It's Not Love, It's Just Paris by Engel Patricia

Author:Engel, Patricia [Engel, Patricia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, General
ISBN: 9780802121516
Google: je2F3sF2aHQC
Amazon: 0802121519
Barnesnoble: 0802121519
Goodreads: 16129333
Publisher: Grove Press
Published: 2013-01-01T07:00:00+00:00

That morning I woke up long before I heard him stir upstairs, waiting in bed as the watery morning light filled the room, the pressed sheets against my bare body, hoping he’d come knocking on the door to wake me, but he didn’t. He went from the base of the stairs to the kitchen, filled the kettle with water, moving about the tile floor, teacups clinking. I showered and dressed, wandering with hair dripping down my back to the kitchen. He was at the table, leaning over a newspaper. He wore wire-rim reading glasses, a small new discovery about him that thrilled me.

I asked what was happening in the world but quickly added, “Never mind. Don’t tell me. I don’t want to know.”

During those days, we began a habit of lying together without touching. On the desolate strip of beach just steps from his house. The sun at its noon peak buried into a pastel sky, cold sand under our feet. We wore sweaters, hats, and scarves, stretched on a blanket as waves hit the beaches once stormed by the Allies. He told me he came there every morning and sometimes at sunset through the warmer months. He worked at the marina maintaining boats, washing them, polishing, doing whatever needed to be done. He liked outdoor work. But it wasn’t consistent work, because sometimes the boats left for Le Havre or La Rochelle, Cap Ferret or Mallorca, and though it would have been good money, he didn’t have the captain’s license to transport the boats himself. He’d taken his baccalaureate in history and studied the same in university, but such a degree was only good for indoor jobs. He’d passed the tourism exam, too, but confessed he wasn’t very good with people, so he’d never been hired when applying to give D-day tours. He’d had a few friends growing up, but they’d all moved to Paris or other cities by now, for school and for work. And Sharif didn’t visit anymore—they only saw each other when Cato went to Paris.

“You have your own corner of the sea here,” I said, though it seemed a coast of ghosts with its leftover war tanks and murky foam-capped waves rushing the shore.

“Do you ever get lonely out here?”

“I’m used to solitude,” he said. “But yes, now that you’re here, I realize I’ve been very alone.”

And then I understood that between us there was a common spore of isolation that grew in my overpopulated home and within his quiet cottage. We were young but we’d both grown well into our loneliness. We were the kind of lonely that wasn’t ashamed to be so. A lonely without self-penitence.

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