BRIDGES OF TIME

BY:  ROSE CARR

CHAPTER ONE

Remie stepped off the train at the Gard du Nord, and knew immediately that she had made the right decision. It gave her the chance to fall in love all over again. Although she’d traveled halfway across the world, and lived in a dozen cities, there was still no place like Paris. She’d decided to adopt it as her hometown from her first days at the Sorbonne where she had come to study fashion and costume designing. It was where she had met Scott and fallen in love. It was where they had spent hours walking the quaint cobbled stone streets of the old city- absorbed in one another- sharing dreams over steaming mugs of coffee in the Place St. Michel.

She rounded the corner and there it was, the building where she had lived so long ago. She heard laughter coming from inside the darkened entrance. A young couple emerged from the building and passed here without so much as a glance. A smile tipped the corners of Remie’s mouth. She and Scott had once been the same way, absorbed in one another and happy. Paris had been center of their world during those early years of struggle. They had reveled in their poverty, took pride in it, refusing checks and handouts because it let them fit in. Everyone was young, brilliant, and poor and full of ideas that would change the world! God, had they been that naïve…and that poor? That first year their diet was strong French coffee and butter and cheese sandwiches made on thick French bread.

She stepped inside and felt her heart squeezed tight. Love and time had erased the reality of what she now saw. Threadbare, shabby hallways heavy with the pungent smell of garlic, perfume and Gauloises… the cheap strong cigarettes Scott had smoked, stretched out before her. She was a fool and shouldn’t have come here. Tears threatened and she ran from the building before the memories closed in on her. She caught the Metro and headed home, away from where she’d once been so happy, so alive, so in love. That was all behind her now. She had a new apartment, a new job and a new divorce.

to be continued....

© 2003 Rose Carr

Contact the author:  Rosematuse@aol.com

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