Lotan and I left the park early that afternoon, around 2pm. We packed up our little picnic and walked back to his house under the warming, February sun. His spirits had hugely lifted since the nightmare-glitch of that morning: he spent the whole walk talking to me about baseball and how happy he was that he hadn't failed miserably at it in front of my dad and brother.
'...and I know I'm not many good on the, er, the throw - pitch, part, but I like the running. I liked running past you, Olivia. I wanted to touching you every time I run past you but, I, er, couldn't, with your family seeing.'
I smiled and threaded my hands around one of his arms.
'I'm so glad you enjoyed it, Lotan! I'm really glad. But I'm sorry my dad was so pushy, and my brother -'
'No, no, they are nice!' Lotan said reassuringly. 'They are nice to me all the whole time. Leonardo gave me his, er, er, glove, to catching the ball, but it was too small. But this is nice, he, er, tried to give me.'
I smiled again, slowed my pace a little and said,
'And you're really okay with meeting my family tonight? You're not nervous?'
'Ah, I am very nervous! But I love you very much, so I must loving your family also, I think. Only, please, baby, help me at the games, tonight. I am not good at games.'
I laughed and kissed his shoulder.
'I'll always be on your team, my love, don't worry. I just hope all the noise doesn't make our hangovers worse!'
Lotan stopped then because we were at his door. He looked down at me and asked anxiously,
'They are very noisy, your family?'
'Oh, yeah.' I laughed. 'We're Italian on my mum's side. We're naturally loud people.'
'Ah. Will, will they, er, speaking fast, to me? Fastly?'
'Probably.' I admitted, moving closer to Lotan to soothe his frown a little. 'But don't worry about anything, baby. I'll take care of you. And if you don't understand something they say, just ask them to repeat it - or me. We'd be happy to do that.'
Lotan exhaled through his nose, then kissed me. His lips moved slowly around mine and his tongue never emerged: he was nervous already.
'I hope this happy for you tonight, Olivia.' he whispered afterwards, keeping his face close to mine. 'I want you to be proud of me.'
'I'm proud already.' I told him, lovingly stroking his lips with my thumb. Lotan's pupils dilated when they connected with mine, so that my heart had to add, 'I'm so proud to be your girlfriend, my love. You're the best boyfriend in the world.'
The Frenchman frowned a little.
'But, I am not many good with English words, and I am serious like my papa, and I don't sleeping very much! How I am a good boyfriend for you?'
While he lowered his head in shame I paused, staring up at him.
'Hey!' I suddenly cried, sliding my hands under his jaw to tilt his chin up. 'Don't say things like that! You are perfect, and I love you, exactly as you are.'
But he sighed, and let his eyes shut. Desperate to get that self-hateful look off his face, I went on, 'Lotan, baby, my family will love you. You're handsome, and tall, and passionate and honest, and you play the piano better than Mozart! And you have the sexiest accent in the world and you always dress smart, and you have big dreams and, well, your eyes are like nothing I've ever seen before. And you always try your best to make me happy. And last night you gave me the best time of my life! You made my dreams come true! You will always have a special place in my heart for that, Lotan Dufont. Always.'
Finally, those big brown eyes connected with my green ones, and Lotan's lips turned up in one corner. I smiled back. 'I love you.' I told him again. Lotan said it back. Then he unlocked his front door and took me inside.
It was easy to kill time before six o'clock! Lotan and I couldn't bear to be apart for even a second. We talked, kissed, cuddled, and when he played me an incredibly romantic song on the piano, which he'd come up with on the spot, I was helpless but to melt onto his lap. I mean, how could any woman not find a hot Frenchman playing the piano for her incredibly arousing!? He even hummed along to his melody, and sang a few words here and there in his native tongue about love. Oh, how I adored that man. I almost cried when he went upstairs to shave and told me to 'stay comfortable on the sofa, here, my love. I am just five minutes.'
'No!' I'd gasped, clinging onto his t-shirt. 'Just let the stubble grow out, you look so sexy!'
'Dear lady,' he'd exhaled gently, 'I must looking my best, for your family.'
