That’s what I wanted at first, but things are different now. I love you. Forget those guys. All fine choices of things to say. Certainly all superior to what I did say, which was, “Marcel, I told you that up front,” after which things deteriorated significantly, and with some alacrity.
Eventually he spat at me, “What a waste of my time.”
That set me off. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I groaned. “I’m sorry I’ve wasted your precious time, although I have no idea what the hell else you have to do all day. I’m sorry I’ve been such a pain in your ass. Maybe I’ll just go back to L.A. and leave you in peace. You know what? I’m sorry I ever came into your life.” Take that!
I’d been landing wide all morning, but that one hit the target. Dead center. Marcel half sat, half fell back onto the bed, as if he’d been knocked on his ass by a wrecking ball. I knew I’d gone too far, but dammit, I was mad, too.
Eventually he rallied. “If you even halfway mean that,” he whispered, “then yeah, maybe you should go.”
I dropped to my knees beside him. “Marcel…”
He turned away from me, saying only, “Go.”
Fine. Whatever. We were both mad, so I stormed out of his room and into mine, slamming the door so he wouldn’t think he was the only one with a right to be pissed off. That we were both pissed off at me was beyond my grasp at the moment, and in a fog of I’ll Show Him, I actually started shoving my shit into my suitcase. I made something of a production of it, obviously, slamming drawers and rattling hangers, so Marcel would know to come and stop me, but he didn’t.
Fine. Whatever. I called a taxi, knowing that when it pulled up in front of the house, Marcel would come out of his room. Don’t go, he would say, and I’d think about it, like Maybe I should, and he’d beg me to stay, send the driver away, and take me to bed. My butthole began to tingle at the mere prospect. I let the taxi honk a few times, just to drive home the point that I was, in fact, departing, but Marcel’s door stayed stubbornly closed.
Fine. Whatever. What did a taxi to the airport cost, anyway? Twenty bucks? He’d follow me and run dramatically through the terminal, catching me at the ticket counter just before the agent handed me my boarding pass for Amsterdam. He’d declare his love, she’d smile knowingly, and we’d saunter off into the sunset. That was worth twenty bucks, I supposed. The farther away he let me get, after all, the grander the gesture would be when he came to stop me.
I had an open-ended return ticket to LAX on KLM; who knew they were so easy to cash in? I had my boarding pass for the next flight to Amsterdam in my hot little hands before Marcel so much as screeched to a dramatic halt in front of the terminal, as well as a window seat for a five p.m. connection to L.A. Time was a-wasting; hadn’t he ever seen a romantic movie? Where the hell was he?
Customs was a breeze, and it was a turbo-prop commuter airplane, so boarding didn’t take long. Certainly not long enough. I loitered in the gate room until the KLM employee threatened to drag me across the tarmac and onto the plane himself. I knew Marcel might not be able to get through security, but my ears were straining, listening for the last-minute page that I knew would come, directing me to beg forgiveness via a white courtesy phone or airport information booth. Apparently I had really crossed a line, and would have some major reparations to undertake. For which I was fully ready, but precisely when was he going to give me the chance to make them? I willed the canned voice to call my name, even in Luxembourgish if necessary. It steadfastly refused.
Departure time eventually came. One propeller started up, the little blue airplane pushed back from the terminal, and the second propeller fired to life. It’s a small airport, it was a short taxi, and, after a brief pause at the end of the runway to wait for clearance, the puddle jumper started rolling. Slowly at first, then picking up speed, lifting its nose into the air, the rear gear shortly pushing it off the ground, it climbed into the sky and away towards Amsterdam. From the rooftop observation deck I watched it go until even the tiny speck it eventually became disappeared, and only then did I hang my head and allow myself to wonder, Now what?
I had obviously alienated Marcel, and I didn’t really have any place else to go in Luxembourg, but he’d been right: I did want to go to the Olympics. I burned for the opportunity, and if I had to work for it, and practice and go to Munich and pay my dues like everybody else does, well then, I’d just have to find a way to make that happen. Surely Marcel didn’t have the only rifles in Luxembourg; I’d go online, find a club, work my ass off, and surprise him in Munich—just the look on his face would be worth it. Sparing another glance at the wild blue yonder, I turned to go.
“I thought you’d never turn around,” Marcel said with half a smile. He was leaning against the door that led back into the terminal in my favoritest charcoal jeans and a hoodie, half-zipped to reveal my favorite chest—and the fact that for the first time in his life he hadn’t layered. The overall effect was of someone who had left the house in a hurry, I noted with satisfaction.
“God, I’m glad you didn’t get on that airplane,” he said.
“And what if I had?” I challenged him. And when he held up a boarding pass
