XXIV

Then, Again

Thibault sends me a large square envelope from Provence. Inside, I find a small kite to assemble. Chiseled bamboo sticks and thin sheets of violet-streaked paper the color of Indonesia sky in the spring, he describes. Included is a note written in his indecipherable handwriting—like plucked feathers: “I made this for Flora, but never had a chance to give it to her.” I turn it over for more, but there’s nothing.

A week later, Jan and I go to the Café Charbon in Ménil-montant in the eleventh arrondissement. It’s the place everyone’s talking about. Outside, September fills the sky with its rich colors of pink and gray. As we descend deep into the underground, I recall my first autumn in Provence years ago. Soon it will be Laure’s birthday. Another year without seeing her. Olivier thinks we need more time. I make a note on my ticket stub before exiting to send her a card, a CD, some flowers, any sign that I haven’t forgotten her.

At the long wooden counter of the café, a man sits next to me, waiting. Months before, I would have made myself available, smiled, cocked my head in that certain Parisienne way. But random men, no matter how intelligent or beautiful, no longer excite me as potential lovers. The closer this one scoots to my side, the more I am repulsed by his overgrown hair and very smooth voice.

“Je devine,” he says, squinting into my eyes. “Tu es thailandaise?” Because I ignore him, he continues. “Eurasienne?” I shake my head. “Japonaise. C’est ça.” I roll my eyes dramatically at the bartender. “I give up.”

Jan returns from the restroom and answers, “She’s American from New Orleans.”

The bartender smiles and asks us what we want. I shrug. “Mojitos,” he decides.

The soda and mint mix easily with the rum; the liquor slips through me. Before I realize it, the man has ordered us another round, promising he’ll be back. The place is packed. I look around to find Jan talking to a group of people, mainly a beautiful licorice-colored man with long dreadlocks. The music’s loud now, so I don’t mind sitting by myself, not having to talk to anyone. The air’s filled with some repeated rhythm that puts one in a trance. But all I hear are Olivier’s words: So I can love someone else. Just a little bit.

It’s been two weeks since we’ve really talked. Olivier leaves messages, begs me to call him back, he’s worried about me, but I won’t call him. I need to move on, be strong, let him love someone else, just a little bit.

I overhear shreds and pieces of conversation, mostly young men talking about things I no longer care about. After a third mojito, though, I can join in on anything.

“Are you finished talking about cars?” I ask in my slurred French, addressing two men about my age, in their late twenties, standing next to me.

“As a matter of fact, we are.” One of them I hadn’t noticed earlier comes into focus. His eyes are like the sea, all wavy and lit from another source.

“I’m Kim,” I say, swallowing the last drop of liquid sugar from my glass. I’m more than tipsy. My limbs feel separated from my body. The faces and voices are spinning, but there’s something liberating about it all.

“I’m Valéry.”

“That’s a woman’s name . . . in English,” I tell him.

“Paul Valéry was not a woman.” He smiles. “My friends call me Val. This is Thomas.”

I stand up and sway until Val catches me by the wrist.

“Thibault?” I ask, squinting at him. “You know my brother?”

“Tho-mas.” His friend smiles.

Val laughs, shaking his head.

“It’s not funny. They’re all gone. Everyone I’ve ever loved. Thibault, Poppy, Olivier, Flora, poof! Just disappeared.”

Val introduces another friend of theirs, and after a few banal exchanges, I start making my way to the door, barely balancing myself along the bar counter.

Outside, it’s cold and dark. My head is killing me, and I can’t find my purse or my keys. I just want a cab to take me and drop me off at the end of the world. When I turn around, Val’s there in a taxi with the back door open, gesturing for me to get in the backseat with him.

“I don’t want to talk to you,” I tell him, scooting to the opposite side. “I don’t want to take care of you, and I definitely don’t want to care about you, because I’ll just leave or make you go away, or—”

“Vers la rue Goncourt,” I hear him tell the driver. He fastens my seat belt around my waist and stops to stare at me. His eyes, at first dark green, are now bluish with gold flecks.

“Je suis désolée.” I truly am sorry. I feel queasy.

“Look, I don’t need taking care of,” Val says calmly. “You, however—”

“Me neither. I don’t need anybody,” I say, staring out the window. The city is a blur, and I hate myself for wanting to be so self-sufficient.

Once in the apartment—Val’s, I assume—he pours me a large glass of water and hands me a bathrobe. It’s soft and oversize and smells good.

“I’ll be in the other room.” Val kisses me on the forehead and shuts the door gently behind him. The bed is warm. There are photos on every wall—black-and-white urbanscapes, a barber’s chair, a lunch counter, a single promising shoot of golden jonquil. I need air. I want sleep, love. I want Olivier so much, it aches. My heart is beating fast, and my tongue is thick with rum. I open the window and trip back into bed, pulling the covers over my head, counting the beats of my heart until I’m deep in sleep.