'Then I'll come with you!'
'No, no, chérie. Wait here just five minutes, because you are comfortable here.' he'd insisted, before removing my hands from his top, kissing them, and taking himself upstairs.
When he was gone I huffed and looked out at the living room. Truthfully I was comfortable on the sofa, but without him the room felt cold and dark and a little bit menacing. But I told myself it was silly to be so clingy, so obsessed, so I distracted myself by brushing my hair, putting on a touch of makeup, and then, when Lotan seemed to be changing his clothes, I looked through his books.
I hadn't intended to snoop. But my mind started wandering once I'd sat on his piano stool for a while, grinning to myself in memory of what we'd done there not long ago and pressing a few random keys.
'How can anyone play this crazy instrument?' I thought, squinting at the sheets set up on Lotan's piano as if I could teach myself how to read them. His scribbled music notes were Greek to me and the titles were French - although I could translate the word 'amoureux', which made my knees turn weak. 'He's so romantic, my Lotan. What do these little symbols mean? There are so many of them! What, how can he - just, how!?'
Lotan had plenty more stacks of loose sheets and music books between his piano and bookshelves, some reaching as high as the piano stool. He also had a few shelves dedicated solely to French novels, plays and poems. I wanted desperately to hear him read them: I bet the romance only sounded more divine in his deep voice! But to my English/Italian brain, they were just foreign words on a page, black and white and boring. So I sighed, put the books back, and stroked along the spines of Lotan's many, many others until I found one I could understand.
It was on the very bottom shelf, tucked away behind a stack of old books: a red, leather-bound book with a wide spine, which looked to me like a photo album. Immediately I was curious. I'd never seen any old photos of Lotan! I'd never seen Grigny either, so in an attempt to answer my questions about my boyfriend's childhood I quietly reached down and tugged it out.
It was an old album, dusty and creased, and the pages inside were thinned by the turning of many fingers. The first photo was of a cute young boy with dark hair, sun-kissed skin and a suit, sitting onstage at a piano which looked far too big for him. His legs dangled off the stool, not yet able to reach the pedals, but his hands were spread out along the keys and his face was serious, focused, with closed eyes. He was performing some sort of a recital. Beneath the photo was written 'Lotan Dufont interprète Fantaisie-Impromptu de Chopin, Op. 66. Mauvais.'
Not knowing what 'mauvais' meant, I smiled and turned the page. I couldn't find any more photos of Lotan playing piano recitals, but there were photos of Christmases and birthdays where his family were opening presents or singing together. In every one, Lotan was sitting at a small, upright piano in a cramped corner of the cramped house.
The album was mostly filled with photos of his mother (who was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen, with shiny, straight, brown hair and big, dark eyes just like Lotan's), his father's friends and clergymen, but Lotan was never really a main character in any of the photos after page one. The few photos which did manage to contain him only ever caught half of his face, or his reflection in the piano, or his feet tapping some pedals. He seemed to always be off to the side: banished to a corner. However I could see from those facial fragments that he'd been a good looking boy, and a placid teenager, and he'd always worn his hair in a similar style: long waves on top and shorter underneath. I loved his hair like that.
I'd squinted so desperately at those minor parts of his younger face that when I put down the red photo album and found another, hidden away on the bottom shelf between two larger books, and found it full of clear, smiling photos of him, I nearly jumped for joy! Oh, this one was much better! Inside there were photos of him grinning beside uniformed soldiers, sergeants, recovering comrades, a few of whom had head bandages, slings and casts or, on a few occasions, disfigurations. But even so, each one seemed thrilled to be standing next to Lotan. He was a celebrity in this album! Arms were always thrown around his neck, hands were constantly being shaken and in one photo, a man was holding Lotan's head to kiss his temple! I smiled as I gently turned each page. My boyfriend had looked so happy at this time in his life. - So unburdened. So healthy and radiant. This was before the bomb.
