When she met her husband, she could hardly believe her good fortune! It was almost as if the things she had been long wishing for, had somehow stuck together. At 33, she had dated but without fail the men who sat across the table from her had let her down. A butcher, a baker, a candlestick maker, each as relentlessly hopeless as the last. A long list of exceptions. Why nots. She had long started thinking herself to be a freak magnet and thus, when he entered her life she thought he was only a figment of her imagination.
He had walked in, a tourist in the town where she was working, registering to the hotel, he pulled out his ID. And she, like always, attracted to the shy sort, loving the ease to which she could make them red, flirted outrageously, simply to watch him blush. To her surprise, he with a brain as big as the country where he came from, retorted. She blushed instead. She was refreshed, embarrassed and she without thinking reached across the counter and touched his lapel. Green, bumpy, unusual, she thought him immediately interesting. They locked eyes, and she knew then, already, that she would marry him.
They spoke, the business of registration, with the edge of attraction. It was a sharp knife cutting through the formality of the process, the chasm was obvious.
He turned to leave and she admired him. His little boy legs and tight behind, she was highly attracted. He looked back, briefly as she watched in awe of him. They smiled. She noted his perfect teeth, like little white soldiers in a conforming row, broad, defending his soft insides.
She worked that day, as always, but distractedly thinking about this unique man who seemed to come from something that she conjured. Then when she saw him later, knew he would be there (she thought) checking in with the hotel computer, took a break to seek him. He was not, as she expected. She searched to no avail when suddenly on the way back to her post, they literally bumped into one another taking a close corner. “Hi,” she said, “I was looking for you”. He looked at her and said “I know”.
They met that day after she finished work. It was as she imagined, they had so much to talk about; he, smart, interesting, travelled. Leaning to the political left; they agreed on nearly everything and what they did not agree on they could laugh off, argue, sway, they danced like this all night in each other’s thoughts. Like the man who she long dreamed of, they found that they wanted the same things in life. They expected a certain lifestyle, had good work ethics, and he understood intrinsically all the things that she wanted/needed him to. She was in love with this dream, that had somehow walked right up to her desk from thousands of miles away.
They walked that night, ate, drank, paced the park, sat on the swings and watched the sun come up over the horizon and had by that time planned their life together.
The details would be difficult, so they forgot them then. He on side of the planet where people walk upside-down and she on the polar opposite. A different language, a different culture, thousands of miles; these all remained must since they knew, both of them, that there was will and that they would find a way.
He left that day. At ten am. She watched his black car pull away until it became as small as a dot at the end of a sentence.
