I'll Miss You, part one

   
     He couldn't remember why he was there.

     He knew where he came from, well aware that he turns over every rock from his past like a prospector looking for gemstones. What he found, those bombshell facts and secret aunts and roads that led to nowhere, gave him enough direction that he knew what to steer clear from, if not always where to aim to.

     He knew he was in a place, space, thirty thousand feet up in the air crammed beneath a seat not in its locked and upright position. He thought he would feel cut loose, detached, disconnected when the plane left the ground. It shook and fought, rumbled and creaked, but at lift-off the vessel was washed in peace.

     Yet...yet...what he really wanted to know was why he was there, in this fortress that he called his heart, walls built from the inside out and arrows ready to let loose, though he hadn't yet given the orders. He didn't have to. He felt protected, safe in that place where he could care less what people thought of him.

     But why here?

     He would see if their bullets could penetrate, step out and see if the walls have merit. So step he would when the plane landed in Paris. And then he would run.

     But there was always the problem of fear, the one that clouds thought, reverses intent and kills rationality? Simply, it started with language and his lack of comprehension, for he wasn't used to being misunderstood, even worse not comprehended at all. That used to happen with her sometimes, he'd say something but what was heard was the complete opposite. But he'd repeat his message over time until misinterpretation was an impossibility. She taught him patience. It took effort, inside all those angry arguments, but without her near it felt good to let the arguments dissolve into the forgotten and just be left with the affection she also offered.

     

    The first step onto the Rue St. Denis felt good, but that may have been the 5 a.m. start. The stroller's street was only populated with shopkeepers cleaning up the messes left by the previous night's drinkers and smokers. They didn't notice him, not even in his aqua running shorts. Or maybe they assumed he was French.

     “Bonjour” - that's “good morning”, right? He'd have to be ready because his shyness made planning his words a necessity. How hard would it be though to reach out and connect with someone, maybe a runner?

         

     Picking his steps over granite curbs, he felt the strength of his built surroundings, a place so old as to have absorbed the weight of every human emotion and still be standing with just a few nicks in the limestone leftover from a revolution or two. An ancient city, the patience of a place, waiting for the best of us: monuments to our heroes, something to shoot for. Massive squares open for thoughts and meetings between friends and lovers, new and old. The old city waiting for us to arrive. She, too, only chose to see the good in him, though her choice left her with a few scars. In the light of dawn, the Eiffel Tower stood proud over a sleeping city. A woman must have loved Monsieur Eiffel. Did she see what he saw and allow him his frustrations, even when she was sometimes caught in the fray? Why does love feel so good but sometimes hurt so much?

     Some of the hurt came from what he knew, the givens. Standing amongst the old he felt small and inconsequential, not important, when he compared himself to the parade of men that came before him and accomplished more than he could ever articulate. Running by the Arc D' Triomphe, where armies passed through after victory, made him feel little like dust in indefinite space. All of it gave him a knot in his stomach. All he could do was grab on and not think of love's fleeting nature, how it is a word or heartbeat from being a footnote in a bygone era. It was tempting to him to try to make a possession out of love. You belong to me, there's comfort in that. But it was also frightening to hold on to something irreplaceable, no matter how delicately it was held. The Hotel Regina looked vaguely familiar, stirring a memory that played in his mind like a movie he once saw, black and white, scratchy and dark.

     

   
     He stopped for a moment, and that second turned into the better part of an hour, as he sat on the stone steps of a closed dressed shop and tried to imagine he was a Parisian. Poles that kept cars from parking on the sidewalk called out to every school kid to be weaved through in slalom-like fashion. Adults merely stood out of the way.

     He wanted that doorway across the street that led to apartments above the stores be his front door, one he came home to every evening after a day's work at a bakery or replacing cobblestones. Inside, a round wood table by the window would look down upon where he now sat this morning. It'd be a place of comfort, as he put thoughts into words on paper in notebooks. This might be the place. He would need time to know, and time was always in short supply. That was never more evident than now.

     

     Now.

     

      For now he would cross bridges on his run through a waking city. Bridges in Paris could be crossed on a whim. He could zig-zag across the Seine or he could run on its banks, so it was purely by chance he found himself on the Pont Alexandre. Gilded, low, robust – these were traits he could aim for.

     

     

   
     Ile de la Cite was the type of locale he could imagine himself living in, tight and compact with well-defined borders. This was a favorite pastime of his, picking out windows of apartments to live in, ones with views of the river, some green at the edges and an opportunity to peer on to others below on the banks of the waterway. He never tired of watching lovers. Having a dream never got old.

     

     A glint on a bridge above snapped him out of his fantasy. It was enough of a non-sequitor for him to stop and look for the nearest stone stairway to get himself up to the railings that reflected the rising sun. Thousands of locks were attached to the sides of a bridge built for pedestrians, clipped to iron, clipped to each other. Upon each of these locks was written a name, a name he presumed was not of the person affixing the lock, but of the keeper of the locker's heart. For something so seemingly private as the affection one feels for another – for why else do we whisper words of love? - he felt reassurance in the company of brass and steel proclamations. He didn't feel like such a fool.

     A casual sign at the entrance to a tabac across the street advertised locks for sale.

     “Bonjour.”

     “Bonjour. Un cadenas, s'il vous plait.”

     “Oui. Cinque euro...merci, monsieur.”

     “Merci, monsieur.”

       An older woman behind him in line also had a lock to purchase. He quickly paid the store owner for hers but retreated from the shop before an awkward exchange could occur. He liked fast little random deeds, but not so much the attention they drew.

     The lock came with a skeleton key.

     

     He wrote her name on the lock, snapped it onto another someone's romantic gesture and stood back to take in the weight of so much giving. Below the bridge were barges tied to the stone wall banks of the Seine, boats retired from crossing, now homes for weathered sailors with turf on the cabin top and cats on the deck, resting. I could live there, too, he thought.

     He buried the key deep in his pocket and continued on with his run, vowing to the best part of himself to return to Paris when he felt ready to rest.