Curio Vignettes 04 Confession (2 page)

He loves me,
I think.

He loves me.

When he releases my jaw, I slide my hands down his shoulders
and hold his arms, unwilling to let him go. I feel more naked than I ever have,
letting him see every messy emotion contorting my face. I want to hide, but
more than that, I want him to see. If this is love, it’s sloppier than movies
and love songs let on. It’s wonderful, and I need him to see what a wreck it’s
made of me.

“I’d like to ask you something.” His voice is deep and confident,
the way it sounds in the dark of his bedroom.

I sniffle and clear my clogged throat, nodding. “Anything.”

“Can I consider you my girlfriend?”

I laugh. I hadn’t had the time to guess what his question
might be, but this one needs no deliberation. “Yes, of course you can.”

A broad grin, another kiss—fierce and brief.

“I got you something,” he says, reaching into his pants
pocket. “Open your hand.”

I let his arms go, honestly surprised when I don’t float off
into the stratosphere. He holds my wrist and silver pools in my palm, along
with a pair of heavy raindrops.

It’s a bracelet. A charm bracelet, made of delicate double
links. Three baubles dangle from it and I have to peer close to make them out,
the sky’s grown so dark. I hold my whipping hair out of my eyes.

There’s a tiny, ornate key. A Tahitian pearl, big and dark
as a ripe blueberry, threaded on a simple sterling post. And a little bird.

“A dove.”

He smiles. “A pigeon, I decided. They’re doves, technically.
Doves with bad publicists.”

I laugh again. Of course a pigeon. And the key needs no
explanation. The pearl doesn’t hold any symbolism for me, but it’s beautiful
all the same. I close the chain in my hand.

“Thank you. I love it. I love you.”

He wraps me in his arms, kisses my temple, whispers, “And I
you.”

For a long time we stand that way, until the breeze becomes
wind and rain is running down my collar, plastering my skirt to my thighs,
gathering in my flats. The last time rain filled my shoes this way, we were
strangers. I was standing on his stoop, so scared to ring his bell…

I laugh for no good reason at all and step back a pace to
stare up into the sky, just as lightning flashes in the distance.

“Maybe we better not ruin all this by drowning,” I suggest,
glancing at his bare feet. As if some greater force agrees, the thunder arrives
and the door slams against its frame with a rattle.

He holds out his arm and I precede him down the stairwell,
water squishing around my toes with every step. My skirt’s clinging to my legs,
trying to trip me. Didier shuts the door on the shushing rain and secures the
lock with a snap. We trail puddles all down the tiled corridor.

Back in his flat, I gape at everything in wonder. The last
time I smelled that roast, I thought I was about to get dumped. When he’d flipped
on that lamp, when he’d led me to the door, when I’d last set that glass on the
table…

And now he loves me.

I’m his girlfriend.

I’m someone’s
girlfriend
. And not just anyone, and
not even just someone I love back. Someone extraordinary and kind and so
handsome it breaks your heart, someone lovely and…and unlike any man I’ve ever
met.

Didier heads to the phonograph in the corner and puts on a
record, something soft and classical. Unlike me, he doesn’t bonk his head on
the garret’s sloped ceiling when he straightens. He knows this place too well,
could navigate it in the dark as easily as he does my body.

I excuse myself to change into the plain ivory shirt-dress
I’d packed, draping my skirt over the door of his wardrobe to dry. The silk
will probably never fully recover, but I’ll love it all the more for its
wrinkles.

I glance at myself in the mirror hung inside the wardrobe’s
door, at my wild, wet hair and the smudge of mascara beneath one eye. I wipe it
away, thinking for the first time that I can remember,
I’m beautiful.

I’m sort of
off
, too long in places, too pointy in
others, but so is the
Girl with a Mandolin
, and now she gets to live in
the MoMA. Maybe Picasso designed my figure too. I grab my new bracelet and find
Didier in the kitchen, setting the roast pan on the butcher block.

“Would you…?” I ask, holding out my hand.

“Of course.” He clasps the links around my wrist and I
wonder,
Is this what it feels like when a man slips a ring on your finger?
If it felt any better, every woman would surely die of pleasure overload the
second she got engaged, just crack into a million gleaming pieces from her
smile outward, leaving a heap of empty clothes and happy shards where she’d
stood.

