
There were statues and monuments, grand buildings, and many people, people whose faces and names and voices I did not know nor would ever, likely, know.
There was a river on the other side of the buildings, and thick billows of fog rolled into the square from this river.
Strange, that in a city in the middle of a desert, there was fog, but there was fog. It wrapped itself around me.
I realized, in that moment, standing in the middle of a square surrounded by fog and hundreds of people, that I was alone, and I realized, in that moment, that I had never really been alone.
I realized, in that moment, that I liked being alone, like that, free to wander, not obligated to chatter, not required to do or say anything to anyone, or to be anyone other than the young woman in the coat in the fog who walked through the square.
And then I realized, in that moment, that I was not alone at all, I was part of something much greater. I felt at peace and though I was alone, I felt some sort of love, or the promise of love. It came upon me quickly, like the fog, and then it rolled away again.
This was a moment in my life when I was at a crossroads, like I am now, not knowing what I would do in the future, or if there was promise or only regret ahead of me. I was nervous, but I was hopeful too.
The city seemed to send me a message in that moment - that there is more than you and you are part of it, but you must go to it, embrace it, don't let it roll away like the fog.
I left Zaragoza after only one night and one morning. I never saw the city again. I went on, with the others, to Madrid, and then south.
Later I met a man, on a plane, and we talked, and I felt at peace after feeling frantic and uncertain. His name was Paco. He was slight and blond and wore glasses. He was on his way to Madrid and then to Copenhagen. But he lived in Zaragoza. His face warmed when I told him I had just been there, and how beautiful it seemed, how peaceful, how much I had liked the way I felt when I walked there.
We left the plane and as we separated to take our different flights, he reached his hand out to me.
He removed his glove.
He took my hand and squeezed it gently, and looked into my face, and said goodbye.
He put his glove back on his hand and turned and walked down the corridor to his plane, to Denmark.
I never saw him again.
I never went back to Zaragoza.