In the morning, my head feels like a half-cracked coconut. I’m able to brush my teeth with a new toothbrush I find laid out on the counter, but the bristles against my gums make the pounding in my head even stronger. In the other room, Val has set up a tray with big bowls of coffee with cream and thick slices of bread with cold salted butter. He sits there with the windows wide open, the light illuminating him as he reads Photo magazine.

“Bonjour.”

“Du café?” Val’s dressed in a white sweater and faded blue jeans and smiles at me, openly, gently.

“Aspirin,” I beg.

He nods and points to two Doliprane and a glass of water on the tray before me. I must have made a fool of myself last night. I start to apologize but don’t really want to and suddenly realize that I don’t know what I’m doing here. I grab my coat.

“Thank you for everything, but I have to go.”

“So soon? I thought we—”

“No, I’m sorry. I’ve got to go.” I dress hurriedly. Before I leave, Val hands me my purse and keys.

“You left them on the bar last night.”

He kisses me on the cheek as I thank him. He asks me to write down my phone number. I take the elevator down to the street. I’m in a neighborhood I’m not familiar with. September fills the air with the cries of schoolchildren and crisscrossed light, signs of fall. I forgot to call Laure to wish her happy birthday again this year. I stop to call my answering machine. Olivier has left three more messages. For an instant, I tell myself that I will finally call back, but I can’t bear to talk to him, not just yet. Grignon. I have to speak with him, too, but he’s away at some conference. As I walk down the boulevard, a cyclist swishes by, and then I remember the dream.

Grignon has had an accident, broken his leg, and he limps to my grandfather’s house. I feed him a bowl of hot oatmeal and assure him that tomorrow he’ll be fine for the Tour de France. Every time I try to spoon the oatmeal into his mouth, the crowd cheers. Olivier steps up to the home plate, playing to the spectators, but it’s not his turn to bat. Grignon reminds me that I have the list of players, the order of things, and that I must read it carefully before calling the shots.

A few weeks later, Val and I plan to meet for dinner. Dinner turns into a weekend, and soon we are spending as much time together as possible, photographing the city, the urban landscapes of its outskirts. I realize that I am much more random and spontaneous in what I shoot. I want whimsy and chance. Val is more meticulous, much more painstakingly exact, than I’ll ever be. But I like this about him. Even in the kitchen, he trims all the vegetables to the same size, takes the exact temperature of meats and sauces. I throw in whatever I can find, tasting and rectifying as I go along. Val makes a simple but delicious croque-monsieur, with warm béchamel thick with cheese. He teaches me about Sancerre and other wines of his region.

His physical beauty is abundant—a strong swimmer’s body, dark, curly hair, and deep blue green eyes—overwhelming sometimes. He is thoughtful and measured. And although he is a bit too careful at times with his emotions, I am attracted to him, but I will not fall for him.

Val’s mother calls one day to talk. She wants to meet me ever since Val told her how important I am to him. “He doesn’t say that often,” she informs me. She wants us to come and stay in Blois, visit Tours. Before we hang up, she warns me that Val’s fiercely independent, feels constrained in France, and is considering a job offer in French Guiana.

“I know he’s sent résumés to all the French territories—New Guinea, Guadeloupe, Tahiti,” I tell her. “He’s waiting to hear back from someone in French Guiana. I know he really wants that job with the tourist commission. He’s planning on going there anyway, I think.”

“He’s usually so reserved, so quiet,” she answers.

Val is anything but quiet. We talk all night, as though time’s running out. We listen to music, read passages from our favorite books to each other, spend happy moments in the kitchen. We roll out fresh pastry, taste Jack Daniel’s, dream of places we want to visit in the world. We take turns critiquing photos.

I tell myself not to fall in love with him, but I am drawn to his fiercely independent spirit, his desire for a new start in a new country. And the sheer pleasure of his youthfulness. We are the same age, and for once, age matters. Although sometimes, because of my life with Olivier, I feel so much older. We also talk about the future, a month, a year from now, but none of it seems possible because I sense the same restlessness in Val that was inside of me.

He shows up one evening with an armful of long-stemmed sunflowers and a bottle of Sancerre blanc. “I’ve been offered the job in Cayenne.”

I congratulate him. I’m actually happy for him until he tells me that he’s leaving in less than a month. I’m surprised by my own sudden desire to beg him not to leave, something I would never have imagined ever telling anyone.

“I have something else for you,” he says before I can answer. He presents me with a battered Patrick Cox-WillBe shoebox.

“Shoes? What’s wrong with these?” I point to my new Stephane Kélian boots I bought at the sales.

“Open it. I went to Montreuil today to the flea market.”

Inside are photos. Tinted browns and faded colors, odd-looking faces, children who look grave and wise beyond their years.

“Who are these people? You didn’t take these,” I say, handing the box back to him.

He pulls them out one by one and starts spreading them out on the kitchen table. “Aren’t they beautiful?”

