This Foreign Affair

by Harper Bliss

  “I waited for your call all weekend, but none came.” She winks at Josephine behind the counter.

  “I was otherwise engaged.”

  “I bet you were.”

  “What did you do yesterday?” Josephine asks.

  “I showed her around Sydney.”

  “Mainly the area around Balmain, I suspect,” Caitlin says.

  “Here you go. With an extra shot.” Josephine hands me my tall black coffee.

  “I’m too tired to play coy.” I glance at the smug smile on Caitlin’s face. “I wish I had the kind of job where I could just call in sick. I was up half the night with Camille and every second of it was utterly glorious.”

  “You are stretching the concept of a one-night stand to its limits,” Caitlin says.

  “I know, but she’s leaving in three days. Speaking of.” I sip from the coffee, in desperate need of a hit of caffeine. “Would you two like to have dinner with us?”

  Caitlin brings a hand to her chest. “Such an honor to bestow upon the modest non-French likes of us.”

  Josephine shakes her head. “Don’t mind her, Zoya. We’d love to. I’m free tomorrow night.”

  “That works for me,” Caitlin says. “You’re buying, though. You owe me for making that magical booking for you and Camille.”

  “It’s a date then.”

  “And don’t worry.” Caitlin’s Monday morning energy is enviable and enervating at the same time. “We won’t waste too much of your time.”

  “Morning.” Sheryl has approached us. When she sees me she quirks up her eyebrows. “Someone’s had an interesting weekend, I hear.”

  “Honestly, for a bunch of grown women, news travels way too fast around here. You’d think this was a place where gossip comes to thrive instead of a place to enjoy coffee.”

  “Ooh, defensive,” Caitlin says.

  “I ran into Micky this weekend,” Sheryl says. “She told me.”

  “It wasn’t me who spilled the beans,” Caitlin says. “I would never.”

  “Where is Micky this morning?” I ask. Even though I’m glad for one less inquiring mind that wants to know too much.

  “She has the day off,” Josephine says.

  “When is, er, she leaving?” Sheryl asks me.

  “Camille is leaving on Thursday morning.” Oh, just saying her name to my friends. “Her plane takes off at eleven thirty in the morning.” I should plan a really exciting activity for that day. Thursdays are always recording days so I definitely won’t be able to take time off to accompany Camille to the airport. It’s simply not possible. Who am I interviewing again this week? My mind is so preoccupied, the interviewee’s name escapes me.

  “So, it’s a holiday romance,” Sheryl says.

  “It is for her because she’s on holiday. It’s back to the dreariness of everyday life for me after she’s gone.”

  “Aren’t we being a touch dramatic?” Caitlin asks.

  How can I explain to her that a woman I met only three days ago has already shifted my perspective on everything. That I dread this coming Thursday when she will fly out of my life for good. When I will come home in the evening to the same old house Rebecca and I shared and everything will be covered in a new layer of gloom. A double one. One post-Rebecca. And one post-Camille. And how the upcoming loss of an overly long one-night stand is going to hurt me just as much as the unraveling of a sixteen-year relationship. That I know it was meant to do me good. Make me feel desirable and alive and get me out of my own head where I was spinning circles feeling sorry for myself. And that I fear it will only end up increasing my self-pity. Because the madness of it all is that, after these three short, romantic, frenzied days, I don’t want Camille to leave. I want to talk to her more about all the things she’s so eloquent about. I want to marvel at the way she articulates her thoughts, and how her cheek dimple deepens when she ponders a question for a minute and holds up a finger, and says, “I’m still thinking” and the th always sounds more like an s.

  I shrug. “I’d best get to work.”

  “We’re here if you want to talk,” Sheryl says. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I might move into the rental after she leaves. Be closer to my new friends.” It may sound like a joke, but I should just do it.

  “Josephine is singing here on Friday,” Caitlin says. “We’ll make a weekend of it. We can go look at houses.”

  “Thanks.”

