The Epilogue. 4 страница

“Why did you lie to me?”

“I hate the word ‘lie.’ It was a creative truth.”

I became silent and stared. He knew he couldn’t get off with some lighthearted typical Gerard remark this time. He sat up straighter at the table, tucking his back clothed legs behind the legs and leaning forward. He evaded my eyes a little, drinking coffee in a rather languorously gulp. He didn’t answer for some time.

“Enjoying being L’Étranger too much?” I probed, my sudden bitterness that shocked even me leaped from my throat. I had been hanging onto it for too long. Let go, let go, let go, I told myself.

He shook his head in short choppy movements. He seemed to debate his next move for awhile, before he finally reached his hands across our table and gripped my own so hard. It was the first real contact we had shared that had been so unprompted. We had hugged when we met, but that was standard upon meeting someone in Paris who you haven’t seen in seven years. We may have hugged and held our bodies close to one another, but it was as if we had walked through one another more than anything.

He had come up to me from behind at the café, to surprise me, I supposed, and been the one to whisper in my ear to get my attention. I thought I would have leapt into his arms when I did look at him face to face, but instead I stopped. He looked different, and in the café now, I was forced to look at him again. He was not the Gerard from seven years ago, the one that I had just spent so much time living in my memories with. Not even the Gerard on paper, the coarse knots of pulp and fine etches of black pen. The real, human Gerard, the one holding onto me right now. The much, much thinner Gerard who had stopped dying his hair. It was almost all gray now, a salt and pepper like appearance in some areas. His face was older, and despite his weight loss, he still kept plump cheeks that would go red and rosy when he talked with some passion. He was so different, so worn out and ragged and just plain old. But I knew that this was Gerard, no doubt about it. It was more than just his appearance that was recognizable beneath all the change; there was an air about him, an entity that I could never describe beyond a sensation in my body.

Previously, when I hugged him, I had held on for quite some time. I clung onto him like the child I still was inside and had never really stopped being. He brought out this youthful naivety in me, even though I knew a lot more, even though it had been seven years and I was now twenty-five. Everything melted away with his touch. For those few moments, I forgot about the negativity I had received from my art. I forgot about how long it took his letters to get to me some days. I forgot the failures, the slip-ups, the stupid one-night drinking binges simply because I could. I forgot all of those things; they melted away, and shed off my body like a skin.

This was more than shedding the old and starting again. It was like there had been no waiting period, no limbo, no dead-space of time. I forgot that it had been seven fucking years since we had seen each other – I never thought it would get this long – because those days, months, and years fells away in an instant. It was like they never existed or we were spinning backwards to a certain point where life began for both of us. In his arms, I was always seventeen years old. It didn’t matter what had happened before, what would happen after, but right then, in Paris, I was seventeen and he was still forty-seven, even with his ridiculous looking gray hair.

In the café, when he gripped my hand for that moment, I was reminded that it was so much more than just being seventeen and forty-seven again. Those were just ages – and souls, from what Vivian would always tell me, among many things, was that souls don’t have ages. This, right then, was about being age less, time less, in a location that had only been real in dreams. It was about being nothing, but having everything. Forgiveness was always key for letting go, even if we didn’t exactly understand what or why we were forgiving.

But like always, he tried to offer some explanation.

“I didn’t write to you for a long time because I knew we both needed more time. I didn’t want you to write to me, either for awhile, because I wanted to let you live your life.”

I smiled, though it kind of hurt. My life story had just come pouring out of me, again and again, though numerous cups of coffee and croissants. I thought I had been done with everything on that plane, I thought that with the sunrise I could start again. And I had, really, but he was still guiding me along, more than ever.

“Your life, at least thus far, certainly sounds far more fascinating that I could have ever imagined. I think we waited a good amount of time before we could do this together again.”

“We waited too long,” I groaned, clinging onto him more. My hand was travelling up his arm, past his elbow.