They are, in a strange way. Fragments of mismatched lives. An old man lying in bed, staring straight at the camera. Twins dressed in white, playing with a wheel and a stick. Portraits of dogs and women in simple frocks lounging by a lake. “They were all there together, and I thought they were interesting, sort of already their own family album.”

Val looks for a notebook through the pile of mail sitting on my desk. He finds one under some unopened letters from Olivier, letters I can’t bring myself to read yet. Val takes the notebook Louis gave me before my trip to Asia and flips through the photos of Laure and Madame Song and starts arranging the new faces in some creative chronological order. He starts pasting them in, writing invented names and dates for each. “This one here, what do you think?” He holds up a square five-by-five black-and-white. Five girls, various ages and sizes but the same face, the same cotton dress, each girl a little taller, lankier, wiser, more adventurous, than the previous.

“Val, let’s go, we’re going to be late. Jan wants you to meet Roberto and Eggle, her Italian friends who live in French Guiana. We’re meeting them at Giuseppe’s restaurant. Paolo’s waiting for us.”

When we arrive, Paolo smells of sweet tomato sauce and garlic as he hugs me warmly while kissing Val hello. Even though he thinks Val is handsome and sweet, he doesn’t approve. “A bit too floating,” Paolo told me once. “He is so talented. What could he possibly photograph in the jungle? Trees and leaves and roots and ants, pesky mosquitoes. No people. He is no Italiano. Without people, Kim, we are nothing.”

He takes us to where Jan is seated at a table for six. “We’re meeting Jan’s friends, no? The Italians?”

“Yes, especially now that he’s been offered the job, it will be nice for him to know someone in French Guiana.”

“I’m sorry,” Jan says, kissing us hello. “Roberto called right before I left to say that he and Eggle have to go back to Kourou immediately. His wife is a little hypochondriac,” she explains to Val. “She always has something.”

“I don’t know how anyone can live in that part of the world,” Paolo adds. “No Prosecco, no pasta, no cheese.” I shoot him a look, to stop being so negative.

“She’s an archaeologist, right?” Val asks, pulling out my chair for me before Paolo does.

“I’ll give you their info before you leave,” Jan tells him.

“Well, Kim will meet them, too, when she comes.”

Jan and Paolo look at me, and I look at Val. This is the first I’m hearing of it. Paolo says, “You are not going to South America.”

I shrug, not sure what to answer. Val smiles. “Of course she’ll come, as soon as I can figure out where I’ll be.”

“Everybody’s leaving.” Paolo throws up his arms. “Gilles in Switzerland for an exhibit. Giuseppe in Italia—”

“They’re coming back,” I tell Paolo, convincing myself as well. “We’re all coming back. Val’s leaving in about three weeks, though. The French Guiana tourist industry has offered him a full-time position.”

“Good, we still have time.” Paolo calls over a waiter to bring us food, drink. Later, he pulls me aside. “At least he is more your age. But tell me, what is it that you see in him? Yes, he is bello, very bello, but he will break your heart.”

“You think everyone will break my heart. It’s too late. My heart’s already broken,” I say matter-of-factly. “I have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I’m not afraid.”

Val winks at me from across the room. I am drawn to his sense of adventure and his own doubts of wanting to stay in his birth country of France. This is something familiar to me.

I tell Paolo about his mother, how Val took me to meet his family in the Loire Valley. They greeted me as though I were already part of the family. Amid châteaus and rivers, they told me stories of how Val, at the age of twelve, would be in the kitchen at 5:00 a.m., rolling and baking fresh croissants for break-fast. His mother kissed him on the top of the head and whispered to me how sad she was now about him leaving so soon. “Can’t you do anything to stop him from going?” she asked.

Someone brings over plates of colorful antipasti, fried zucchini, and clams in tomato sauce to start. “ Mangia, mangia. I have ordered you such a wonderful meal, tomorrow you will be crying to come back.” Paolo takes my hand, looks at Val straight in the eyes. “Some of us, we know the importance of food and friends.”

After dinner and a long walk back to Val’s place, we get into bed and talk about when I will join him in French Guiana. “As soon as you can,” he says hopefully. “But I don’t really even know where I’m going to be living . . . and this job with the tourist board doesn’t pay a whole lot . . . but it will give me my start.”

I can hear the anxiety in his voice and tell him that it’s okay, I won’t join him until he says it’s time to come. Then he says softly that he thinks he loves me. I’m not sure I’ve heard him correctly, but he goes on to whisper something about the timing not being right. Timing is everything in relationships, and if things were different, he says, maybe we could have had a future.

Val falls asleep closer to me than ever before. I am almost off the bed, my bare foot rubbing back and forth against the cold hard locks on his half-packed suitcase. I look over at his beautiful face. His eyelids move rapidly, darting back and forth, a sign of a dream at once familiar and long forgotten. His restlessness worries me. I have been here before.