Missing the sex and videotape....

Mood: Good
Music: None


I guess I lied.

I said I wouldn't post parts of my long format stories (book length). Lies.
I feel like it, so I'm posting the beginning of my manuscript in progress. It's untitled. It continues on a theme I've written about before (reincarnation) but is an entirely different story. And here it is.
----

A journey of a thousand miles begins with one step. Is that it? The phrase I’m searching for?

It is raining, and this fits.
I’m nothing more than a cliché as it is – here at my desk, staring at the expansive white rectangle on the screen in front of me, fingers poised and in position. I’m ready to tell my story. It’s decided, and now I need to carry through with the decision. And my story – I would not categorize it as a happy one, so the rain is a good accessory. It will help solidify my fickle mood.
I’ll add some music. Melancholy, but not completely achieving sadness. A plaintive piano. And I have my tea – amber, not weakened by cream.

And finally – I have you. Not in the way I wish, but a possession all the same. I know you’ll help me tell this story, because it’s yours as well as mine. You won’t let me embellish too much (although, admit it – there is one part you will want me to embellish, one part you might push me away from the keyboard to chronicle yourself if you could, so untrusting you are of my ability to capture the specific details you’ll want immortalized).

The kettle is whistling, and all I’ve accomplished is yet another letter with no information in it to you. I’m closing this one now, and going to fill my mug.
When I return, I’ll write.
-Anne

Here are the things I remember most, and some of them startle me because they are still so vivid.

You, of course, tall and skinny in your bathing trunks, your shoulders rounded like knobs atop your arms. You hadn’t grown into your respective parts yet. All the women said it. That you were awkward then but you had the telling blueprint of someone who would be an attractive man, all wide and strong in the right places, and trim and taut.

Of course, telling a twelve year old boy that he will one day be handsome is also telling him that he is currently not, and it’s the latter which stuck with you, and colored your every decision. So when you were standing atop the pier, toes dangling off the edge, hugging yourself to stop the embarrassing shivering the beefier boys didn’t experience, I knew you were doing it to please me. The jump, that is. Otherwise you would have stayed back and let the other boys take on the bay.

And I remember your dog. He was my dog, too. You insisted this was true, although I was not allowed to own a dog and had not contributed anything to bringing Sam home. That was all you – the successful coercion of your parents (you were always better with yours than I was with mine), the months spent hunting different kennels, looking for just the right pup, the weeks you spent waking up to messes on your carpet, on the walls, in your shoes – all so we could walk Sam together along the beach and I could experience an animal. This is one of the things which startles me – how much I recall of your precocious taking care of me, the depth of feeling you were able to summon about us at such a young age – how I can see it all so clearly and yet can’t just reach out and bring it to myself now.

But I’m not starting with now, so:

I remember the kiss the most. Of course you know this. The two of us, hiding in a grove of trees away from the rest of the our families. The tentative lean, the anticipation so thick and rich and probably better than the kiss itself, though I don’t think I’d ever get you to admit that. You tasted of fire. We had both been blanketed in the smoke of the campfire. And you didn’t close your eyes. You said that you did, but I’m sure you didn’t, because I was peeking (there. I admitted it). Your eyes were open, so when I stopped peeking, and pulled away to open my eyes, you were watching.

Something in the air charged between us. We both felt it, and moved silently together, deeper into the thicket, letting the darkness swallow us.

You found enough of a clearing and blindly brushed away any errant twigs and rocks, the moonlight your feeble guide. Then you pulled me down with you, our bodies lying on the earth, and I gave myself to you.

The others wouldn’t have understood. We were only twelve – it would have seemed madness. But you were my husband, past and future, and it was right.

Perhaps it is the physical connection I miss the most. I have you mentally, and emotionally, and it is not enough.

Not at all enough.

**

We have probably had five hundred first kisses. If I exaggerate it is out of happiness. Still, tell me. I can correct it.

I don’t know why that particular kiss stands out so much for me. Perhaps it’s because it’s the most recent first kiss, and I am an unknown number of days away from having any kiss from you at all, much less a first. Acceptance. That’s what you told me before I left. I am here, and you are not, and there really isn’t much point in dwelling on that particular fact, because nothing about it will change.

