That electric brink of anticipation. He came close but not close enough, and time spread out, and with it came an increasing heat as the space between them slowly thinned. Then there was the warmth of his breath as his lips were almost against hers, but still he held back, until all at once she pressed into him, kissing him and present in every inch of her body in a way she never was. The surface of her skin felt charged. Her toes, even. She moved a bare foot so it was against his, and her skin flared.
Everything was still and silent. Just a bit, she opened her eyes to see that this was him, that this moment was real, and when she did, she saw him do the same. Still, his right hand was in her hair and his left was wrapped around her wrist, fingers pressed into the center where the vein pulsed.
CHAPTER 3
“I bet we were diverted here for a reason,” Delan tells Olivia now as they drive the streets of Geneva without their luggage.
That scrap of paper from her list, the one that mentioned The Tonight Show and led to their first kiss, is currently framed and on his bedside table because he is the believer in fate, the one who sees the roots of events, all that grew and gathered and had to be just to create one beat where words spoken would match words written, all so the rest would unfold.
“Something might’ve happened in Baghdad,” he continues. “An accident maybe.”
All they have are Delan’s backpack, inside of which is a change of clothes and some toiletries, and Olivia’s purse and camera bag, inside of which is her Nikon F2 Photomic—improved automatic film advance and a wider shutter-speed range, her black-and-silver best friend—and the MD-2 motor drive that allows six frames per second and automatic film advance and rewind. You have nothing to wear, Delan had said earlier, but at least you have twenty pounds of lenses and color filters and film. To that she had agreed, because the thought of being separated from her camera was truly upsetting. She’d realized he was being sarcastic only when he started laughing.
Photography is a start she feels she’s still in. Caught in a perpetual state of ready, like a quivering crouch at a starting line that’s gone on too long. But that could change. Just a month and a half ago, after the tickets to Iraq had been booked and paid for, the contest at work had been announced. A bit of in-house fun. Selected anonymously in the middle of June, the best photo would win its owner a spot in the photo department, courtesy of an employee who gave his advance notice for the middle of the summer. A chance based on merit. There were months to prepare, and an undercurrent of competition wedged itself among the rookies and those who manned the desks. And now this contest, she’d said to Delan the day it was announced. Because with the timing of the trip, she had a chance to take photos that would stand out, that would be different from those of the scenery just outside the office door. Fate, Delan had replied. Opportunity, she’d countered.
Ornate buildings and cafés and streetlights like full moons. For a while they watch it all streak by, this detour on which they’re captive.
“So where are you from?” Delan asks the driver.
“Mumbai.”
“Mumbai,” he says with drawn-out wistfulness. “I had a girlfriend from Mumbai. Her hair was like onyx, like the chiseled side of onyx. So shiny.”
The man’s eyes find Olivia in the rearview mirror, and she smiles to assure him it’s okay and then feels Delan squeeze her hand.
The hall on the hotel’s second floor is long, with impossibly high ceilings. Eighteenth century, the clerk had told them when Delan asked the building’s age. With drafts to prove it, I bet, Olivia had added.
“What did they do in the eighteenth century that demanded such high ceilings?” she now asks.
“Their hair,” Delan says. “Three-feet-tall hair. Powdered white and dangerous.”
“With peacock feathers.”
“Or peacocks.”
Inside the room, there is a window with a view of two streets that seem to branch from the spot in which they stand. “You,” he says, turning her so she’s facing the window, his fingers on the rise of her hip bone. “You and me here. Look at this.”
And she does. There is the dark luster of streets and the city in the glass, and the feeling of his lips along her neck while their reflection hovers before them in a faint overlay. This moment. It wasn’t supposed to happen. They exist in the middle of everything, this night like an accidental slip in time. It makes her think that yes, they can be forever, and she was right to hope and believe their differences won’t matter because if you want something enough, you make it happen. You find yourself in an unexpected place, something shared. This, this is what they need.
After loading in black-and-white film, she opens the window and leans out while Delan holds her waist; then she twists to capture the row of buildings beside her, pulling against his grasp. “I’m not gonna fall.”
But his grip tightens. “You really think that’s the only reason I’m holding you?”
For a second, she loses her focus, feeling only him standing behind her and the points of pressure from his fingertips and even his smile that she knows is there, and she must remind herself that he is not going anywhere, but this view will be brief and in her life for only one night. So once again she finds her focal point in the spread of buildings next to her: a sign with the white cross of Switzerland. Click. In black and white, with the diffused light from the streetlamps and the