“Ah, maybe I will agree with you there. But it is far better to wait too long and realize significantly what you’ve missed, than to be gone in a blink or a breath, and not had time to realize you need them to breathe.” He touched my hair, combing it over my ears. His face was tender and old. Like an aged vase under a bathroom sink, finally brought out to hold flowers again. It felt inferior, being tucked away for so long, but absolutely honored to still be something so cherished. The manner of which he touched my hair and now ran his thumb over my hand circularly became a distinct rhythm and pattern and it let me slip away. For the first time in a long time, something shifted inside my chest, and that constant lub-dub motion of my heart constantly missing him made my breath flutter with sudden release.

I opened my eyes and finally looked up at him, and I knew, deep down inside that everything was going to be all right again. I didn’t need to miss him anymore. After seven years, I could feel our lives about to change. We were on a cusp of something huge, something remarkable that could start all over again.

My breathing started to get rather erratic with the realization that we could do everything we had done before all over again. I was bombarded by the memories that had become so apart of my being that I had simply forgotten about them. But it all came flooding back in that fraction of a second my soul got trapped in my mouth again and my lungs ached with each breath, breaking between the capillaries.

I remembered everything then: the smell of his cigarettes, how his skin felt against mine, the vibrant shades of colour we made together, the bitter numbness of wine, and the sound of soft coos from a bird’s beak. Coupled with the realization that all of these sensations, and more, we’re ours again, came the aligning factor that we didn’t just need to repeat old memories, paint copies of pictures, or look through photo albums. We could do it all again, remake it, and maybe this time around get it absolutely perfect. We could hole ourselves up in an apartment again, but instead of creating the world of Paris, we were actually there.

I looked around suddenly, as if my vision had now been restored, and I saw what Gerard saw. Everything was so much more distinct against the skyline, the Eiffel Tower in the distance. Nothing was bigger in the shadows than a tree stripped of its leaves in the fall, bare branches reaching out for some kind of warmth and consolation in the night. The café itself - its dark hues were stronger, richer, and I suddenly felt fuller from the croissants and my nose was violated with the aroma of coffee. I wanted to pinch myself. I was really here, really with him, and this was no longer a pipe dream anymore. When I quit school, I thought I had used this notion of Paris as an excuse to give up for a little while. But this wasn’t an excuse at all, and this wasn’t giving up. All my years of hoarding the grease-stained letters, dwelling and toiling were never wasted. They evaporated from existence because he was right here.

Gerard didn’t say a word about my sudden shift in breathing, just squeezed my hand tighter. I was pretty sure he understood what had just happened, because I knew it had happened to him the moment he saw me standing in front of the café, looking around like I didn’t know where I was, like I didn’t belong, like I probably looked so many years ago standing in front of that liquor store. And then I understood what he meant, by how I had to find him. I had to get myself to the right place in my life, to the right location, before he could appear, and then whisk me away into a wonderful world. I had to do the traveling, but he was always the tour guide.

This time, there would be no paint stained clothing, no curses of sacré bleu, and no worrying about the law and age differences. I may have felt seventeen years old all over again, but when I met his eyes across the table just then, his age a startling force, everything clicked. The past was gone, in more ways than one. All the restrictions, rules, and negative feelings that used to bog us down were gone. I needed to stop living in my memories, because now, we were finally ready to make new ones.

We hadn’t kissed yet, even though we had been within close proximity of one another. That fact shocked me, and as I leaned forward against the gray marble, he was already waiting. The hand he had been using to touch my hair shifted down to touch my cheek, and then to the back of my neck as he quietly pulled me forward. Our lips met across the table in a soft embrace. His lips were gentle, and mine were cracked and dry, but it still felt so good and so right. The kiss was chaste, and only lasted a few moments, but it had been enough. I had needed to feel what that felt like again. I needed to remember his lips on mine and how perfect an instant could be. Something about the way he cradled my face in his hands, even after the kiss was over, and the way I stayed there helplessly, made me feel at home again.

This was it, I told myself. This moment, right here. The kick off, the explosion I had been waiting for. It was a lot more subtle than I had anticipated, but this was how life went sometimes. You weren’t really sure when it would suddenly begin in an instant. Right now this was all we had, and this was Everything – all over again.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14