One Night in Paris

Ayri Kalamiyorum

It wasn't until I was finally back in my small rented apartment that I realized I was still wearing his jacket.

I had a sudden urge to bury my face in it and just breathe him in again.

Do it. What harm could it do?

I told my inner voice to shut it and with Herculean effort, I controlled myself and slipped the jacket off my shoulders.

It was the one with the fingerprint on the back, so many memories tried to slip through the cracks in my mental walls. I flung the thing away like it was on fire. Something fell out of it onto the floor. I stared disbelievingly at my old bandana. I bent down to pick it up. It was wrapped around my book, dog eared and obviously well-read. Did he carry this around all the time? I couldn't deal with the fact that he read my book right now. I was too emotionally battered from seeing him tonight.

Oh, Can, what are you doing to me?

I slept wrapped in his jacket and drowning in his scent.

********

The next morning I walked into the quaint little bookstore where I was scheduled to do an author reading of my book. I was met at the door by the owner who had arranged the event.

"Oh, I almost forgot," she paused in her tour of the bookstore, "a man stopped by and asked me to give you this."

Mystified I took the small package from her and opened it. Inside was a beautiful pen with a note.

Yazmayi Bırakma,

Hayallerini de...

C.D.

*********

He's here.

I didn't see him but I felt his presence as soon as he walked in. I was right in the middle of reading a chapter of my book. I stumbled over the words and looked around over the small crowd but I didn't see him. How a man his size could go undetected was a mystery. As I nervously finished up the paragraph I was reading, the owner stood up and announced that a member of the audience had volunteered to read a favorite passage from the book. And then there he was standing up in the back of the room, his hair tousled, his eyes looking at me with a well of longing I could drown in. His deep voice sent shivers down my spine:

Can love include a war?

It turns out that yes it can.

My biggest war is with myself.

Trying to stay away from her and not being able to do so.

Praying she won't look at me with her lovely eyes but feeling hurt when she doesn't.

My war is with myself and my heart.

I love a woman, there's no one like her. No one has her voice.

Her courage

Her honesty

Her hands

Her eyes

If I don't love her, I have no one.

Her scent will stay with me forever.

The room held its breath throughout his modified recital of my words. He wasn't holding a book. He had recited the whole thing from memory. I was unable to move, pinned to my seat by the storm of emotion in his eyes. He took one last long look at me and left.

I sat stunned.

"This is Albatross, no?" Said the bookstore owner smiling.

I think I nodded yes but before my brain registered the command, I rose from my seat and ran.