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‘Let me,’ he said, in a friendly American voice, indicating his willingness to take the photograph. He was maybe in his mid-fifties and handsome, in an ageing cowboy kind of way.
‘You’re very kind.’ Claire took a step forwards, handed him the camera, stepped backwards, tripped over her bag and would doubtless have fallen had Ronan not leaped to save her. She felt his hand spread wide on her hip, pulling her close. She wrapped her left arm around his waist but couldn’t decide where to put her right hand.
‘Say Brie,’ said the man with the camera.
‘Brie.’
‘Brrrie.’
Claire laughed out loud. Her loose right hand landed firmly on Ronan’s belly.
The camera clicked, and the man handed it back with the screen facing upwards. She couldn’t help but look at the shot. They were offset to the left of centre, the landmark shopfront perfectly framed to their right. She was looking down the camera lens, laughing. Ronan was looking at her.
‘It’s a great shot,’ she said, looking up. ‘Thanks so much.’
But the stranger had disappeared.
‘Did you see where he went?’
‘You’re all lit up.’ Ronan leaned down and kissed her lips.
Her habit of late was to pull away, to maintain a safe distance. It was, now that she thought about it, weeks since he’d even tried to kiss her. She felt an urge to step back, but a jostle from the milling crowd shoved her hard against his chest.
For a split second, she imagined they were at the spot-lit centre of a movie scene. She raised her eyes to meet his and saw the hope there, that same hope that woke the anxious worm in her gut. Live in the moment, she told herself. Make it good.
With her eyes closed, she kissed his neck, his jaw, his cheek and almost found his mouth. Someone jostled her again, but Ronan moved his hand from her hip to the small of her back and held her there, close against him, until she kissed him back.
Old and Kinda Pricey
Dan was slipping a vinyl LP back into its paper sleeve when the man came clattering through the door. ‘You got any guidebooks here?’
Californian, for sure. Dan pursed his lips to contain a sigh.
‘I’m afraid not, sir,’ he said, closing the lid of the record player. ‘Guidebooks are in the main shop next door.’
Funny, the man seemed kinda familiar. He had the look of an early nineties action hero.
‘Where you from, son?’
This one seemed lonely, too. Dan was a sucker for lonely tourists.
‘Boston.’
‘Listen, I don’t do queues, and I don’t need a guidebook. I just want something to read.’
‘You understand, sir, the books in this section are old and kinda pricey?’
‘That’s just fine, son.I’mold and kinda pricey. What ya got?’
‘Fact or fiction?’
‘I want a story.’
‘American?’
‘Something set here, in Paris.’
‘Hemingway?’ Dan pointed, reverently, to a hardback copy ofA Moveable Feast.
