Colin
Before There are lights on the Christmas tree. I won’t tell her how they got there. I said she wouldn’t like it. I said that someone else’s loss is our gain.
She says they look absolutely gorgeous at night when we turn off the lights and lay side by side in the dark, with just the lights from the Christmas tree and the fire.
“This is perfect,” she says.
“This isn’t good enough,” I say.
“What do you mean?” she asks. “It’s perfect.”
But we both know it’s far from perfect.
What is perfect is the way she looks at me, and the way she says my name. The way her hand strokes my hair, though I don’t think she knows she’s doing it. The way we lay together night after night. The way I feel: complete. What is perfect is the way she sometimes smiles and she sometimes laughs. The way we can say anything that comes to mind, or sit together for hours in absolute silence.
The cat lies by us during the day. He sleeps with us at night, on her pillow where there’s an ounce of warmth. I tell her to shoo him away, but she won’t. So she moves closer to me. She shares mine instead. She feeds the cat table scraps, which he devours. But we both know that as the cabinets empty, she will have to decide: us or him.
We talk about where we would go if we had the chance.
I list everywhere I can possibly think of that’s warm. “Mexico. Costa Rica. Egypt. The Sudan.”
“The Sudan?”
“Why not? It gets hot.”
“You’re that cold?” she asks. I pull her on top of me.
“I’m getting warmer,” I say.
I ask where she’d want to go—if we ever got out of here.
“There’s a town in Italy,” she says. “A ghost town—it’s all but abandoned, lost in olive trees, a nearly nonexistent town of only a couple hundred people, with a medieval castle and an old church.”
“This is where you want to go?” I’m surprised. I expected Machu Picchu or Hawaii. Something along those lines.
But I can tell she’s been thinking about it.
“It’s the kind of place we could slip in. It’s a world apart from TVs and technology. It’s in Liguria, this part of Italy that borders the south of France—we’d be only miles from the Italian Riviera. We could live off the land, and grow our own food. We wouldn’t have to rely on others. We wouldn’t have to worry about being caught or found or...” I’m giving her a look. “You think it’s stupid,” she says.
“I think fresh vegetables would be a nice change from stewed tomatoes.”
“I hate stewed tomatoes,” she admits.
I say that I hate them, too. I only got them because I was in a rush.
“We could find a rustic old home, one of those granite monstrosities, one, I don’t know, maybe two hundred years old. We’d have breathtaking views of the mountains, maybe the coastline if we’re lucky. We could raise animals, grow our own food.”
“Grapes?”
“We could have a vineyard. And change our names, get a new start.”
I sit up on my elbows. “Who would you be?”
“What do you mean?”
“Your new name.”
The answer seems obvious. “Chloe.”
“Chloe. Then that’s who you’ll be,” I say. I consider the name. Chloe. I remember the day, months ago, when we’re driving in the truck back to Grand Marais. I forced her to pick a name, and she came up with Chloe. “Why Chloe?” I ask.
“What do you mean?”
“That day. When I told you you couldn’t be Mia anymore. And you said Chloe.”
“Oh,” she says and she sits up straight. There are creases on her face from my shirt. Her hair is long. It goes halfway down her back. Maybe more. I’m waiting for a simple answer. I just like it, something like that. But what I get is more. “Just some girl I saw on TV.”
“What do you mean?”
She closes her eyes. I know she doesn’t want to tell me.