Even though the Sun felt light as a feather in that afternoon, every time I closed my eyes in there I could swear he was coming closer. There was a beautiful silence filling the room where the sweat of our bodies felt like an oasis in the desert, and our names were being chanted as if they were the only words that made sense at that time. It was a special fragment of my day; to be so close to God that I could touch her, to be so close to living that I could die, to be so close to grace that I could pray on my knees. I felt like my mind could go anywhere for once, and not be bound to my boring job and my boring routine. I felt more like a painting than a human being – no, I felt more like a sculpture. I felt like from my body the most primordial clay was being taken off just to mold a perfect model of a soul, so I could eat it and pretend it’s mine. And the taste would be divine, because her taste was divine. She was my trembling legs, my trembling mouth and my trembling soul, but so stern, as if she was a body and not a floating ghost like myself. And then I would open my eyes foolishly and she would be looking at me, trying to play my heart like her broken violin and looking for a kiss that came so dizzy it would feel desperate, but it was the rush of love. There was an innocence to that act of vulgarity, I thought, because she moved like it was only natural to do so. She didn’t felt perverted at any moment – she was a supreme ruler of her own volition, she was a mind more than she was a heart, while I was more like a soul: a vague concept that barely exists, but shows up in nights like these.

Yes, it was night, already. We kept looking at each other, trying to hold the smiles but failing, like children madly in love.

“I was thinking of what you said the other day”, I said to her, trying not to be hypnotized by those eyes.

“What did I say?”, she laughed.

“You said… We were at the cafeteria, of course, and you looked at the window and said that there was something quite awfully tragic about a foggy night.”

I got up and walked to the window of the room. I stared at the streets, that were completely unaware that a goddess had came down from the heavens that night just to walk through that pavement and meet me.

“I think sight is important, I guess…”, she interrupted me, playfully.

“Is that all? I remember hearing you say that and thinking ‘she must be watching too many of those melodramatic movies’”

“Stop it, you…”, she laughed. I hate to be even more indulgent, but if the Gods couldn’t make me relive that entire night just one more time, I would ask for them to just play that laugh of hers in loop for a couple of hours. It would be my everlasting medicine. “If I have to be honest, you’re kind of on the money!”

“I knew it!”

“But. You’re. Wrong.”, she said it slowly, rejoicing on teasing me. “It wasn’t a melodramatic movie, it was just my melodramatic life.”

“Did something happen to you on a foggy night?”

“My ex-husband. He left me on the train station. It was awfully cold, but he didn’t hug me. One more touch and it would be too late for both of us.” She suddenly felt more serious and sad. “I have to be honest, I would’ve like that, at that moment. To give up my life to be doomed with him. But he was stronger, he just left without a kiss.”

She seemed haunted by someone, which was a thing I could understand very well. I tried to cheer her up.

“So you’re against foggy nights instead of being against a doomed love?”

“Every love is kind of doomed for me”, she layed on the bed and looked at the ceiling, partially out of here. “Every night has its share of fog.”

I felt a bit down at that moment. We were both feeling a bit more distant from the magic that happened a few moments ago.

“Do you still love him?”

“No…”, she said after thinking a bit. “You see, we were totally different. We had minds that couldn’t connect. But his hold was a nice place to rest. His voice was nice…” She went silent for a bit. “He hated music, that’s so funny… He loved to wear this stupid fedora that I hated. And still, we were puzzle pieces perfectly attached.”

I felt jealous, of course. She noticed, but I was quicker to talk.

“We see each other every day on the cafeteria for the past month. You never once spoke of this man. Tonight is our first night together and…”

“Don’t mind me. I do love you. Ghosts cannot touch us from where we stand in this realm of bodies and memories. You are by my side now, your flesh is the only surface by this moonlight. You are in the spotlight of this sky’s eyes, as deep in me as my own guts.”

She said fancy words that meant nothing but trouble, but they worked on me.

Our love started slowly. We’re both very busy, but we both lunch at the same cafeteria. That’s where we met. I sat by her side one day. She talked about music and things I didn’t even know could be called art. She had strong and interesting opinions about the most mundane aspects of life of which she cherished tremendously, and I could listen to her speak of the wonders of the world as if she was the priest forgiving me for being a devil in long legs. Religiously still, we would meet every day at the same time in the cafeteria, just to continue the conversation from the day before. After so much talk, we both ditched our jobs today and came here. Today, only today, she seemed a bit out of it. But she got very excited with the idea of this late rendezvous, I think it took her mind off of it for a while. Looking at her, staring lost at the cracks in the ceiling, I felt like what was haunting her earlier came back for a moment.

“I love you”, I said it because I felt like it was the only thing I could say.

“I love you, too.”, she said it because I said it first.

“I’m glad you’re here now. It’s a beautiful foggy night. But I won’t leave. You can see my face clearly from this room, you can touch me and you can talk to me. Until I die that will be your reality, if you wish to be with me. And if a night has more fog than an other, you hold my hand. I swear that even if I can’t see my own feet, I will lead you to wherever you want to go, through the densest fog and through your weirdest dreams.”

She stared silently at the ceiling for a bit. She turned and looked at me.

“Come lay with me. I need to be attached to you, my puzzle piece.”

I layed and we kissed. I stopped after a while and looked at her.

“I will travel tomorrow. You know that. I have work to do in another city. But please, promise me that you will go to that cafeteria, at the same time and in the same table, on the wednesday a month from now.” There was no need in repeating myself. She heard it loud and clear.

“I will meet you there. I’m already there. I’m already there, waiting for you to come back to me. To come back to this room and love me again.”