You are dead. I am alive.

I’m supposed to be the lucky one in that equation. Life is grand, and all that. Yet I wake up every morning a little bit more jealous of you, knowing what I know. Knowing where you are. The way you are not missing me in quite the same way I am missing you – you have the luxury of an absence of the ability to really feel absence. To you, I have whirled away for a quick turn during a dance. You can see me, spinning across the floor, just slightly out of reach. You aren’t alarmed. You know I’ll spin right back into your arms.

You’ll blink, and I’ll be back.

But here… me… it’s quite different. You don’t know; you’ve never had a turn on your own. Not since we met. The days drag endlessly until I am sure somewhere there’s been an error, because I can’t be passing just twenty four hours from sunrise to sunrise. The minutes tick lazily by, in no hurry to pass, and I quite simply want to open my mouth and wail all day. I am only twenty four. I have buckets of time to fill before I see you again, and whatever am I supposed to do with it? I have literally knit till I have blisters. I have collected three degrees, which is ridiculous considering I’m twenty four. I have already traveled every continent (again, mind you, because we did that together already, remember?).

And I accept dates from men. I told you I would. But they are all so… shortsighted. Focused on the only life they know, and who could blame them? Sitting around drinking tea and contemplating the mysteries of death is hardly a fun time. But that’s what I want to do, Gabriel. I want to tell them. I want to tell them about you, and us, and what happens to us and how it feels and how I love you so much I have to scream into my pillow sometimes from the sheer weight of it, or my heart would burst through my ribcage, I’m sure of it….

I just want to tell. And I can’t. This life is full of cant’s. I can’t touch you, can’t hear you, can’t tell anyone about you….

This was a terrible experiment. Terrible. I should never have agreed.

I’m getting off track.

I’m sorry.

I’m going to go to bed. Tomorrow, when I write again, I’ll be better.

-Anne

Okay. I took some deep breaths, and then took some wine, and slept well last night. Did we visit in my dreams? I don’t remember. Which is fine.

One more breath. I promised I would write about this and I decided I would start so here, Gabriel. Here you are. Here is the telling of my experiment, starting with the telling of us, and when we are looking at this together you can change any parts you like. Okay?

Alright.

**

Chapter Two

I am focused so much on last time that it is burdensome to go all the way back to the beginning, but I promised I would (indeed, that is a large part of this entire experiment, isn’t it?) so I will be good and begin my chore.

We met in summer. It was so long ago only parts of the memory are still clear. I do remember your name, and mine. We were adults, which at that time meant I was seventeen years old and you were twenty, and really, I was considered a bit long in the tooth to still be unmarried.

You had been married, of course, and had had a child. Your wife did not survive that process. I know now that you stayed behind purposefully, because of your daughter. You knew you had choices.

I laugh now, remembering how we each thought we had a secret to keep from the other. So I did not tell you, at first, how I remembered an existence before. That I had had choices and elected to come, and had been conscious of the entire experience from the beginning.

Instead, I told you things which could be taken another way. That I was a precocious toddler. Had always had a deep interest in the spirit, in an afterlife. That sometimes, I had vivid and strange dreams.

You soaked all this up without offering anything, thinking I was just a girl with an imagination. You were afraid to say too much, to give yourself away, and spook me in the process. And at any rate, all of our visits were chaperoned, as was the custom of the time, so we could no more have spilled our secrets during our courtship than thrown ourselves onto the floor and ripped off our clothes (although, several times, there was that tempt).

Forgive me. I am taking in a breath now, remembering. I’ll confirm again: that is the hardest part.

You asked my father for my hand, and it was not surprising when he agreed, probably relieved because I am sure he thought he would never be rid of me. I was headstrong, and ill behaved. I rode horses in the style of men – splaying my legs across the beasts and leaning into them as they ran me across a field. I drank whenever I could, draining the barley concoctions my brothers and uncles left laying about for me to gather and tidy. I alarmed my mother constantly by doing things like trooping to the market at that time of the month, when I was supposed to sequester myself in my rooms and shun society properly for seven days.

