The Stranger

The story begins, my vacant stare, a car horn, rain falling on the roof and you asleep beside me, naked.  You're here but already a distant memory.  I push your shoulder, and say your name. You say nothing.  Your back is to me, and there is a scar on you right shoulder in the shape of a J.  I hear your breath, smell your skin, trace my fingers along the curve of your back until you stir, turn to look at me and smile: que haces, my amor? you ask.

Nada, I say, in my best high school Spanish, wondering if I'll ever be able to say such a word again after you're gone.

Don't worry, you say, switching so sweetly to English, your Spanish accent like something sweet and sticky on the tongue.  I'm not going forever. I will call you from Barcelona, and fly back as soon as I can.

You pull a notebook from the nightstand, and write: I promise Anna to call, and to love her unconditionally for the rest of my life.  You draw an X, sign your name beside it.

Now you. 

Me.

Yes, love takes two, mi amor, I can't do it by myself. 

You draw another X. 

I sign my name. 

I mmediately feel as if I've signed on to something serious, even though you are laughing. Even though you tell me that you are going to become a lawyer, so that if you ever need to find a way out of this legal agreement, you can help me.

***

Six weeks ago, you were sitting in a coffee shop in downtown Seattle where I would go to study, but my mind would wander to your dreamy quiet, your dark olive skin, and perfect smile.

You reading Kafka. 

You drinking black coffee.

You writing something in a notebook. 

You texting on your phone. 

You with the messy brown hair and quiet eyes. 

You with the smile you gave to everyone and no one. 

I wrote you a love poem and handed it to you because I thought you were lonely like me.  It was about the way your hair reminded me of sunlight, and your eyes like cool sand and I'd never given anyone a love poem in my life.  I was afraid you'd laugh, so I prefaced the poem with: I have nothing to lose by gifting you these words because they come from God. 

I exit before I could see your reaction.

I didn’t care if you thought I was crazy because I was my first year of college, and I was drinking my life away in a sorority because my father had just died, and I didn't know how else to say goodbye.  The only thing that mattered on the day I wrote that poem was that I reach out to that which I didn’t understand, to what I believed was beautiful.

The only thing I saw that day, besides the rain on the endless concrete, was you.

***

I didn’t see you back at the cafe for three days.  I was writing a paper on Jane Austin, and you came up to me in your sweet Spanish accent and told me you liked it.  I couldn’t tell if you meant it or if you were just being nice, so that maybe I would leave you alone.  Then you said you didn’t believe in God, or anything other than the mystery of passion, duende you called it.  You said I was very poetic, and that you loved a poetic woman.  It may have been the first time I had been called a woman, but the way you said it my skip like a little girl's.

Two strangers exit into the rain, the cold wind whips at our jackets, and the contrete city suddenly smells fresh, alive, pulsing.  It feels as if you brought the fall into being, and that everything up until that moment had been frozen in time, and was now broken with your presence. 

I know we talked a lot about our families that day, and I felt so strange telling you about my father's death, and how my mother disappeared when I was a girl.  You told me about your family in Spain and everything sounded so perfect I was ashamed I'd told you the truth, afraid I wouldn't be able to fit into your glamous book.  

On our first walk together as the night came on, and a train moaned in the distance, we passed an alleyway where a homeless man was huddled in the dark. His ruddy face hidden in shadow. He said, Time is a motherfucker, you know.  He laughed, but I felt like it was the Devil, cursing me for trying to be happy when my father had just died.  I had this feeling that somehow we had met before, and that if there was ever such a thin as destiny, this was it.

I asked if you believed in destiny, and you said you didn’t know.

I asked you believe in curses.

Just thinking you are cursed is a curse, you said.

I laughed.

I looked down an empty street, and I saw you walking there alone. 

I knew right then that no matter how much I loved you, it didn’t matter.   Our time was fixed, and this was just one moment, our moment.

***

We wen't to the most expensive hotels in the city.  We made love madly, passionately in a way I didn't know possible with your magnetic eyes pulling me into your world, taming me with your hypnotic stare.  You recited poetry in Spanish.  You ordered everything on the room service menu and told me, Life is a banquet, mi amor, so eat!. 

Later we walked dowtown Seattle and you told me to buy something from every store we went into, a toy soldier, a thousand dollar dress from Barney's, bubble gum, playing cards, a diamond ring that made me blush.  I didn't even know things could cost this much, but you told me not to worry because your father was a rich and powerful man.  You said that you're allowance was more than most people make in a year and not to worry about it, and so I didn't. 

I allowed myself to be spoiled like a princess, in a way that I never believed possible, and didn't even feel guility about it. 

I remember lying in a bed of silken sheets, the sun streaming through the room like golden ribbons.

I don't want this to end, I told you.  It's like a fairy tale.

No, mi amor, you said.  It is a fairy tale.

I just hope it has a happy ending, I said.

You smiled in that silent way of yours, fed me a strawberry, and told me not to speak because even silence in such moments is golden.