Chapter 62
Greta
Many times, I’ve asked myself what I’d feel when this day came, and the one thing I’d never imagined was myself running desperately through the streets of Vienna.
I manage to catch a taxi and tell the driver to take me to the Belvedere Palace.
Ten minutes we drive, and there, in the heart of Vienna, we arrive at that baroque building surrounded by gardens. It’s impossible not to feel your breath taken away as you look at it. Not just because of its splendor but because of the artwork you know its galleries hold.
I wait, pay, walk in, work my way lazily through the rooms, try to decipher the folding map I grabbed at the entrance.
It’s late. The palace will close soon, and it’s huge inside and I’m completely lost. I would have given up if it hadn’t been for all this time I’ve spent now in cities that are constantly putting me to the test. But no, I won’t give up.
I calm down, I ask a woman who can’t speak English where to go, and using gestures, I get her to understand me, and she gestures to me, and I understand her too.
I advance toward the spot.
There are more people in this room than others, but they are invisible to me as my eyes settle on that painting rising up like a monolith. It’s huge, six feet by six feet. Klimt’s The Kiss, right there, iconic, in all its splendor.
I admire it in silence. I soak in the image, stare closely at every detail: the way flatness and three-dimensionality play against each other, the round and floral motifs on the woman’s clothes, the rectangular ones on the man’s.
The soft shimmer of gold, of silver. The delicacy of the garden at the feet of the lovers, the way they abandon themselves in each other’s arms. I always thought love was as unstable as the weather, but tenderness and intimacy persist.
That is when I notice his presence.
He’s moving slowly, the way a cat moves in the middle of the night. But I sense him. I sense him because I know how he smells; I know what his body feels like standing next to mine, the exact distance between his head and mine, the stiffness in his shoulders.
Will’s here.
After almost three months without seeing each other, we meet again, standing in front of The Kiss. I turn into a statue, but inside, I’m liquid and volatile. I don’t know how long we go without saying a word, before his voice suffuses me like a waterfall.
“I thought about what you said to me on the Ferris wheel that night.”
“I don’t remember,” I lie.
“How we’re basically all dying, and how if we had a stopwatch that told us how long we had left, we wouldn’t know what to do.”
“Yeah.”
I don’t want to look at him. I don’t, and still worse, I can’t. I feel like he’ll vanish if I do, he’ll no longer be real, and I’ll know then that what we had was just an illusion.
“I’ve known for a while now who I want to share that time with.”
Those words calm me enough to manage to turn around and look at him.
He’s the same as always. But he’s different too. He cut his hair, and he’s wearing a light-colored shirt under his dark coat. In his eyes, there’s…more light. Hope. The fog is gone. But he’s still just as fascinating as I remember.
He comes closer. I tremble. I tremble because I’m nervous.
I tremble because I’m ready. I tremble because I can hardly contain the knowledge of what his presence here signifies.
When you lose something and you find it in the moment you least expected, you have to recognize that you’ve been given a gift.
And you want to open it. I want to open it.
“Don’t think what I’m about to say occurred to me on the spur of the moment.
” He seems to savor each word before uttering it.
“I’ve reflected a lot, and that led me to realize that of all the things I could do or all the people I could be with, what really mattered to me was being by your side.
It’s that simple, and it’s that complicated too. ”
“Will…”
“Wait, let me finish.” He pauses, looking away from the painting in front of us.
“I had to fit the pieces of my life back together. You were right. I needed to accept who I was to decide who I want to be. Running away and hiding was just putting patches over the cracks. I won’t deny that facing the ugliest and darkest parts of yourself is hard.
When you do, you make them real. But I understand now what you were trying to say to me that last night in the RV, and I appreciate what you did for me.
I needed…a push. A push in the right direction. ”
I glance up at him, and I realize that a look can be everything. Words are ephemeral, gestures can be theatrical, but the eyes… The eyes don’t lie. A look demolishes you or can show you in an instant what someone is hiding in the deepest depths of their heart.
