Chapter Fourteen

He should never have had quit smoking. He liked it far too much and thought about it far too often to swear it off completely. The nicotine patch didn’t hold the same comfort of a freshly lit cigarette, burning between his lips. But the smoke was even better. The smoke was the best thing about being addicted to tobacco. It felt like black silk down his throat. Had Caitlyn never ask him to quit, he never would have. He would have smoked until the day he died.

“Why bring it out if you’re not even going to light it?” she asked him.

“It makes me want it less.” He didn’t know why, but just feeling it there, in its rightful place, made it less tempting. He didn’t know if she’d understand. After all, she didn’t look like the type that smoked. She looked too honest to smoke. Or maybe too secretive. The two seemed to be almost interchangeable to him at times. But he was never a good judge of character. Simply judgmental.

He slid down against the wall and sat on the floor. This song made him want to smoke. The sound of Paris made him want to reach into his pocket and take out the lighter and damn self control to hell. Something about Paris just whispered smoke in his ear. Deep and sultry. A hidden desire, beneath sheets and sheets of black silk.

They’d picked it out of a random stack of CD’s. Picked with eyes closed. He couldn’t even understand the album title. It was in French. But the cover seemed to say it all. The Bridge of Sighs in the background, a couple dancing on the Riviera edge. Odd for a French CD to have an Italian cover. He’d found it odd and decided to put on the CD, with track number eight in mind, as instructed by the post-it note attached inside.

“This is a new song isn’t it?” He turned to her, speaking despite the cigarette in his mouth.

“Not too new. But definitely not old.” She said in between hums. She looked like she knew it well. Like she’d listened to it too often. Perhaps even one of her favorites. Not too new, she said. But not too old. That sounded right about right. The song didn’t feel too old. It lacked something to add the final touch of black and white cinema to it. Perhaps the writer was a lover of the classics, like Casablanca. He himself grew up with old films littering the walls of his life. Old films and Cubans. His grandfather on the tattered recliner and a projector showing Bogart on the screen, Bergman leaning on the piano. All covered in a zephyr of smoke from a Cuban.

She looked like Bergman, in a way. Perhaps it was the blond hair, tumbling in curtains of sunshine down her face. It caught the light like a prism. She didn’t act like Bergman, though. There was no mystery about her. Nothing that spoke of film noir and femme fetales. There was nothing in her eyes that would have enticed Bogart to damn her ever coming to his gin joint. Perhaps it was the way she closed her eyes while listening to the song. Even when Sammy played a slow one, Bergman never closed her eyes. She kept them open, eyes of what he always assumed was blue. They had that in common too.

He took an imaginary drag of his cigarette. “Can’t understand a word.” It made him like it even more. It felt like instinct. Dancing to words he didn’t even know. It felt like a hazy memory, where you just guess how everything fits in or makes sense.

“Neither can I.” she sat down in one of the nearby tables, tucking one ankle behind the other and leaning her elbow on the chair. “But I like it.”

“Like it enough?”

“I’m not sure..” A smile like Hepburn. Katherine. Not Audrey. Audrey had too sweet a smile. This was mischievous.

The song ended, and another one was already starting to play. He stood up and hit stop before it could get to the first verse. She still had her eyes closed. Still lost.

“I don’t think I’ll listen to it again.”

Her eyes shot open. “Why?”

“Things are more memorable if you keep craving for it later.”

He sat next to her, flicking the cigarette to the floor and putting out its imaginary embers. She laughed. He did too.

“What do you want to play next?” She asked.

“You pick.”

She stood up, leaving him alone in the table He watched her as she walked away, her hair bobbing with each her slight footsteps. It didn’t take long for her to decide which to play next. As if she didn’t think about it. Instinct.

The song started. He didn’t recognize the instrument playing. But it felt familiar. The sound of swaying. Crashing ocean waves. A sultry afternoon. And the dancing of trees to a sea breeze.

“I don’t think it sounds like a first dance, kind of song.”

“It will.” She was standing on the balls of her feet, her eyes closed, the rhythm swaying her like palm trees. The ocean wave sound of her skirt, playing with the music.

He stood up, took her hand and spun her to him. Placing his hand on her waist. Hand in hand. “Why are you dancing with me?”


He didn’t answer her. She didn’t seem to mind. Her head was on the crook of his neck. Humming. Singing, Tall and thin and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking… As if speaking secrets to his ear, she whispered the words.

They didn’t seem to match., though The song was in another language. One that he didn’t know. But she sang as if she knew what the words meant. As if she’d heard it once before.

He dared to close his eyes.

