Elderly Woman Behind the Table in a Large Town

The glass of Absinthe sat before me. It’s quite amazing how despite such terror rendered upon their stones in the preceding decades, these streets still held the beauty I first read about as a girl. I never dreamed I’d set foot on these cobbles, at least not safely.

I took a drink.

They called me many things back home, many vile things: Harlot, Adulteress, and even, at least on the tips of a few loose tongues, Murderer.

And, given the facts of the case or rather the intense predilections given to the manner of my sudden departure, I admit that such charges should rightly be considered justly rendered.

After all, what kind of widow does not attend the funeral of her husband, deceased unexpectedly after thirty-two loving years, without arousing some pointed accusations of foul play.

Not that there was any. Quite the contrary, I loved my husband very much, and anyone who was not a bumbling idiot would know that. Alas, the world truly is full of bumbling idiots, including but not limited to the bumbling, stumbling idiot on the Rue before me, or the rather odiferous one beside me. At least he keeps to himself and doesn’t bother a lady alone.

There was only love between us and so any condemnation of foul play makes me laugh. For example, only I knew that, while a proud Conservative, he thought Peel was a right Knob. Only I knew that he took his eggs scrambled with salt but no pepper. But our love was a two-seater carriage. Only he knew how much I truly loathed tobacco. Only he knew how the only thing I detested more than tobacco was screaming children. How ironic it was then that here I sat, smelling pipe smoke and drinking in the screeching Parisian din.

The thing is, when you’re sitting in a two-seater carriage, well, you’re both clip-clopping somewhere together. I loved my husband, more than I ever thought possible, thirty-two years of being the doting, loving wife, and I harbored no regrets for that, for I loved every single second of it.

His departure seemed a perfectly natural point to get off that carriage. So yes, instead of playing the widow at my husband’s funeral, I sold our China and bought a first class ticket across the channel to Paris.

He would have laughed, a rolling guttural laugh. I know it. I was the only one who knew it.

Here I sit, in the place I wanted to visit since I was a little girl, wishing it was he I sat with, and not the bumbling, stumbling idiot beside me, not wishing to finish the glass before me, for if I do I fear the moment will slip away like a ship along the Seine.

I do not wish for this moment and the multitudes it contains to end.

Instead, the man beside me stumbled to his feet, knocking over my little cafe table, and shattering the crystal on the stones. The moment, and the drink, wasted.

How full of little jests life is.

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A/N:

I miss Paris. A previous art study from the same visit:

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