25 Years Online
••• The International Writers Magazine - extract from The Restoration of Ami

Remy's Love Story • Sam Hawksmoor When love happens grab it with both hands

Remy stretched over to a dusty bottle of brandy and wiped a glass with his sleeve. He poured himself a generous helping and sat back in his chair to watch Ami working on supper.

“I’m going to tell you a story I never told anyone, Ami.  It’s about love. I’m kinda thinking you probably don’t think a man like me ever thinks about love, what with me being an engineer and being a pretty boring old bastard at that.”

Ami giggled. “You’re going to tell me a love story?”

 “You can say no, and I’ll shut the heck up, but there just might be something you can learn.”

Ami turned to face him, knife in one hand, onion in another, tears already forming.

“To tell you the truth I never ever heard a love story from anyone. Not a happy one. Is yours a happy one?”

“Hmm, love stories always kinda start out happy. This is a story about a man who lost his head over love. Bet you never thought I’d be saying that.” Remy was staring into his brandy tumbler. “I’d been married ten years when the story starts. I can’t say it was much of a marriage. Jean wasn’t affectionate at the best of times to tell the truth. But somehow, or another she fell for another man.”

Ami turned to stare him in surprise. She hadn’t expected that. “She left you?”

Remy laughed. “No, she decided to have a secret affair, but a helpful neighbor told me all about it. We were living in our old house on this lot back then and I was working at NASA up the road a ways. Jean went to do a paralegal course in Orlando where it just so happens the man she was keen on lived.”

Ami frowned. This wasn’t much of a love story so far. “You weren’t upset?”

Remy sighed. “Nope. In fact, the total opposite. I was kinda hoping she’d leave me.  Jean was ten years younger than me, and I was often away in Houston. She got bored living here on her own.  She worked for a lawyer nearby. Anyway, she was gone for a month, and I was suddenly on leave.”

Ami blinked and resumed chopping vegetables.

“Anyway, it was the second day of my vacation. I was walking my dog Dizzy along the beach. There was some shouting and screaming coming from a shack about a mile from here. Dizzy ran over there and began barking. He hated to hear arguing and screaming. I approached; a bit wary because people can be volatile in a domestic dispute. Anyway, this woman came running out of the house yelling. Dizzy backed away but I could see she had been beaten and was bleeding.  This half naked guy followed her out ready to beat her some more.”

Ami stared at Remy wide-eyed. “What did you do?”

“Normally you wouldn’t get involved. The girl could turn on you for trying to help or he could start attacking me. But Dizzy jumped up at the guy to stop him and he was about to start beating the crap out of my dog. So, had to intervene and brought him down. Dizzy had a good hold on his leg, and I may have got a lot of sand in his eyes. The man was blind drunk but that’s no excuse for beating anyone. This was nearly twenty-five years ago mind. I wasn’t always this old wreck with a sore back. I used to go swimming and work-out at the gym.
I took the girl back to my place to treat her cuts and let him sober up. She’d been beaten pretty bad, so I bathed her wounds and let her sleep. She didn’t utter a single word. Not one. I didn’t know her name or if she was married to the guy, nothing. She slept right through the day and didn’t wake till the next morning.”

“Is this the bit when your wife comes home and …”

Remy chuckled. “No, I told you she was away. Next morning, I was making breakfast, and she suddenly appears in the doorway. No smiles, no thank you for saving her. She just asked where the bathroom was and disappeared. About twenty minutes later she reappeared having showered. Still bruised of course. She sat down and ate the breakfast I put in front of her and stroked Dizzy.”

 “Then the guy who beat her up must have come around,” Ami suggested. “He had to be so mad at you for taking her away from him.”

“He’d have to find me first. She started speaking after she’d drunk some coffee and spat most of it out. She informed me that American’s know nothing about coffee apparently. Which is probably true, if you had grown up in Europe, as she had. I never found out exactly where she was from. She told me she was a nurse. She’d only been in the States for six months. That about all I ever found out about her.”

Ami frowned. “And that’s the end of your story?”

Remy grinned and took another sip of his brandy. “That my girl was the beginning. The sun came out as it usually did once the ocean haze burned off.  There she was at my table, sunlight on her hair.  I could see the fine hair on her neck. She was no more than five foot tall, petite with astonishing black-greenish eyes.  I can see her now looking at me with a twitch in her nose as she studied me.
“I know that that look,” she said finally. “Don’t fall in love with me.”
“Too late,” I told her. I couldn’t take my eyes off her.
“I don’t want love anymore,” she told me. “No one knows how to love here.”
"I pointed out to her that I was married, of course.  I’ve never cheated on my wife.  The girl laughed at me. “All men cheat on their wives,” she told me. “Always.”

Ami protested. “But your wife was cheating on you.”

“Maybe, but I knew that if I cheated as well, there’d be no going back.”

“But you wanted your wife to leave you.”

“I did. But I also didn’t want to give her an excuse to divorce me. I was conflicted. I was clearly totally smitten by this young woman, who probably didn’t give a moment’s thought about the effect she was having on me. I was drowning in my emotions. I never imagined that I, an average boring NASA guy through and through could be experiencing these explosions in my heart. I had an extraordinary love for this young woman and couldn’t stop it. It was a runaway train of emotion. I even went to take a cold shower to try and calm myself.”

