Originally Posted Monday, August 4, 2014
She was quite a girl, really, somebody you might want to write about. You'd already read about her. She was that kind. Yet for all the things she had done, she wasn't yet complete. She scared the hell out of you if you stood too close but not so much from afar. "Don't do it," you might tell yourself, and you were certain you wouldn't, but you were not that type. You just couldn't be careful. You always had to get close enough to feel the event rather than just watch it.
Some mornings there would be an email or a text.
"Can I come over? I'll be there in half an hour."
The leisurely morning now truncated, you tried not to hurry, but you were always nervous.
"Hello," she'd say slipping into bed and everything would disappear.
She was half your age plus seven, the perfect formula according to the French. Still, she made you feel as if she were older, more mature. You talked too much trying to tell everything, then, in a moment when she would laugh and look at you, you realized you were talking and telling, and then you wanted to listen. She had dated a Russian jet pilot, had lived with an older man in a stilt house above the waters of a forest lake, had fallen for a Haitian Prince. . . married a rich Italian. Had she been in love? Yes, she said after a moment.
"I think your idea of love evolves," she said.
"Mine hasn't. I'm like a kid about love. It is total. It is awful, like falling down flights of stairs."
The eyes you couldn't read.
"I love you now," she might say.
You don't tell her that it is an idea that will evolve.
How these things happen you never know. What is there to know? Mornings are so brief, the soft light falling through the shutters, the music. Mornings cast their spells. They are soft enchantments. There is no telling about the night.
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