by Rebecca Foxx
Those simple pleasures were found by her in Paris. She could smell the rain behind the closed window and see how the raindrops were caressing the huge wet and clean window glasses of the small humble cafe in the center of Paris.
What she loved about that cafe and chose it to enjoy the black hot bitter liquid was that the place and atmosphere gave her relaxation and complete rest after three hectic days of conference. She was sitting there alone without her colleagues.
The need not to rush but stop and breathe drove her to this lest noisy place. Oh yes, there were actually quiet places even in the greatest and craziest cities in the world. Her gaze was wandering over passer-byes who seemed to be Russian, Italian, African, American based on their appearance and number of features.
Yet, their smiles, confusion, admiration and grief had no nationality. They were all human beings equally looking for some miracle to come in the form of happiness, inspiration, and love or simply shopping. Yes, some people were seen with several packages hardly able to handle them with all their ten fingers. On their faces, one would obviously see how ecstatic they felt.
Her mind was in perfect state of peace. She was able to think about past events in her life with clear, fair and peaceful mind. She had given up the unpleasant habit of self-judgment, fears of losing herself in love or losing love in her.
It was called freedom. Half a year ago people that surrounded her could see her tortured and devastated soul in her young and beautiful body blossoming despite the grief. And that grief was born just in a second, when she saw her man and sister kissing in her own room.
That was the man who she had been engaged with for nine long months. That was her sister she had grown up sharing toys, love and sadness. It was a double loss that made her leave their parental home, leave for another city, a big one, rent an apartment there, give up her career of freelance writer temporarily and get from nine to five job, spending her time on fulfilling the inevitable job requirements.
Being a content writer of a large company that used to take part in events around the world, she and some of her colleagues soon were headed for Paris to take part in the conference and present their services. She had always hated public speech; instead, her passions were expressed dynamically through black and white.
All her thoughts were freely and willingly given to the white without invitation, unlike the times when she had to deliver speech or speak wise like people loved to. And now she was sitting in a thoroughly new foreign place surrounded with foreigners that seemed closer to her than those being left behind. The way bitter thoughts managed to gather around the cup of black bitter coffee was unexplainable, she thought.
A book was resting on her table, next to her coffee, wallet and phone. The book was named “The Art of Loving Yourself”, and the author was Stephanie Kruger, actually herself.
She was a 28-years-old woman at the age of mature passions and independence that were always interesting for true men. Maybe those features of wisdom, inner stability, independence and confidence are well seen by the way the woman sits, talks with a waiter, smiles being here and now, pushes her fringe away from forehead, the way she holds the cup and blows the liquid to cool or corrects her shirt.
She had given her feet some freedom from the depressing shoes, which had kept putting pressure on her tender feet. And they could feel the pleasant coolness of the cold air sitting on the floor. Her feet were snuggled in black stockings, and were still wet.
Yet Stephanie did not long for hotel where she could dry her hair and feet. Still she would manage to join her colleagues in two hours to have a tour at museums as planned. Now she needed that small pleasure of resting far from anyone she knew, to satisfy her needs of being alone with herself and enjoy her own company.
Being alone with oneself is definitely something that people lack because they are perhaps afraid of being alone, or they just find their own company uninteresting.
Stephanie was really a beautiful woman with everything big and noticeable. Her eyes were big like green ripe grapes, and they were grey and watery like them too. Her lips were full, juicy and many times bloody as she had a bad habit to bite them. The snow-white color of her teeth was in perfect contrast with the light-reddish color of her injured lips.
Her skin was not as white as one could imagine considering her Latvian and German descent. However, her hair that hardly reached her bare shoulders was milky brown and while looking at their straight fall, one wanted to touch them and feel the fine perfumes she used with care and moderation. She was tall and voluptuous body. Yet, she was very delicate in her manners. Her refined nature was like a good warm wind of spring that deprives from hot with its pleasant coolness and does not make anyone feel cold.
She was pondering over publishing her second book after 3 years of silence, but she was deprived of courage as she had given up creative writing for sake of her own ambitions, instead dedicating all her time to content writing for the company. Now, she needed some inspiration so much, she used to look for it everywhere.
She was thinking about leaving for some old French settlement, village that was far from Paris, full of its natural charm, national virtues, simple French people, interesting churches and small colorful houses... However her thoughts were interrupted when she saw a hand of a man just approaching to her table.
Stephanie had not yet looked at his face, but was just watching his hairy arm with metal watch around it. She slowly looked up as if not to miss any detail on the way from his fingers to his eyes. She felt how inspiration was poured in her soul like a coffee was poured in a cup just in seconds.
