11 And we run toward it
11
And we run toward it
Tristan
I know everything would be infinitely easier if I hadn’t taken a step back, if I hadn’t left the house that Saturday with the intention of running into Miranda. My life would be calm, affable, comfortable. Because Miranda is uncomfortable, let’s be honest. Uncomfortable like the cheapest sofa from IKEA, like a transoceanic flight on a budget airline, like when your mother catches you with eight condoms in your jacket pocket and asks if you think you’re Billy the Kid. And like a ride on an extreme roller coaster. And that’s the problem, I guess.
Miranda loves her work over everything else. She loves it more than her personal life. If she had to choose, I know what she’d say: to hell with everyone.
Sometimes she sounds like she’s nuts, even though she’s not. She snores. A lot. And I know I can’t throw the first stone on that, but she snores. When she gets nervous, she talks too much. She’s awfully direct. She’s obsessed with fucking me every time she has five free minutes. She doesn’t sleep much, which means that when I’m with her, I don’t either. She’s one of those crazy people who don’t care if they are and seem like it. She made me promise that if she ever had something in her teeth in a restaurant, I would tell her. It was one of our first dates, and before the first course, she had practically drunk me under the table. I’m not sure how I didn’t end up literally under the table or on the hood of a car or on a bench at the bus stop since she was so eager to have her way with me.
I’ve never met anyone with such a voracious appetite. Ever. And I’ve had some pretty demanding lovers. Miranda is a fire that never goes out, that always wants more. Her body is a temple that she doesn’t care for much but that she respects with devotion. She loves praying on her knees in front of me, you know.
She’s crazy. Crazy like a fox. Crazy curious. Crazy with the memory of an elephant. And elegant. With those curvy hips, slightly drooping breasts, toned arms, and dimpled ass. With everything.
The classic crazy person who wears black and always walks around the city with a book, who drinks coffee without milk and kisses with tongue and a lot of it. Once, after a few glasses of wine, when we started seeing each other again after the monthslong break, she told me that she didn’t want anyone to clip her wings, but she can’t stop the anxiety from gleaming in her eyes when she thinks that maybe nobody will ever ask her to build a nest together.
She likes really loud music, my cologne (she breathes me in and sniffs me like it’s the most normal thing in the world, but, buddy…it’s not), sex in the dark, and saying goodbye with a filthy kiss on the mouth and another blown in the air. I suspect the latter is in case the first kiss hints at some hope and the second sweeps up the pieces of what she wants to be given but doesn’t dare ask for.
What the fuck am I doing in Paris?
Well, falling. Falling head over heels. For a crazy girl. For a girl I don’t understand. A girl who sometimes scares me a little because I don’t know if she’s getting the best out of me, boring me, motivating me, or making me feel small. Maybe that’s why I’m falling for her, to be fair. Because she challenges me. Constantly. Maybe, at some other time in my life, I wouldn’t have gotten back in the saddle, but she makes me curious. She’s intense…so much that I stopped caring that I moved to Madrid planning to head back home as soon as possible.
So the fact that she’s been such a weirdo since we woke up doesn’t freak me out that much. She is weird. After ignoring me all morning and a lunch that wasn’t exactly idyllic, I had to cut her off because it was starting to get really awkward.
The rest of the lunch went well. She got something stuck in her teeth, and when I told her, even though she tried to be dignified, she couldn’t help laughing. Smiling. She’s beautiful when she smiles, even though sometimes her cackles sound like loose change rattling around in a pocket. She’s noisy when she wants to be, this lady.
After lunch, we strolled to the Madeleine, the gardens around the Place de la Concorde, and the Tuileries, and opposite there, we found a café with a patio where we could have a coffee.
While she people watched, I watched her. The wind had ruffled her hair a little. She got a haircut before we came, and it’s barely two fingers below her ears, which have two heavy gold earrings hanging from them that give her a special shine. Her long eyelashes (so long that I’ve almost succumbed multiple times and asked whether they were really hers), covered by that black line that makes her look kind of feline. And her lips. Those lips…
“Can I kiss you?”
She looks so weirded out it’s like I just asked if I could lick her forehead, and I like that. It always throws me off a little when she’s the one pouncing on my mouth, because it makes me feel like I don’t have the reins. And I need them.
She’s wearing a black suit with a double-breasted blazer and pants, and she’s wearing a turtleneck that’s practically see-through. I wonder what underwear she has on today. She always wears the wildest stuff, like assless panties.
