The Empty Room

It’s cold for autumn in Paris, too bleak and rainy to escape our flat, which reverberates with echoes of silent meals and lovemaking.

He drains his coffee and sets the cup down. “There’s a train for Madrid at noon.”

I hold out the fleeting hope he’ll add, as he once would, “Let’s go.”

“Some things I need to do,” he says.

Outside the station, he pulls away his arm and bends to kiss me. My fists clench; I look away.

He whispers,“Au revoir, mon amour.”

He isn’t French, but he likes the economy of French phrases like this one.

It’s not “goodbye, my love,” he insists. “Au revoir means ‘until I return.’”

*

He always returns. In a week. A month. Comes back smelling of another woman or just sunshine and cigars. He’ll have stories. Some will be true.

I walk to the flat and light a cigarette. When he returns this time, will I be here? I sit at our table by the window, my view of Paris rooftops all but obscured by thick gray clouds and teardrops of rain running down the pebbly glass.

If the sun comes out before I finish my cigarette, I’ll leave…

Bonnar Spring is the award-winning author of international thrillers and short fiction. A nomad at heart, she hitchhiked across Europe at sixteen, joined the Peace Corps after college, and trekked to Machu Picchu for a significant birthday. Bonnar earned an Ed.M. from Harvard and hosts the Crime Wave podcast.