She saw a handsome man in front of him. What could be first noticed in his eyes was simplicity, humble smile that could belong to a kind-natured man. It seemed to be deprived from common wish to impress. It seemed to be deprived from any wish to demonstrate one's own majesty. It lacked artificial manners to inject respect or admiration.
It was rather gaze that asked for compassion or was ready to give that. He had to be someone who was not at all intended to flirt, whose behavior was spontaneous. Stephanie's creative mind managed just in seconds to explore his arrival, his appearance, his nature and write in her mind a short introducing paragraph about a stranger suddenly interrupting her rest to give a better chance to go on with it.
"Hi," said the stranger.
He had a smile that inspired trust. She thought they had met somewhere else before, maybe in previous life.
"Hi," she said.
This was the first greeting in her life that she expressed through her heart and did not just offered a sequence of letters after those sufferings. She felt that actually she greeted not just a person, but life. She had "Hi" to new feelings, new opportunities, new page of meaningful life and mindful experience.
"May I sit here with you?" he said.
He was tall and was special despite the fact that everything about him seemed common: his hairstyle, his manners, his clothes, his style, and his words. A very nice-looking man he was whose even mere look provided unexplainable sense of stability and trust. Some kind of classic man he was who had been long erased from the pages of contemporary media and reality.
No, he was not like a shallow type of men who shopped more than women, looking themselves in the mirror more than women, who waited to be invited, who did not know the art of dealing with the opposite sex like a tender fragile statue. He could be dangerous for her recovery.
To love again? She thought she was ready. But soon she would leave, and like a silly girl in her teens she would fall in love with him in just couples of days, though she thought she had already managed that during the first seconds she saw him.
Come on, there is no love at first sight. This will be just a short sweet romance story abroad beneficial to those who do not want to be tied, but who are not against to have a little fun either for sake of testing a forbidden fruit, breaking classic process of romance, having absolutely no responsibility for feelings they give and feelings they get, she thou
ght.
"Um... I am afraid I should go..." she said with a voice that she did not anticipate herself. It was less confident than she would like and was intended to show.
He stood there with his brown warm gaze, like a hot chocolate, still directed to her lips that uttered those unfavorable words. He expected that answer. Before him he saw the woman, who was not easy to conquer, someone who was maybe lost, confused though she had thought of her state as one who could manage to cope and succeed.
Being a true man, meant to have a male instinct and know women even by their smell or innocent manners.
She must be in her middle twenties, she looks so innocent, I think she is the same inside and outside. There must be some fine line between those two worlds, and it is natural. There is nothing artificial in her. How classic she is, he thought.
He saw her excited fingers to pull the dark blue costume over her bare shoulders to leave the table, to leave his expectation to have just a cup of coffee with her. Her confused smile was born from the inconvenience she felt for refusing him. He did not say anything, just explored her in silence that only existed between them two.
Of course, the cafe did not lack silence of its people making noise, laughing, talking and the sound of the door being opened and closed. But for these two people, being complete strangers who had ignited interest in each other, the silence was immense, and it was so disturbing that she added with warm smile with which she wished to cover the inconvenience of maybe her harsh and impolite sentence just seconds before.
"You can sit, of course, however I should run," she said with informal smile.
"May I accompany you? Maybe I can catch some taxi for you?" he asked politely.
"Thank you, but I am afraid I should refuse your help. I am really sorry," she said feeling that now he would definitely think that her heart was made of ice and iron.
She calmly stood up, carefully pushing forward the chair. Quickly putting the book and phone in her big black leather bag, she made sure that her skirt was well sat around her beautiful big hips and thighs. She paid for the coffee and was about to leave when she suddenly noticed that she was barefoot.
What a shame, she thought. He smiled and bent to take the shoes lying under the table.
"Thank you," she said while red color of feeling ashamed had covered her charming face.
Those were milky color leather shoes that she put on her beautiful sensual feet. Under her stockings, he could notice the bloody red nail polish on her feet fingers. Her heels were pink and healthy. The shoes perfectly hugged them. It was a great turn on for him, which he failed to control and felt extreme shame, when she saw that unintentionally.
They both felt shame. The woman because of her confusion of leaving barefoot and being so excited to notice it later. The man felt shame for not being able to control his arousal. When they actually parted, however, none of them really felt relaxation. That strange situation as if became the little dirty secret of two complete strangers.
Maybe for a long time yet they would remember that day when out of blue just during some minutes they had managed to know a little more about each other than it was supposed.