The trench coat, which is perched on her shoulders, never actually with her arms in it, is folded on the seat opposite her right now. The lining doesn’t lie; it cost an arm and a leg, like her bag. But I don’t want to ask her if she bought it for the occasion, if she already had it, or if she borrowed it, because I’m going to feel silly if I’m the only one who spent more than I should have to fill my suitcase for the trip.
I’d rather kiss her, even with that bright-red lipstick that promises to make my mouth look ridiculous.
“Hey, can I kiss you?” I ask again.
“Here?” She asks me, suddenly a Victorian.
“Of course. Here.”
“Ay, no.”
“No?” I’m surprised.
“No. And you should be the first to not want to. You’re from the north. People from the north don’t like PDA.”
“You’re the worst at stereotypes.” I laugh, even though in my case specifically, she happens to be right. “But I remember the second time we met up, I had to stop you because before you even said hello. You were like: ‘Let’s go fuck in the bathroom.’”
“See? Let’s calm down.”
I get the giggles. I really like her idiosyncrasies. Shit.
I want that kiss.
“We’re in Paris, in a café opposite the Tuileries gardens, watching the drizzle through a beautiful portico…you’re not going to kiss me?”
I take a pack of cigarettes out of my bag and put one in my mouth.
“You’re going to smoke.”
“Why are you being so stubborn? Last night, you kissed me everywhere,” I say, laughing.
She furrows her brow. She doesn’t remember. I do, and that’s frustrating because it was really cool.
“Ask for the check.” She looks at her watch. “The party starts at seven, and I have to slap on the war paint. I’m definitely gonna need help with my hair.”
“Great. I’m really good at doing women’s hair.”
She glares at me.
“So gullible,” I provoke her, laughing.
A tiny, contained smile appears, which seems to make her even madder.
“You sure you’re not mad?”
“Didn’t we already talk about this? This is how I am. I’m…well…”
“Weird. But not grumpy. When you get like this, it’s always because you’ve gone too far.”
“Too far to you because you’re made of ice. But you should’ve thought about that before you looked for fire as a dance partner, sweetie.”
I open my mouth to answer, but she hurries to give me an explanation that I don’t need:
“The ‘sweetie’ was ironic, eh. I don’t want you going around thinking I go too far with my cutesy nicknames for you.”
“And all that.” I raise my eyebrows and call over the waiter, making the universal mime to ask for the check.
Nearly eighteen euros for two coffees doesn’t seem like that much after what I paid for lunch. This woman’s pace of life is going to drive me crazy and leave me broke as a joke. But this time, she puts down a twenty-euro bill, and as she stands up, she takes the receipt and folds it carefully into her wallet.
“I’m gonna expense it,” she explains.
“And you can’t do that for lunch too?”
“Don’t be a mooch.”
The drizzle patters our faces as we emerge from the shelter of the awning. I keep looking at her, but I don’t know why exactly. The way she looks at everything around her kind of fascinates me. Because her eyes roam the surfaces so quickly, devouring everything in their path. That hunger is what makes her so indefinable. Because she takes on the whole world without thinking twice, and her interior expands like a galaxy. She’s crazy…she goes from talking about shoes to explaining her view that everything we take as absolute truths is actually just a social construct. Sometimes she seems so lost…so completely lost that I think we’re similar. Just on the basics.
She’s not my type.
She’s not.
It’s not going to last.
It can’t last.
Two worlds. Two natures.
I’m not even that into her.
The fine drops of rain are clinging to her ruffled hair and her eyelashes. She has eyes the color of a cat. What color is that? I don’t know. She invented it for the world when she opened her eyes.
What is this? What’s going on? Why does it feel like the honking horns, the sound of conversations, and the noise of the city are suddenly singing in harmony? Like this chaotic city is wrapping everything up with a bow.
“Hey…” I call her.
Tristan, what are you doing?
When she turns back to me, her hair, now wavy from the humidity, sways. And I want to put my hands in it and smell it. I want things I’ve never wanted.
I stop her there, on a corner between two magnificent buildings, wrap her in my arms, and before she even realizes, in a twist she wasn’t expecting, I kiss her. Even though I think she’s going to reject me for a moment, both of us open our mouths. Her tongue wastes no time finding mine, like she has no choice. Are our tongues completely in love with each other? She kisses so well. So well.
People swerve around us grumpily, zipping in every direction across the sidewalk we stopped in the middle of, but instead of undoing this knot, I squeeze her tighter. Paris suddenly sounds like “Often” by The Weeknd, which I’ve thought for a few years now was the dirtiest and most romantic song in the world. I wish it were playing right now. Screw “La Vie en Rose.” Right now, in her mouth, Paris sounds like The Weeknd.
