Emmanuelle drove me to the train station early in her old Land Rover Defender. I had a ticket on the first train through Lamballe at 7:40 which would take me to Rennes and then onto Paris where I had to change stations to catch my train to Barcelona. I knew I had a long day ahead of me, but frankly I was too drowsy to care or pay it much heed in the moment.
The last ten days had been that special kind of dream in the daytime; a weed-smoked bliss of beaches and bike rides through the countryside and the old villages and cider and moule frites and intriguing women and cavalier gentlemen of the best sorts (photographers, writers, designers, creatives, entrepreneurs, band managers, models, bakers, real estate ragers, the works, all ragers really), and a proper French family garden party, and spliffs, spliffs, spliffs, and hash and the best cocaine and the best molly, absinthe, excellent wine, home-cooked cake and galette, and oh yes, the cheese of course, and the red poppies and all the damned magic.
Emmanuelle's Defender sounds a little like my Dad's Ford Courier from when he used to drive me to school early in the morning before going into the office. This drive is remarkably different though. We're rushing through Brittany, the early morning sun poking through the clouds by the sea, the tide filled in all the way and into the wetlands. It's quite a different picture than on the way in with Sacha and Tom and Matthew and the other girls, Arielle and Magda and T-Pain in the trail car, when the tide was out and everything was mud and boats dry on their side on the flats.
It was just me and Emmanuelle. I had grown up with her daughters, Arielle and Sacha. I'd known them since high school, I used to go to parties at her house up in the hills in Los Feliz. Her daughter had taken me to prom, and so of course I knew they had horses growing up. She still had horses in fact, at her ranch in Ojai. Driving, I saw a black horse alone in a wet green field, and I asked Emmanuelle if she ever had one, a black horse.
She tells me she had in fact, her most beloved, and she tells me of the day it died, "...and she looked at me with her old eyes that day, and I knew, I knew she was saying goodbye to me and when I came close she nuzzled me softly with her nose, and it felt like something went for her to me that day, something transferred. I felt it. And she was gone in the morning. She looked so peaceful."
She tells me how she missed her and how she cared for her and gave her the best things in life. She tells me about the day her cat died too, and even in the drowsy morning it's ridiculously apparent that Emmanuelle holds in her heart the most precious kind of respect and beautiful love that I've ever seen in this life. There's shades of it in her daughters, but to be with her, alone with Emmanuelle in her Defender, it's such a jolt of goodness, like unfiltered coffee. She's straight French espresso, an absolute delight. Simply the way she talks and the youthful passion she has for everything dear is enough to make me wide awake for the coming journey ahead.
We roar into the sleepy town of Lamballe with five minute to spare, but get turned around on the skinny winding cobblestone roads and Emmanuelle pulls over to ask a couple of old geezers the way to the station. They oblige her starry-eyed. She has that effect on people. It's a small station, there's only one track and I see the train come to a stop as we pull up. "We made it! We just made it!" exclaims Emmanuelle. "Hurry! Hurry! Safe travels dear!" She's such a darling.
"Thanks for everything Emmanuelle! Thanks for letting us tear around your house for the week, and for all the berries and adventures and the secret beach and just everything. I had such a good time! Seriously thank you, thank you. A million times." I put my hands together towards her and can't help but smile before I turn and rush off to the platform with my backpack bouncing on my shoulders and my bag in tow.
*****
There is an old man at the train station; two bags, two tired eyes. He orders a cafe at the cafe, no croissant, no pain au chocolate, just a small espresso. Renne. He eyes the schedule board with his tired eyes and the train from Voie 7 at 9:05. A small squad of soldiers passes, four of them in military fatigues and freshly shaved faces, fingers just above the triggers of their fully automatic FAMAS rifles. One of them, the youngest one, looks tired too.
The old man with the espresso in hand goes tense in the neck for a second, stands closer to his bags and looks hard at his coffee as the soldiers pass. The oldest looking one looks him up and down without stopping. He's not tired at all. He's vigilant after the latest attacks. Everyone's a little on edge after Bastille Day.
The man's train is on time, and the man is already on the platform waiting dutifully. He gets on at the proper car and takes the seat on his ticket that's been reserved. He puts one bag in the overhead carriage and keeps the smaller bag in his lap, hugging it just casually enough so as not be awkward as he stares out the window at the other boarding and those making their way down the platform to the station. There's a wishful longing in his eyes as he watches them walk away. They're probably going to have a great day, the man thinks to himself, and he's jealous. He doesn't cry, not yet.
The man had gotten quite good at disguising his desperation and the emotion in him in the mirror at home. He had mastered his face, just as they'd told him to do.
A younger man, younger than the man who had mastered his face, sits down next to the old man as the train pulls away. It's a plop, and it startles the master.
The young man starts at the startle and looks the master up and down, his loose pants and his shirt and his arms clutched tight around his bag, but not with eyes like the soldier's. "Desolée. Pardon," says the young man in French, but his accent is not French, it's something else, and his French sounds like shit. "Tu parle anglais?" he asks. He's American.
The old man did in fact speak English. Yes, he spoke English and French as well among other things. "I do..." says the master cautiously.
"You much of a talker? asks the young man.
No, but the old man hesitates. Despite everything they told him, all the rules, all the outcomes, the master looks at the young man with the American accent and sees something familiar, something he used to possess way back once upon a time. It's camaraderie. It's congenial interest in other people and a knob on the master's oven nudges a little and clicks. He hadn't had a face-to-face conversation in weeks, nothing without some deep gravity behind it in months even. He'd never been a man of vices and his drug of choice used to be small talk. He used to talk to everyone. He used to always make friends on the train. The master's heart jumps at the prospect, and that surprises him, "You're in luck," he says. "I've just had my coffee."
"Fancy that. I've just had mine too," says the young man.
For a second the old man isn't thinking what was in his bag. He's not thinking about all the reasons he's supposed to hate the young man. He's not thinking about the hatred that the young man is supposed to have for him, the hatred they told him about, and in that second, there was a flash of light in the old man's heart and something began to grow; curiosity.
Who was this young man? "What is your name?" asked the old man.
The young man holds out his hand. "I'm Brian. What about you?"
"My name is Abel."
"Where you from Abel?"
The old man hesitates. Is this a trap? Best not risk it. "I am from Turkey."
"Turkey," says the young man thoughtfully. "Istanbul?"
"Yes. Istanbul." The old man had been to Istanbul. His memory of the city comes rushing back, the streets, the markets, the summer nights looking out across the Bosphorus Strait with the woman that he would marry. The mother of his child. They had been so young then, not unlike the young man sitting next to him, with eyes that darted in wonder not in fear. It was a different time then, the old man told himself. But then again, it's always a different time isn't it.
"Always wanted to go to Istanbul," says the young man. "Never got that far east though. Got as far east as Prague. What's your favorite thing about Istanbul?"
The old man already knew. "At night, when the city is all lights. Sitting by the water at night with my wife. But she wasn't my wife yet. It was the most beautiful thing. I was so happy then. We were young, like you. How old are you?"
"Twenty-eight."
"I was not much older than you when I visited Istanbul.
"I'll be twenty-nine in January."
"That is six months away."
"I'm practically thirty. Time goes so fast nowadays."
"It only gets faster, Brian. This I know."
"Must be nice with someone to share it with. I wish I had what you have. My girl just left me, but maybe one day I'll get it right."
The old man gripped his bag a little tighter. "My wife is dead."
[stop]
