I was having a strange but familiar dream. I had seen a beautiful woman and I began pursuing her through a hedge maze. I was just at the point where I'd caught up to her and was reaching out to turn her and reveal her identity when I awakened. It was a variation of a dream that I often have where I'm about to discover something important, but just at the critical moment, I awake to find that the discovery is just out of reach. As my eyes blinked open, I stared at the ceiling, and for a moment I wondered where I was, but the oil portrait of Lily that hung on the wall at the foot of her bed quickly reminded me that I was in her apartment in Paris. I recalled that my last conscious thought last night had been when I had been staring at that portrait and marveling at the skill that the unknown artist had shown in capturing Lily's 'Mona Lisa' smile. As I glanced to my right, the real-life Lily was still asleep, but I noted that even now, she still wore that mesmerizing smile that so intrigued me.
I could feel the warmth of Lily's naked body against my own and as much as I would have loved to snuggle with her I realized that one of the reasons that I'd awakened was nature's call, so I reluctantly got up and padded to the bathroom. After taking care of business, I went to the sink to wash my hands and throw some water on my face. As I looked at my reflection in the mirror, I noted that my day-old stubble was in need of a shave, but at a deeper level, the image that looked back at me had a quizzical expression that revealed my confused emotional state. I had a sense that the answer was right there, but just as in my dream it was tantalizingly just out of reach.
Last evening as Lily and I were locked in a carnal embrace, she looked into my eyes and, with apparent sincerity, said "Je t'aime," and I had impulsively answered, "Me too." Both her statement and my immediate response had shocked me to my core. I was aware that some people say "I love you" in a casual and insincere way, but I am not one of them. I have always considered those words to be almost sacred, and I can remember only using them three times in my entire life and never to someone that I knew for less than two days. I never believed in the proposition of "Love at first sight," and as I gazed at my reflection, I could see that my heart was reexamining that notion while my mind continued to assert its absurdity. I just shook my head and sighed and headed back to the bedroom.
I had first met Lily three nights ago when she greeted me at the entrance of the Paris Freyja Club where she was employed as the hostess, and like all women on the premises was naked except for her shoes and a gold tiara that served as her name tag. I remembered that I had been stricken by her beauty then, and even more so now. That first meeting was enjoyable, but of necessity, brief, because of her responsibility to warmly greet each new member, the opportunity to hold lengthy conversations was severely limited. I had pushed Lily to the back of my mind that night and it wasn't until the next evening that the Goddess Freyja orchestrated a reunion of sorts.
I had spent a long Sunday editing a story that I had written about another Freyja Club hostess. Kyree was the subject and her journey had started in Senegal, but most of it happened in France. She was now in New York but had granted me permission to write about how she'd come to find her way to the club. As with a lot of my endeavors, if I get locked in, I can forgo food, rest, and even bathroom breaks and that's exactly what happened.
By early evening I was starving and on a whim had decided to walk over to the nearby casino that was less than a quarter of a mile from my hotel. Imagine my surprise when I saw a familiar face at one of the blackjack tables and Lily again entered my life. She had driven to the Paris suburb of Oise to take her mother to church that morning, but on the way home had decided to spend a couple of hours at the casino. She said that she rarely gambled but had felt drawn to the casino that evening. It was a coincidence that was beyond unbelievable and we both agreed that it had to be divine intervention, but God's purpose in reuniting us in exactly this way was a mystery.
Over dinner at the casino restaurant that had been my original objective, our conversation covered the waterfront of the kinds of things all people talk about in the getting-to-know-you stage of their relationship, but at one point drifted into the area of religion and spirituality. Lily told me that she and her family were devoted Catholics, and as such she wanted to ask me a question that had been troubling her for some time, namely, did I think that God would punish her for what she had chosen to do? Of course, I understood she meant the Freyja Club.
I think I was successful in giving her a new perspective on the question that so troubled her and also on life in general and the value of her life choices. It had seemed to lift a burden from her shoulders and from that moment on, I could see a difference in Lily and the way she regarded me. It was later that evening that she told me that she loved me, and now I was dealing with the emotions that her statement engendered. As these thoughts clashed in my mind, I knew something profound had changed, I just didn't know what.
Back in the present, I looked at Lily and It was easy to eschew my normal morning five-mile run since I had neither my running gear nor any enthusiasm to do anything other than crawl in next to her oh-so-soft naked body. Lily must have already been awake or very nearly so, because as soon as she felt the mattress move as I slid in next to her, her beautiful blue eyes opened and she whispered, "Salut soldat." I smiled at her attempt at early morning humor because she had essentially said, "Hi soldier." I assumed that she was referring to the time that I spent in the army because last night I had told her about some of my experiences as an infantry captain in Vietnam. Of course, I hadn't been a soldier for more than fifteen years, but it was a sobriquet that I was quite proud of earning.
I was still bemused by Lily when she chose to use some French phrases. I knew that her English was excellent and she didn't need to search for the right words so I assumed it was just something that she did with me to communicate the intimacy that we were feeling with each other. So if that was her game, I did my best to play along with my meager two-hundred world vocabulary. I touched her cheek and responded, "Bonjour ma petite fleur." Lily's eyes sparkled and she chuckled at my pathetic attempt at repartee, but her hand felt the day-old stubble on my cheek and she snuggled even closer. "Your little flower huh? Perhaps that's just your poetic invitation for me to spread my legs like a blossom so that you can get to my honey, non?