The Stranger

Chapter 9

This is a summary of my relationship:

We meet in a coffee shop in Seattle when I am a freshman in college.  You tell me your parents live in Spain. You came to Seattle for a summer to study English, but your English was as perfect as your smile.  For three weeks, we walked thought the city, sharing laughter and the rain.  You told me about your life in Spain, said your mother was a doctor and your father was a lawyer.  You said you hated the law, and loved only literature.

You are travelling.  You are finding yourself.  You are looking for enlightenment.  You pass through this town like a ghost, and sometimes leave me crumbs, and imaginary kisses.  I'm a woman, but I feel like a girl whenever you call, whenever the phone vibrates with your number, I'm a teenager alone on Friday night waiting for you to pick me up.

You treated me like your mistress for years, paying for everything, the drinks, the movies, the trips to Europe.  I beg you to take me to Spain, but you refuse because you say it bores you.  You make love to me passionately in exotic locations, but always like a ghost, always withdrawing, and each time further and further away until you were gone. 

You become a phone call from Paris. 

A letter from Rome. 

A signed first edition of One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez that said only: Love, me.

I take on other lovers in college to try and make you jealous, but you tell me things will be what they are meant to be.

You came when I graduated from the University of Washington, and danced with me on top of the Space Needle, but said you had to fly the next day back home because your father was ill.

When I got my job at the University of Oregon, you came to Eugene, and stayed a week in my bed, making me Spanish tortas and tapas.  I almost believed that this time you would stay, that the curse was only a figment of my young imagination, but on the last day in my arms, you said that a week was the longest you could stay, and that we now only had six days remaining before either the curse was broken, or you disappeared forever.  I didn't believe you, but now I see that you were telling me the truth.

When I saw you that night beneath the streetlight after I broke up with Jacob, that made five, and after the night at the gallery, we we're down to four, so what do I do now? 

You said Lorenzo held half the riddle to break the curse, but I don't know what that means anymore. He didn't give me any words.  I don't even know if you are real or just part of my imagination.  I need you.  I need you here with me now, to let me know how all of this will end. 

I call, but you won't answer.  I try to work on my novel, but I can only think of you.  I'm stuck on chapter nine when I am alone, the wizard is holding me captive in a high castle, and the only way I can think of getting out of it is jumping.