Café Noir ©

The woman did not smile and her face was tight and the instant she saw the man she looked away. She looked down and quickly aside and was momentarily ashamed that her eyes had nearly met his.

The following day and for a number of days afterwards the woman saw the man. Some days she would stare straight upon him until his dark eyes glanced up from his work. She would turn swiftly then, and duck away, and blend in with the passersby.

The woman lived with her child and her withdrawn husband in a loft near Café de la Paix. The woman was stricken with great mental lassitude but managed to carry herself through her days of indolence by caring for her child. She loved her child above all else and cared for the child without a helping hand from her husband. The woman was lonely and lived with a constant ache, for the love of her husband had faded.

The man sat outside the Café de la Paix where the woman saw him each morning. He read the papers there and worked on his writing and drank his café noir. The man was covering a three-week bicycle race for the Toronto Star. The race was called Le Tour De France. The race would end in Paris where the man was staying. The man wrote and prepared for its grand finale.

After the man made an unexpected shift in his seat one morning, the woman suddenly found the man’s eyes on hers. His eyes were intelligent and friendly and a sadness washed from the woman and she did not try to look away. She stood solid like stone and soon discovered the man’s smile was also welcoming. No words passed between the two, but they knew the moment was theirs.

For several days the man and woman greeted each other with only their eyes and each morning the woman thought, tomorrow I will write him a note.

The woman dressed hurriedly this morning then left the loft feeling true and proud. She found the street empty now and the bicycle riders gone. Things were once again as they had been before the race. A small crowd was outside the Café de la Paix, but the man was not there.

The woman stood alone in the street and wondered what terrible thing she had done. She clutched the note in both hands. The sadness the woman had known and disliked returned as her eyes filled with tears – and the tears began to spill.

Café de la Paix

The Lilies are for His Children ©

Going into the winter months was always worrisome. It was nothing to brood about or to torment oneself over, but now that the snow had come, the old man understood it was to stay for a long while, and it was both worrisome and unwelcome.

The man was ready for the frozen weather ahead. He had pitched enough wood against the back of the house to last until Spring. The wood was piled high next to the door and was covered with a tarp to protect it from the rain that came before the snow. The man always felt sad about burning the wood. He did not feel guilty, only sad – sad because the wood was a thing he had gathered when the weather was nice, and burning the wood made him feel as if he were destroying part of the warm season. He enjoyed the weather then, when it was warm, and wanted to remember it, but not destroy it.

The man did not like the cold cheerless winters, it made his heart ache and his joints stiffen. Also, he was unable to enjoy his garden when the cold months came, and he found it increasingly difficult to visit his children when there was snow.

When the snow came, the hilly path to the children was too icy to climb without the high risk of slipping. Because of this grave concern, the man stayed safely indoors with his heavy books and looked out and thought about what it would be like to be warm again.

When the weather is warm, the man will visit his children, but not before it is mild and the snow has thawed from the path and washed down the incline and into his garden. In the Spring, the man will climb the hilly path to visit his children. He will take with him white and spotless lilies that grow along the back of the vegetable garden. The man will group together two bouquets of lilies and loosely tie the lilies with colored ribbon. The man will take the lilies and leave one bunch each to his children on the hilltop.

In the Spring, when it is warmer, the lilies he will take will be those that seemingly have always grown along the back of the vegetable garden. The lilies grow large and white along the back – the vegetables grow in the front and are more accessible. The lilies are not planted along the rear because they are less important, but because the vegetables are for the living, and the lilies are for his children.

An Alternate Odyssey ©

After his brother’s wedding in the Greek Isles, Buddy stood on the edge of the cliff with Rebecca and removed his shirt and tie. He held his white shirt above his head until it was lifted by the wind. He let the shirt flutter about like a white flag of surrender and talked about what sort of woman he would marry.

He would marry a woman who would not lie flat beneath his feet to be walked upon like a color-faded rug. One who would sing and dance and open his eyes to languages and arts and religions.

Buddy wanted a woman who would drink with him beneath the red windmill of Moulin Rouge, or fish with him in the crisp air of Aurora, or swim naked with him in the clear water of the Mediterranean, and afterwards, dine with him in their newly tanned skins on the hilltops of Greece where they would read French aloud to one another.

He wanted a woman who would bend from his reaches and splash outward from his cupped palms. A woman who would spill through his fingers like cold water from a Colorado stream, but who, like the stream, would always be there when he returned to kneel before her.

Buddy talked of wanting an untamed woman with her own ideas.

He talked of needing these things in a woman the way an ocean’s edge needs a place to curl under itself to collapse – to relax and spread out smoothly before the land in victorious climax.

He said he needed these things the way the shore needs the sea to show submission to the shore’s solid banks and rocky walls – a sea defeated after a thousand miles of treacherous travel, defeated, like Ulysses in an alternate Odyssey.

He explained to Rebecca how he needed these things in a woman the way the sea and the shore need one another.

This is what Buddy wanted. It’s at least what he told Rebecca, who was playing the part of Penelope. But Buddy was twelve, and knew little about such things as women. When he is his brother’s age, he imagined, he will know all there is to know about love and women.

Carefree and overhung with childhood happiness, Buddy unexpectedly lost the shirt to the wind. Buddy’s eyes grew large and Rebecca laughed at his carelessness. He turned then and with Rebecca chasing after him, they ran together like scatty rabbits back to the wedding party.