“Was she still there when you got back?”

Remy smiled; his eyes closed as he remembered that moment. “Yes. I told her that she had better stay inside for a day or two until her boyfriend calmed down or sobered up. She agreed but didn’t think he’d do either thing. That night she came to my bed. After that I don’t think we left the house for five whole days.  It was the most intense experience I have ever had in my whole life. She was passionate. She talked about a lake where she grew up and how she longed to come to America. I was entranced by her. Never felt like it before or since.
I was in a state of bliss, finally aware that I only had one day of leave left and I’d have to go back to work. Had she asked me to quit my job and go with her anywhere I would have quit everything for her.”

Ami stared at him in wonder. She’d never expected anything like this.

“Then came a knock on the door,” Remy said. “It was like the breaking of a dream.”

“The boyfriend must have found you.”  Ami said confidently.

“Worse. It was our neighbor Chester. A man had attacked his young wife. Chester had shot at him, but he’d gotten away. Right away I suspected it was the girl’s boyfriend who’d mistaken her for his girl.  His wife needed a nurse or doctor fast but wasn’t insured and needed help. My guest whispered in my ear. “I will take care of it.”  She quickly got dressed and went to my neighbor’s house. Meanwhile the cops found the injured man who’d beaten Chester’s wife and locked him up. Sure enough, it was the drunken boyfriend.
“She fixed her up and I hoped she’d return but she went back to the shack where I’d found her to find her passport and work documents.  I drove over there to ask her to return.”

“And did she?”

Remy emptied his brandy glass. “She asked me to make a promise.”

“A promise?”

“She asked me to let her go and never to look for her.”

Ami was shocked. “But you were in love with her.”

“I was, very much so. I really didn’t want to make that promise.”

 “Didn’t she love you?”

“For five days she did.  She told me that love was too much for me. Too much for her. That she didn’t want that kind of love.  Nothing so intense can last and it can only lead to pain.  She didn’t explain, but I understood she wanted something that would last forever.”

Ami shook her head. “I don’t really understand.”

“Intense love can consume you, like a fire. It can’t be shared.  There’s no room to breathe and sooner or later one of you will want to breathe. I’m guessing the man who beat her couldn’t stand the thought of losing her, this is what drive him mad. I don’t really know. She asked me for bus fare.  I gave her a fifty and would have given her anything she asked for. She said it again. “Promise me you’ll never look for me. Never ever.”
I promised, pointing out that I didn’t even know her name or where she was going.

“But you could have searched for her,” Ami protested.

Remy offered her a rueful smile. “No. That’s the rule with a promise. You don’t break it.  Besides, if I had gone looking, that one day I finally found her, I’d be an even older man, pitching up outside her home where her kids and husband are sitting down to supper, or I’d be facing a rifle from a jealous man who wants to run me off his property. No thanks. We had a brilliant five days of love and I’ll treasure it forever. Never had it before and will never have it again.”

“That’s so sad.”

Remy shook his head. “No, it isn’t sad. It was the best thing that ever happened to me, Ami. The best thing. When the old house blew down in the hurricane it robbed me of the last traces of her. I was sad for a while. I’d lost the place where her bare feet trod the boards or where she’d drawn a little picture of her lake. But I could still close my eyes and see her smile or remember her whispers in my ear as she laughed at my reaction.”

“Then your wife came home.”

Remy nodded and sighed. “My wife returned at the end of the month. She told me it was ‘over’. At first, I thought she meant our marriage but no, she meant the affair, that I wasn’t supposed to know about. We never once talked about it. She went back to her bedroom, and I went back to mine, and we carried on as before.”

“So, you never told her.”

“Lord no. One day I hope you have a love like that and if you do, don’t try to prolong it longer than it needs to be. It’s like a shooting star. It’s not meant to last.”

Ami shook her head. “That will never ever happen to me.”

“It will. I promise you. You are going to grow into this beautiful woman and all I can hope is that you’ll learn pretty damn quick how to tell good from bad.”

“Good from bad,” Ami repeated. “And how do I do that?”

“Find someone who respects you, listens to you, cares for you. First signs of jealousy or violence, pack your bags and leave. Don’t look back.”

“And go where?”

“As long as I’m alive, you’ll always have a home with me. That’s a promise.”

Ami smiled. She wondered how long that kind of promise was good for with such an old man then cussed herself for being so ungrateful.  “I wonder what your nurse is doing now. You think she ever thought about you again?”

Remy shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe she did, but I suspect she forgot about me the moment she got on the bus.”

“That’s a sad ending.”

“But a trueful one.  You need any help with the soup?”
           
“I need noodles. You got any noodles?”

© Sam Hawksmoor - 11.01.24
samhawksmoor.com

extract from The Restoration of Ami

'Fabulous, can't-put-down story with quirky, original characters, a loveable dog and a great adventure'. ***** Roxy West on Goodreads. 8.28.24

More stories

Share |