by Ana Sparks
“I guess not.” Maybe I was the fragile one, and maybe Icarus had known that. I had already lost a mom and a dad, and sometimes, it didn’t seem worth the trouble of getting close to anyone when relationships were so delicate and easily broken. “At least you’re here, now.”
“Did you think I was going somewhere?”
“I mean…you will, in a few days.” I didn’t want to be having this conversation now, not when the river was so close. “I guess I’m just trying to enjoy the moment, you know? I don’t know how many more of these we’ll have.”
“We can have more than this, if you want them.” I could feel Salman staring at me, but I kept my eyes on the road. “I can always fly back.”
“Do you really want to go out with an out-of-work journalist who lives in Phoenix?” There was something sweetly endearing in his talk of commitment, but I was old enough to be wary of men and their promises. “There are more glamorous women in Paris. Heck, there are more glamorous women here.”
Salman’s gaze never left my face. “But I don’t want to go out with any of those women. I want to go out with you.”
“Why, though? Have you seen me lately?”
“You haven’t driven me away yet, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“I can see that.” There was a strange comfort in knowing that Salman had seen me at my worst and still persisted. “I guess I’m just questioning your judgment, is all.”
I could feel him smiling at me, though I couldn’t turn my head—we were navigating the dusty road that hugged the sun-dazzled river. After the drive we’d had, I was looking forward to tossing off my sweat-soaked shirt and wading knee-deep into the water. I’d worn my swimsuit for the occasion, though it was anyone’s guess whether it would stay on or not.
I parked the car by the side of the river and got out, dragging the cooler along behind me. I used to go camping out here in college, and the place looked much the same as I remembered it: jagged cliff faces, over-hanging mesquite trees, a circular stone fire pit that hadn’t been used in a week or more.
Salman stood at the edge of the water, warily eyeing the rapids as though afraid the current might carry him off if he ventured too far in. Perhaps he was wise to be cautious: here was the sort of place where a single slip of the foot could lead to serious harm.
“You scared?” I asked him as I waded out up to my ankles. “You were such a pro in the hot tub, I thought you’d love this.”
“Hot tubs aren’t the same, though,” said Salman, eyeing me shyly from the shoreline. “A hot tub has walls. You can decide when to turn it on and turn it off. You can’t do that with a river.”
I peeled off my shirt and tossed it lazily down on the bank, revealing my bare torso and bikini top. “You mean you never went swimming in the Seine?”
“No, it’s not recommended.” Salman had grown oddly quiet, his face a warm shade of burgundy. “You, though…you seem strangely at home in the river, here. Not at all like you did in Qia.”
I shrugged, swatting a gnat off my naked shoulder. “Well, I’ve been swimming in this river my whole life, since I could walk.”
The thought of stepping out into the current seemed to terrify Salman, but I found it oddly calming. It was the same feeling I had gotten on my walk through the Latin Quarter on my first afternoon in Paris—a sense that the scope of my life was expanding, that at any moment, I might mount into the sky on feathery wings and soar off.
“You make it look a lot more fun than it probably is,” said Salman.
With a single, deft motion, he tore off his shirt and threw it down on the pile. I caught my breath and looked away, not wanting him to see the shock on my face. We were likely going to spend the rest of the night snatching peeks at each other when the other person wasn’t looking.
He dipped a toe into the water, then shrank back with a shake of his head. “No, no, no, no, no!”
“Have you really never been in a cold river?” Delighted, I tried to fling water on him, but only succeeded in getting myself wetter. “It gets easier once you’re actually in the water. You’ll never get warm by hesitating.”
“You know, I’m fine with that,” said Salman philosophically. “There are some experiences that a man does not need to have.”
“What if getting in the water was the only way you could get to me?”
I let the question hang in the air for a minute. Salman wavered, looking torn between wanting to stay warm and dry on the riverbank and joining me in the cold water. I made the choice easier—or harder—by wriggling out of my shorts until I stood there in only my swimsuit.
“Oh, come on!” Salman shouted, covering his eyes in mock horror. “That’s not fair!”
“I’m not done, yet. There’s more I could take off.”
“In that case, I’ll just wait,” he said with a lascivious smile.
In a show of defiance, I flung more water at him, and this time, he retaliated in kind, churning up a froth with his powerful arms.
That night, I experienced a feeling I had only felt a few other times in my life—once at an outdoor rock concert during the summer after my sophomore year of college, and once or twice as a girl, when I’d gotten so lost in play that I’d lost track of the time passing.
It was a feeling of being completely transported out of myself, so that the troubles of the past couple weeks—the threats, the stolen purse, the job lost, the bargain made and unfulfilled—seemed like the concerns of some other woman in some other life.
Once I managed to coax Salman into the water, there was a precipitous moment where the day could have gone in any direction. When our bodies touched, I became acutely aware of the canyon above us, how we were maybe the only two people for miles around, how we were unlikely to be interrupted whatever happened, how naked I felt under my swimsuit, and how I yearned for the feel of his arms around me.
