Page 99 of Two Chances With You

It’s a dream come true. We’re flying first class. Thailand, Vietnam, and Malaysia. All expenses paid. The best flights. The best bungalows. The most beautiful beaches. The sun, the sea, and a contract waiting for us when we come back, ours to accept or reject. And freedom. The freedom to sayyesevery minute of the day if we feel like doing something, or elseno, without commitments, without unexpected phone calls, without problems, without meetings with people you don’t want to meet. We board the airplane, free and relaxed.

A young female flight attendant shows us to our seats. I smile at her. She’s very courteous. And also very cute. She offers us drinks. When she turns to go, Gin gives me an elbow to the ribs.

“Ouch!”

“I want to see you being rude and abrupt with the flight attendants.”

“Certainly, I’ve always been like that.” I smile. I take a drink from the glass that the young lady from Thai Airways has courteously offered us. Then I kiss Gin rapidly. A light champagne hue colors our lips. I make it last for a while. The airplane is starting to roll down the runway. Gin holds tight to me, and we’re in the air.

Rat-a-tat. The wheels fold away into the belly of the aircraft. The airplane reaches altitude. It climbs into the clouds. A closer sunset caresses us through the window. Gin relaxes her embrace and rests her head on me. “Do you mind if I lean on you like this?” I don’t have time to reply. I sense her drop into slumber, abandoning all the latest tensions, letting herself relax in my arms, aboard an airplane in flight, scudding lightly above our clouds. She must feel safe.

Tenderly, I try to move her as little as possible. I reach into the bag I have lying nearby and extractLucy Crown, the book my mother gave me, and I start to read. I like the way it’s written. At least, for the first few pages, it’s not painful. Not yet.

Suddenly. I hear music. I realize that I’ve fallen asleep. The book is propped up on the tray table. Gin is next to me, looking at me and smiling. She has a small camera in her hands. “I took some pictures of you while you were sleeping.”

I hug her, pulling her close. We kiss. Then we notice the presence of a person. We pull apart, and Gin blushes. It’s the flight attendant from before, with two glasses in her hands. “These are for you. It’s almost time.”

Curiously, we take them. The petite flight attendant heads off, just as quickly as she appeared.

“It’s true, I hadn’t thought about it. It’s December thirty-first…”

Gin looks at her watch. “It’s just a few seconds to midnight.”

A strange countdown with an American accent starts up from the cockpit. “Three, two, one…Happy New Year!”

The music gets louder. Gin gives me a kiss. “Happy New Year, Step.”

We raise a toast with the two glasses of champagne delivered just in the nick of time. Then we exchange another kiss. And another. And yet another. With no more fear of being interrupted. Everyone on the airplane is singing and happily celebrating the year that’s just ended or the one that’s about to start, the fact that they’re starting their vacation or returning home. In either case, they’re happy. With their champagne. With their heads, and the rest of their bodies, in the clouds.

The airplane drops to a slightly lower altitude, and there’s a good reason. “Look,” says Gin, pointing out the window. In some country down below us, they’re celebrating. Fireworks are leaving earth, coming up to greet us. To celebrate our arrival and departure. They open up beneath us like newly blooming flowers. A thousand unexpected colors. With a thousand carefully crafted patterns. Charges of gunpowder, perfectly crowded together, free themselves into the sky, catching fire in midair. One after another. One inside another. For the first time ever, we see them from above. Gin and me, embracing, with our faces framed in the window, see the end of the year, the part that has always been hidden, always seen only by the stars, the clouds, and the sky.

Gin looks ecstatically at the fireworks. “Gorgeous!” Distant lights manage to depict her face. Delicate brushstrokes of luminous color caress her cheeks.

We continue looking out the window. And the music continues. And the airplane, fast and secure, continues on its way. It flies through the sky, over the happiness and high hopes of who knows how many countries. And we, drunk with happiness and some other influence, wish each other Happy New Year over and over again. We drink toast after toast for that same New Year’s, with only one great certainty. “Let this be a year of happiness.”

Thailand, the island of Koh Samui

We wake up on the beach. And it almost seems as if we’re dreaming again in the presence of that sea, that crystal-clear, perennially warm water, that sun.

“So you see, Step, it’s the same as the postcards I used to receive. I always believed that some strange counterfeiter might have dummied them up on a computer. Even if I’d worked on it, I never could have dreamed of a place like this.”

“Certainly, God has some imagination. And He created this out of nothing. What a great artist.”

And so she gets out of the water, leaving me soaking amid a thousand colorful fish.

Vietnam, the island of Phú Qu?c

Still in the water, embracing now, splashing each other, fighting a minor skirmish on the sand before the amused eyes of children whose curiosity is aroused by these two strange tourists who first do battle and then hug and kiss! And we continue like that. Kissing a little more, lulled by the sun, wet with desire, we hurry into our bungalow.

A shower. Curtains lowered, dancing to the rhythm of the wind but without unveiling the windowpanes and ruining our privacy.

Waves break on the rocks, and we, not far away, follow the rhythm of the waves.

I let Gin set the pace. She climbs on top of me, throwing her leg over me, and takes me in her hand, and slides me into her, softly and decisively. Confidently. She continues kissing me. Bent over me, she holds my arms wide and shoves her hips down hard at me, taking me in all the way, into her most remote being.

She grips my wrists tight, and for a moment, she abandons her kiss. She opens her mouth. She remains suspended over my lips. She sighs repeatedly and then utters that fantastic phrase. “I’m coming.” She says it softly, slowly, enunciating each tiny letter, in a low voice. A voice of unrivaled eroticism…

And a split second later, I come too. Gin throws back her hair, pushes her hips toward me another two or three times and then stops and opens her eyes. As if she had suddenly returned. “So you came inside me?”

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