Love Is Pink!

“What do you mean?” I said. “It’s a classic. We’ve driven hundreds of kilometers in it. Through snow and ice and flood-like rains. And now just because it doesn’t start one time—and I stress, one single time—you call it a jalopy?”


The young guy’s mouth hung open. Obviously, his intellect needed some time to decode my message.

“I just wanted to say—”

“I don’t care what you wanted to say!”

He gulped and turned helplessly to David. “I just wanted to say, ‘What a spanking car.’?”

Even this description pissed me off. I was about to explain to the guy what spanking actually meant and that the details of his sex life did not interest me, but David clearly felt sorry for him and led him to the rear of the car, where they started talking.

In the meantime, Emma had come out and was clinging to my legs, as usual. She rested her head against my hips.

“You were right!” she said. “He said stupid things about our car.”

“Exactly!” I said. “He has no idea.”

The Citro?n was hauled onto the tow truck in no time, and we climbed into the cab. Emma sat on my lap, with Baby—whom David had lifted in—taking up the rest of the backseat beside us.

From his perch up front, David asked me, “Where do you need to go?”

I gave my address, and the driver said, “We’ll pass by there on our way to take the Citro?n to the service station.”

“Which service station are you going to?” I asked.

“To mine,” David said. Naturally. He was going to try to fix the car in his own garage.

Where was rush hour traffic when you needed it? Nothing got in our way. Even the traffic lights were working against us. They were constantly green. We drove on without any hindrance. Time was slipping through my fingers.

Emma cuddled up against me. “You’re not coming with us?” she asked.

“No,” I said. “Not today. I need to get home and check on my apartment. I haven’t been there in days.”

“And are you taking Baby with you?”

I hadn’t thought about that, but without hesitating, I said, “Yeah, Baby is coming with me.”

The brakes screeched as the truck stopped in front of my building. Emma clung to me. She picked up her head, and I saw that she was crying.

“Now, now,” I said. “You’re a big girl. Big girls don’t cry.”

“But you cry, too,” she said. “And you’re a lot bigger than me.”

I didn’t answer, just opened the door and slid out, placing Emma on the now-empty seat. Emma held my hand tightly. “You won’t go away for forever, will you?” she asked.

I didn’t know what to say. I cleared my throat because my voice was failing me. “The two of us will stay friends. No matter what happens. Right?”

“Yeah.” She turned away from me and crossed her arms in front of her chest. Her little body shuddered as she cried even harder than before.

David helped me get Baby out. First, the dog whimpered happily because he thought that we were taking him for a walk. But once he noticed how sad I was, his ears drooped, and he refused to take his eyes off me even for a second.

David came up to me. He seemed bashful. No, unsure. Or was he crestfallen?

“This is it, then,” he said.

I nodded. “This is it.”

“We made good time. I’ll make my appointment tomorrow, and you—you’ll get to do what you had planned.”

He looked strange. Vulnerable.

Since I didn’t want to cry in front of him, I tried to act like the brave one. I held out my hand and said, “Thank you for everything, and I hope to see you again.” It was the stupidest thing I could have done, but I couldn’t think of anything better.

David studied my hand as though seeing it for the first time. Then he took it and . . . something magical happened. Perhaps it was only a moment of weakness, or it happened because I’d been breathing in toxic fumes for hours. In any case, I leaned forward to kiss him good-bye on the cheek. But, as luck would have it, our lips met. And again, a powerful feeling surged inside me—it was a drive to hold him tight and never let go.

The nasty guy from the tow truck honked.

I pressed my hands on David’s ribcage and pushed myself away from him. We stared at each other, speechless. Then he turned around and left me. He climbed into the truck and it took off. Soon the Citro?n, Emma, and David had disappeared from my life forever.





35


I took my copy of Gone with the Wind down from my bookshelf. It was a little dusty. I blew off the top edge and placed the book neatly in one of the big cardboard boxes I was filling.

I heard a key working my front door’s lock from the outside. Over the past three years, I’d heard this sound at least a thousand times. I looked toward the door.

Valentin wore an Armani suit with a camel hair coat draped casually over it, and a lily-white scarf. His Italian shoes shined impeccably.