"We’ll Always Have Paris,” Or, Thanks Is Not Enough

by Sam Bluefarb (March 2015)

“Paris is forever…” –Ernest Hemingway

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*           *          *

When she got back, she was breathing hard, scarcely able to catch her breath, her hand patting her heart, shaking her head, visibly distressed, scared.

*          *          *

When I let her off at her house, she gave me a quick peck and rushed into the building and closed the door. There was no hug as there had been many times before. It looked as if things were off between us, and maybe I figured, just as well, because if such niggling things got her ticked off, what would something more lasting produce—something less lasting? I answered my own question.

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Is Not Enough

Followed by the usual canned banalities, then the handwritten note, the best part of occasion cards:

Thank you for all, especial from the trip, and your name will forever Be in my heart and Corazon.

                                                         Juanita.

 

Then an afterthought:

Joe

     J.

 

But it did end—the irrevocable difference between us…in age and time, the time when we first met, and I thought, then, that I was too “old” for her, when out of the blue, on our way to a retirement development south of Tucson, with no preliminaries, she said, almost casually, “Let’s get married.” A flirty smile. She had to be kidding, and I told her so.

But that was fifteen years ago, and now I suffer my own company as well as other geriatric debilities, not diminished by the Christmas card she sent me last Christmas. (She has of course since shared her home for some years now with a man closer to her own age.) Until last Christmas her cards were signed off, “With all my heart—Juanita.”—or something like. Last Christmas, the sign-off read, “With best wishes—Juanita and Joe.”

Magic coincidence? He and I share first names.

 

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Sam Bluefarb is Prof. Emeritus, Los Angeles Harbor College.

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