SARA'S WAY

My Julys in Paris were rained out. Raining at my return. Rain through the night, and every business day.

“Sur ce vaisseau,” she said.

I'd hurried, to not be late. Under the canopy, ahead of the chairs along the back wall, I sat opposite her at the small, round table; oui, two considered past.

“We leave,” she said, and stood up, dropping a coin onto the table; and a clink; and it rose and turned fast on it's edge; and it slowed; and fell tail to table with a clink; that sounded lavender to my ear. My eye moved to her hand, up her arm, and I looked at her. I smelled her.

We walked the Champs Elysee. Elbow to elbow, arm touching arm, shoulder touching shoulder; we walked through the large crowd of visitors to shops and restaurants; walked through them to the Eiffel Tower where an extravagant show of fireworks popped up into our view. We were soaked. We moved out of the wet crowd, into our own dripping in the heat of July.

She said, “I despise the feeling of wet clothes, sticking to my back, and my breasts, and my legs, clasping to me like a drunken lover's hands. Licking my flesh, foolishly.

As a fascination for it in childhood, she wore it, I thought. She had forgotten her umbrella.

I don't know why, but my mind (maybe for insight) in a flash, had me view her, sitting at the table where we had been earlier, at the Cafe d'Arbre du Japon. There was something I needed to see in the way she nervously flicked her cigarette. As if she'd cursed her situation.

“Sur ce vaisseau! Sur ce vaisseau!” she repeated as I could hear, upon entering her space. She knew she would go anywhere I asked. Do anything I wanted. Out of them all, I alone had that kind of power over her.

Sara is the kind of person who detests waiting. I had rushed to greet her. At the table she nodded slightly, and took a long drag of her cigarette. Sara's agitation, and her connections, always frustrates me. I know - in her mind - my past has formed a contradictory image. What did she have planned this time? Would it be like Madrid? Cairo?

“Come with me,” she said.

I followed behind. And the thin wisp of smoke led me to her car.

“You've got the diamonds,” I said.

“Did you bring the money?” she asked.

“I brought the cash,” I replied.

“Sit there,” she said, pointing to the back seat of the Peugeot.

I was forced to squeeze between two gorilla-sized men whose faces I could not outline because of the hoods and darkness. I was moved to her action, and it tore me silent. She nodded her head, pulling on a cigarette, driving down into Paris and narrowing streets with pockets of mist dropping on our path as if a dragon's exhaled breath was guiding us. That place we were going to do the business transaction, only Sara knew.

After, she put the money into her purse, left me at taxis and then later pushing Rene the Artist to fix the diamonds fashionably to the birdcage.

Once more she had surprised me. She held me captive. What had I figured within Sara's intrigue? Sara's way ... offered no discernible outline to an understandable condition.

They say of Paris, July will make for flesh a cloth of rain.

“Sur ce vaisseau,” she said, so often this meeting.

And I thought: Blow winds, whip the waves and wash the shores. Lightning flash and thunder roll. Rise. Rise up waters. Flow rivers, flood the fields and fill the woods. Drown the earth again. For the Lady Oracle never really tells us all she knows, but keeps her secrets close and only hints with cryptic tongue.