She lets a moan escape from her throat, but I swallow it quickly because I don’t want it to stop. Her, the feeling, the void, the spiral we’re wrapped up in that isolates us from the rest of the world. I’ve kissed Miranda many times, so many, but there’s something in that kiss that keeps me hooked to her mouth. The suburban boy who lives inside me whispers that she’s too much woman for me, but the adult shuts him up and clings to her even harder. Harder and harder. Left hand on her neck, right hand running down her back, under the trench coat thrown over her shoulders.
She’s not your type, I repeat to myself.
She’s too extreme.
She’s weird.
She’s a complication.
She wants more than you want to give her.
I don’t care.
Her tongue and mine dance the same way an old couple would. One of those who don’t know whether they love each other desperately or whether they need each other out of habit. It’s a wise kiss that makes me recognize some things I don’t even understand. I just want to press her tighter and tighter into me.
And the magic is breaking. I can feel it. The edges of the world are starting to define themselves again. Something elastic is constricting and expanding between us, trying to smash us into pieces. Her hand pushes against my chest, trying to put some space between us. I refuse. I shake my head no while I keep clinging to the kiss, but finally we pull a few millimeters apart.
“Let’s go to the hotel,” I beg her.
“To get dressed.”
“To fuck. On all fours. Standing up. You on top. I don’t care. Fuck me.”
“No.” She pulls away from my face a little. “This is not how this goes. I’m in charge here.”
I don’t doubt it. I suspect I lost the rudder a long time ago.
Shit.
She’s not my type.
I don’t like her that much.
Why do I have so much blood in the wrong part of my body?
That’s it. My erection is impeding the necessary blood pumping to my brain.
She pushes on my chest, and I pull back.
I could swear I can see a spark of rage in her eyes, and I don’t understand it, but it makes me like her even more. A spark of rage that gets lost like fireworks that explode and then fade into the night. And that rage disappears completely when Miranda bursts out laughing.
“What?” I ask her, a little offended.
She points at my face. Judging from the state of her lipstick, I must be hard to take seriously.
“You’re covered.”
“You should talk…” I smile at her. “Do you have a Kleenex or something?”
Before I can wipe my face with the back of my hand, Miranda leans in and rubs her thumb over my mouth, from side to side, leaving the tip of her thumb red. I’m about to ask her if that made it better when, she stands on her tiptoes and runs her tongue over my mouth. A second. One fucking second. But her lips dart over my mouth so quickly, from top to bottom. This nutjob licked my mouth in the middle of the street. This crazy lady is going to make me lose my head. And I’m suddenly filled with a tingle that I can’t locate or scratch. Because Miranda makes me tingle, and that’s something I’ve never faced, ever.
“Crazy,” I whisper, unable to take my eyes off her mouth.
She moves away, tugging me along with her.
“Let’s go.”
I want to take her hand, but I don’t. I don’t do these things. All I do is clean off my mouth while she takes out her phone and uses the selfie camera to do the same. She’s ready before I am.
She won’t let me touch her in the hotel. I try it in the elevator, the hallway, up against the door. She says no very sharply, so I let her be. She must be nervous. I stay silent while she spins around the room like a top, seemingly aimlessly, until she locks herself in the bathroom with her phone clenched in her hand. It’s not long before I hear her talking to someone very softly, but I can’t eavesdrop because I fall asleep.
At 5:30, she’s getting dressed. She’s a tsunami swirling around the room, which wakes me up and not how I’d like. I could’ve sworn Miranda is the type who wakes you up carefully, sweetly, hotly…but if that part is true, she left it in Madrid.
I wasn’t expecting her to ask me, but I’m a little disappointed to see that she called over her colleague from the magazine to dress her. I could have done up the zipper on her dress or whatever she needed. Fine, I couldn’t have helped with the makeup or hair, but I wanted to be alone with her for a bit.
When Rita comes into the room, I get a little anxious, but because I can’t name the root of the feeling, I try to keep it busy with work emails. And Rita barges in like she owns the place, like I’m not even there. It’s not like it bothers me, but…I appreciate my privacy when I’m in a hotel room. She came in with “her own” key card. I guess it’s a logistical thing because of the next few days, but chill out, Rita .
“Hi, Tristan!” she greets me.
I keep myself busy with my emails, but I look up to greet her and…I wish I hadn’t.
“Hi, Rita, how’s it’s going?” I answer with a smile.
It’s not out of kindness. I’m stifling my laughter. I have no words to explain this girl’s outfit. Sometimes fashion gets too avant-garde and I stop understanding it at all. All I can see are layers and layers of black-and-gold ruffles… I hope the designer of what she’s wearing forgives me, but she looks like a baroque cabbage.