Really – it was all so silly. I knew they couldn’t see that. They didn’t know what I knew, but how was I supposed to cultivate a fear of being stoned or dragged from my home for a beheading when I knew what would happen after? So I didn’t care, Gabriel, and wantonly flitted about in ancient Israel, mind you, as if I were still in Rome, where I had been before, and where I could pretty much do whatever the hell I wanted.

I miss that Rome.

Enter you. You were a friend of my brother’s, I think. Possibly an uncle. You were widowed, with a child, and good Lord, we couldn’t have that, now could we? I know you’ll forgive me the dramatics, but really – the thought that you couldn’t adequately raise your own daughter, that precious girl, was ridiculous. At any rate, that was not the way things were done then, and you were brought to meet me, tainted goods being matched to tainted goods, my marring a bit more serious than yours.

I want to say we knew immediately, that we’d easily bond. There was certainly a draw. Whatever it was, you came faithfully to court me each day for thirty days in a row (minus the seven necessary to maintain some sense of appropriateness). We sat in the courtyard, or in the front room of the villa, never able to escape the heat of a middle eastern summer in any case. I broiled underneath my robes and coverings, linen being the appropriate material for the season, but certainly not meant to be layered and draped in the middle of the desert, in what was essentially July. You sympathized, asking that I be brought water and using leaves to fan me whenever my parents turned their heads.

It was expected that you would ask for me at the end of the month, and you did. My parents put together a hasty wedding, no doubt fearing you would change your mind if you got to know me too well. But I was refreshing for you – you had known another existence and the affect of all the protocol and rules had bored you as well. You sought me out after learning of my reputation, not despite it. The hasty wedding could not have better met your desire.

Hmm.

It would seem unusual for a woman to not recall the details of her wedding day, but we have had so many weddings, and that one was hardly my favorite. It stands out only because it was the first – but really, it was so long ago, I’m sure you won’t mind if I trip lightly past, only noting that you let me get drunk on the wine. That I recall.

No, I would much rather proceed to the wedding night, which, as you might imagine, I recall quite vividly. I was a virgin, of course, at least by the technical status in that incarnation, having only pushed my wild behavior so far. You were not – had not even been for your first wedding night, and we shall say that your appetite had been ever increasing since you were widowed and leave it at that.

And then we shall say that my appetite had not been fed since I’d left Rome, and all it’s slick permissiveness, and we will also leave it at that.

The servants in your villa would not meet my gaze for weeks.

Oh, Gabriel. We really should have talked about these things first, and then decided what we wanted to do. Hindsight.

It really is everything, isn’t it? And now, if you are looking, you will see me shaking my head at the negative miracle we have groomed. For two people as experienced as we are to have so lightly fallen into such a state (well, I have fallen, even if you have not) is deserving of no more light a word than stupid. Very, very stupid.

**

I had to take a break. Not simply because I needed to free my mind of the subject matter, but because someone rang at the door. It was Charlotte, who has been my friend since college, and puts up with my mopey moods and general darkness, although I don’t think she understands it, or has experienced even a minor disappointment in her entire life. I am often jealous of her, too.
Charlotte wanted to eat, and I never have any excuses for avoiding that. Nor would I want to, really. So we left, and I let her guide me to a small wine bar in the middle of the historic district, where they let you sit wherever you want and always have plenty of copies of the paper.
Charlotte took a copy of The Post, which I would have expected, and I took The City Paper, which did not surprise her.

“If you see anything good, read it,” she told me. She means something controversial. She believes The City Paper is all and only about sex and drugs and drinking and then sex some more, and really, she’s right, so I indulge her by reading aloud the particularly funny or naughty bits.

“Here’s one,” I told her. “The advice column - a man wants to know if he should be clearing away his drug paraphernalia when he brings a lover home, or if it’s important to be up front about these types of things right away.”

We both snorted, her laughter then breaking away into a silent, short gasping, and me retreating into a grin, shaking my head.

“I vote for leaving it out. Especially if the intent is to consummate the relationship. I do hate finding out about the pothead thing after he’s seen me naked.”

