“Why should I go bald? Isn’t this enough?” She looked incensed, or pretended to be.
“Well, eventually you’ll be toothless and bald like the rest of us. Until then, you are still the most gorgeous woman on the planet, scars and all. And you are certainly not pitiful.”
She stared at him for a moment, stood up, and put her hands on her hips. “Fine, go ahead, take my picture.”
He couldn’t believe she’d said it. She was ordering him to. “Like that, with you scowling at me? You look like you’re going to kick me. I will not take your picture.”
“You called me bald and toothless!” She appeared to be outraged and he laughed at her.
“I did not. I said you will be bald and toothless, I did not say you already are.”
“Well, I’m not, so take my picture,” and then her voice softened and she grew serious, “and I’m sorry about your wife,” she said gently.
“So am I. She was fantastic. Not as beautiful as you, but no one is. She was a great woman and I loved her. She was full of courage, like you.” She sensed it was true. “She was half Italian and half English, fire and ice. She was an incredibly talented journalist, far better than I am. I write junk compared to her. She wanted to write a novel, and she would have written a great one. We came from two different worlds. I came from a stuffy, pompous family of upper class intellectual snobs. Her father owned a trattoria in Venice. She had none of the prejudices I grew up with, and she turned me into a human being. And then, she was gone and nothing made sense anymore. Why did I survive and she didn’t? She was so much better than I am.” He sounded as though he meant it.
“I ask myself that question every day about my mother and the friend I was with. Do you have kids?” she asked him, and he looked like he was going to cry.
“No. She was pregnant. We’d just found out. It’s hard to understand the meaning of life after something like that. Why it happened. Why you were there. Why they killed her and not me. They didn’t even shoot me. They killed her and I walked out without a scratch. I’ve been trying to make my peace with that for eighteen months, and I can’t.”
“You never will. I haven’t been able to make sense of it either. Why my mother and my friend died and I didn’t. Blind luck maybe. Destiny. You just have to keep going. That’s why I’m here. Now are you going to take my picture or not? I used to get a lot of money for having my picture taken, and I’m doing it for free for you. So don’t waste it.” As she said it, he grinned and picked up his camera, and took a photo of her head-on, scolding him, with both sides of her face showing, the old and the new, the smooth and the scarred with the big floppy hat. She was surprised when he took it. “That’s a terrible picture!” she complained.
“No, it’s not. It’s a great one. And it wasn’t cheating. I got both sides of your face, the old and the new, your funny hat, and you were giving me hell. Don’t worry. I won’t use it. That one’s for me. I’m going to frame it. It’s perfect. Can I say in the article that you were working here as a volunteer? I won’t if you don’t want me to.” She thought about it for a minute and then nodded.
“I guess there’s no harm in that, as long as you don’t run that picture.” She smiled at him, and they headed up the stairs, toward dinner. “You’re complicated,” she said to him.
“So are you,” he said, and she laughed.
“I guess we have a right to be,” she said more gently.
“I think we do.” He sat next to her at dinner, and they had an intelligent conversation about a variety of subjects and a nice time together. It seemed odd meeting here, but it felt as though it was meant to be, given their experiences.
“You know, I’ve never been that open with anyone before about it,” he said about what he’d told her. She was easy to talk to, and listened well. He could tell she was a compassionate person.
“Neither have I. I suppose we have that in common.” They both knew what it was like, to go to hell and back, and try to make sense of your life afterward. They were both still working on it. She had survivor guilt too, about Cyril and her mother. It was obvious that he was riddled with it, over his wife.
“How long are you going to stay here?” he asked her.
“I don’t know. Until I want to go back to Paris. Maybe until I feel good about my life again. I have nothing to go back for. And I want to do some good and put some love back in the world instead of all that hate. You’ve been there. You know.”