We kissed and the rest of the night felt like a dream.

The next morning, I got on the plane very early to the city of Casablanca in Morocco, the place I would live for the next month or so. When I arrived there, my mind was completely busy with how hot the streets were. But the people had nice smiles and they always seemed to be in a rush for something; “Well,” I thought, “This seems like my kind of place.”

I won’t tell you much about my job. It will bore you, I’m certain that it will. But I can tell you about the nights I spent on the bunker I shared with a few people I didn’t know anything about. They were hot, lonely nights with only walls and mosquitoes to talk to. I remember staring at this big wall on the other side of the bed and pretending a movie was being screened there from a projector on the back. I would direct my own movie, and I would be so tired that it was kind of like sleeping awake. I don’t understand a lot of psychology, but I really think my cafeteria goddess was in all of those fake dreams, to a certain extent. I wouldn’t really notice it until it was over. Sometimes she was the love interest, but sometimes she would be me. I remember a time when she was both, and then I was both. It was fun to write her in these fake scripts, but it wouldn’t fill the void of her vacancy in my heart. I wish I was by her side at that moment, protecting her from the foggy night.

I kept remembering our conversations at the cafeteria. God, do I always sound that dramatic? As if a very pretentious poet just wanted to regurgitate fancy words for his lover like a peacock spreads his wings? I don’t know, but she didn’t seem to mind. I had a few memories I liked to go back to in tough nights. There was this one…

“I was thinking of something…” She said, drinking a dark coffee while we enjoyed the voice of the rain outside.

“You can tell me.”

“Well, we said goodbye this other day. But I had so much to say. I remember thinking on the train all the stuff I wanted to talk to you about the next time we met each other here.”

I laughed. “This happens to me too, dear.”

“But then I started thinking about you, and what you could be doing now. You would be getting off the train, walking through the wet platform… And then you would get your umbrella. You would walk all the way to your house, probably singing a song.”

“That’s probably right.”

“And then I realized. I wanted to be a part of all of it. I wanted to see all of that. I wanted to slip in the wet platform and have you catch me, I wanted to share that umbrella with you. I wanted us to hum the same song as we would walk to our house. Darling, at that moment I wanted to be a part of every small piece of your life. To see you live your life upclose, no matter how simple it becomes. I wanted to see all the strains of your heart.”

I don’t remember what I answered to that, even though I could remember everything she said there and then. It helped me sleep well those thunderous nights. Time slipped through me just as the bunker started to become small, and suddenly I was in the plane going back to my house and, soon enough, to the cafeteria.

A couple of days passed and wednesday arrived. I arrived very early at the cafeteria, but took a long time to order anything. I didn’t wanted to be full before she got there. But time passed, and she didn’t pass through that promenade. I stayed there as long as I could. No sign of her.

Maybe she got mistaken. I went there the other day. She didn’t come. It went on like this for a week. On the wednesday, a week after our wednesday, I said to my boss I was sick and didn’t come to work, just so I could be there all day on the watch for her. Maybe she got the weeks mistaken. She didn’t show up.

I didn’t have a lot of time to waste on this for the rest of the year, sadly. Still, I went there every wednesday. A month passed. A semester. A year. I kept going there, but I was alone.

A few years after that, I had stopped going to the cafeteria. I assumed every worst possible, but I also just didn’t wanted to think much about it. I was still single, but I got promoted a few times over the years and things were getting steady.

As I was walking past that cafeteria one day, I decided to go there for lunch. It had been a long time since I last went there. I remember opening the door and searching the tables for her face there, waiting for me. She wasn’t. I just sat and ate a piece of pie.

Through the window, though, I saw someone on the promenade. It was her! But she wasn’t alone. With her, there was this short little fellow with a fedora and a mustache. They were laughing. Holding her right hand, there was a smaller little fellow with her. He was dressed nicely. They were all going somewhere. That’s when I noticed how still I was.

She got older, she got happier. Still, I felt rage and frustration and sadness. She couldn’t wait a month for me. She had a kid and the kid was not that young. He felt to me, while I was blinded by the anger, that he could have just as well been born nine months after our failed meeting. I wanted to go outside and scream at her face for leaving me, maybe throw some punches at the loser with the fedora and…

I looked around. The cafeteria had changed a lot, I hadn’t noticed that. The windows were much cleaner, but the inside just felt older. Much older. I looked at the floor and a collection of dead flies were meeting directly under the lightbulb. I could feel them whispering my name, since it was the only thing that made sense for them to say. The chairs and the table felt like they wouldn’t last another couple of years. Everything felt much older.

I touched the wallpaper next to the window, trying to check if there were cracks on the wall. Suddenly, the borders of the window collapsed on the ground and became dust. I got so startled I jumped from my chair, but then I noticed that the window was still there. But there was something odd about it. It didn’t feel like a window, it felt like a… Projection. Like a movie was being shown on that wall. I looked behind me and there it was. A projector. I looked back at the projection. There she was, living her life, but going offscreen to the other side of the promenade. I didn’t understand, but there was only her face there.

The whole place felt like it could fall apart at any moment. But I stared at the projection, lost. I couldn’t move. She kept smiling in the film. I couldn’t understand. I felt so still.

What happened next is clear to me now. The cafeteria collapsed. I remained. She continued to “be”, as I continued to “was”, and we both were part of a life that belonged to neither of us.

About this text: This is an old short story I wrote after watching Hiroshima Mon Amour. I decided to share it here after watching Noel Coward’s Brief Encounter and appreciating how similar both stories are. The clips before and after the story are from the David Lean movie.