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.