Maxim Jakubowski - I Was Waiting for You

Jack had switched to citron pressé and nursed it slowly, drowning the drink in sugar. He leafed through the current issue of a film magazine he’d picked up earlier at a kiosk. Most of the features were about new French actors and actresses he knew little about.

Many years ago, this place had been the very centre of his private universe, as he regularly missed lectures and sought comfort in the familiarity of these old-fashioned surroundings, the shiny metal counter, the sizzle and hiss of the coffee machine, his gaze invariably captured by the full-size glass window on the other side of which passers-by trooped by, many of them women, young, old and in between but all unapproachable and distant to him. With a quiet smile, he recalled the day Mary Ann Armshaw had walked in. Blonde and skinny, all-American and, then, his distinctive ideal of the perfect Yankee corn-fed beauty. She had not been alone, but her companion, also American, was on the curvy side and had dark hair to her shoulders. He had listened to their conversation as they sipped their coffees, unaware as they were that he was also English-speaking. They had arrived in Paris four days earlier, on a student exchange programme and both young women were still in awe of and scared of this new city which proved so different from their small Midwest town. None of his mates had been around that day so, on a whim, he had quickly decided to follow the girls when they left the café. For two hours, they navigated the small streets and corners of the Left Bank, with him never more than fifty metres or so away. They appeared quite aimless and fancy free, peering at shop windows, at buildings, walking along the busy streets as if they had all the time in the world. More than once he almost gave up the chase and returned to his flat. Had it begun raining that evening, he would certainly have done so, but the weather just about held. The day grew darker and one of the two young American girls finally noticed his presence in their wake and they quickly glanced at him observing them from a distance, quietly conferred and then made a beeline for the nearest bar. This was still the days when almost every other door led to a café in the Latin Quarter.

“You’ve been following us, Monsieur” the blonde girl said to him as he walked in and stood by the counter next to them.

He’d smiled. “Yes, I saw you in the other bar earlier.”

She looked him straight in the eye. He held her stare.

“I often sit there in the afternoons…” he continued.

The darker-haired girl squinted a little as she gave him a closer look and it dawned on her that he was actually speaking English. And with no French accent.

“You’re not… French?”

He sighed with relief. They were seemingly not going to prove rude or aggressive. They were now curious. The ice had somehow been broken.

“No, I’m a foreigner here myself… like you,” Jack added.

“Oh.”

He no longer recalled today what her friend’s name had been, and her participation in the ensuing conversation turned out patchy to say the least. Two weeks later, she returned to America, having proven unable to adapt to the distinct charms and perils of Paris. Mary Ann Armshaw had stayed behind, and remained the full nine months of the academic year.

In addition to Jack, two of his friends, that he knew of, actually slept with her during that period, although he was sorry to discover later he was not actually the first and sly Marcel had breached her uncertain defences long before he did. He’d always been the quiet one. When his time came, she allowed him to do almost anything to and with her except touch her breasts. He still remembered those small breasts now as they rapidly became the very focus of his desire and he would on every single encounter try to get her to change her mind. But he never did succeed. Whenever a finger, let alone a whole hand, ventured inches forward towards her tits, she would begin to squirm uncontrollably as if the contact could have proved capable of setting her nipples, her very skin, on fire. Had he actually touched her there, he knew for sure she would have screamed like a banshee and thrown him violently off her and stormed off at great velocity in any random direction.

Anything but her breasts. Today, sitting in that bar, that haunt of his younger days, he could remember no other body part of Mary Ann Armshaw. Don’t ask Jack what her features were like or whether she was tall or small, or how long her blonde hair was. Just her pale, small breasts and her name came to mind. He wondered where she was now and if she had married her high school boyfriend after her return home? And was now a mother, or even a grandmother?Or even alive?

This place was so full of strange memories. It had been ages since he had even thought of Mary Ann. Why now recall yet another woman he had failed to truly connect with? He pushed the magazine aside and drowned his glass. Should he stay or should he go? The weather outside appeared unsettled and it was too early to go eat, and if he stepped back to his hotel room, a ten-minute walk away from the Rue St André des Arts, he knew he would no doubt doze off trying to kill time and wake up way past midnight with an unquenchable appetite. He called out for a further espresso.

He watched all the women walk by outside through the bar’s windows. There were men too, of course, but they were almost invisible to him. They came in all shapes, sizes, ages and colours, a melting pot of movement and limbs and lust.

He smiled.

Was he turning in old age into some sort of pervert who found every single unreachable woman trooping past out there an object of desire?

He chuckled quietly.

And silently answered his own question: no, he was not. He had always been that way: a dangerous dreamer, a fantasist, an unrepentant lover of the female kind.

And some had loved Jack back too.

But all too often in the wrong place or at the wrong time.

Like now.

He peered at the empty cup of espresso. The sugar had congealed at its bottom, but the taste was no longer present in his mouth. All he could taste was a bitter tang of loneliness.

Jack sighed.

Which is when the man walked through the door.

Outside, a deeper night was falling, darkness surrounding the narrow Paris streets like a blanket floating solemnly to the ground. The evening regulars at the café were making place for the night owls, another species of drinkers altogether.

The middle-aged man who had entered the bar gave him a rapid glance and walked towards his table. For a brief moment he annoyingly obscured Jack’s view of the street and a sumptuous passing redhead with unending legs and a cinched leather jacket who had momentarily caught his attention.

The stranger had a broken nose and short, greying hair and was dressed in a long green woollen coat which reached all the way down below his knees. Under the coat, he was wearing dark brown slacks and a white button-down shirt open at the neck. He didn’t appear to have shaved for a few days and the stubble across his cheeks and lower jaw veered patchily between black and white.

With no hesitation whatsoever, the stranger faced him and sat himself down on a chair across from the table where Jack had spent the last few hours in deep thought and reflections.

“I know who you are,” he said. He spoke to him in French, but he had an accent Jack couldn’t immediately place.

“Do you?”

“Yes,” the man confirmed.

He wasn’t in the habit of being recognised in public, but it was nothing to worry about. He had done readings and participated in literary festivals in several countries. Maybe that was the explanation.

“Great,” he said. “What can I do for you?” he asked the stranger. There were deep, swollen red pockets under the man’s eyes as if he had recently been crying a lot.