The waiter asked us if we had been to Du Temps Perdu before. It wasn’t really a question. I think it was obvious we were from out of town.
We must have looked like we had wandered in from a different movie with our peanut butter suntans and our California colors in the murky New York atmosphere.
“We’d both like the prix fixe,” my wife said before I could make the situation more awkward with a joke.
“Of course,” said the waiter and brought the crowns. They were both wrapped in fancy foil and it wasn’t obvious how to unwrap them or put them on our heads. I actually put mine on backward and as my wife started to laugh, the waiter righted it without a word.
He reviewed us like a scoutmaster and then touched the small glowing sphere in the center of the table. I immediately felt a shocking zing across my scalp like when the dentist touches a sensitive nerve, and this weird black and white static effect appeared around everything in my vision.
“Most people find it helps to close their eyes, sir,” the waiter said.
It did help.
When I closed my eyes I saw total darkness. Not just the back of your eyelids darkness but a matte black vacuum absorbing all light.
And then I smelled warm cotton candy. And diesel engines. And the salt of my own perspiration dried on my skin from a day of being young.
And I heard plinking carnival music and high excited voices in the night.
We were walking toward the cotton candy machine, and as we got closer it grew warmer as we approached. I held the narrow paper cone and tasted the hot pink sugar dissolving in my mouth like mist. In both of our mouths as we shared. Our lips coming very close. And we laughed.
And then I was holding her hand, much smaller than mine. Her fingernails didn’t extend far past the end of her fingers and were rough at the ends. No varnish. Adolescent fingernails.
This was long before she wore perfume but the air was subtly festive with her girly citrus antiperspirant.
(For me? Because this was a date?)
I felt real fear crush my stomach but also the excitement as we rose on the creaky Ferris wheel. A counterfeit danger but maybe also a real danger from the shaky feeling of the thing. The summer breeze made my perspiration evaporate and it was surprisingly cool and dark at the top.
We were stopped at the apex of the wheel. Swinging slowly. I could sense every fragile rusted bolt that held us aloft. Each breath filled the thin membranes of my lungs completely.
I had been surfing all morning and the ocean had washed the oils from my hair leaving it stiff in the breeze. From the top of the Ferris wheel we could see a long crescent of desert plants, and then a sliver of pale ashen sand in the darkness, and then the black emptiness of the ocean that went on forever to the nighttime horizon. And we could hear the soft rhythmic lapping of the waves. I leaned over carefully, each movement augmented in every vector by the fragile equilibrium of the carriage.
I kissed my wife. But not yet my wife. Just a girl who made my chest feel hollow. Her lips were warm against my cold skin. The intricate network of tiny folds of her lips smoothed over with strawberry scented gloss.
She had been helping her mom in the kitchen making cookies. Her hair still smelled like cookie dough. We were sixteen.
“Don’t feel bad about crying, sir,” said the waiter. “Everyone does the first time alone.”
I opened my eyes and looked across at my wife but she wasn’t there, and only slowly did I realize that this was also part of the memory.
Michael Tracy is an avid reader and occasional writer.
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