Heart the Lover (27)

The trail is narrow, the trees tall on either side. An occasional footbridge stretches over a stream. During the first hour we have glimpses of the town below getting smaller through the trees. The next hour or so we have no views, then with no warning the sky opens up and the land flattens into a meadow flush with pink and red flowers.

‘I warned you this might happen.’

‘You did,’ he says.

I put down my backpack and run through the grass with my arms stretched out. I spin around and around and begin to sing that the hills are alive as loudly as possible. Eventually I peter out and Yash joins me in the grass near the lip of the ridge and we lie there and feel the mountains and their shadows and we take off our clothes and have sex until three cows come trotting quickly toward us in an aggressive, uncowlike way, each with a big loud bell around its neck, and we leap up naked and laughing and unsure of which way to go. They abruptly change direction and we lie down in the grass again and their clanging fades away slowly.

Yash traces his fingers over my neck and shoulders. ‘I think for the rest of my life the sound of cowbells will make me horny.’

Closer to the peak we come to a dark green pool surrounded by flat rocks. We take off our clothes again. The water is very cold. Not long ago it was ice. I want to play in the water together, ride on his back, kiss in his arms, everything slick and sexy. But he swims away from me across to the other side. I get out and stand on a warm rock, the cool water dripping from my hair down my back and legs into a pool at my feet. The sun dries my skin. It feels polished and alive. He comes out of the water and stands beside me. He takes my hand and I feel relieved. I press my lips to his neck and hold him close and more water from his hair drips down my back and shoulders and my skin tightens as it evaporates. I tell him I love him with my whole heart.

I look up at him and his mouth is twisted.

‘What’s the matter?’

He doesn’t answer.

‘You okay, Hink?’

He shakes his head. ‘It just hurts a little, to feel this good.’

When we come back to Paris at the end of August, Léa and her children are home. Yash and I take them to tennis lessons on the Métro and shop for food and make them meals. The kids grow attached to him quickly and Léa tells me that if he weren’t so marvelous she would never let him stay in my room. Yash and Laurent argue volubly about topics as disparate as NATO and prosecco. A week before Yash is supposed to fly home, Laurent offers him a job at his company in something called l’intelligence artificielle, which I’ve never heard of before and will for a long time think of as exclusively French. Laurent insists it is an exciting and promising field. He has a friend in the Ministry of the Interior who can move the papers quickly. Yash thinks about it for a few days and accepts. He’s going to stay! He will make a real salary. We can get an apartment and I’ll finish out the year working for Lèa, then I can teach private English classes and really start to write.

On the night before he was supposed to fly back, he goes to the phone booth around the corner to ask his dad to send over some clothes and books. And there in that glass box, in less than ten minutes, he has a change of heart.

At first I think I can change it back. ‘This is a rare opportunity,’ I say. ‘Laurent is going to get you a work permit. Mr. Cautious needs to carpe diem a little.’

‘Or it could be a year of French bureaucracy and getting deported before the paperwork comes through.’ His father has gotten to him so fast.

‘What does your dad think is a better idea for you?’

‘It’s not him. I’d been thinking maybe I should stick to my original plan.’

Original plan? I have not heard of this plan.

‘To save enough to move to New York.’

New York?

‘A guy I know from high school is there. He’s working at Houghton Mifflin. Entry-level position, though he’s pretty plugged-in already. He had dinner with Philip Roth last month.’



I’ve never been to New York. It always looks so bleak in movies. This plan makes no sense to me.

‘Paris is better in every way than New York.’

‘Not for being a writer.’

‘Yeah. Think of all the crappy novels that have been written here. Ulysses, The Sun Also Rises, Madame Bovary.’ I have no idea where Madame Bovary was written and hope he doesn’t either.

‘New York is the hub that Paris used to be,’ he says.

We stay up all night, his last night, going around and around on this. Didn’t we spend last fall dreaming of living in Paris? What happened to that? What happened?

‘So,’ he says, softening, nuzzling up to me, ‘you don’t want to live in New York?’

‘Not really.’

‘With me.’

‘I like trees.’

‘With me, near a park?’

‘When?’

‘When I save up.’

It feels like such a mistake, him going back and working for his father again, miserable, when he could be here and we could be together right now.

Our last sex is sad. Or at least it is for me.

The first pale light comes through the window. In an hour he’ll have to go to the airport. I can’t stop crying.



‘How about January?’ he says. ‘I can make enough by January.’