I admire my bracelet under the kitchen’s bright bulbs.
“Thank you.” The light glints off the little pigeon charm and I glance to the
window. The Sommelier is there on the ledge, a gray ball pressed softly to the
glass. He’s asleep, but I hold it up to show him all the same.

“Let’s give this ten minutes, then I’ll carve,” Didier says.
He’s quiet again, but not like before. He’s spent, I can tell—from the exposure
or the proclamation or both, or perhaps the same tenderness I feel, this deep
nakedness with the words said and heard.

He excuses himself to change into dry clothes. I refill our
glasses then wander around the living room, glancing at everything through
these new, intoxicated eyes. He returns and I sit on the couch, leaning my back
against the arm with my knees bent. Didier does the same, interlocking our
ankles. He looks so sexy with wet hair, I blush and bite my lip.

He loves you,
I think, floored anew. I always felt it
but never dared hope it was special, just for me.

I sip my wine and it tastes brighter, like liquid gold,
little effervescent stars bursting on my tongue. I can’t believe it’s the same
wine I tasted only a half-hour before. It pairs with everything—the rain on the
windows, the earthy beeswax scent of his home, phonograph crackling like a
hearth, its music warming the room.

Didier reaches between us, rubbing the top of my foot. “I’d
like to live with you. Someday.”

I blink, falling down to Earth with the gentlest plop.
“Really?”

I imagine us eating dinner, kissing each other goodbye—and
me going out to blow a few hours while a client borrows my bed and my
boyfriend.
Yeah, no.

“But you’d…”

“Yes, I would. I’d have to find a new job.”

Another dumbfounded pause. “You love your current job.” And
truth be told, as amazing as it would be to hear he suddenly craved monogamy,
for the sake of him and me… Can I handle the pressure of Didier giving up all
that variety to settle for only me?

“I have loved my job, yes. I’ve loved it like I love my
clocks and these walls.” When hiding inside the flat isn’t enough to quell his
fears, he takes the immersion a step further, losing hours to his meticulous,
obsessive hobby of fixing broken clocks and pocket watches. “All my job asks of
me are things I find very easy to give. But lately…”

“Yes?”

He sighs. “Lately, I don’t know. This job is what keeps me
here, inside. Safe. And I’m starting to resent that, strange as it seems.”

“Well. Wow.”

“Indeed. I don’t have any grand plan at this point. Only
desires and intentions.”

I squeeze his hand. “There’s no rush, not for either of us.
I’m floored to even hear you ask.”

He smiles. “And here I thought my attachment must be
shockingly plain.”

“It is…but I always wondered if maybe you treat all your…
You know. That way.”

“Affection, yes. Not attachment.”

Attachment. Holy crap. The most amazing man ever is
attached
to me
. I’d worry I’m dreaming but he’s too real, his eyes and his smell and
his heat, his hand in mine.

“I’ll carve the roast.” As he stands, he pauses to kiss my
temple, so tender. I watch him going, thinking,
This could be my life.
This could be my home, where my impossibly kind and sensitive and handsome
boyfriend cooks us dinner and we drink wine and listen to music, in the heart
of Paris.

It’d be different, of course. He’d work, presumably outside
the home. His anxiety would lessen over time, but surely he’d have to suffer it
far more frequently. And for me. All his safety, his routines, the novelty of a
different woman in his bed every other evening… He wants to trade those for me.
What if I don’t prove worth the price?

Stop it.

The most amazing man ever loves me. He just told me so.
Enjoy
the glow, dum-dum.

I grab our glasses and join him in the kitchen, where he’s
slicing the chicken at the butcher block, delicious-smelling grease gleaming on
his fingers. The rain is a muffled din.

“You do know how to spoil me.”

“You make it easy,” he says with a smile, glancing up from
his task. His ease has returned, utterly. “I hope this is special enough for
such an auspicious night.”

“It’s perfect.” I settle on one of the high chairs, cradling
my glass in both hands. “You could’ve served me burned toast and I wouldn’t
have complained.”

