The Situation in Djeppe

Who was that girl?

Ben did not know. Lucy did not know. Armando did not know. Neither did Altamira Maskawa, shrugging.

Who was that bereted girl whose green eyes shot like two blinding comets past the lobby door’s bullseye window dumbfounding me as I stood manning L’Hôtel Djeppe’s reception?

Someone has to know.

Does anyone in here know who that bereted girl who just walked by the door was?

Heads shaking, staring blankly, resoundingly saying no. I will have to find for myself the bereted girl into whose green eyes I looked as they zipped past the window like two comets in a telescope.

Altamira Maskawa, may I go?

Altamira Maskawa, shrugging.

Vaulting over the counter, running out of L’Hôtel Djeppe and down the sidewalk. Afternoon sunshine alighting pedestrians’ shoulders, firetruck sirens wailing far away decrescendo into oblivion.

Who was she? I ask individuals as I run down the street, stopping and starting again at each one of them:

A policeman puffing a pipe: I don’t know.

A drunk drinking a drink: I don’t know.

A lady holding lettuce: I don’t know.

A mime, gesturing: (I don’t know).

Catching my breath at the corner of 12th and Minou St., remembering briefly a diorama of the earliest winged insects I saw at Le Musée de Biologie yesterday, a yellow taxi zooms by.

Was that her?

Could she be on the way to Bordeaux, my destiny irrevocably reconstituted by the toe of a career driver’s expert throttling?

No. Visually following the taxi as it zips by the corner until happening through a retail window display to land upon her green eyes as she leafs through records in a yellow crate across the street.

Comets stop?

Jaysprinting across Minou, sliding to a halt outside of the window as two cars’ honks rapidly crescendo until then crash into each other, shards of shattered windows quietly tinkling as they scatter about the road. People say Sacre bleu!

Her pausing painted-red fingernails minusculely reflecting my bewildered expression from a series of different angles as they stop to hold a Mulatu Astatke record perfectly still.

What to say now?

Running inside, doorchime above door chimes, she looks at me. God.

I just saw you walk by L’Hôtel Djeppe.

I just saw you working the counter at L’Hôtel Djeppe through that bullseye window.

That was me. I have run after you because I am furiously in love with you.

Oh?

What is your name?

Alice.

Frank.

Her downturned eyes looking at my outstretched hand while she doesn’t shake it.

I do not respond well to unsolicited approaches.

She hates me and I know for certain that she hates me.

I am sorry but when your eyes passed by the lobby door window it was like two comets shooting across the lens of a telescope.

I have never used a telescope.

Neither have I. I was using language to convey the phenomenologi—

Her finger disabling my talker.

I’ve had it with men like you who think that just because I looked curiously into a window in passing you can come up to me and pretend to be an astronomer.

I am not pretending to be an astronomer.

You are blushing.

I am not.

You are.

Am not.

I have eyes.

Alice, I can assure you that I know that very well, if you could only give me a minute I could explain how it is your very eyes that have veritably changed my life and unlocked new horizons of passion in my humble reception-boy’s heart.

I have heard this all before.

She has heard this all before?

You have heard this all before?

I have.

Tell me everything about yourself.

Well, I was born in Montreal and my star sign—

On a deeper level than that, Alice! By everything I meant only the deepest things!

I believe that the fundamental meaning of life is to connect to others because then you mean something to them and they mean something to you, when it comes to metaphysics I’m an realist, I believe that most people are living lives that they are told to live instead of lives of their own design, I believe that the world will end when—

She thinks and I know that she thinks. But what does she feel?

Alice, I am listening intently and am sorry to interrupt you, but please would you tell me what it is that you feel at the deepest level?

I sometimes feel an inexplicable intense desire to hear music, a desire which compelled me to visit the record store this afternoon and purchase a new record which I plan to bring home and put on my record player and let spin while lying on my bed smoking grass until I am satisfied, then I think I will go to sleep, then dream, hopefully, though often I cannot dream after smoking.

She feels, she thinks. I am helplessly in love.

I am helplessly in love with you, Alice, you feel, you think, I have never been more enthralled.

I’m flattered. Now tell me about yourself.

Myself?

Be vulnerable!

Well, I um… My greatest fear is that I will never feel as fulfilled again as I was when I was in love with someone named Lyla, my second greatest fear is that I will die without learning the meaning of life—

But I have just told you the meaning of life!

—I believe that God made life without meaning, that life is all for fun, I believe—and I have never told anyone this before—I believe that we do have free will, I do not trust determinists, I do believe in synchronicity, I do believe in the limitlessness of individual ch—

Doorchime above door chimes, an Italian and a Scot walk in wielding car fenders like baseball bats.

In sync: We are going to kill you, reception-boy!

I look at Alice, terrified.

She looks at me, smiling.

We must go. She grabs my hand and we leave this world together without a word.

Henry Romain is a poet from Des Moines, Iowa, currently finishing up his B.A. in English from the University of Southern California abroad at the University of Edinburgh. His work has appeared in Palaver Arts Magazine at the University of Southern California, The Inkwell and Contemporary Arts Society Magazine at the University of Edinburgh, The Underground Literary Magazine at the College of Mount Saint Vincent, and ONEA Zine. Sometimes, he likes to masquerade as a photographer, too.