A LOVE STORY

In a junk yard, skipping school, hiding behind iron frames of old cars, they found a free space to bake in the sun. Just like birds bunched up together on a winter morning, sitting on top of a light pole, absorbed the light and warmth, Claire and Adam found themselves inseparable during that winter. They clung to each other, telling each other sad stories of their childhoods. He told her about how lonely it had been in the suburbs as an only child of an absent father. She shared her hatred for the blue-collar part of the town where she was forced to live after her mother remarried.  

            Letting the light shine on her face, Claire let her backpack slip of her shoulders and land on the ground with a thump. 

            “Be careful!” Adam reprimanded her gently, shifting the bag with care so that it stood upright. “What if you break something that’s inside?” 

            She replied, “I’ll live with it.” 

            “It might be a loss you don’t like,” Adam remarked. 

            She pulled up the zipper of her winter jacket to her chin and smiled at him. “I’ll be okay.”  

            Having gone to their required sparring class, Claire was wearing sweatpants underneath her snow pants. She had not bothered to change, too eager to see Adam, fall into his warm embrace, and hide from the demanding world. She was capable. She didn’t need to hide, but to be offered such a safe haven out of the blue proved irresistible. 

            “I’m starving,” she announced, putting her head on her backpack as if it was a pillow. 

            “Well, it just so happens that I brought you some plum dumplings in a hot pot.” 

            “You didn’t!” 

            “I did.” 

He took a steel pot wrapped in a cloth out of his bag and handed it to her with a clean fork. She smiled at his efficiency, amazed by it. She wasn’t like that. She was happy with store-bought dressing sprinkled over a box of lettuce thrown into a bowl with a side of Kraft noodles for dinner. Adam just shook his head at those meals. “It’s not even real food,” he’d say. Now, he lifted the lid and a slight snake of steam escaped through the crack. 

“My mom is right,” she said, stabbing her fork into the dough and biting into a hot dumpling with wolf-like hunger. “You are a golden boy.” 

“Golden boy?” He smiled and blushed, which was a hard to see on his olive skin, but she knew the details of his face by then to the point that she noticed even a slight change in shade. The blood rushed into his cheeks with pleasure of a rare compliment. He lived for pleasure. He worked hard but lived for delight. And he lived to please, especially her, Claire. He didn’t even try to hide that he was smitten. 

            “How’s your thesis going?” she asked, biting into another hot plum. 

            “It’s not.” He shook his head, and his smile disappeared. Since January, he had been spending endless hours at the university library to research the Yugoslavian war from the nineties and the rise of Eastern European prostitution; girls provided for the American soldiers. He had been inspired by a book Claire gave him as a Christmas gift, The Whistleblower. 

            “It’s so dark, Claire. The things they did to those girls… It’s unspeakable. Uncles selling their nieces to thieves and criminals for a little bit of cash. Girls beaten and raped with pipes for entertainment. Because soldiers are bored or need to blow off steam. Do you know how ridiculous the very concept is? To torture someone for amusement. It’s inhuman. I mean… I almost can’t read this stuff…”

            “I don’t think you’re the only one, but imagine living it!” 

            “I’m not like you… I’m not… tough… I think I made a mistake in choosing this research topic.”

            “No!” she yelled, banging her fork against the metal container and splattering plum juice mixed with butter and sugar all over. It looked like blood to him. “No. No. No. You have to finish it. You have to look at it. We have to look at it. If not us, then who? We care. We are brave. Remember?” 

            He cast his eyes down and whispered, “Yes, I remember.” Large crocodile tears slipped out, despite his trying to hide them, and started to roll down his soft cheeks. There was something so easy about him, so feminine, so unlike herself. It was the quality that endeared him to her. He got her right in the heart. She put the steel bowl away, placing it on top of the snow-covered ground. She took his face between her hands. 

            “Please don’t cry. Don’t cry…”

            “We’re like two animals licking each other’s wounds,” he said. 

“Please don’t cry. Don’t cry. Don’t cry, because if you cry, I’ll start crying over all these lost girls, girls to whom these atrocious things have been done. But crying won’t get us anywhere. Anyone with a bit of sympathy can cry. You need… We need to look the devil in the face and strategize instead of letting fear get the better of us. No matter how hard it is, we’ve got to keep on looking. It’s why we chose police academy. Do you think we met by chance? I don’t believe that. We’re a team, a great team. We are here to care and fight injustice.”