“You’re not even dressed yet?” she asks me.
“I’m waiting for Miranda to tell me whether I can go.”
Rita rounds on Miranda and glares at her. All her layers, which are pretty light, tremble around her.
“You can. We arranged all that in Madrid,” she answers me, although she’s still looking at her.
“I wasn’t clear,” Miranda points out, calling her out with a gesture.
“Well, I’m clearing it up now.”
“Ladies.” I smile. “I can get ready in five minutes, so however it turns out, don’t worry.”
I can’t understand the details, but they’re arguing in the bathroom. And in spite of it all, I find it funny. I wish I was close enough with my colleagues to call them cocksuckers to their face and not just behind their backs when I’m ranting to my sister on the phone.
Miranda takes what seems like an eternity, and I mean, I’m slow, but I have to admit that every minute she used was worth the effort. When she comes out, she’s spectacular. She pulled her hair back in a low, slicked-back ponytail, which reminds me of how she looked when I first met her. A few loose strands are curling around her ears, making it all look less formal. She made up her eyes with the most feline cat-eye eyeliner in history and the reddest and juiciest lips in the world. She’s a caramel apple. She’s wearing a black tea-length dress that fits like a glove with transparent cutouts at the hips and waist. No bra, because her breasts are visible under the stretchy fabric, and judging by the positioning of the transparent fabric, I can’t be sure she’s wearing panties. She put a rigid, golden necklace around her neck, which makes her look like a Greek effigy, a bust to revere. An Athena with powerful and generous hips, who’s wobbling but trying not to wobble on the very high heels of a pair of open-toed shoes with thousands of straps. I don’t understand fashion, but I think it’s a good choice.
“What?” she asks after I study her in silence.
“Nothing? What do you mean what?”
“Are you making fun of me?”
I point to my chest, surprised.
“Me?”
“I don’t know. You made a weird face when you saw me. It is too tight on me?”
“You look beautiful,” I abridge myself. I’m not the kind to regale someone with compliments.
“Of course she looks beautiful. She’s wearing Balmain,” Rita retorts, as if it were obvious.
“I don’t know what that means.” I shrug and smile. “But she’s very beautiful.”
“What about you?” her colleague asks me.
“Me? Well…” Since they haven’t said anything up until now, I assume I’m not going. “I’ll go out for a walk, get something to eat, and come back to the hotel. I brought a book.”
They side-eye each other. Miranda seems like she’s in a bad mood.
“Get dressed,” she says, brushing past me.
I feel like telling her to fuck off, but I get up from the armchair and head toward the closet.
“Okay, kids. I’ll see you downstairs.”
The dark cabbage disappears through the door with a less dramatic exit than her wardrobe demands, and I take the opportunity to turn around and look for Miranda.
“Hey…” I call out to her.
She’s sitting down, concentrating on stuffing lipstick, a few cards, her phone, and a compact into a minuscule purse.
Is she wearing underwear? Tristan, forget it, you can’t ask her that. If you’re lucky, she’ll have one of her outbursts and suggest fucking in the bathroom.
“Go ahead.”
She doesn’t look up at me when she answers.
“If you don’t want me there, I won’t go.”
She looks up, but she doesn’t move her head. Her eyelashes are brushing against her eyebrows, and the effect is very strange.
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, because it doesn’t seem like you want me to go. And…I kinda get it. It’s a work drinks thing…at a job in the fashion world. I’m a lawyer, and I grew up in a neighborhood where tracksuits were considered highbrow. I don’t fit in there at all.”
She savors her words before she lets them escape her lips.
“It’s just that I don’t know if I can go with you.”
“I understand.” And I do understand, but I feel disappointed.
“I’ll spend the whole night worrying that you’re uncomfortable and it’ll become a vicious cycle…”
“I get it, really.”
I nod, put my hands in my pockets, and we both look at each other without talking. This is uncomfortable, not strolling around a room in the Louvre drinking champagne, but I don’t say that to her. I should but I don’t, because I want her to feel free to decide how the night ends. I’m glad I had the idea not to get dressed yet, because this conversation would have been pathetic in a three-thousand-euro suit.
“It’s work,” she says in a thread of a voice.
“I know. That’s why I offered you a…get-out clause. You wouldn’t have had to worry about me anyway, but this way, we can eliminate that from the equation.”
“Well, I appreciate it.” She nods.
“Fine. Well…see you when you get back.”
“Yes.”
I would go over and kiss her. In spite of everything, I’d give her a kiss before she left, but I don’t fucking feel like it. Self-love stops me.
“Don’t get bored,” she throws out.
I will say, in her defense, that she seems sad.
