Remembrance

“Jet lag.” Or century lag, is what I wanted to say.

He was wearing a dark suit, which made his hair and eyebrows even darker, and more than anything in the world I wanted to touch him. I wanted to tell him everything there was to tell about us. I wanted to feel his arms around me.

“Why are you looki

ng at me like that?” I asked, wanting to force him to tell me what was in his mind.

He smiled and he had straight, even, beautiful teeth—and his mouth was something that made me ache. My robe was gaping open but I didn’t bother to close it. With even the tiniest hint from him, I’d have flung it to the floor.

“I do not know you,” he said softly, “and you do not know me. But, somehow, I do know you. I know all that is good and all that is bad about you.”

“Bad?” I said involuntarily.

He smiled. “You have a temper, I believe.”

“Only when you don’t do what I want you to do,” I answered. “I’m perfectly reasonable when you do exactly what I want when I want you to do it.”

Considering that we had just met, this should have been an incomprehensible statement, but he smiled and said, “Yes, I know. Your will is very strong.”

He took a deep breath and looked down at the tiny liqueur glass he held. I was sitting on the edge of the couch, about eight inches away from him, and the distance seemed almost intolerable.

“I am new to your country,” he said softly. “I have arrived only yesterday and I was to meet a man here in this building.”

“On the eighteenth floor, but you pushed the wrong button.”

He lifted his head and looked at me. “No, I think I pushed the right button.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “You pushed the right button.”

He looked back down at his glass and I could see a vein pounding in his neck, a neck that I longed to kiss. The air between us was like a bolt of electricity that stayed charged and grew stronger with each moment.

“I have come from my country to your country to talk to your people, your president, about misunderstandings between your country and mine.”

“A diplomat,” I said, knowing how very talented Talis would have been as a diplomat. He was so likable that he could make enemies at ease with each other.

“I do what I can,” he said modestly, then gave me a piercing look. “You are not one of these American women who is tied to a company and cannot move, are you?”

For a moment I didn’t know what he meant, but then my heart gave a little flutter. “I am completely mobile. I write for a living and I can live anywhere.”

“Good,” he said, smiling, then started to say something else but hesitated as he carefully put the still-full glass of liqueur on the table beside the couch.

“Why do you, ah, ask whether I can travel or not?”

“You would think me mad if I said what was in my heart.”

“No I wouldn’t!” I said fiercely, praying he wasn’t just going to ask me out to dinner.

When he looked at me his eyes were on fire and my heart leaped into my throat. “I do not know how or why, but I love you. I love you with all my heart, with all my soul. It is as though I have been waiting for you, searching for you all my life.”

All I could manage to say was, “Me too.” And now, I thought, we tear each other’s clothes off, and I made a bit of a move in that direction.

But when he looked at his watch, my heart fell. How could I have forgotten his meeting? He was here in America for a very important reason: peace between two countries, uniting two philosophies of life, maybe even trying to prevent a war. How could one fainting woman stand up against that?

“I am very late now, but I will finish my meeting by four o’clock. At that time I will return here and we will go to get married.”

My mouth fell open until my chin nearly hit my chest.

“You will not faint again?”