Charlotte was joking, entirely. Her history of dating contained no such slumming as a pothead. She seemed to wander from appropriate to ever more appropriate and full of potential lover, always being the one to break it off, never failing to land the handsome man across the room once she has decided she wants him.

Perhaps this is because she is pretty, but I think it’s more than that. I am pretty, too, this go round, and I continue to be disappointed that you can’t see it.

I am tall, which is always preferred, since those times I have not been I have viewed my lack of height as nearly a handicap, especially when it comes to keeping up with you, who have never been less than six feet tall (how do you manage that? I keep intending to find out).

I have gorgeous hair, Gabriel. Everyone comments on it. It hangs nearly to my waist, and this is not at all common nowadays, so it is a feature. I am lucky: this time I was born to parents who hail from wildly different regions, and the resulting mix is very interesting. My father is African. Not African American, although I am an American this time, but he is actually from the continent of Africa. Kenya, to be specific. Nairobi, and now you’ll recall the beaches, I am sure. His family has houses along one of the beach strips, and when we went in summers, I thought of you.

My mother is Scandinavian. Yes, I know! What an odd pairing. He is the blackest night, and my mother is whiter than the clouds in the sky. She is so pale, her eyelids are pink. So blonde, her hair seems white in certain light. By particular nationality, she is a Swede. I visited there in college, but she had no interest in coming, and no family is left there to see, anyway.

So these are the people who created me. I am the best of both worlds, my parents say, having escaped the thin haired beefiness of my mother’s region, and the particular lean of my father’s. I am tall and trim, but not too; my hair is thick and wavy, but just so. I have my mother’s aversion to heat, but manageably so, and my eyes are set, I am told at least, attractively wide. It is an interesting combination, so different from the last time you saw me, when you proclaimed me too pale at every turn and burned me to a crisp with your insistent beach visits.

Charlotte is different. Very conventionally pretty. Beauty pageant pretty – not interesting, in my way, but striking. She would perhaps remind you of Jane Russell, who you liked very much. You would like Charlotte, too. If any woman could have a chance given our possessiveness, that is.

Because you like details like this, I will tell you that Charlotte ordered eggs and I had a Belgian waffle. With too much syrup, and two sides of bacon. I eat horribly all the time, Gabriel, because this body seems incapable of gaining weight (no doubt my father’s Kenyan genes), and also – I’m sure you know I don’t care. The sooner my heart flutters to a stop, the better, although by all indications I will have to have thousands of waffle and bacon breakfasts for it to have much of an effect.

After breakfast, we wanted to walk (and thus put a dent in my artery clogging plans), so we mulled about downtown for a bit. It was chilly, but I didn’t mind, and Charlotte tolerated it for the sake of the shops. I have a hard time buying things – always have, as you know – because I haven’t figured out a way to keep favorites. I haven’t even figured out what will become of this manuscript.

Charlotte bought clothes, but this is not important.

The main thing about our outing today – what I wanted to tell you – is that I saw James! Yes, that James, from Paris. His name is not James now, and he is not an expatriate roaming the world two dollars away from being homeless altogether. He is a respectable professor (of history, of course) at Cambridge, and was in the states visiting friends.

Cambridge is about to celebrate its eight hundredth anniversary, and so I am sure you can imagine why James wanted to be working there during. I find it hysterical – all those scholars with no idea that one of their very first students is coming to the party. James and I snickered about this privately, Charlotte having been introduced and giving us a moment to catch up. Undoubtedly, she wanted to leave room for us to hook up.

That’s what they call it these days – hooking up. You don’t meet and date. You hook up. It’s all very casual.

As if I could hook up or down or even sideways with James, of all people. Hysterical too, that thought. He is with Claudia, though she was not on the trip, and I am to board a plane as soon as possible and go visit them. I will probably attend one of the events for the anniversary; seems a good reason to go. And now I am looking forward to something when I haven’t looked forward to things in a very long time.

By the way, Gabriel, you should know: James is mad at you.

More later.

-Anne

**

What James said to ask you, exactly, is whether or not you are fucking mad.