“I hope it’s not too late.”
“You’re just in time,” I assure him.
I don’t want to cry, but I see The Kiss start to blur: The colors blend, the gold melts into the blanket of flowers.
And that blurry sight is more beautiful than any painting in the world.
Hardly moving, I stretch out my hand and find his.
He’s warm, he chases away that cold I always feel.
I recognize his knuckles, his nails, the soft feel of his skin.
I’ve watched those hands turn the pages of a book and stroke every inch of my body.
And I’ve missed them so much. I’ve missed him.
“I’m never going to let you go.”
“Perfect.” Will smiles.
I entered the gallery alone. But I’m leaving it with him.
We walk out of the palace and into the heart of that monumental city on the banks of the Danube. The streets are ready for Christmas to come. The lights are bright, the people are walking in the markets, the cafés and restaurants are all bustling.
“Now what?” I ask.
“Now it’s nightfall in Vienna.”
“I didn’t mean literally,” I say.
Will smiles and presses my hand. The avenue we are walking down smells of something I can’t quite place, and all these emotions are making me feel dizzy.
“We should get to know each other,” he says, and I raise my eyebrows. “Yeah. Imagine if back there in the gallery was the first time we’d ever seen each other. You caught my eye because…I like your new jacket. Is that a pattern of dragonflies?”
“Yeah, I bought it in a secondhand shop in London.”
“So you’re a globetrotter.”
When our paths crossed for the first time in the spring, I’d have had to say no. But now, months later, I find myself nodding and saying yes. “You nailed it. I love to travel.”
“I do too.”
We stop walking and look at each other. “My name’s Greta Peterson.”
“Will Tucker. Pleasure to meet you.”
He traces out spirals on the back of my hand. It’s a small gesture that means the world to me, and I get butterflies in my stomach. “Have you got your life figured out now?”
“Only the important stuff.”
“Good. You have to leave room for improvising.” We’re holding each other—it’s probably bothering the people edging past us, we’re crowding the sidewalk, but I don’t care.
When I look at him now, everything else ceases to exist. “I’d like to ask you a couple of questions before I decide to spend the night with a complete stranger just because. You get that, don’t you?” I joke.
“Absolutely. The floor is yours.”
“Sweet or savory?”
“Savory,” he answers without hesitation.
“Favorite color?”
This time he pretends to think about it. “Hmmm…purple,”
“Where are you from?”
“Nebraska. I was born in a little town called Ink Lake.”
“Do you believe in ghosts?”
“No.” He shakes his head and smiles.
“Have you ever been in love?”
Will gives me a mischievous look and smiles slowly. “Isn’t that a little bold, asking that of someone you’ve just met?”
“You just answer, and don’t worry about what is or isn’t bold.”
“You know, Greta. You know the answer.”
“But I want you to tell me.”
We forget the game when Will bends down. I think he’s going to kiss me, but instead he whispers in my ear, “Yeah. I fell in love with a girl who likes colored wigs, grape seeds, the smell of markers, and spiral staircases.”
“You better not let her go. She sounds like a keeper.”
“She is. She stole my heart.”
I giggle, and he wraps his arms around my waist. It’s so cheesy, talking about each other in third person, but I love it. My nose is frozen. He reaches out and shakes the little jingle bell hanging from one of the tassels on my wool cap.
“Will, I have this strange feeling that the girl in question wants you to forget about her hat and kiss her for once.”
“You really think?”
He’s driving me crazy on purpose. I know. I know him. “There’s no doubt about it.”
He’s still smiling when his lips graze mine, so softly that I get impatient and stand on my tiptoes to kiss him deeper under the Vienna sky.
We stand there, recognizing each other’s lips, recognizing ourselves in each other.
If this were a movie, the camera would start to pan away, and little by little, the main characters would mingle with the other people in the city.
You’d say they were just one more couple in the midst of a sea of people, but in that moment, they might as well be the only ones there, full of a happiness too big for them to keep inside.
And in the end, that’s exactly what the magic of love is.