How we managed to pull back from the brink, I don’t know—it would have been so easy just to drift along with the current and let one thing lead to another.
“You have to space these things out,” said Salman after we had been kissing for an hour or two. “We can’t do it all in one day.” But, of course, I was feeling hungry and reckless; I was ready to wade neck-deep and let the river carry me feet-first into something stupid and wonderful.
We packed up the car at around five, and made it home a couple hours later at sundown. Aunt Patricia was still at work, and the house was empty, though Clay had left a note saying he would be over for dinner.
I brewed a new pitcher of iced tea and brought it out onto the front porch, where Salman sat idly rocking with the neighbors’ cat on his lap. In the twilight, the fireflies flickered like the lights of a fogbound ship.
Setting his glass down on the table next to him, Salman said, “I’m glad you asked me to stay. I wouldn’t have wanted to miss this.”
“Of course I wasn’t going to let you go,” I said. “Not when you were right there, standing in the middle of my living room.”
“You still seem so surprised.”
“I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.” I leaned myself against him, reclining my head on his broad chest. “It was like perfection suddenly took on human form.”
“I’m very far from perfect.” Nudging me back up into a sitting position, he said earnestly, “Can we talk about something? I feel like there are some things that need to be cleared up before—well, before we go any further.”
“Yes, of course.” My eyes followed him in the half-light as he picked up the cat in both hands and set it down on the ground at his feet. The cat gave an indignant scowl and began washing herself with a sulky air. “What is there to talk about?”
“It’s about my job and…how we met. We’ve both been skirting around it, understandably so, but I don’t think we can continue to avoid it if things are going to get serious between us.”
I nodded. I always felt a little apprehensive when serious discussions were broached, but in this case, the uneasiness w
as tinged with a sense of relief. He wanted to be serious. He wanted to be more than friends. This wasn’t just a fling to him, and the relationship we had had until now was inexorably evolving into something more.
Maybe it had been doing so the whole time, and I was just bad at seeing it.
“I probably shouldn’t have waited as long as I did to tell you this,” Salman prefaced, “and I hope you won’t hate me for it.”
“Why would I hate you?”
“You’ll understand when I tell you.” He scratched at the back of his neck with an air of trepidation. “I wasn’t just your dad’s creditor. For a long time, before he took suddenly ill, we were more like…rivals. We had both gone into the real estate business in the same part of the country. We were both intensely ambitious, and my livelihood depended on driving him out of business.
“Mind you, I had nothing against the man personally. He was just standing in the way of me being the more successful. Asar was full of ideas for ruining him, most of which I rejected out of hand as being illegal or unethical. But still, I didn’t always conduct myself in the most professional or respectful manner, and for that, I’m ashamed.”
“Why had you never mentioned this?” I asked him. “I had no idea you and my dad were so involved in each other’s affairs.”
“Okay, well, imagine you had just met a beautiful woman…” Salman laughed.
“Nope, never happened.” I shook my head and made my best oblivious expression. “I don’t know any beautiful women.”
“Not even Aisha?”
“She transcends the usual categories. She is the definition of beauty.”
“Well, there you go.” Salman leaned back and stroked my hair, presumably feeling more at ease. “You’d be sickened if you knew how much gloating there was on the day we found out your father had been forced into an early retirement. At that point, it was only a matter of time before the business folded, because he had always been the real brains behind it.”
“I’m guessing you didn’t send him flowers.”
“Only as an ironic gesture, which I don’t think he appreciated.”
I thought surely, Salman must be joking at that, but his tone betrayed sincerity, and deep regret.
“In business, you never think of your rivals as being real people,” he continued. “Meeting you caused me to seriously consider how I had treated him.”
“I don’t see why,” I said acidly. “It’s not like he ever talked to me.”
“No, but you were his daughter, and I couldn’t help being reminded of that whenever we were together. You had the same eyes, the same way of tapping your pen on a table, the same way of asserting your opinions whenever you felt passionately about something. I should have guessed it on the first night I met you—you were so much like him, but I couldn’t place it.”
“You wouldn’t have believed me if I had told you.” How long ago that first dinner seemed now, and yet so pivotal to all that had come after.
“Perhaps not. And maybe I would have had second thoughts about kissing you.”
“Understandable.” Not that I could really help looking like my father.
“But even knowing who you were, I couldn’t help wanting to see you again.” He was running his hand along the back of my neck now, making me shiver. “I was so desperate that when you called me, I took up your offer without even really thinking about it.”
“Aisha tried to talk me out of going. She felt you should have just given me the book in the first place.”
“She was right about that,” said Salman. “But I’m glad you didn’t listen.”
“I’m glad I went,” I said, leaning into him. “And that she was wrong about you.”
We sat there in contented silence while the shadows deepened over the street in front of the house. I wanted to go on sitting there for a while longer, but I knew that at any moment, we would hear the screech of tires and Clay’s truck would come tearing into the driveway. On the bright side, last night, he had broken up with Leah, after one too many fights.