  “We’ll see you tomorrow.” Josephine steps from behind the counter and throws her arms around me. “And every day after that if you need to,” she whispers in my ear.

  Chapter Nine

  I have the kind of job that doesn’t allow me to daydream too much. My team of researchers are constantly throwing new information at me that I need to parse and evaluate to see if I could base a good question on it. But throughout the day, I can’t stop thinking about the questions I would ask Camille. The ones that would really lay her bare to me. Over the weekend, I’ve asked her many a question already, but often her answer was drowned out by a new onslaught of passion—and experiments that needed to be repeated over and over again.

  Every time I think of our possible recorded interview, my mind wanders to what she asked to record. What she wants to take home as a reminder. And what it means that she asked me at all. The thought of recording ourselves while having sex excites me, there’s no doubt. Then my mind gets lost in another tailspin of delving up memories of the weekend.

  “Well, well, well.” Jason sticks his head around the door of my office. “Let me have a look. Ah yes, dark circles under the eyes but an unmistakable glint of satisfaction in them. Okay, it was worth being stood up for.” He shoots me a big, toothy grin.

  “I’ll make it up to you, Jase. I’ll have all the time in the world as of Thursday.” I hate that, suddenly, now that the weekend has ended, everything seems to have become a reminder of Camille leaving. I will make a point of not having it overshadow the time we have left. We are grown women, not love-sick teenagers involved in a summer fling.

  She’ll go; I’ll forget about her; move on.

  “I’m counting on it. And a full blow-by-blow as well.” He sits down in one of the chairs. “Though do give me a little something to whet my appetite already.”

  I tell him about the batteries, the dreadful meeting with Rebecca, and the forty-eight hours of sheer bliss that followed with Camille after.

  “Here’s the best I can do for you,” he says, putting on his semi-serious TV face. “I can falsely predict extremely inclement weather passing through for twenty-four hours as of Thursday morning, keeping all international flights on the ground for at least a day.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to violate the weathermen code of ethics just so I can have a few more orgasms, but thanks anyway.” I have to chuckle.

  “Looks to me like we’re talking about a bit more than a few orgasms here, Zo.”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Hm, kind of,” he says.

  “But it’s so stupid.”

  He waggles his finger in front of me. “Oh no, it most certainly is not.”

  “Even if it’s not stupid, it’s still impossible.”

  “Nothing is impossible, just untried.” He uses his serious television voice.

  “I can’t stop thinking about her.” I bring my hands to my head. “If only she was from New Zealand, or some godforsaken settlement in the Northern Territory, but not Paris. That’s too far. You know how long the journey is from Sydney to Paris? Twenty-four hours! And that’s the best-case scenario.”

  “But surely the fact that she’s from Paris adds to her attraction.”

  I sigh. “Oh god, yes.”

  “You can’t have one without the other.” He drums his fingertips on my desk. “Hey, don’t worry. In between forecasting the weather, I will dedicate all my waking hours to concocting a plan to make you forget about her as quickly as possible. If”—he holds up his finger again—“that’s what you want.”

>   “Ask me again in a few days.”

  He shuffles his chair closer. “Just so you know, these things happen all the time. People fall in love with other people who live on the other side of the world all the time. If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be.”

  “I’m not falling in love, okay. That’s a bit too… I don’t know. Inaccurate. Perhaps I’m falling in lust. Well yes, I’ve definitely done that. But love? That’s just ridiculous.”

  “I said in love.”

  “What’s the difference? Please, explain it to me, Jason.”

  “I don’t think you need me to explain anything to you at all. You are one of the smartest people I know. And the hottest—for a woman. I don’t even need to have met this Camille to know that she is pining for you right now.”

  If anything, Jason makes me laugh with his exaggerations. “She just sent me this.” I show him a picture of Camille in front of the Opera House, pretending to sing.

  “She’s thinking of you at the very least.”

  “And I’m thinking of her.” I expel another feeling-sorry-for-myself sigh. “Even if I were falling in love with her and we embarked on something long-distance and impossible, I’m the very first woman she’s ever been with. She’s not just going to sit around and wait until I go to Paris once a year. She’ll want to explore.”

