The Cat Jumped off the Balcony to Catch a Fly
A short story.
A cafe in Paris. How romantic.
The waiter — a typical Frenchman: dark hair, dark beard, scarf — had said “Bonjour Madame” instead of “Bonjour Mademoiselle” as she came in.
Did she really look that old?
What had given her age away? Maybe it was the brand new wrinkle she had discovered this morning under her right eye. Maybe it was her cheeks; both of them hollowed out right around her 22nd birthday.
“It doesn’t get any easier, does it?” she thought to herself. She wished she could look a little more like the Instagram model whose profile she stumbled upon this morning.
Fine. Maybe more than a little.
“Un expresso, s’il vous plaît.”
“Autre chose?”
“Non, merci.”
She used to hate coffee. “Why would anyone want to drink black water?” she used to say.
The waiter brought her her espresso and the usual jug of water. Beside the cup of espresso was a teaspoon, a cookie, and a pack of sugar. She left them all untouched and took a sip of her two-euro coffee.
Warm and bitter. Just the way she liked it.
Over the past few days, she had been experiencing an overwhelming urge to have children. As someone who was aiming to have a long-lasting career, it was bizarre. It was as if it had come with age.
It was frankly exciting to be able to experience new feelings that she’d never had before, but it also made her worry. If she didn’t already have a healthy and stable career, how was she supposed to raise a child?
“I would rather die than not be able to protect my children,” she told herself.
This was the moment she realised that her parents were not going to live forever.
When you’re a child, anything that catches your attention becomes your everything. Every word, every face, anything that you could touch and taste — every single one was an entire world in itself. You could chase a butterfly for two hours and it was always better than going to sleep.
To live in the moment — that was our natural state.
Time moves so fast when we’re adults, but when we were children, time was never as important as being happy.
She was very aware her childhood was a privilege. There was no childhood trauma available to haunt her, unlike with some of her friends. She had heard their stories — absent parents, dead parents, divorced parents, cheating parents — and the only thing she could do was have an urge to hug them. She then imagined how frightening it must have been, for a child to come home to an empty house.
Consciously or not, she was now waiting for something awful and traumatic to happen in her life. It was bound to happen sooner or later; she was sure of it. If she had not yet experienced a sudden permanent loss in her life of something she loved very much, could she even call herself an adult?
She was sitting in the corner of the cafe, next to the windows. Across from the corner was the bar. It had just rained, but it didn’t look very romantic outside. Paris in the rain was just grey.
The passing cars were covered in wet, dark, deadly-looking water droplets. There was a homeless man at the bus stop across the street. He was wearing a red beret and talking to himself. He had the look of someone who regularly made foolish decisions that didn’t fall in line with normal societal standards.
There were no helmets to be seen on any of the cyclists.
Inside, two tables in front of her, there was an elderly couple with their coats on. The woman, sat on the left, was having a thé au lait: tea with milk. The man on the right: a cup of thè noir, or black tea. His hot water came in a pitcher made of stainless steel; her cold milk was in a white ceramic jug. They were both looking out the window.
It was becoming harder for her to not think of her parents every time she saw an old person in public. When she looked at them, all she could see was the future.
There they were, what her parents were becoming: colour fading from their hair, hair fading from their head, crankiness fading into their patience, life fading out of their body. They were aging. Edging closer and closer to being swallowed up by the short attention span of history. And she was powerless.
Today was the day she learned to hate death.
“L’addition, s’il vous plaît.”
“C’est €2.20, Madame.”
As she walked out the doors of the cafe, the thoughtful voice of a female singer could be heard from the cafe’s speakers. She was singing a bossa nova version of a Coldplay song.
Where to? Where do I go?
If you never try, then you’ll never know.
How long do I have to climb,
Up on the side of this mountain of mine?
Standing there outside, she looked at a black crow walking across the pavement in front of her. It was a nice change from the poopy Parisian pigeons.
From her nose and out through her mouth, she took in a deep breath. It was the kind of breath that made her feel like she was augmenting her eyes, making them sharper…clearer…enhancing them.
She began to speak out loud, mostly to herself:
I got everything I need.
I have now.
And birds go flying at the speed of sound
To show you how it all began.
Birds came flying from the underground.
If you could see it then you’d understand.
Oh, when you see it then you’ll understand.
