goodbye but we never let go completely. Something always remains, something that always triggers memories, people never end. Nor do things, often. While we’re alive, all kinds of memories live, to which we never fully say goodbye. We forget, but memory, that hard drive of memory, preserves them, and sometimes, when least expected, they leap to mind, and become the most real thing in the world.
24.
One cold, sunny morning I left my hotel and started walking up the Calle Toledo towards the Plaza Mayor, but thanks to my scarf I realized I was walking on two streets, the one I was on and the Rue du Temple in Paris, the two ends of the same scarf. Wearing it, I entered a record store, the kind that doesn’t exist anymore. It was like a late-eighties record shop, large, more than three thousand square feet, with shelves of LPs and shelves of CDs. Looking back I realize it was a festival, every store was a music festival. We didn’t know back then that after the imminent, even longed-for disappearance of vinyl, the CD would disappear, too, and that cities without record stores are sadder places. I was looking at albums there, Neil Young, Ryan Bingham, Jimmy LaFave, and in front of me was a pretty woman, a woman longing for other hands, she’d been married for years to the same husband, and she was touching the CDs and I sensed that what she wanted was other hands, and when she looked up from the discs I realized it was my wife, that she’d lied and was in Paris while I was hanging out with the king of Spain. I moved forward to tell her off but as I approached and nearly reached her I realized she didn’t recognize me, she gave not the least sign of connection, and then I was face to face with her and had to say something. Given how shy I am, especially when it comes to an opening line, I was bound to say something idiotic.
“You still like the Beatles?”
“Forever and ever,” she said in her French accent.
Clearly she thought my comment ridiculous but her need for other hands was much stronger than her opinion of me. Honestly, I’ve never understood why a beautiful woman would want to marry a man, much less me. But my wife is beautiful and has been married to a man for a quarter of a century. So I understood why she needed other hands.
“Then we must celebrate that.”
She smiled and said, “With champagne.”
“But first, I’ll buy you that CD you have in your hands.” It was the Bach Cello Suites by Paul Tortelier.
“And I’ll buy you whichever one you want.” Since she was holding a double-disc set I also went and chose a double disc, the SACD reissue of Blonde on Blonde .
We paid. We left. It was raining. We walked into the first bar we saw. It was like a corridor that got darker and darker the farther you walked.
We sat.
We ordered two coffees and croissants. No one mentioned champagne, I don’t know why.
“Let’s see if you can guess my name.”
She surprised me.
I do know her name. I should have kept silent, or made one up.
The coffees arrived. French waiters are fast, hollering across the bar, “Deux crèmes et deux croissants.”
“Gabrielle,” I said.
“Close, very close.”
“Daniela,” I said.
“Michelle.”
But I knew she was lying, and was giving me the name of the lover I’d had years earlier. Maybe she was pretending to be her. Now I was sure she didn’t recognize me.
I felt more confident, and uttered the worst line you can put in a romance novel.
“Well, I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”
“Oh! Yes!” she smiled.
“Yes, look. For example, I get the feeling you want to have new hands touch you all over your body.”
To my surprise, she didn’t deny it. And she said, “It’s like an irresistible craving, not that I don’t love my husband, sometimes he seems like my only salvation, but I want to feel other hands envelop me, I can see them like a cobra, but not harmful, a very caring, very gentle cobra that envelops my naked body bit by bit
24.
One cold, sunny morning I left my hotel and started walking up the Calle Toledo towards the Plaza Mayor, but thanks to my scarf I realized I was walking on two streets, the one I was on and the Rue du Temple in Paris, the two ends of the same scarf. Wearing it, I entered a record store, the kind that doesn’t exist anymore. It was like a late-eighties record shop, large, more than three thousand square feet, with shelves of LPs and shelves of CDs. Looking back I realize it was a festival, every store was a music festival. We didn’t know back then that after the imminent, even longed-for disappearance of vinyl, the CD would disappear, too, and that cities without record stores are sadder places. I was looking at albums there, Neil Young, Ryan Bingham, Jimmy LaFave, and in front of me was a pretty woman, a woman longing for other hands, she’d been married for years to the same husband, and she was touching the CDs and I sensed that what she wanted was other hands, and when she looked up from the discs I realized it was my wife, that she’d lied and was in Paris while I was hanging out with the king of Spain. I moved forward to tell her off but as I approached and nearly reached her I realized she didn’t recognize me, she gave not the least sign of connection, and then I was face to face with her and had to say something. Given how shy I am, especially when it comes to an opening line, I was bound to say something idiotic.
“You still like the Beatles?”
“Forever and ever,” she said in her French accent.
Clearly she thought my comment ridiculous but her need for other hands was much stronger than her opinion of me. Honestly, I’ve never understood why a beautiful woman would want to marry a man, much less me. But my wife is beautiful and has been married to a man for a quarter of a century. So I understood why she needed other hands.
“Then we must celebrate that.”
She smiled and said, “With champagne.”
“But first, I’ll buy you that CD you have in your hands.” It was the Bach Cello Suites by Paul Tortelier.
“And I’ll buy you whichever one you want.” Since she was holding a double-disc set I also went and chose a double disc, the SACD reissue of Blonde on Blonde .
We paid. We left. It was raining. We walked into the first bar we saw. It was like a corridor that got darker and darker the farther you walked.
We sat.
We ordered two coffees and croissants. No one mentioned champagne, I don’t know why.
“Let’s see if you can guess my name.”
She surprised me.
I do know her name. I should have kept silent, or made one up.
The coffees arrived. French waiters are fast, hollering across the bar, “Deux crèmes et deux croissants.”
“Gabrielle,” I said.
“Close, very close.”
“Daniela,” I said.
“Michelle.”
But I knew she was lying, and was giving me the name of the lover I’d had years earlier. Maybe she was pretending to be her. Now I was sure she didn’t recognize me.
I felt more confident, and uttered the worst line you can put in a romance novel.
“Well, I feel like I’ve known you my whole life.”
“Oh! Yes!” she smiled.
“Yes, look. For example, I get the feeling you want to have new hands touch you all over your body.”
To my surprise, she didn’t deny it. And she said, “It’s like an irresistible craving, not that I don’t love my husband, sometimes he seems like my only salvation, but I want to feel other hands envelop me, I can see them like a cobra, but not harmful, a very caring, very gentle cobra that envelops my naked body bit by bit
Similar Books
