THESE ARE A FEW EXCERPTS FROM SOME LOVE
STORIES THAT ARE SURE TO CHEER YOU UP,
MAKE YOU CRY, OR EVEN MAKE YOU WANT REVENGE.
Cafe at Night
Kirk Israel ([email protected])
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I sit in the cafe, and fret. It is a beautiful cafe, full
of young
couples flirting and old men playing chess. The cafe is exactly what I
had always thought a European cafe would be, with white tables and
chairs pouring over the esplanade onto the sidewalk. I look at my watch.
It's a few minutes past seven. Where is she?
I order another coffee. The coffee is very strong and good. She is
supposed to be here by now. Is this the right place? I glance at the
napkins. No, this is the cafe. Where is she? I look for her face in
the passing crowd. The city here has a distinctive sound and rhythm,
different from a city back home. A siren wails in the distance, and it
sounds very foriegn. I sip my coffee and start worrying again.
Quarter past seven. I look for her face in the passing crowd, but she's
not there.
I take out a pen and start drawing on a napkina bad habit of mine.
I
never draw anything important, just cartoons. People with stupid grins,
and frogs. Sometimes I wish I could draw things, real things, instead
of
dumb cartoons. I write her name on the napkin, but I quickly draw over
it, embarrassed. Where is she?
"How are you?"
She's here! I stand and we hug, briefly and awkwardly. We sit, and
she
orders a coffee. She apologizes for being late. I tell her that it's
okay.
She smiles, and arranges her things. On the street, a green cab swerves
at
the last possible moment, barely missing a pedestrian. Both the pedestrian
and the driver scream curses at each other, but the cab doesn't even slow
down. We look at each other and I laugh, but it sounds forced.
She looks so beautiful. It was her physical beauty that first drew
me to
her, over three years ago and an ocean away. It isn't an adolescent fantasy
glamour: it is more subtle: every part of her seems to be the perfect
complement of every other part. I notice she's looking at me, and I
realize that I have been staring. I quickly look down into my coffee.
We start talking. She tells me that things at the university are going
well for her, but that there is so much work there! I tell her life at
my
school is good, sometimes a little dull. We chat a little more, about
our
families and a few old friends. Her English isn't as sharp as when she
left, three years ago. That's not too surprising, I suppose. I feel
terrible that I know almost nothing of her language, and I tell her that.
She tells me that that's okay, and that I shouldn't worry so much. She
was always so good in languages, I have always envied her of that.
I ask her how the saxophone lessons are going. She laughs, and tells
me that they are still going well, but that she doesn't practice enough.
She played piano when she came to my high school, and she joined the jazz
band there. That's really where we met. She was a classically trained
pianist, and sometimes had trouble in ensemble jazz work. Our jazz band
wasn't the greatest technically: what we lacked in substance, we very
nearly made up for in style. The judges at competitions had always remarked
on our energy on stage. When she returned to her own country, she started
studying the saxophone.
We start talking about the year she spent at my high school. She came
as a Senior in my junior year. We had a few mutual friends, both sax
players, both in the band. We started talking during the breaks in the
rehearsals. Later I received a small part in the high school's annual
musical, and she was an extra. There was a lot of time when neither of
us had to be onstage, and we talked then too. It was shortly after the
jazz band's trip to Boston that she asked me to prom. I accepted. I
realize that I have been talking too much, and that my throat has gotten
very dry. I order a Coca Cola.
I tell her my theory of Coca Cola representing the very best and very
worst of American culture, that only the U.S. could make such a wonderful
drink and that only a country like the U.S. would want to. She laughs,
and
orders one for herself. A mother and her daughter walk past the cafe,
in
identical blue dresses. I smile as I watch her eyes follow them down the
street. I think back to all the times she would point out little children
playing, and how we would always stop and watch.
The summer following the close of school was a wonderful time. I was
in love, and I think so was she. Our relationship was satisfying mentally,
physically, and emotionally: it was the first romance I had ever had that
was. It wasn't just a matter of being able to tell her anything, it was
a
matter of wanting to, also. We talk about that: we talk about many things.
I tell her how I would drive past the house of the family she had spent
most
of the year with. She tells me of her father's new job. I describe changes
in the high school. We talk for a long time.
We wrote consistently for two or three months after her departure.
Then the number of letters from her dwindled, and the ones that did come
dealt more and more with the mundane parts of her life. I feared then,
and asked her if her feelings had changed. They had. It's getting later
in the evening. The streetlights put everything in a strange, unearthly
light. Her hair casts her face in shadow. I ask her about the letters.
She looks down at the table, and then she meets my gaze. She places her
hands on the table. "We said we were going to be realistic,"
she reminds
me. "The last night I was there, in the restaurant."
"But didn't you have feelings for me back then?" I ask.
Of course she did. But our romance was never meant to survive that
kind
of distance. We both needed somebody who could be there, whom we could
talk
whenever we needed to. But still, my soul felt captured, and she was firmly
on a pedestal in my mind, a great unrequited love. I have had relationships
that were in most ways better than the one I had with her, more mature,
more
firmly ground in reality: and still I felt very deeply for her. She told
me
before that she was seeing someone: that she had started seeing him a few
months after her return. I hope she is very happy with him, I swear to
God
I do, but I am afraid to ask.
"It is very late," she says.
She's right. The hours have passed quickly. The old chess players
are
gone, replaced by small groups of younger men and women. We settle with
the
waiter, and stand. We walk onto the sidewalk, slowly. She turns and faces
me. She extends her hands, and I reach to take them. The air now has
a nip
to it, and she shivers slightly. We stand there and look at each other
for
a moment that echoes, silently. She looks so beautiful. We kiss, once,
very gently. "Bye," she says. Reluctantly I let go. I watch
her turn and
walk down the dark sidewalk, not sure if I'll ever see her again.
from "CINEMA PARADISO"
Giuseppe Tornatore
"Once...a king gave a feast for the loveliest princesses
in the
realm. Now, a soldier who was standing guard saw the king's daughter
go by. She was the most beautiful of all and he fell instantly in love.
But what is a simple soldier next to the daughter of a king?
At last he succeeded in meeting her, and he told her he could no
longer live without her.
The princess was so taken by the depth of his feeling that she said
to the soldier, "If you can wait for 100 days and 100 nights under
my
balcony, at the end of it I shall be yours."
With that the soldier went and waited one day...
two days...
then ten...
then twenty.
Each evening the princess looked out, and he never moved! In rain,
in wind, in snow, he was always there! Birds shat on his head, bees stung
him- but he didn't budge.
At the end of ninety nights he had become all dry, all white. Tears
streamed from his eyes. He couldn't hold them back. He didn't even have
the strength to sleep. And all that time, the princess watched him.
At long last, it was the 99th night...
and the soldier stood up, took his chair and left."
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