Those were his words, not mine, so I don’t want to see that face when you read this and have to hear the admonishment. You don’t like my naughty tongue, and I am behaving.

James, however, would like you to know that he is under no such agreements, whether it be about what to say or about this experiment we are conducting, which he calls ridiculous. He can’t believe you didn’t discuss this with him when you were both in between, and that we kept this secret, and he is disappointed from that angle, too. That we didn’t tell him this huge thing. And now he and Claudia are here, and we’ve run into each other and can begin the fun, and there is no you. It’s uneven, Gabriel, and that’s another thing we didn’t think all the way through.

So James has a proposition, and although it fits right in with what you told me to do, I want to think you will mind. At least, prepare yourself now to read the next few lines and pretend to mind, okay? I’ll be hurt if you hip hooray as if you are glad I went out and did what James has in mind, which is, essentially, to get me a man.

After we came back from our breakfast and walk, and Charlotte had dispatched herself to home, James called. We couldn’t very well have an in depth discussion of our reincarnated lives and all the plans therein while standing in the English store, marmite in hand, customers who don’t believe in such things brushing past. So he came by for a proper talk, and to find out the details, and to impress upon me the importance of booking a flight immediately.

“Anne,” he said, and his voice was rough. “Why are you doing this? No, don’t answer that – it’s Gabriel, isn’t it?”

It’s all so very complicated, and I wasn’t going to succeed in converting James to supporting us in this venture without some help. So I uncorked some wine, and was generous with the pouring, and finished mine before I even let myself say your name to him.

Of course, he drank his wine, too, and you know James. He teases. He wanted to know what I was doing with you, which is not at all a new question, but there was more of an edge to it this time, so I answered him seriously. Which means I talked to him about Italy.

You and I finally shared our secrets when we’d been married a little over one year. It was explosive, the telling – you caught on to exactly what I was trying to say and nearly crushed me with your responding embrace. You’d never been with anyone like yourself, not in that way. We stayed up all night, feverishly whispering our stories, which were legion and not possible to truncate. We worried together that we would be heard, and being exposed was never a good thing if it was in the company of them – the people who didn’t come back at all, or didn’t remember if they did. History had recorded some interesting responses to the discovery of one or a group of us – the stories eventually revised by enough of us to keep our secret safe. Even now, without a breach in so long, I shudder when I think of horrible times, like the Salem trials, and look over my shoulder for days.

But no one heard us, and we delighted in each other anew. Every memory was safe to share now, and I think you told me the name of every ship you’d ever sailed on, while I was bursting with a new story to tell you every day. And then eventually we knew each other’s stories well enough, and settled into living and loving – and aging – in the present, and we couldn’t avoid the topic any further.

How would we find each other again?

I won’t go into the hurdles we counted out, because they will depress me. You know my greatest fear was that you would come back this time, and not tell me. Encountering each other is a fickle miracle left to fate unless it is planned point by point. You could easily avoid me. Maybe it’s you who needed to….

This is the type of thinking which you abhor. I’ll stop.

First, we crafted a mark. A symbol, easily created by both a craftsman if we could afford it, from silver. And if we could not afford it, it had to be able to be carved in wood. An amulet, of our own design. We decided square was easiest for the piece, with a round symbol inside, in the shape of a teardrop. The teardrop would symbolize how lonely we’d be until we found each other (dramatic, yes, but ultimately very, very true). This symbol we would wear around our necks.

Next, we decided we needed to designate a meeting place. It would have to be a place which was not in danger of disappearing – you and I were great historians of that phenomenon, the way the earth could blink and great civilizations no longer existed. Looking back, our selection of Rome was faulty. We were basing it on age, and power, and certainly I can now tick off places which were chronologically ancient then and are now paved over and serving as a parking lot for something new. But Rome has persevered logistically, if not politically, and it has always been our place.

We chose a small area near what is now Vatican City; a beach on the Tyrrhenian Sea. As soon as we were able, we were to travel to that place on the one hundredth day of the year (a potentially disastrous plan, considering how calendars kept evolving, and I wonder that we ever laid eyes on each other again).

