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Late Last Night
By The Host
Draft version of a story I'm working on. Please, take a moment to read this (it's only 2.5 pages) and let me know how it might be improved.
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Late Last Night
So he sat there waiting, twenty-three and waiting, drinking a beer and trying to fill in the blank hours till a plane carried him back to his old world. A temporal waste land stretched before him and there was nothing to do, nowhere to go but back, and yet there was so much he hadn’t done: two days is never enough and when will he be back? will he? Of course he will.
He was trying to read but his mind wandered back through the twisted branching streets of Saint Germain-des-Prés and up a narrow flight of stairs to a pretty blonde shopkeeper standing amongst dusty books. She’s watching the store but she cares more about her boyfriends. That’s what another man had said – cares more about her boyfriends.
Back to reading Nick Hornby’s writing. Maybe he’d meet somebody there.
Five Irish drunks to the left of him (fucking lushes – how easily he forgot last Friday night; but then one never did remember much about Friday nights): he’d followed them to this little café, secretly, let them lead him out of his lonely Paris night. It was nice being where other people were, surrounded by a thousand other stories and more, even if he was just trying to go back to that little shop in Saint Germain-des-Prés.
If I could close my eyes now, he thought, and go back there forever, I’d be happy.
He tried. Instead he saw everything he’d never done. If there was a way to go back—
A sudden sirens’ drone opened his eyes.
There! Two sweet little serpents slithered down the road, two tempting foxes. He stared – leered really – probably never coming back, so why not? – and one was cute but the other, the other, the other was what he’d been waiting for. The night swept right over him she pulled him under.
Her eyes had no story but his, mirrors in her eyes, shallow pools, and he saw his life reflected in her eyes. He saw her lips, hot breath, freckles, the taste of her tongue. He saw himself move forward in his seat. He sighed: Was it love, or was it just Paris?
The drunk dogs went birdy. One stalked toward her; the young man moved forward in his seat. She was his. The drunk staggered along close working but our hero was hooked to his anchor point. She stared at him wriggling there, smiled, rolled her eyes (a universal movement?), and faced the drunk.
‘I’m married and I got three kids. We all got kids. We just want some pretty young things at our table make us feel young again. We won’t bite, I swear.’
The others yelped obsequiously, those lecherous fucks.
Instead she stared at the young man, smiled, and cocked her head just so, giving him sea legs. He imagined her naked and laughing, laughing at something he’d said, as she draped her arms around him. They ran forward together on green lawns topping high cliffs, a weather-beaten lighthouse on the burnished rock below. A picnic in blonde sunlight reading old books to each other, visiting the post office, knowing their milkman. Kids? maybe, two dew-dappled boys, Nathan and Benedict, impetuous rapscallions. He smiled back knowingly and rolled his eyes too.
A connection this made, a visceral connection – two souls had floated together in the primordial ooze and were finally reunited in this electric moment. But then he remembered brown Sarah in grade seven and Eugenie in grade nine, and crying by the soccer field alone and running through naked trees, and that night last year at Larry’s Pub when he had his arm around a girl (couldn’t remember her name) and then let her bound away like a fawn beating through the woods, a nice waste. He flushed, felt ashamed – could she see it? Twenty-three and still waiting. She had so much more experienced, had had so many men – men, not boys. Still, she smiled. Must not see it, I guess. He flushed.
He’d never felt this way before. But what to do? Like a knight on shining horseback emerging from the glooming forest to first feel the fresh seabreeze against his visor’d face, he’d race forward to his fair French maiden (he named her Bernice). ‘Would you like to sit here?’ That’s all he’d have to say; feign familiarity, let her escape her violent captor. She could see he wasn't like the other guy – he was her age, after all, and sober, and shared such a connection. She’d smile politely and say yes (or maybe a delicious oui), and she’d be eternally grateful for his gallantry.
A growing excitement told him he was going to do something he’d never done before. He’d leave his comfortable little jungle behind and live with books and Bernice somewhere on the Left Bank, happily ever after. He didn’t want to go home anyway; he’d told too many lies and, besides, home wasn’t Paris. Maybe he could start over now on this fresh soil. Maybe things wouldn’t be so complicated on this new ground. The feeling he was feeling wasn’t complicated at all.
But then other thoughts washed over him like a wave. Is that what really happens? Or is that only in the movies? It seemed too right to work. And what if it did? What then? What if this stare, this connection, meant something? (His face was fleshier than it used to be.) What if she saw in him what he couldn’t see himself? (Thinning hair and acne.) What if it was too true to be good?
Was it fate? Or was it just Paris?
His heart raced forward. Such a decision to make! And so little time. It’s now.
He screws up his courage. She still smiles softly. The drunk turns to see them both; sees them smiling; turns again.
‘What if this lad here joined us? Would you feel better then?’
She blushes, smiles, looks away, smiles, nods.
His heart leaps into his throat. A new life opens before him here across the ocean: a chance to do things right now. He’ll tell her home doesn’t matter and promise to stay with her here. It feels so romantic, the universe spinning, but then it’s difficult not to feel the motion of the universe on the Place de Clichy.
It makes him dizzy. His heart will stutter. Could he ever make her happy? Can the supplicant mount the podium? The tides change with every season, but will he always go back to quiet desperation?
They’ll look at him both and a mouse will peek out of the bush: ‘I’m just reading this right now,’ he’ll splutter.
They’ll turn away.
Ragged claws and all that. Hell, it don’t matter, anyway. It’s only a moment between two people, anyway. The universe will keep its motion. The tides will change and change back again. Time will still waste away.
And the morning will carry him delicately back across the ocean to his old world; across the wasted wood and up those narrow stairs; and then he’ll stand forever amongst old books in that little shop in Saint Germain-des-Prés with the pretty blonde shopkeeper and his beautiful Bernice.
8/12/2005 3:44:23 PM
(Updated: 8/12/2005 4:01:20 PM)
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(Updated: 8/15/2005 7:19:54 PM)
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