  “Have more of what you gave her a taste of.” Jason breaks out into a sweet smile. “But you have thought about it.”

  “Ever since this morning, it seems to be all I can think about.”

  “Talk to her.”

  I shake my head. “No. There’s no point. We both know what this is.”

  “But what if it’s more than you’re both willing to admit?”

  “I met her on Friday morning, Jason. It can’t possibly be any more.”

  “Let it be noted on the record that I strongly disagree.” He leans over my desk. “Sometimes, in love, all it takes is one second. A flick of someone’s lashes. A corner of the mouth curling up. Looking into a stranger’s eyes at the exact right time.”

  “Yes, sure.” I’m so very desperate to believe him. “If that stranger doesn’t have a life and a family on the other side of the world.”

  “That’s another matter. I’m just trying to make you see that you shouldn’t feel silly because of your emotions, because of how she makes you feel.”

  Sean, my most junior researcher, knocks on the door, which is still open. This really isn’t a conversation Jason and I should have at work, and especially not with the door open.

  “Oh, sorry, boss,” he says. “Hi, Jason. Something urgent just came in, but I can come back in a few.”

  “I was just leaving.” Jason stands. He turns to me and mouths, “I’m right.” At least that’s what I think he’s trying to say. I both wish and don’t wish that he is.

  After work, I drive straight to Darlinghurst. Traffic is dense and moves much too slowly for my taste. Don’t these people know I have no time to waste? That a woman who is about to leave is waiting for me. I should have asked her to meet me at my house. The drive to work is much shorter. Maybe I should rethink my decision to move to Darlinghurst. I like the neighborhood, but I’m not interested in adding half an hour to my commute each way. Or maybe this standstill traffic is just a one-off. Just fate conspiring against me. Staying in Balmain and being reminded of Rebecca all the time isn’t ideal either.

  Every inch my car moves takes me closer to Camille. That thought keeps running through my head. It takes me to her— for now. As I look at my reflection in the rearview mirror, I wonder if it would have been better for me if I hadn’t met her at all. Because attached to all the gloriousness of encountering someone like Camille—someone who ticks most, if not all, of my boxes—is also the wretchedness of having to let her go.

  My phone starts ringing, pulling me right out of my doom and gloom. Camille’s picture pops up on the screen. I activate the Bluetooth speaker and even before I say “Hello” my lips split into a wide smile.

  “Where are you?” she asks. “I’m impatient.”

  “Thank goodness it’s just that. I thought there was another emergency at the apartment.”

  “There is. Me. I’m your emergency.” I love how she’s willing to show it all, to not hold back because of the circumstances. Maybe it’s because we have to compress an entire affair into a tiny number of days. It makes it more intense. Makes it feel like more than it would otherwise be.

  “You are. Sadly, I’m stuck in traffic.”

  “Do you need me to entertain you?” Her voice sounds different over the phone. Deeper. More exotic.

  “Yes, please. Tell me a story.”

  “Okay. Let me think for a minute.” The silence that hangs in the car for the following seconds is almost unbearable.

  “We can just talk.” I manage to move my car forward a few more feet.

  “No, no. You need to focus on traffic. I’ll talk.” She sounds bossy. Maybe it’s her motherly voice. The one she used to tell her children off with when they were little. Before I left work, I couldn’t resist googling her ex-husband Jean-Claude. A very handsome man, and not even in that off-kilter French way. I even found a few pictures of him and President Laroche. All smiles and French elegance in tailor-made suits.

  “So, once there were two women,” Camille starts. “Who started what is now commonly referred to as an Airbnb romance. They met because of a technology that didn’t exist a few years ago. This made them very modern. Des femmes du monde, quoi.“

  I hate that my French is not that good. Why don’t we get taught more of it in Australian schools? How we could benefit from being a bit worldlier. I want to understand every single word Camille speaks. Want to catch the meaning behind everything she says.