Our practice run was horrendous. Simply terrible. Travel in that time was an act of supreme bravery, particularly to travel outside the borders of your own land without accompanying protection. You were some sort of nobility at the time – I forget exactly why – but we could not form an adequate explanation for why we wanted to go to Rome, a place very few people were in favor of, and then frolic around on a beach, when absolutely no one we knew did that.
So we went alone, barely avoiding being captured and enslaved, and committed to memory our little spot on earth, and promised to return to it every year the next time, on the one hundredth day, until we both appeared and could leave it together.

That first time, Gabriel. My God – the joy alone should have killed us with its weight.

I initially went when I was twelve, having been born to nobility in Rome again, and had comparatively nowhere to go. I had been disappointed – I wanted to make more of an effort. Nonetheless, as soon as I was old enough to begin the journey, I went. I came home very disappointed and in need of a sufficient explanation for having disappeared for two days, which I never did find.

When you finally came, you were a Celtic, living in what would become Spain, and seventeen. We were both seventeen by then. This means I went five times before you were able to complete your trip (later you would tell me you’d attempted it several times). I have never been able to adequately express to you those five separate days, and what I endured during them.

And I won’t dwell on it now, because you did come, and we didn’t need any of the greetings we had practiced to know each other. Somehow I knew, standing at one end of “our” beach, that it was you at the other end, and not just because who else would have been arriving at sunrise?

You were tall again, and brown skinned, your hair an inky black. You were wearing our pendant in silver; so was I. You stood out against the pale sand, and honestly, Gabriel, you were practically naked, considering the temperature. Later you would tell me that in your excitement to get to the beach (for some reason, you never doubted I would be there) you had simply slid on your pants and your shirt, which was all ruffles and no heft.

When I saw you, my breath caught, and I froze in place, emotion marbling my limbs. You saw me, and stopped to assess. We stared at each other for a long moment, and then you came to me.

You did not run. You strode purposefully, with long strides, your fists pumping at your sides, until you reached me, and then you took my face between your hands tightly, and kissed me.

Your kiss was rough with longing. Seventeen years passes so slowly here – this is something you are forgetting right now, as we always forget in between. You pressed your mouth so hard into mind that I felt your teeth against my lips, and my own lips were later swollen from the friction of being crushed between us. Your body didn’t move during that kiss, but mine did. I circled your waist with my arms, pulling myself against you, attempting to eliminate the possibility for even an atom to pass between us. You continued holding my face, devouring me with your mouth, your hands so steady and strong I could not have turned away had I wanted to.

I was in danger of collapsing from lack of air when you finally broke free, taking a step back to look at me, but not releasing my face.

You used our practice greeting. “May I ask you a question?”

Your voice held the lilt of your current homeland. I loved it immediately.

“Who is Anne?”

“She is Gabriel’s,” I answered, finishing our greeting, which to any listening ears would sound like some secret riddle, but would not be enough to raise suspicions or concerns. We were using our celestial names – the names we were created with, and not the ones given to us by our parents. Those names we discarded each time without bothering to learn the other’s. I’m smiling now, remembering the confused looks you prompted from my family when they heard you address me as Anne (forget about the floppy explanations we provided for your presence in Rome altogether). They knew me as Tullia.

“I wanted to be certain,” you joked, knowing well that if I had not been Anne, I would have protested your assault and probably had you arrested.

I raised my hands to yours, caressing them, and then lowered both sets and stepped away. I twirled slightly, bathing in your gaze, and wanted to know what you thought of me.

“Enough to marry you now.” You spoke in Arabic, which we have always considered the proper language of our relationship. “But I have a bias. How long do we have to wait?”

I never did ask you what you were asking about. I assumed. “I live here. And I am seventeen, making my own decisions.” This was only partially true. What was more accurate was my preparedness to run away with you if necessary.

You caressed my face, stepping forward to close the distance between us. “I have papers. Money.” You began tickling my face with light kisses, slightly fervent in your adoration, because the sun was getting higher and you would have been thinking that soon we would need to behave ourselves.

“You’ll need to see my father,” I said, breathless.

“I assumed.”

“When?”