She knew already, though, that she was the fighter and he the lover. She kissed him delicately on the cheeks, wiping away the tears. She loved him. Her feelings had totally surprised her when she realized it was love. She had been sitting in her room, on a bed that turned into a sofa during the day, covered with a wool blanket, doing her homework. A feeling of overwhelming warmth flooded over her whole person. It had never happened before. He was her one and only; the love of her life. It was the first time there was safe space in her life. Suddenly, she didn’t feel like rushing anywhere. She was content lying in his arms, in his car, doing nothing, just being held, listening to his stories, jokes, and pranks he had pulled as a kid. One time, over a period of a few months, he grew a beard. Then he shaved it off and walked into the room with his mother grading papers. 

“She didn’t even notice!” He recounted the anecdote. “I couldn’t believe it. She never noticed anything… But now she is gone and I miss even the things I didn’t like.” 

“How did she die?”

“Heart attack at fifty. I wasn’t totally surprised. All she did was work.” 

He picked up the steel pot from the ground and covered it with a lid. He took the fork and wiped it with a bit of snow on his handkerchief. He always carried one with him. He extracted a thermos from his bag and unscrewed the top to pour out some tea into the container, which served as a cover. 

            “Here. Drink some, please. The food will sit better in your stomach.”

            She thanked him and sipped from the cup, warming her hands with it, too. Uneven mounds of snow lined the horizon. She stared into the distance, into the miles covered with white powder and the now overcast sky. It was a small cloud, though. The sun was bound to come back out. The steam from the cup of tea she was holding in front of her face fogged up the view a bit, but the mild wind dispersed it quickly. There was no one around. 

            It wasn’t really a junkyard. Just a couple of rusting car frames lay around, but it looked unappealing enough to others that Claire and Adam were always alone here. Besides, the day was freezing. She pulled her coat tighter around her and adjusted her scarf. He had given her the lamb’s wool scarf along with a bottle of expensive perfume. She had never had things like that before. He was the first one to give her perfume, open car doors, shower her with other gifts she had never dreamt of getting from a boyfriend. She tugged at her coat again. Almost a meter of snow had fallen in the past week. They had gone snowshoeing over the weekend. It had been his treat again. She’d never get such an idea, always counting her pennies and considering snowshoeing an extravagant expense. He didn’t think that way. He thought he was here now, meant to live life. 

            The snow could’ve been an excuse for them to stay home, but they loved their secret spot. It gave them a sense of adventure; a feeling of being out of the city while not driving far at all. Soon enough, the snow would melt, water would drain into grates in the pavement, and the stream on the other side of the junkyard would swell up double its size, gushing with rushing water through a few trees bunched up together, forming a little forest where an occasional deer would hide. 

            “I made spicy sausage spaghetti last night if you want to come over to my place for dinner later on today. Let’s hope the power doesn’t go out again if it snows.” 

            “It’s not supposed to snow anymore. It’s the end of February, almost March,” Claire said, looking into the distance once more. Adam sat on the ground, cleaning off the steal lid with his handkerchief again. She smiled. “If I come over, I’ll get to see Willy.” She had never had a pet; her mother never allowed it, and the parakeet fascinated her. Adam was so warm. Everything about him was warm: his old car, his house, even his pet bird. “Besides, we can have a romantic, candle-lit dinner if the darkness catches us off guard.” 

            “I rather the darkness didn’t catch us off guard,” Adam stated. 

            “Well, I’m sure you’re prepared with at least a dozen candles!” His capacity to plan ahead made Clare feel safe and calmed her down. 

            “Two dozen.” 

            They laughed. He always got too much of everything, “just in case”. She was the one who’d haggle though, on their trips, when things seemed too steep. He never dared; he’d just pay the appointed price. 

            Some sellers shook their heads at Claire as if to say “Lady, this isn’t India or Eastern Europe,” but others smirked and took a moment to reflect, respecting her boldness in a part of the world where negotiating a price wasn’t done at a market. Some offered her “no tax” if she paid cash and often added an extra item. She remembered them and returned to buy. It was by haggling that she scored a huge leather elephant on a trip to New York. Now her prized possession glistened, polished, on the mantel in her mother’s house, his trunk turned up for good luck. A monument to boldness and pride. The bills were significantly smaller when she accompanied him on his weekly shopping without sacrificing quantity or quality. 

            She took off her hat for a few seconds, despite the cold, letting the wind play with her long brown hair, messing it up. She was like that. She liked order Adam provided but allowed chaos into her life without fear, watching patterns break. 

            “I like your spaghetti. You add bay leaves and cloves to your sauce, but I’m not a fan of spicy. You can have the sausage, and I’ll just put some mozzarella on my noodles and do vegetarian.”

            “I’ll make lentils, too.” 

            “Even better.” She smiled. 

            She plopped back down and lay beside him. The sun reappeared from behind the dark cloud. She snuggled up close on the waterproof blanket he had brought and spread for them on top of the snow. Adam played classical music on his phone, and the sweet sounds surrounded them. 

            “It’s perfect. You’re perfect,” she whispered into his ear. 

