by Lucy Morton
“What was the table Bob used to sit down?”
“Umm… you really wanted to know that just by coming here, you little devil one?
I look around me and I stare longingly at the first coffee table. It’s the one on the left side of the door and in front of the window that Bob always looked distracted to the outside. I used to say that many things are seen from a window without caught. You can discover a whole world in the eyes of the people and in the expression of their faces. I knew, just by looking once, if the person was sad, tired, happy, excited, thrilled… Bob was a little “Amélie” but in man and real. Very real.
“That one over there” I point it out to my daughter.
There is a couple sitting there. They must not be more than twenty years old. Their glances enraptured at one another tell it all. Words are unnecessary.
“And do not even ask Jerry anything” I say. “It is strictly forbidden to want to find out details of the story before it is over.”
“You know? I’m not really convinced that Dad is Bob anymore. Because you talked to me about the floor guy and the other that you have not yet spoken to me… a girl usually does not keep the first man that shows up, right?
I am surprised by her maturity and her intelligence. April likes to think and overthink things, that she got it from me. Intelligence and curiosity, of course, from her father.
“You have to kiss a lot of frogs before you meet your prince.” I nod reflexively, until I realize the consequences my sentence may have on an eight-year-old girl who is biting her chocolate crepe with her eyes widely open for what I just said. I mean I try not rectifying myself. “You do not have to kiss a lot of guys. No, no, no, nothing like that. I mean that when real love appears, you only have to kiss that one.
April is looking at me sideways and she is laughing. I like her laughter. It is scandalous and contagious, as was his. I like her eyes, because they look just like his. Wandering and fun; with that mystery so characteristic of never knowing what they are really thinking.
CHAPTER 16
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Closing your eyes… is not going to change anything. Nothing is going to disappear simply for not seeing what is happening. In fact, things will be even worse the next time you open your eyes. Only a coward closes his eyes. Closing your eyes and covering your ears will not make the time stop.
Haruki Murakami
(Kafka standing on the shore)
BEFORE
When I left the coffee shop at eight o’clock in the morning, I ran into Jack, the new neighbor across the street. He said good morning to me. He was kind, but I was already upset with him, so I just went downstairs and I got out outside. It was very cold in New York. I kept myself warm. I took the subway and after half an hour, I was already working at the coffee shop and I cannot wait any longer to see Bob. He played hard to get. Just as I was really used to. He arrived at eleven-thirty in the morning with a horrible scarf wrapping around his neck.
“Here we have the Teruel lover!” Jerry exclaimed who has always been some kind of a prankster.
I blushed. I think Bob did too. He ordered a natural orange juice and he sat down at “the usual table”.
“I think you have ten minutes of break, little girl. Go. Sit down with him.”
You cannot imagine how much I thanked him. It was what I wanted the most in the world. Sitting down with him. Being with him.
“I have not slept all night” he admitted. “I have not stopped thinking about you.”
A long “Ohhhhhhh” took over my mind. But if there was any trauma, it was Tom’s, the English guy I had met in Ireland who also tricked me with his pretty words.
“But…”
I’ve never liked the “buts”. Never. The “buts” never bring anything good.
“I am going to Australia in a month.”
The coffee almost comes out of my nose.
“To Australia? It will not be one of those excuses to disappear, right?”
“I’m afraid not” he answered sadly, taking my hand.
It gave me goosebumps like the night before at the movies. It was as if with only a touch, he was able to shake me up. “That’s love, right?” I thought.
“And you have to go, no matter what?”
He nodded. For a few seconds I had a strong internal struggle consisting of: fucking him off for winning my heart, even knowing that he would leave in a month or telling him to enjoy and live to the full the month we had before he went to the opposite side of the world to live. Finally, and fortunately, I chose to do the last thing. Enjoying the time and the moment despite the consequences of the decision made. I used to say, “A girl like me, never got any luck. She knows the one who seems to be the man of her life, and he, on matters scheduled before he knows of my existence, has to leave. And I was like: “What would I do in Australia? It would be crazy!”
“Okay”, I whispered. “Do you want to come to my house tonight?” I dared to ask.
He nodded.
*Note to the reader: what I am about to tell next, I am not going to tell my daughter even as a joke. I just skip it.
I had convinced Kim to stay with Barbara in any grimy pub in the city. At first he complained a little bit. She was in the most interesting part of the novel she was writing and the last thing she wanted to do was to go out to the cold streets of New York with the crazy and egocentric of our friend who almost ends up in jail in a small town in the south of Ireland.
However, the neighbor across the street could not leave me alone. I had a romantic plan prepared. I had even bought candles and I hoped that Bob liked the pizza, because back then, I did not know how to cook very well. No. In fact, I could not cook anything, not even a fried egg.
Bob came with a lot of people; a real wild bunch of guys who were into the flat across the way before the complaints and shouts of old lady Dorothy to the neighbor once again.
“A party! Are you having a party today? If it’s Wednesday, boys! I you make a lot of noise, I will call the police. I warned you!”
I prayed to God and all the angels she called the police. But the very good liar did not do it.