“Do you think I’ll ever have a proper job again?” I asked Salman, absently stroking the back of his head. “Or is it just freelancing from here on out?”
“I hear ghostwriting is a pretty lucrative position,” he said with a wry smile. “Or, I could take care of you.” There was no jest in his voice, now. “I’ll look after you, and you can spend your time however you want. If you want to go into freelance journalism—or if you want to take the year off and finish your book…”
“That is tempting…” I was surprised he even remembered that. It had been so long since we’d talked about it.
“Or you can go to Paris and spend the year partying in a houseboat on the Seine and wear velvet robes and not have to wake up until noon.” As though seized with the idea, he turned to me suddenly. “Would you really do it? Would you go to Paris with me?”
“For a year?” I asked, incredulous.
“For however long. A few days, a week. I want to go back, but I don’t want to go alone. I want you to come with me—not just for a night this time—and we’ll visit every crêperie and brasserie and museum in the city and sip espresso and write poetry about love while shivering in the garret of a run-down apartment block overlooking the Eiffel Tower.”
I couldn’t have refused a suggestion delivered with such gusto. “I think we could afford better than a one-bedroom apartment. Or, at least, one of us could.”
“True, but you can’t beat the ambiance.” More quietly, he added, “What do you think? Would you go with me?”
“I’ll go,” I said, “on one condition.”
“What’s that?”
“That we invite Aisha to come and spend a few days with us. It would make her whole life.”
“Of course. She can stay as long as she likes.”
I threw my arms around him and rubbed the back of his neck with my fingertips. We were still embracing passionately a few minutes later when the lights of Clay’s truck flooded the driveway.
Epilogue
Cassie
Salman stayed with us for another three days, at the end of which we boarded a plane together bound for Paris. Aisha decided to stay in Phoenix for the time being, but promised she would catch up with us in a day or two.
“I need to take care of some things, maybe buy some heels, new dresses…plus, you have to be emotionally ready for a trip like this,” she said, fanning herself. “Read a few books, make reservations for one at a fancy French restaurant, smoke my first cigarette so when a suave man in a motorcycle jacket offers me one, I don’t look like an idiot…”
“Please don’t hook up with the first bad boy you see,” I said with a disapproving shake of my head. “If the two of you get in trouble, I’m not bailing you out.”
“No, but I might fall in love with a gorgeous painter dying of something tragic. Or cut my hair into a cute bob and accidentally wind up in a fashion show, mistaken for a model—”
“If you manage to accomplish all that in a week, I’ll be really impressed,” I said. “Why didn’t you study abroad?”
“I went to community college, remember?” she said sadly.
“Well, you’re an adult, now. You could live there if you wanted to. Come to Paris and camp out for six months—maybe more, if it proves to be everything you want it to be.”
“Tempting,” said Aisha, who stood at the mirror applying her makeup absently. “How long are you and Salman planning on staying?”
“Until we get tired of each other,” I said dreamily. “So, sometime around the year 2052 or so.”
“Maybe by then, you won’t be so disgustingly cute.” She scrunched up her nose in feigned horror. “You’ll have to get separate houseboats.”
Aisha had been talking nonstop about coming out and visiting us ever since Salman had informed her that he owned a houseboat on the Seine.
“No, even if we get divorced, I’m keeping the houseboat. Then, you can come and live with me, and we can wear hi
gh-necked sweaters and be a couple of old ladies together.”
“I never thought I would be rooting for my best friend’s divorce,” said Aisha, combing her hair back. “And yet, here we are.”
“Here we are,” I replied with a laugh. I leaned my head on her shoulder, and we stood there together, beaming at ourselves in the mirror.
On our first night back in Paris, Salman and I ate at that same corner restaurant on Rue Saint-Georges, at the same corner table where we dined on the night we’d met. We spent a couple of enchanted hours talking about nothing in particular. Salman wanted to know how the city had changed so much in our brief absence, while I countered that it was beginning to feel like an old friend, my second home. The domed ceiling of the Galeries Lafayette and the sweeping chestnuts of the Tuileries Gardens had become as dear to me as my own city, all the more heartwarming because he was here with me.
“I think I could spend the next year exploring this city and not come to the end of it,” I said over a second glass of wine. “When I return home, there will still be desserts I haven’t tried, department stores I never had the chance to go into, flowing skirts I never had the courage to try on.”
“But surely, even Paris would start to bore you, after a year of living here,” said Salman.
“Does it bore you?”
“Yes and no. Yes, because I’ve hardly paid attention to it—I’ve been so absorbed in my work. No, because now, you’re here, and nothing could ever be dull if you were with me.”
“In that case, maybe it’s time you worked less and paid more attention.”
“I’m planning on it,” said Salman, slicing the ends off his steak Polmard. “By the way, Asar wanted to meet with you while we’re here.” Seeing me flinch, he was quick to add, “He wanted to apologize.”
“Apologize for what?”
“For being a heel, basically. He had some sort of epiphany a couple mornings ago and realized he should never have treated you the way that he did.”