He was still wiry and slim back then, with a dimpled chin and defined cheek bones, but his smile was far more frequent and his suits were wrinkled by the embraces of many friends: creases about which he couldn't care any less. He looked so, free. I'd seen him like this a few times: on our first date, after my first visit to his bedroom, during our dances at the ball last night - I'd seen it at the park earlier too, - but the Lotan I knew and loved was not quite the same man in these photos. He had, tethers, now. Trauma. He had skeletons in his closet that made his appearance quite literally, pale in comparison.
In some of those 'Army Days' photos Lotan was playing a piano in a dim, crowded building. But this time his stool was pushed far back from it and his long feet were pushing the pedals. He wasn't a little boy performing his first recital anymore, oh no. In this album he was a man. A mature, grown up gentleman, serving his country with a skill only he possessed. And yet in the majority of the pictures he wasn't acting like some serious professional: rather he was drinking with the soldiers, and chatting with them, and even singing karaoke with them on the tables! - Not only had he been their source of therapy, but he was their friend too. He must have missed that life sorely.
I turned some more pages, my eyes flickering over every happy photo there was. After a while I found my lips being nibbled by my teeth, desperate for another taste of Lotan's smile, but he was busy upstairs probably fretting over what to wear to this family dinner party. The house was quiet, so I continued my snoop. I was invested now.
Lotan was messy. So much had become obvious to me the first time I ever visited his house. It wasn't an awful sort of messy: everything smelt clean and fresh all the time and the floor was often vacuumed: but it was a disorganised sort of messy, with bins overflowing with crumpled papers in every corner, blankets and cushions chucked lazily onto the sofa, random objects like matches, nail clippers and pens littered around every surface, and clothes scattered around the floor - which I suppose was equally my fault.
Upon realising that I tidied up a little, but I didn't touch his books. There were so many of them, in such odd stacks and piles that I was sure Lotan must have put each one there for a reason! Besides, if I moved them around and he couldn't find a particular French waltz later on, I'd be hopeless to help him find it again! But I did gather up the papers on his piano into one small pile. I couldn't help doing that. I left one entitled, 'Valse de mon ange no. 3, Do diese majeur' on top because I wanted to hear Lotan play that for me later, but while I continued to wait for him I stared at the way in which he'd actually written the music. I used to believe he was simply a sweet, eccentric musician, but when I looked closely at the shaky, almost careless way he'd scrawled the notes, I paused and wondered, how much time did Lotan actually spend at this piano? How many hours had he spent on that leather stool, tapping those keys and creating original songs? How much emotion, how much of himself, had he poured into it? ...And how did his obsession with music compare to his affection for me?
I quickly cleared my throat and stepped back from the piano. Maybe it wasn't right to think about that. After all, I'd spent my entire life focusing on becoming a great ballerina! Lotan had every right to feel passionate about his art too - especially when he was so good at it. Maybe playing the piano helped him forget about the bombing in The Middle East. Maybe it took him back to a time in his life when his music was appreciated: a time when he was respected. Loved. Or maybe creating beautiful music was merely something he'd been born to do!
And maybe he didn't want me to speculate. Maybe he didn't want me to know how much he'd changed in the last few years. Maybe he wanted to leave all that in his past and make me his future.
I purposed within myself to stop digging around after that. While I still longed to find a photo of little baby Lotan in the bathtub, or toddler Lotan on the beach, or child Lotan dressed up like a pirate with a mucky, birthday cake-stuffed face, I knew I had to wait for him to offer up those memories instead of snooping around in his private life. After all, he was a private sort of guy, and he'd clearly been through a lot in his 20 years. Some of those things, he was still recovering from. So if he wanted to put those memories on his bottom bookshelf and let them collect dust, I wouldn't dig them out anymore. I would simply try to make his life from that day forward much, much happier.
And I think that was the first time in my life that I really, truly felt empathy for someone.
YOU ARE READING
The Greatest Mind I Ever Knew
Romantizm**SEQUEL SERIES TO THE 3-BOOK 'RUTH HARRIS' SERIES ALSO FOUND ON MY PAGE.** Olivia Brookes is a young ballerina with her whole life ahead of her. Her biggest problem is finding patience for her mother, who has a lifelong diagnosis of Dissociative Id...