He shoots me a flirty glance, but in addition to the
seduction I so often see in his eyes, there’s an extra layer. Something
delicate, vulnerability or hope or happy fear. A nudity that bares the very
soul.

I bite my lip, stifling a grin.

“What?” he asks between slices.

“You love me, huh?”

He smiles down at his busy hands. “That I do.”

“Even though I torture you all the time and make you go
out.”

He sets a choice cut on each of two plates. “Especially
because of that.”

“Does that make you a masochist, do you think?”

He smirks at my tease then leaves me to wash his hands. I
find a serving spoon and scoop carrots and potatoes from around the roast onto
the plates, drizzling both servings with extra juice. He sits and we drape
cloth napkins on our laps.

“We ought to toast again,” he says, lifting his glass.

I hold mine up, suddenly shy as I try to think of the right
words. I feel the pleasant, new weight of his gift at my wrist. “To…”

“To you saying it back?” he offers.

“To you saying it at all. I…” I falter, choked up all over.
“I felt it ages ago. I never let myself think you felt it too.”

His brows draw close, heartache etching a crease between
them. “I won’t ever give you reason to doubt it again.”

My throat hurts worse than ever, clogged with tears. I sip
my wine, feeling castrated of my voice.

“I’ve felt it for a while,” he tells me, and his ankle rubs
mine between our chairs. “But it’s so easy to feel it when I’m inside. I didn’t
want to tell you here. And I promised myself I wouldn’t tell you until I bought
you a present, from that shop I mentioned, the one my mother used to take me
to.”

“Where is it?”

“Gobelins.”

The 13th Arrondissement isn’t so far, but adjusted through
an agoraphobe’s lens, even two or three kilometers become an epic journey.
“That’s a ways. Did you take a taxi?”

He shakes his head. “That was another rule. I had to walk
there and back.”

“Wow.”

“Yes. You should see my blisters.”

“Was it how you remembered?”

“Exactly. The same old man behind the display cases, even.
And he remembered me. He remembered my mother, the second I said her name.”

“Neat.”

“He was much the same, only with white hair instead of gray.
He said, ‘I remember you. You were always staring at the watches. You always
left your face behind on the glass, after you left.’”

I laugh. “Did you buy anything for yourself?”

“No. I have enough clocks and watches for now. Perhaps on
Christmas I’ll permit myself a new one. On special occasions… But they’re my
drug. I can see that now. I’ll treat myself now and again, but not daily. It’s
not good for me, spending entire days stooped over, squinting. It’s a wonder
I’m not a blind hunchback.”

“I thought for a while I wanted to restore paintings,” I
said between bites. “I took an internship one summer to try it out, but my back
ached too much and the cleaning solutions gave me migraines. I’d much rather
stand back and admire.”

He smiles. “When you first came to me you were content to
stand back and admire. But not for long.”

I blush, immediately flooded with visions of that first
night. Nervous virgin me, with all my clothes on, a check for Didier in my
purse. Him, stripped naked, masturbating for my entertainment for what felt
like hours, until he couldn’t hold back any longer. I think I touched his bare
back that first night, and we kissed. I didn’t touch him intimately until our
second date, though I’d paid for the chance to do far more. I let him touch
me
on the third date, and he took my virginity. All of that feels like ages ago.
It’s shocking now that I ever thought of him as just some beautiful creature to
feast my eyes on.

Lately when his handsomeness strikes me, it’s at unexpected
moments—the time I swore in French without even thinking about it, and he
laughed and smiled at me across the café table, his anxiety momentarily
forgotten. The second his brown eyes open in the morning, their usual intensity
blurred by sleep. The grumpy face he makes when I beat him at cards.

I’ve made love to Didier dozens of times, in dozens of ways.
I’ve made love to the real him, my fond and frantic lover. I’ve made love to
the men he plays for other women—seductive men, rough ones, cruel ones,
obedient ones.

He knows me better than anyone else in this city does and I
suspect the reverse is true. He knows sides of me I’d never let friends see,
and I’m in love with a man his clients will never meet. The one buried inside
all the pretty packaging. The vulnerable, imperfect one.

And he’s the one I want to make love to tonight. No games,
no trying on other women’s desires. Just me and the man I love. Who loves me
back.