Flash Fiction
Please Come Back
Carousel of opaque memories
A sigh. A look. A small gesture. A whiff of eau de cologne. The sound of the tram passing outside of her apartment. Raymond finds it hard to remember Eva as a complete picture. His memory of her is like cubism. A hotchpotch of fragments that suggests a reality but doesn’t intend to reproduce the original experience of it. It’s an adaptation. An interpretation. When Raymond thinks of Eva — her voice, her nail bitten fingers, her wispy hair, her cute boobs and her incredible ass — all that his thoughts encompass, is a rehashing of something elusive. And somehow it seems accurate. Wasn’t she as elusive when he was with her? Didn’t he have doubts about her presence when he kissed her or when they fucked? He recollects looking up at her while he was licking her clit and labia. She seemed to be distracted — or was she attracted? — by something outside of her window. It was a winter morning. The sky was grey and the light diffused. Raymond knew that from her window you could see the top of a plane tree. Eva had smiled like the Mona Lisa and he had wondered if it was caused by his oral skills or that a pigeon sitting on a branch had pleasured her. On their second date, he’d asked her during dinner if food bored her. His question had been prompted by the seemingly heedless way that she ate. As a chef, it was unfathomable to Raymond that anyone could be indifferent to the beauty and the magical impact of ingredients on the human palate. But Eva had fiercely denied the idea of being bored or phlegmatic. She’d started a passionate argument about the importance of food to our understanding of human existence. She’d compared food to music, stating that both communicate solely through physiological experience. With delight, Raymond had noticed the fire in Eva’s eyes as she was philosophizing. And he’d understood that he was so attracted to her because she seemed to be a strange and nebulous woman. It was only later, after her disappearance that he realised that her culinary plea had hardly been directed at him. Her eyes had skittered all over the place, never really resting on anyone or anything. Her gaze seemed to follow her words as they fluttered through the restaurant before losing their decibels and dissolving into the rich and spicy scented air.
When Eva disappeared it was in character so to speak. Like a logical consequence of her being. To think of her vanishing in terms of “where could she have gone?” seemed too concrete. Raymond often said “she could be anywhere” when people asked him about the mystery. But he thought he could easily say ‘anything’ instead of ‘anywhere’. To him, it was entirely plausible that she was able to change form. Not that this was consoling in any way. He had been devastated by losing her. He’d sobbed uncontrollably for weeks. Even now, seven years later, there were moments in the kitchen of his restaurant that sudden tears fell into a soup or sauce. Or the back door would open and he expected her to stroll in, kiss him on the cheek and jokingly ask “what’s for dinner?”
Last night Raymond has fucked a woman he met on Tinder. She is similar looking to Eva of course. Wispy blond hair, squint-eyed, girly slender body. She crawled on top of him and while she was riding his cock she smiled at him constantly. Her eyes locked on his, not only did she show him how she was enjoying the sex but she even said it out loud. To Raymond’s surprise, he loved it. Her words aroused him. Her bright smile and her obvious joy pushed him over the edge. He orgasmed with such relaxed delight that he burst out laughing. The woman who’d introduced herself as Stella responded to this with her own giggles. She held his cock inside her as she rubbed herself to a climax. When she collapsed on his chest Raymond took her firmly in his arms. “I’m happy,” Stella said and she fell asleep.
Raymond cries in silence. It is so simple to just hold this unfamiliar woman and sink into their togetherness. He lies awake for another hour and inevitably he revisits his memories of Eva. He has clung to all the fragmented images, thoughts and feelings for seven years. He has believed that being Raymond means being part of Eva, present and absent. That idea is now being questioned. He can sense the change inside him. It’s like a flutter of wings. He thinks of the pigeon or whatever bird it was in the plane tree outside of Eva’s apartment. Maybe it had flown up and maybe that particular moment had coincided with a flush of pleasure tingling Eva’s pussy. Or maybe not. Raymond realises that he has been trapped in a stream of consciousness. Now he flows on the rhythm of Stella’s calm and regular breathing. He inhales her scent. He savours the taste of her still lingering on his tongue. It soothes him. The crazy carousel of opaque images that has raged through him in an attempt to make sense of his loss is suddenly replaced by the image of a small plant he’s incorporated in a new recipe. Sea aster. Raymond closes his eyes and the purplish pastel of the daisy-like flower dominates his sleepy vision. The saline taste of the leaves he so loves to make a buttered salad with mingles with the recent memory of Stella kissing him softly on his doorstep before inviting herself in. He slumbers off to sleep smiling.
Before dawn, Stella wakes Raymond up. “I have to go,” she says. Raymond nods sleepily and gets up to make her a coffee. He watches her drink her ristretto. “Good coffee,” Stella says. He accompanies her to the front door. She kisses him. “I’d like to come back,” Stella says. “Please do,” Raymond replies. He stands on the threshold and watches her walk down his street towards the tram stop. Soon enough the first tram of the day screeches around the corner. Stella waves to Raymond when she passes him. Her smile is as bright as the early morning sun rays that are waking up his beloved Lisbon.