            In the dimness of the winter day, they kissed, touching each other’s faces, memorizing each other’s features with their fingers. They had found that fascinating creature in one another that people find when they fall in love, wondering how someone so perfect had been created. The first time they kissed, they sat in darkness on her porch. The second time, they met at a restaurant, where Adam grabbed her just as soon as he saw her not waiting till the end of their date. She secretly loved it and fell in love with French onion soup he had bought her because the taste amalgamated itself in her memory along with his passion. They lay on the blanket, their legs locked, hands moving, eyes staring, lips whispering sweet nothings. 

            “Promise me you’ll finish your thesis,” she asked. 

            “Not now,” he whispered. “Please don’t spoil this moment. I just want to look at you. Admire you. Love you.” 

            “Well, if you insist,” she joked. 

            His hands wondered all over her body, exploring but careful, shy, respectful, as if she was a porcelain doll, as if any wrong move would break their romance. He knew she never slept well at her mother’s and stepfather’s house, so he let her rest at his place. She was ambitious. It was a wonder to watch her blossom when she was given a little bit of space and peace. It was probably why she had insisted on him writing about girls whose childhoods had been stolen. Treated worse than animals. For entertainment. For someone’s amusement.

            “You know, that first month we went out, I invited you over, telling you that my mother was at work, I actually asked her to go to work that day because I wanted to invite you.”

            “Funny girl.”

            “Golden boy.”

            “We made a good pair.”

            “My favorite fruit.”

            “I’ll remember that.”

            “We made out for the first time, and then we went to Bean Machine and still couldn’t stop kissing.”

            He laughed. “Until they threw us out.”

            They had sat on red velvet sofas and kissed. Later, they walked the dark streets lined with more cafes and restaurants in the city’s student corner. She bumped a cigarette of a friend met by chance, Suzy, and pretended to be a star in a film noir. He took pictures with his phone and later could not stop staring at them. 

            “Tell me a secret,” he said. 

            “I never cheated on any test in my life, even if I knew I wouldn’t do too well.”

            “I believe you.”

Somewhere in the background they heard workers packing heavy boxes onto trucks. It didn’t disturb them. It added to the music of the scene, their spot, their moment. 

            “Now, your turn. You tell me a secret.”

            “I learned Spanish from my mom, but I learned French entirely on my own.” 

            “Really?”

            “Yes.”

            “Smart boy. Not just golden but also clever.”

            “Tell me another secret.”

            “I really like your poster of Metropolis in your bedroom.”

            “A detective has to be many things, and that is my life’s ambition, to be a shrewd detective. I want to actually solve things, be able to put things together, like a puzzle. But going backwards isn’t easy. I scored pretty high on my SATs. I could’ve made different choices, but solving a murder… I can’t think of anything more challenging.” 

            “For the love of justice.” 

            “And the love of Claire. I’ve got to make the world safer for you.”

            They kissed. She usually played around with make-up, but that day she had none on her face. Just rosehip oil he had given her, too, which made her skin glow in the sun and filled the spot with a sweet scent of roses.

Later on, in the evening, they drove up to his place. She took off her boots and sighed with relief. He slipped off his jacket and put it in a closet, along with his scarf and hat. She threw her coat on the mustard armchair, which clashed with the rest of the room. It had been a gift from his grandfather, and he could not part with it. She loved the chair and joked, “Start with one good piece and work the room.”

            He’d scrunch up his nose because he had chosen all the pieces carefully. 

            Now, he went into the kitchen to heat up their meal. When he came back to hand her a glass of wine, she was staring out the window. 

            “Thanks,” she said, put the glass on a side table, and continued to stare. 

He fried up some onions because he knew she liked them with the red lentils. Following the scent, she joined him in the kitchen and set up the table. He’d put on a Diana Krall record they both liked. The kitchen filled with sweet sounds again. A vase of flowers he had given her for Valentine’s Day decorated the center of the table. He set two dishes one with spaghetti and the other with lentils close to her chair. He put the wine and the sausage closer to where he’d be sitting. The bread basket with their favorite caraway seed buns, and French churned butter sat between. Claire filled their water glasses. They sat down and began to eat. 

            “Is the sauce too spicy?” he asked. 

            “No, it’s delicious. You’re a great cook.” She put some lentils on top of her buttered bun and shoved a huge piece into her mouth, closing her eyes. “Delicious.” 

            “I’m glad.” He sipped his wine to bring out the taste of the sausage. “I love it when you’re happy.”

            “I’m happy,” she told him. “I’m so happy.” 

            He lifted his glass, and she clinked it with her. “To us,” he said.

            “To us,” she echoed. 

            They sat, not talking, enjoying the music, the first bites of food, and staring into each other’s eyes.