Bob and I had dinner between two romantic candles and the dim light that I had prepared for the occasion. While I was hearing people laughing, yelling, stamping and dancing to the sound of a horrible music back there that, over time, I have chosen to forget. Heavy style, but in fact, the neighbor looked like anything but a heavy style.
“What a quite a party back there!” Bob was laughing.
I was also laughing, but just because I was imagining myself choking the neighbor across the street. At midnight, they were still at the party while Bob and I were sitting on the couch watching a movie. I do not remember which; I could only look at him. To the most beautiful new eyes in the world. In one moment of the movie, he got up and he went to turn off the light. I sat waiting for him, and when he came, he put his hands on my cheeks. He stared at me and he brought his face closer to mine. When our lips were about to touch, the doorbell rang. It was not kindly. Indeed, really strong. A loud sound that shattered my eardrum.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed to myself.
Bob, a little confused, turned away from me and I got up to open the door with a grim look.
“What do you want?” I asked Jack.
“Do you have lemons, neighbor?” Jack asked me, a little drunk.
“Lemons? Lemons?”
I slammed the door in his face. I took a deep breath, one, two, three and four times, and I turned around with the biggest smile. The new neighbor could not spoil that moment. No, no way. No one could spoil that moment.
“Where were we?”
I approached to Bob. I sat on top of him and I ran my fingers through his hair. He grabbed me tightly by the waist, drawing me close to his chest and at the very moment when, finally, our lips were approaching dangerously, we heard the door lock. I look up at the front.
“No way. Kim, I’ll kill you. I kill you.”
“Hey, wh
at’s up?” I’m sorry, I could not stand it any more… Barbara has gone with some guy, who…” She stopped short. She saw Bob. She opened her mouth and she squinted her eyes pleadingly. “I am sorry! Emm… Hi, I am Kim, Jean’s roommate.”
“Nice to meet you, Kim. I am Bob.”
Bob stood up, looking at me sadly.
“Hey, I’m going to bed.” You can… I do not know, you can… Well that, I gotta go.”
Kim left before my glare, “I’m going to kill you” and Bob and I stood in the middle of the room with the mess of the party in front of us.
“This is such a disaster, Bob…” I regretted.
“We have a month left. We have a month ahead.”
“Stay to sleep. Yes, stay to sleep” I proposed him, even though it was all very sudden, everything was going very fast. I did not want to scare him, but it did not seem to be.
He put his arms around me. He took a lock of my hair behind my ear and quickly without further ado so that nothing and no one spoiling the moment, he kissed me. Slowly. Enjoying the moment. Is there anything more curious than a first kiss? The rest seem to be taken for granted. You know how the other person kisses. You know his movements and his tongue-play. But you never forget the first kiss. The first kiss only happens once.
I closed my eyes and I let myself go. Without stopping kissing me, I lead him to my room. We undressed quickly and Bob, on top of me, started a foreplay that I wished never to end. We continued listening the shouts and the noise of the party. The wall of my room was located next the hallway. But most curious of all, it was when the party, it seemed to be on the other side of the door.
I could not believe it. I could not concentrate. I was making love to a wonderful man and Kim, had let the party into the house. In our house!
“Shhh…” Bob reassured me inside me. “Everything is okay. Close your eyes” he whispered. “Close your eyes.”
I listened to him. And in spite of everything, I lived that moment as one of the best of my life. Bob slept with me that night. Hugging each other. He did not stop touching me and touching my back all night.
“I was not wrong this time”, I thought. “Not everyone is like the English guy.”
You can imagine what my surprise was the next day, when I was going to prepare an orange juice for Bob, who was still sleeping in my bed, when I found the neighbor in front of me snoring on the sofa.
Had he slept with Kim? No, that was not his style, it could not be. But what was that guy doing on the couch? A beer was lying on the floor next to him. Beads of beer had stained the woodblock. I sneaked open the door to Kim’s bedroom. She was sleeping peacefully wearing her Mickey Mouse pajamas without knowing, surely, that Jack had fallen asleep on the couch.
How long had the party lasted? Why was not he in his apartment? Without making a sound I went to the refrigerator and I picked up a pitcher of cold water. I did not think twice. Here was my revenge.
“Ahhhhhhhhhhh!” the good Jack screamed, by getting up quickly. “Damn, girl! What’s wrong with you?”
Within two minutes, we had Bob and Kim as spectators.
“What are you doing in my house? Kim” I stared at her, upset. “Why did you let them to come in? Because you let them to come in. Do not tell me you don’t.
“I, don’t… they just came asking for lemons and they came in and I joined the party a little and…” She tried to apologize, still asleep and shaken up.
“Learn from your roommate. She is cool. You are not.”
Jack looked at me with contempt. Then he looked up and down to Bob, who was only dressed in some underpants, which is why Kim was running to her red bedroom on that occasion like a crab and the neighbor disappeared slamming the door.
“Orange juice?” I asked Bob, still laughing at the neighbor’s awakening.
“Sure.”
I hated Australia without knowing it.
I hated and I loved that November equally.
December 1st came and Bob, who had slept with me every night, was crying as much as I did. He would return in three years. He would finish his master’s degree and he would live permanently in New York.