  “These women both had some emotional baggage. Not to be confused with the luggage they brought into the Airbnb apartment, of course.”

  I burst into a giggle at her silly sense of humor. “Of course,” I say.

  “Shht. Focus on traffic,” she says. “Let me tell my story.”

  Whatever was blocking the procession of cars I find myself in seems to have been cleared away, because I can pick up speed a little more. But now I just want to stay in the car until Camille has finished her story. I want to know how it ends.

  “They were of a more mature age but very, er, well-kept. One of them was Australian, but of Indian descent.”

  My heart starts beating faster.

  “She had the most expressive eyes. And her mouth. Oh, that mouth. Lips you’d want to kiss for days.”

  Oh Christ. I shouldn’t feel like this when driving. Her words connect with something deep inside of me, making my pulse pick up speed as I accelerate.

  “There are no two ways about it. The woman was beautiful and kind, albeit a bit, hm, how to put it, not very handy.” Camille’s voice remains serious. “Most of all, she was incredibly sexy. The kind of sexy that knocks you right over. Not to be ignored. Unmistakable. Obviously, the other woman, who was French and visiting Australia and renting the Airbnb, had to do something. Because after she briefly met the Australian woman, she couldn’t stop thinking about her. She was meant to be enjoying her last few days of relaxation and introspection and tourism, but instead, her mind was filled to the brim with thoughts of the Airbnb owner. It was stronger than herself. So she asked the other woman to go out and, miraculously, she said yes.”

  A pause. But I have no intention of saying anything. I should be in Darlinghurst in less than ten minutes, but now I don’t want this drive to end. Although, no matter how much I’m enjoying this story, what lies at the end of this commute, will be far more divine. The Australian and French women will be joined at the hip—and quite a few other body parts—for the rest of the evening, throughout the night and most of the morning.

  “They had a wonderful date under a bunch of fairy lights in this magical courtyard. It felt like it was all meant to be. Then…” She stops again. Maybe she’s looking for words. Or just cr
eating suspense. I wish I could see her while she’s telling me this story. “Then, they made love. For the French woman, who was very new to all of this, it was like a fairy tale. Like magic. Kind of how she felt when she walked into the patio of that restaurant, into the magical atmosphere, not so much created by the decor or the lights, but by the woman she was there with. Because sometimes, maybe only once in your life, you meet someone, and it makes you feel something so… big. Si incontournable. That it made her feel as though everything was going to be all right in her life. If a thing like that can happen, just like that, in a flash, then other wonderful things will follow. There’s just no other way.”

  My throat feels tight. Are those tears pricking behind my eyes?

  “The two women spent an amazing weekend together. Talking. Getting to know each other better. Making love. They made some memories they would never forget. But then the weekend ended. And the Australian woman had to get back to work, leaving the French woman alone all day. And what was strange was that this French woman had been traveling on her own, purposefully, for two months by then. She enjoyed the solitude, the room to breathe and think, but on the Monday after that weekend, she’d never felt so alone. Bereft almost, although she may have had a typical French flair for the dramatic. Lost. Like something important—no the most important part of her was missing. Even though she had to ask herself the question: how can it be? How is this possible?”

  Camille goes silent for long seconds. I miss her voice reverberating through my car. Her funny inflections. Her endearing accent. Wait. Is this the end of the story?

  “Zoya?” she asks, breaking her narrator character.

  “Yes.” My voice sounds so hollow and broken.

  “We still have to come up with the ending for this story. Together.”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes.”

  “Use them to think about how it will end,” Camille says, and hangs up the phone quite abruptly.

  This has been one of the most fascinating commutes of my life. I’m definitely moving to Darlinghurst. Maybe I can call Camille every day when I get back from work and she can tell me a story like that. Something to keep me going. What’s the time difference again? But no, I shouldn’t be thinking about that. I should be thinking about an ending for the story. A happy one. I rack my brain, but traffic gets busy around Darlinghurst and I need to find a place to park, and I know there’s not really room for a happy ending here.