He saw how she left and caught the first taxi. He expected so much her to look back. Just a small gaze. But she did not. She just disappeared in a taxi, and the taxi disappeared on roads. He was just standings still and smiling at his own stupidity of approaching to a strange woman, offering to accompany her, being witness of her absent-mindedness, causing her trouble and shame, feeling unable to control his virile nature, giving her wrong signals... But most of all he regretted for not following her, for not insisting on meeting her any other time at any other place at least with purpose to eliminate the uncomfortable feelings of that day.
But then he saw a beautiful scarf she had left there.
"What an absent-minded girl!' he whispered with smile and even laughed from thought that now he had a perfect reason to meet her again. He asked the manager of the cafe just to give his phone number when a tall beautiful woman with milky hair would come after her scarf. But he little knew that in some hours they would meet again and in that meeting scarf would play little role... What a twist of fate!
Part 2 - Starry Night
The Musée d'Orsay was making the left bank of the river Seine especially aesthetic and marvelous. It was one of the most favorite places of people around the world who appreciated art. In addition, those who loved to admire the culture of the foreign country where they had luck to travel for a short period visited the place.
Two men and two women were exploring the beauty of impressionism and post-impressionism, the paintings that they had heard about only through media. That was Stephanie and her colleagues who had decided to have short tours in their free time. They were to stay in Paris for three more days. So they would manage to satisfy their cultural interests to some humble extent.
"You like it?" asked Maria to Stephanie.
"Yes," whispered Stephanie in her feminine sensuous voice as if she had been waiting for that question to express her humble admiration with single yes.
She was standing in front of Starry Night Over The Rhone Arles painted in Semptember,1888 by Vincent Van Gogh, her favorite painter. She had always dreamt about seeing it through her own eyes, being so close and feeling how the paintbrush of one of the greatest painters in the world just more than an era ago had touched the canvas.
The colors of the electric blue sky and lemon-yellow stars had filled her world with indescribable joy that made her soul fly in the hall of museum and even out of its limits. Maria, being a psychologist and the Human Recourse manager of the company, seemed to enjoy more analyzing the feelings of others when they were experiencing ecstasy or disappointment about different reasons while travelling, for example the unfavorable service of hotel.
And now she joined two men of their stuff to discuss how they felt, and, moreover, why they felt so.
"The paintings are great, but if we had a guide now, it would be great. I wonder what history this painting has," said Benjamin to Maria showing her Bal du Moulin de la Galette painted by French artist Pierre-August Renoir in 1876.
"There are some guides here, let's hope at least one of them will not ignore our cultural needs," said Edward.
Stephanie was still standing in from of Van Gogh's painting and enjoying the starry night.
"Don't you need a guide to satisfy your curiosity?" asked Maria again approaching to Stephanie.
"That would be fine, but don't you want sometimes feel just pleasure, simply feel without requiring information, getting knowledge?" asked Stephanie kindly. "We do it so much, so often. Now I want just look at them and get lost in their deepness."
"Oh yes, sometimes it is better just to eat your pie than ponder over the philosophy of its cooking techniques," joked Maria and they laughed.
Stephanie slowly moved her gaze to another painting and felt that someone was just standing quite close and looking at it too. She looked left and saw a familiar face of the stranger. And he, apparently feeling her gaze, looked at her, too. Obviously that was a great surprise for both of them.
They looked at each other with extreme feelings of passions and longing for each other. They felt gratefulness to the fate for fantastic surprise. If his face was not covered with so much delight and surprise, maybe she would think that he had been following her. But he was standing still unable even to move or say "Wow", something that she, in fact, did.
"Twist of fate," declared the man with its already familiar noble manners. When he was speaking his right eyebrow was rising up. He was using his hands and smiling a bit confused yet confident.
"Yes..." murmured Stephanie.
"You are a tourist, aren't you?" asked the man.
"Yes, actually," said Stephanie briefly.
He was looking at her with admiration when a man, apparently from the administrative stuff of the museum, approached him and said something in French. All that Stephanie could understand from their sho
rt exchange of few sentences was "Monsieur Beaumont". Judging from the movement of his head, he gave a positive answer without uttering any word, after which the man left.
"Do you know French?" he asked smiling.
"No, frankly said all that I could understand from your short conversation was that I can call you Monsieur Beaumont, or am I mistaken?" asked Stephanie with mild smile.
"You are absolutely right!" he smiled, "Only I am M. Beaumont for strangers. For family and friends I am Jean."
" Enchanté," smiled Stephanie.
"Wow, you look even more beautiful when you speak French. Nice to meet you too," said the handsome French man, not quite a stranger now.
She smiled and looked away with her shy feminine smile still on her lips.
"My name is Stephanie," she said without looking at him, but looking at the Starry Night, yet now sinking in something very different.