She heads to the door seeming undecided. Before she goes out, I take my right hand out of my pocket and raise it in a goodbye. She looks like she’s going to double over and vomit on the carpet. She opens the door, and…the sound of the door closing echoes through the hall. I don’t know what it is about hotel doors. It’s impossible to slam them, but you can’t close them without slamming them. And here I am, in front of the door, with my left hand in my jeans pocket and my other hand dangling limply, like an asshole. There’s something rumbling in my stomach that has nothing to do with hunger; it’s a kind of strange dignity. It’s a kind of nervousness that she’s decided not to leave.
Miranda looks up at the ceiling, sucks her teeth, and, after a sigh, says:
“Please, don’t take too long getting dressed. We have to leave right now.”
And I’m lost. Lost. I suspect it, but I still don’t know.
Five hours later, we’re crossing the Louvre esplanade together, heading toward Rue de Rivoli, where Miranda says there’s a car waiting to take us to the hotel. We left Rita with her cabbage dress saying “yes” to the proposal of having one more drink, and we escaped. Miranda would never admit it, but I think she’s tired, and those shoes don’t look very comfortable.
The Louvre’s esplanade is beautiful at night, with the glass pyramids glowing through that very Parisian mist. I try to imagine what we must look like together, like we’re in a French movie from the seventies. I love it.
The whole night was…incredible. Seeing her in that environment, seeing her work, seeing her need to create an empty space between us. Seeing her. Fuck. Is there anything sexier or more terrifying than a woman who doesn’t need you?
Now, Miranda is walking securely on her heels next to me. She’s wearing a coat over her dress, a long, flowing one in something like black suede. Like the trench coat she wore at lunch, this one is balanced on her shoulders too. It’s not much protection from the wet wind whipping the city, but she’s not complaining.
Now, by her side, I worry my long strides will leave her behind as I look for my tobacco inside my suit. What a suit. Because I don’t want to blow smoke up my own ass, but I’d definitely devour myself with this on. I just have to look at Miranda’s eyes to see that I’m right.
Even tonight was erotic, and it made me think. For months, I’ve been asking myself why I’m such an idiot; maybe I inherited it, or that’s just an excuse I give myself so I don’t feel like such a dumbass. But the truth is the more distant I find Miranda, the more I like her, and the more I like her, the more that distance bothers me. It’s irrational, because what seduces me about her are her strength, her independence, her bravery, and her shamelessness. She’s driving me crazy. This is a dangerous game.
We walk together but separately, and I keep on imagining us from the outside.
“We’re cool.” I say the word in English with a wink, only half joking.
“I feel like the star of a Clara Luciani song,” she says suddenly.
“Who?”
“‘La grenade.’ You’ve never heard of her?”
“Nope. Doesn’t even ring a bell.”
“Ah. Maybe she’s not well known yet. But I promise you when you hear it”—she winks—“we’ll be the shit.”
She’s fucking crazy.
As we cross the street, the wind lifts her coat up a little, and I can see her goose bumps. I want to warm her up, but instead I take a long drag on my newly lit cigarette before I look at the color of the burning embers.
“I’m going to quit,” I tell her.
I look at her out of the corner of my eye, and she’s smiling with restraint. She isn’t looking at me. It feels like she can’t look at me for the same reason I can’t stop looking at her. We like each other. We’re not each other’s type. It’s not going to last. We shouldn’t like each other this much…
The boy from the suburbs tells me to take off my jacket and put it on her; the man that I should be knows she wouldn’t like that, so I pull her into me and wrap an arm around her.
“You’re freezing. That coat is pretty, but maybe it wasn’t the best choice.”
“It’s called fashion. Look it up.”
We both crack up at the same time. Our shadows stretch beautifully across the sidewalk. More beautiful than we actually are, I’m sure. So elongated they look like they could reach anything, slip into anywhere, so intertwined it’s impossible to guess where she begins and where I end. That joint shadow seems like a more dangerous promise than the game we’ve been playing for almost a year now. Almost a year, Tristan…
“I ignored you all night,” she says with a note of regret in her voice.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t have to come.”
“Did I complain?”
“No. I guess you’re not the type who complains.”
“No, I’m not.”
I squeeze her a little tighter.
“Fuck…” she murmurs, looking at the ground.
“What?”
“You smell good.”
“You say that like it’s a problem.”
“It is. You smell too good.”
“Can you have too much of a good thing?”
“Yes.” She looks at me out of the corner of her eye. “Too much is where things we can’t control grow.”
“Well then, we’d have to burn the wheel.”
I don’t know if I can even find the brake pedal anymore. But I let her take me.
And we run toward it.