Thanks for taking the time to read this story. It's my second posted on this site. This is just the start, and based on your feedback will continue to develop it. Any/all thoughts are appreciated. Thanks. jm08nyc@yahoo.com.
CHAPTER ONE
Sometimes, when it just seems like I have life figured out, everything goes awry.
The wheels screamed as the train roared through the countryside. I had caught the first train from Nice, heading back to a city that for years had been my home, but now felt like a foreign land.
I turned up the volume of my headphones. Trying to use the music to drown out the thoughts in my head.
It wasn't working.
My fingers tapped the table in front of me. Nervousness coming out of every pore, through every extremity.
"Votre billet, s'il vous plaît, monsieur?"
I heard the words, barely. He repeated them slightly louder, leaning down into my field of vision. The conductor coming to collect my ticket. Good looking. Fit. Very French.
I slumped down in my chair. Shook the thought from my head.
And turned my attention back to the window.
The summer had done me some good. I guess. At the very least I found myself slightly tanner, if not any wiser.
It was late May when I decided to escape Paris. I had bought the house in the country a few years before. In a moment of weakness--spurned on by lust, by joy. Cooper and I had only been together a few months at that point, and had driven down from Paris to escape the pressures of work and get to know each other better.
We came across it on the side of a winding road, in massive disrepair. But, through the weeds and crumbling walls, a glimmer of something great.
The years had come and gone. I had focused on work. On life in Paris. On Cooper. Instead of restoring the house.
But, as I found myself again seeking a purpose this past May, I decided that now was the time. And had spent the summer putting the house, and, perhaps my life, back together.
I had thrown myself into the house, fixing walls and repairing the roof. Turning what had been a crumbling mess into something more. Something on the way to becoming a home.
As the train pulled into the station in Paris, I found myself even more apprehensive than I thought I would be. It had been three long months, but time did not work the wonders that I had needed it to do. It had softened the edges, perhaps. But the sharp pain remained.
Alone, I passed through the crowds at Gare de Lyon. Elbows and shoulders banging into strangers. A million voices in a million languages having a million conversations seemed to buzz around me. Lives continuing. Relationships beginning. Friendships forming & re-forming.
I focused. Straining to make it through. Outside. Into a taxi. Into the city.
As I slipped into the backseat of the taxi, I flipped through the messages on my phone. Fortunately Thomas had been in the city all summer, keeping things at the office on track as I worked via telephone, email and videoconference from my reality-escape in the south.
I needed to do something special for him. I'd be lost without Thomas. Must work on. It would be weird to be back in the office tomorrow. Weird, but good.
I stood at the door. Looking up at the building on Rue Charlot. Life seemed to have gone on around the house as it did when we lived there. And, it would go on inside. As soon as I worked up the courage to open the door and walk up the stairs.
I had moved into the apartment here when I first moved to Paris, years ago. Over the years I had renovated and expanded the house as other apartments in the building became available. After Cooper and I got together he had moved in. Quickly. Probably too quickly. But we couldn't get enough of each other. Every minute we spent together was like rediscovering the pleasures of life. Finding joy in the smallest details of everyday life.
But, the day that Cooper moved out was the day I stopped sleeping here, too. I had checked into a hotel. And had let Sophie, who took care of the apartment for us, run the roost untended. I'd come home every few days to pick up clean clothes and check the mail, and get a lengthy lecture from Sophie about how I needed to get my life together.
I stood against the door and gently banged my head against it. Must. Get. Life. Together.
Maybe one day? But, probably not today.
"Bonjour,Sophie, je suis retourné." I called out as reached the top of the stairs and opened the door to the apartment. "Are you here?"
I stood inside the door and took a deep breathe, smelling the scent of another life--of a life that seems a world away, watched from a distance, through a dark pane of glass.
I walked through the gallery, the long hall that opened off the front door, and took in my surroundings. The collected works of two lives together hanging on the walls all the way to the living room.
"Sophie?" I called out again.
"Il s'agit de baiser le temps," I heard the low grumble coming from the kitchen; I slipped through the door and smiled at Sophie, who was standing over the kitchen table slicing tomatoes.
"Hello, my friend," I said to her. Sliding into a chair at the table. Not yet ready for eye contact.
"Well, it's damn time you came back from your vacation. You silly man." It was amazing how comfortable she felt speaking to me like this. But, it was part of her charm. I mean, she had spent all summer in the apartment by herself, cooking and cleaning for no one. And had the audacity to be mad at me. But, in reality, she was giving voice to the things I couldn't say myself out loud.
"Yes, yes. I know." I picked a tomato slice from the plate and ate it quietly.
She slid a few slices from the cutting board onto a place and pushed it towards me, slammed a bottle of olive oil down on the table and handed me a jar of salt. "Here, eat something. You look too skinny."
"Thanks, Sophie. So, what's been going on up here?"
She exhaled, a heavy, deep sigh. Set down the knife. And eased herself into the chair across the table from mine. And for the first time looked up, and we made eye contact.
TO BE CONTINUED.