“I’m not going to ask you to wait for me” he said to me, still lying in bed, knowing that in a few hours the tragedy of looking at us for the last time would come to know whenever we might see us again. “We do not know where our lives will go on. You may become a famous painter and you have to travel constantly.”
“Or you may fall in love in Australia, and when you get back you will not remember me.”
He forced me to turn around and look into his eyes with his finger on my chin.
“Do not say that. Do not say it again. I will never forget you. The people who leave a mark on you, they also leave an unforgettable memory. Wherever I am, I will always be with you.”
CHAPTER 17
—
I like to think I am going to see you. I do not know where, when or how. I do not know if today, tomorrow, a few years or some other life. I do not know if being children, young or old people. In the form of people, water and stone, flower and earth or rain and sky. Just thinking that I’m going to see you somehow. When our destinations match again in a while. I am just thinking about it. I like to think I’m going to see you.
Leunam.
NOW
“Nooooo!” April said with laughter and tears. “Why did he leave? Why?” she stops for a moment and she thinks carefully about what she is about to say. Did dad study for a MBA in Australia?” She is asking more to herself than to me. “Was dad in Australia?”
“I will leave you in suspense. Come on, time to go to sleep.”
“Look at him.”
“What?”
“Whenever you want to see him, he is there.”
April is pointing out the ceiling and she is staring at her father. I do the same thing and tears are naturally running out from our eyes, as if they already got used to it.
“He will always be here” I say. “With us. Protecting ourselves as always. Wherever he is…” I finish murmuring.
If I like something about painting for hours, is that I was completely isolate myself from the world and I am quite capable of forgetting even eating. The hours are running on a whim but I do not care, while I am on time at three o’clock in the afternoon at the school door to take April to have a snack some chocolate crepes to Jerry’s coffee. I know it cannot be healthy to eat chocolate every day, but I used to do it and here I go. Nothing has happened to me.
That’s exactly what I was saying to myself when Bob went to Australia and I do not know if due to the distance or how busy we were before, we did not keep in touch. I was dreaming about the day he will come back. I did not care if it took two, three, four or five years. Back then, I was still convinced that I would wait for him even though he told me I did not have to. He knew what goes around comes around and that when you go away, you cannot count on the other person waiting for you. The other person must also move along. Holding strongly your life with your own hands and taking a risk to know other worlds. Especially when you are not twenty-five years old.
CHATPER 18
—
Having met each other was no coincidence, nor was it any coincidence. Perhaps everything was already predetermined, fate already had it all prepared. And despite our many differences, we continue captivating each other daily, without limits or schedules.
BEFORE
It had been three weeks since Bob had moved to Australia. Kim tried to cheer me up with chocolate bars, vanilla ice cream, huge pizzas and Mc Donald’s burger to take-out. As if my mother did not feed me well at the Christmas dinners and meals we were celebrating in that month.
Kim rarely used to go out every night, but that Thursday when I left the coffee shop late and to top it off I realized when I got home that I had left my keys. She was not there. I rang the bell a hundred times, but nobody answers. So I put on my woolly hat a little upset by my bad luck and I waited in a desolate cold until some nei
ghbor entered to let me go upstairs to the hallway. Mr. Hope, the neighbor of the second floor, took twenty minutes to come. He was coming with a shopping cart, I wondered if there was any chocolate bar in it. I was starving.
“Young lady, have you forgotten your keys?” He asked, distressed.
“Yes, Mr. Hope.”
“Oh dear! Come, come. Do you want to go up to my apartment and wait for your roommate there?”
No way.
“No, it’s not necessary. I’m sure she will be here soon.”
“Suit yourself.”
I stepped forward to the hopelessly slow pace of Mr. Hope and I ran up the stairs to the fourth floor. I knocked on the door, in case Kim had not heard the doorbell downstairs. But no, actually, Kim had thought of going out that night. Was she with Barbara? Had she hooked up? No, none of both possibilities had any sense, but rather belonging to a fantasy, fiction and unreality book.
“Great. What a good luck of mine!”
I leaned my back against the door and I let myself drag to the floor, sitting down, cross-legged, passing the time and biting my nails.
At twelve-thirty in the evening, Kim was not home yet. And we still did not have the strong need to carry the mobile phones with us, so we had no way of reaching her out. I was so desperate that I was about to go down to the second floor and knock on Mr. Hope’s door or Dorothy’s, who was a few feet away, and even more, when I realized that a few steps were going upstairs. By the way, they were not Kim’s.
I looked around for a place to hide, but I doubted that the neighbor in front of me would not find me behind the tiny fire extinguisher or the pot with the artificial palm.
“Wow, neighbor!” Jack exclaimed. “Have you forgotten your keys at home?”
“Uh-huh” I said, looking at my nails.
He put his key in the lock and after a few seconds of silence, he turned around and, looking at my eyes, told me:
“You can come in if you want. I’m sure you’re hungry. Calm down, I do not bite and I forgive you for that day.”
“Do you forgive me for that day? After all the fuss you set up? You really are crazy.”