Another way to have a quiet evening

My needlework was ready. Two good mysteries were on BBC. I settled myself on the couch.

The phone rang.

“It’s Fanny.”

This is the young woman who I consider a French daughter. I first met her when she was an olive-eating three year old. We first communicated in German as she told me her feelings about her parents’ divorce. She tried to teach me French. We’ve shared time in Boston, Payerne CH, Conway NH, Toulouse, Môtiers CH, Geneva, Aix-en-Province, Neuchâtel, Carcassonne and Argelès

Fanny now works in Holland where she lives with her Dutch boyfriend. Besides being a Jacqueline-Kennedy-type beauty she speaks French, Dutch, English, German and has some Italian. She is a whiz in creating web pages.

“I am waiting for a UN contract, I’m going to New York,” she said. We talked for almost an hour of new times ahead for her, of old times.

“I’ll be thirty,” she said, reminding me that twenty-seven years had passed since I met her and over six since she, Robbert and I sat in an Argelès café after she graduated from university and was not having much luck in finding work. “With your languages, you can go anywhere,” he told her and within a month she was working Germany.

We hung up after catching up on our mutual acquaintances. I settled down with my needlework and the next mystery.

“Donna.” Robbert (RB2)’s voice drifted in my window. Auditory hallucination. He was back in Switzerland.

“Donna!”

I looked down the three flights to the street. The auditory hallucination was accompanied by a visual one.

Rb2 had stayed another day. The 23:02 train connecting to the overnight one to Zurich that he took Sunday nights didn’t run Monday nights, a factg he had learned about ten minutes before.

Of course I would drive him to Perpignan to catch his train. We set out for Barbara’s car, only I remembered I didn’t know where it was parked. A quick lap to her house and we found out.

Rb2 made his train with a half hour to spare, although his learning that Fanny was thirty caused him to stop walking. “That was your age when I met you. In fact I gave you a Tex-Mex birthday party shortly after.” Rb2 will be 45 this year.

My quiet evening was different than planned, although it was still quiet. It had a quiet of the soul that only exists when people you love share a bit of themselves.