A hazy memory. Covered in black silk. Bergman leaning on the piano. A Hepburn smile on her face. A sad song playing in the background.

Chapter Fifteen

The song tasted like a long, lost lover.

She’d heard it only once before in her life, while walking down the streets of Ipanema. It was strange to go walking all alone in a country made for two, but Walter couldn’t be bothered to come with her. Business and all, so she’d made the decision to come on her own. She walked out of her hotel room like a typical tourist, clad in beach wear and thong sandals, ready to go on a romantic, moonlit stroll; even without a lover in arm. It was then that she first heard the song. Tall and thin and young and lovely, the girl from Ipanema goes walking.

A small performing group along the streets played it, complete with maracas and marimbas. The woman’s singing voice washed over her like a long sip of long island iced tea, served with the costmary a lemon wedge. It seemed almost cliché to hear such a song along the very streets that inspired it. More cliché that she seemed to be acting on the same words that inspired it. If only Walter could have walked with her, then it would seem less of a cliché. At least she wouldn’t be like the girl in the song. She wouldn’t be walking alone.

“This song is so sad.” She whispered to her his ear as she lay her head on the crook of his neck. “I never really liked sad songs.” Ever since she was a little girl, songs like Ring Around the Rosie and Ladybug, Ladybug made her so sad. Her mother sang them as lullabies, but they would send her to tears and not to sleep. Ashes, ashes. You’re house is on fire and your children will burn. Why were they sung to make children sleep? How could a child sleep knowing that someone’s babies had burned in a fire. And now, as a twenty seven year old woman, she still disliked sad songs. When she passes he smiles, but she doesn’t see. It felt like a knife through her heart.

He spun her out and caught her back again. He smiled. “But you like this one.” An observation, not a question.

She did. She liked this song very much. She wanted to dance to it on her wedding day. “But do you like it?” She asked him as he dipped her.

“I have a soft spot for sad songs.”

He seemed like the kind. Tall, and quiet, he seemed like the kind of man who would like listening to sad songs. Who would like to dance to sad songs. Who would kiss a girl and make her blush to a sad song. As he led her across the dance floor, twirling and swaying her to the Brazilian beat of Ipanema, she felt as if he was the kind of man who would fit in well in a song like this. If he were the man in the song, maybe, the girl would have smiled right back at him. She knew she would.

She mouthed the words as they played. For someone who disliked sad songs, she knew this one well. But she had a knack for memorizing songs. She only needed to hear it once or twice to memorize the full chorus. Perhaps four times to memorize the verses. But she’d only heard this song once. Once in the streets of Ipanema, with the Long Island iced tea singer and the cliché marimba. Once while walking alone, with the moonlight bouncing off the cobblestone avenue.

“What movie was this song from?” he asked her. “I feel like that was where I first heard it from. A movie.”

“Sabrina.”

“I thought it wasn’t an old song?”

“The other one. Not Hepburn.”

He nodded and didn’t talk after that. Maybe he didn’t remember the movie very well. Maybe he didn’t like it that well. But she remembered the movie. She liked it very much. Even though it was Harrison Ford instead of Humphrey Bogart. Even if it was Julia Ormond instead of Audrey Hepburn. She still liked the movie. It too was sad. Filled with rain and champagne glasses. With stolen glances and unspoken words. Honey whispers on each ear. A kiss on the cheek instead of the lips.

Like a long, lost lover. Maybe that was where the song got its familiar flavor.

“I liked that movie.” He said.

“So did I.”

The song ended and he stopped. He stopped the CD before it could play another song. She was left in the dance floor, by herself. Him, across the room.

“So. Do you think this is the song?” he smiled. He did not smile well. He seemed like the type. It was still endearing.

“I think so. You?” she did not smile all that well either. She lacked the practice. It made them quite a match, really.

He nodded. The song was perfect. They’d danced to it.

Back in Ipanema, she walked alone and saw to strangers dancing to the song. Slowly. Not at all with the beat. They had their head in each other’s shoulder. Whispering in deep, intimate voices. Honey voices. Thick and saccharine. Almost sinful. Almost.

“What time do you have to leave?”

She laughed. “Now. You?”

“Now.” He didn’t laugh.

She walked away from the dance floor and picked up her bag. The car would already be outside. She’d have to make up an excuse. But she was good at that. Practice made perfect. He was getting his things too. They wouldn’t leave anything of theirs behind.

“Maybe we can meet again, Tuesday?”

“Tuesday would be perfect.”

“See you then.”

He went out through the verandah entrance. She went out through the front door. She was right. The car was already there. Walter was waiting inside. He was waving to her. She waved back and got in a car.

He kissed her lips, a kiss like snowfall