Palvine Part 5

By Mitzi Danielson-Kaslik

Parisian red wine

 

As we began to kiss, I found myself wishing I knew more about him. He seemed so young yet so old somehow; he seemed so good and yet maybe he was so evil; he seemed so in love with me but also so out of love with at the same time. I so wished I could see inside his mind; what was he thinking? Did he love me? I had spent the last months dreaming of being his, did he dream about being mine? 

“My dear?” he whispered, brushing aside my curtain of dark hair “Did I tell you out of all my adventures in Paris and all my new found happiness all I wanted was you?” his words almost sent a shiver down my spine. 

Did he mean it? Truly mean it? I wanted to believe him so terribly. I look back into his sapphire eyes and found a fleck in the corner of his left eye; a little tiny grey fleck, smaller than a pin prick and yet so perfectly pronounced in the otherwise waterish depths of his eyes. I wondered what it was. I whispered back to him, mimicking the same hair brushing and soft permissive tone he had used and murmured “My love, did you know that all I’ve wished for and dream of was you? I only found the note because I came back to your house. I needed to see you again. And now I have you.” I finished with a subtle English pink blush creeping in over my cheeks. It was my ‘virgin’s blush’ as he had called it. So I asked “Sylvester, do I still have a virgin’s blush?” I giggled.

“Of course you do my love, you will always have a virgin’s blush. You know, I once heard that the Whore of Babylon had a virgin’s blush.” He laughed. I wondered what he meant by saying this.

The weather changed as we arrived in Paris. It was no longer murky and cold but the November morning in Paris was rather warmer with a slight crispness to the air. The train drew to a clanging stop and we happily hopped off onto a packed platform filled with well-dressed gentlemen in fine tailored coats and ladies draped across their arm dressed in well-fitting dresses with jackets and fur stoles and high heeled shoes and they bore delicately stitched handbags. They all seemed to bustle about their business and hurry in a manner of such decorum that it almost seemed impossible to find a thing out of place.

The platform itself was cold.

He took my hand with an almost wicked smile and led me to the huge ornate exit. The archway towered over us so high it almost kissed the heavens. I couldn’t take my eyes off Sylvester. We began to walk down the main street south towards The Artists’ District and he broke his silence once more “I – We- live on Rue De La Liberte.” He smiled excitedly. We ducked off the main street and down a small alleyway.  I followed him, slightly disconcerted. We continued down it for a while until I began to wonder of Sylvester’s capabilities as a navigator having only lived in the city the better part of nine months. But eventually the path opened out of the alley network and onto a much wider street bustling with all manner of people. Ballerinas. Painters. Musicians. This street held everything. I followed him as he turned to a small narrow street with high stone walls with a small sign marked Rue De La Liberte.