“I need to get set up. I only arrived yesterday. I was mad thinking I might have been late, delaying by another year possibly. I have a contact who can craft a reason; introduce me properly. It shouldn’t be you.”

I started to protest, and you put your hand over my mouth. It was meant to stop me from speaking, and you were successful in that endeavor, but I’m afraid I took advantage and took one of your fingers in my mouth, using my hand to slowly withdraw it as I looked into your eyes. There was salt on my tongue from your skin; you’d been in the water recently.

“So Rome is all you have described, then?” You asked this in reaction to my sensual act, performed so openly. Anyone could have come upon us.

“More,” I promised.

“Then we should try to stay as long as possible.”

“I live here,” I reminded you. “We will be comfortable.”

Relaxed now, you pulled me against you, comfortably rocking us in the sand, even as I worried about whether you were too cold. If you were chilled at all you did not say, you just stood there, holding me, unwilling to break our bond unnecessarily. You kissed me again, and though it lacked the same roughness I still felt the waves of depravation leaving you, your tongue tasting my mouth with the hunger of a man whose appetite had been whetted, but still had much more to consume before he was satisfied.

I was your prey, and more than willing to be so. I think – no. I know that it was on that beach, the sunlight sprinkling over us, that I began to believe that what we had was permanent. That I hadn’t simply been a girl dreaming of a lost love, longing for something which could never be recreated. I knew that day that you were as much a part of me as any other fragment of my soul which survived these surreal trips into time and space.

I thought you knew, too. Not just overall, but on that day in particular. The way you took my hand in your browner one, leading me away from the water and to the horse you had purchased in Gaul, had been telling. There was a tenderness in your movements, as if you had a new appreciation for me. For what we had. At any rate, we did not spend any of our time together then questioning our futures. We planned. We assumed. That day on our beach was our official merger, more significant than any of the marriages we ever cocooned ourselves within.

I told all this to James. He still thinks you’re full of shit.

I was silent about that last dig, and I apologize, but you know that sometimes there is no immediate reasoning with him. He needed his complaint, and I allowed him to have it. The one time he did try to understand, I was not cooperative.

“Anne, does this have anything to do with Irene?”

I’d closed my eyes then. I was not prepared – I am not prepared – to discuss Irene. Not yet. He waited only a beat, then let it drop and moved on.

“So you are coming when? Fire up your computer! We need to check flights.”

“Shouldn’t you call Claudia?” I asked, slightly recovered. “Check her schedule.”

James looked at me as if I’d grown two more heads. “Since when do we not all drop whatever we have going when we meet? Besides, you know Claudia. She is not doing anything which would even remotely result in having a schedule.”

I smirked at this, mentally sifting through the professions Claudia had chosen for herself through the incarnations she’d had since we met. She was partial to the arts – not because she was ever born with any notable talent, but because Claudia-as-artist had an excuse to so rarely did things such as earn income and hold responsibilities. Last time our house would have been stuffed with her, shall we say, achievements, had James not come to our rescue and called a cease fire to her giveaways.

I laughed out loud. It was entirely unfair that she continued to be born without the gifts she so actively sought. Her actual talent was with numbers, but use of that skill so tediously resulted in actual jobs more often than not.

“Where is the computer?” James was asking.

I ducked a little, anticipating the response. “I don’t own one.”

His eye roll was expected and dramatic. James believes in embracing the spoils of progress. As do you. On the other hand I am still mourning the dissolution of inkwells and quill pens.

“I could call a travel agent,” I suggested.

“Absolutely not. To get to England? Overkill.” He stood, gathering his coat and tossing objects he found lying around to me; my scarf, my gloves. “I have a laptop.”

A laptop, Gabriel, is a computer which sits on your lap. You will see. Or more probably they will have something even smaller available when you get back, and I’ll be showing you a laptop in a museum.

I allowed myself to be dictated to and got my outer clothing assembled and on. We left, off to check flights and arrange my trip to England.

**

I had to come back to this portion, because I don’t want you to read ahead without this… preview. I should go ahead and confess now, Gabriel, that this will not be the last time you read of me allowing James to tell me what to do. And you will like it the other times even less than I am guessing you do right now.