golden heartstring - stories inspired by 'folklore'

chapter two: the cardigan

based on 'cardigan'

The Wisteria Café in 1322 Cornelia Street, Boston had already been the decor for many stories, stories that were still told over croissants and coffee or herbal tea and poetry. Stories about a starlet and her estranged sister meeting here for the first time in thirteen years, stories about a twenty-two years-old couple that was still dancing around each other before that night when they erupted into a fight during a card game and ran out before he called her back to him and they shared a kiss beyond words in the rain on an unusually cold August evening. Stories that the cafe owner would still tell his most loyal customers on damp nights, like the one of the two little boys being abandoned by their mom and the three people finding out they were all going to be a part of the same domino organ transplant surgery of the century. Stories of the long-lost lovers reading each other reconstructed love letters after the originals were turned to dust by a mailbox exploding that September eleventh. Stories of a best friend returning a scarf stolen by a jealous boy to the girl she had secretly been in love with since age seven. So many stories that no movie script, romance novel or songbird ballad ever could have done better... and yet they survived long beyond the end credits, beyond the epilogues and beyond the faded notes.

But no story was as unique as the history of the girl with the hazel skin and the boy with eyes both ocean and earth.

Some said the girl had known he would be there. Some said she came to the café every day at the same time for two weeks, hoping he would catch sight of her. Some said she never lost track of him after the supposed end of their story, all those years back. Some said she once tore a page from her book of song lyrics and left it on his favorite armchair on purpose, convinced that it would bring him back to her... that it would bring her back to him, bring them back together, bring the stars back to their scars. Others said she had no idea, that it was the first time their paths crossed since that November morning when everything that once collided suddenly collapsed.

But everyone could see that she would have recognized his voice in a mayhem of thousands. They could see that her eyes lit up as she peeked over her shoulder and recognized his coffee and cinnamon hair and the curve of his stance as he sat huddled over his camera, tapping his foot to the rhythm of Coldplay's A Sky Full Of Stars while scribbling with a pencil that she knew had some kind of famous philosopher's quote carved in it. He collected those, and something told her that hadn't changed. Something told her a lot about him hadn't changed. But then again, she knew that the more you changed, the more someone else seemed to stay the same.

Those who laid eyes upon the girl could see that she took deep breaths trying to shake something off as she threw stolen glances at the guy she once felt free to study all day long, as if he were one of the poets from the age of the Romantics she analyzed for her propaedeutic thesis. Maybe she hoped he hadn't seen her. Maybe she knew all too well that he had, since he was a photographer and a writer and the most observing person she had ever met to date – and he had, for life's sake, been the first one to see her. To see her.

It was one of those early September days, when you're not certain whether life is erasing all memories of summer from the face of the earth or holding on to what remains of those feverish whirls of sun dust just as much as you are. But she could feel his gaze burning on her neck like a blaze of warm wind as she leaned on the counter asking to pay, her legs wobbly but refusing firmly to acknowledge his presence. Those who were there, could have almost read the thoughts written on the back of her head, the prayers listed on her spine: he's not here. It's not even him. He won't recognize me. His memory is blank. Focus on the barista. We've got this. We'll just walk out. Please don't recognize me.

'Tess? Tess Carter?'

The writings continued. That was a hallucination. It was the wind. It's a call to another woman named Tess – a common name. Pretend you didn't hear. It's noisy in here. Just pay and turn around and leave. Leave it behind. Please just leave it. Please don't say my name again. Please don't crumble when he does.