Perfect Strangers

2

Two hours later, I’ve showered off the travel grime, installed myself at a table in a charming sidewalk café near the apartment, and am drinking an overpriced espresso as I curse every decision that brought me here.

The trees are alive with birdsong. The sweet scent of cherry blossoms perfumes the air. The sky above is an endless fairy-tale blue, dotted with cottony clouds so perfect they look painted on a movie set.

It’s June in Paris and romantic to the point of ridiculousness.

I feel ridiculous, anyway, a woman accompanied only by ghosts while throngs of young lovers holding hands stroll past on the shaded avenue and make tender eyes at each other over crisp white linen tablecloths to my left and right.

City of Love. What had I been thinking, coming here?

I feel attacked by all the love around me. Personally victimized, as if love itself were mocking my pain, stabbing gleefully at me with poison-tipped knives.

The perils of an overactive imagination. If I hadn’t become a writer, I’d be in a padded cell somewhere, clawing at the walls.

When my mobile rings, I answer quickly, grateful for the distraction. “Hello?”

“Hey, kiddo! How’s it hangin’?”

It’s my girlfriend, Kelly, her tone a touch overbright. I have the sneaking suspicion I’ll be getting a lot of these cheerful calls from people I know over the next few days as I settle in. They’re all so anxious for me to move on it makes me anxious.

But I suppose two years has passed at a different speed for them than it has for me. The laws of time and physics are disfigured by grief, warping around it so a single moment can be lived over and over, forever.

I tell Kelly, “If by ‘it’ you mean my boobs as one unit, the answer is, sadly, low.”

“Psh. You’ve got the best t**s of anyone I know.”

“Thank you for that vote of confidence, but you work at an assisted living facility. Most of the boobs you’ve seen lost their elasticity during the Carter administration.”

“Everything’s relative, babe. Look on the bright side: if you were naked and had to bend over to sign something, you wouldn’t have to tuck your boob into your armpit to keep it out of the way.”

I think of the nubile blonde, whose breasts were so firm there was no visible effect by gravity, even while lying on her back, and say drily, “Something to celebrate, for sure.”

“What time is it in Paris? Are you ahead of me or behind?”

“I’m ahead by six hours. How do you not remember that? You’ve been here a dozen times!”

Kelly sighs. “I can’t remember anything anymore. Mike keeps telling me I’ve got a brain like a sieve.”

“You don’t have a brain like a sieve, Kell. You’ve got four kids and you work full time and your husband thinks housework is something only someone with a pair of ovaries is qualified to do. Quit beating yourself up.”

In response, Kelly says something that I don’t catch.

“What? I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you were saying.”

I’m too preoccupied staring at the Adonis who just took the table across from mine.

A quick rundown for posterity. Or skip the list and form a mental picture of a stallion in his prime galloping in slow motion across a beach as his silky mane streams out like a flag and his glossy coat glistens under the sun, and you’ll get the general idea.

He’s got tousled brown hair that brushes broad shoulders, a cleft chin that would impress Superman, and a graceful way of moving his limbs, despite his formidable size. Dressed in an untucked white button-down shirt and a pair of faded jeans, he sports a week-old growth of beard on his angular jaw, a leather cuff around one wrist, and exudes an air of animal magnetism so strong I can feel it from where I’m sitting.

Evidently so can everyone else, judging by the ripple of awareness his presence sends through the diners. Heads turn in his direction as if pulled by strings.

But the stunning stranger is oblivious to all the attention he’s drawing. All the furtive glances, both male and female.

No doubt he’s used to it. He’s prime rib, as Kelly would say. Check out all the sizzle on that steak.

Truly, he’s devastating.

If you knew me, you’d know that’s not a word I use lightly.

And my, oh my, what incredible eyes. Bluer than the cloudless heavens above and ringed by a thicket of black lashes, they’re potent. Piercing. Penetrating. And some other sexually suggestive words I can’t recall at the moment because the horrible realization that I’ve been caught staring at him has stalled my brain.

He’s staring right back.

“I was asking if you’ve been over to Café Blanc yet,” hollers Kelly, as if I’ve developed a hearing problem since we said hello. “Be sure you tell Henri I sent you or he’ll charge you double—he’s a friggin’ cheat!”

She says that last part with affection. There’s nothing she enjoys more than the enduring friendships she forms when someone unsuccessfully tries to swindle her.

Thinking her a hapless American tourist on her first visit to Paris during college, the café owner inflated the price of her meal. The ensuing argument has become something of a local legend. When I introduced myself to the hostess as a friend of Kelly’s, she asked if Kelly still keeps Henri’s left testicle in a jar on her kitchen counter.

I replied with a straight face that she keeps it in her fridge.

“I’m actually at Café Blanc as we speak,” I tell her, holding the stranger’s gaze.

“Awesome! It’s fantastic, right?”

The stranger’s blistering gaze drops to my mouth. A muscle in his jaw flexes. He moistens his full lips.

Holy…was that a hot flash or did someone just light a fire under my chair?

Whatever it was, it’s new. For years my body has felt nothing but a boneyard chill. Flustered, I say faintly, “It’s…gorgeous.”

“What?” Kelly thunders. “Babe, I can hardly hear you! Speak up!”

“I said it’s gorgeous!”

A waiter with no chin and a nose like a toucan’s bill materializes at my tableside, frowning at the phone in my hand. He speaks in French, gesturing sharply at the phone.

I don’t understand the language, but I get his gist: You’re being rude. How American of you. Perhaps next you’d like to s**t on the Eiffel Tower?

I frown at him, wishing there really was a testicle jar because I’d be adding a few more to it. “Gotta go, Kell. I’ll call you back later, okay?”