في بحر من البشر، عيني ستبحث عنك دائما
"In the sea of people, my eyes will always search for you."
The first time it happens, it hits him out of nowhere. Sure, he has seen her in his dreams before. She's ingrained in every fiber of his being. It would be hard not to.
But something's changed. Never before has a dream been this vivid. He feels like she is right there next to him, like he can just reach out and touch her, lose himself in the warmth of her reassuring brown eyes. Eyes that are so often darkened by the shadows of her past, yet seem to light up with life whenever they meet his. Eyes that have once lost their sparkle, making him fear he had come too late to rescue her from the abyss. Eyes that have seen so much pain and destruction in their lifetime that he sometimes wonders how she manages to open them time and time again when her alarm clock rings each morning.
He is well aware that sometimes she feels like she can't. Like the weight of guilt laying on her shoulders will crush her for good this time. She isn't the only one. He knows a thing or two about guilt himself, carries enough of it every day to know that if you keep piling it on, one day you won't be able to move anymore. Especially in their world, moving means living. He prays to every deity he has ever heard of, that he will manage to get to her in time now, before the darkness in her eyes wins out.
She doesn't deal well with being weighed down, he knows. Quick and light, that's how she survives. Slow her down and you might as well kill her. It comes with her Mossad training. She's used to being alone, relying on no one but herself, keenly aware that if she gets caught, that's it for her. But she isn't alone anymore. He has her back. Always had. Told her so over and over in the past. At lo levad.
He wonders if she'll ever hear him.
But the eyes he's looking into now are soft, not tainted by visions of grisly crime scenes, lifeless bodies of loved ones and suicide missions in the desert. She looks radiant, her hair as wild and curly as the first time he met her. He can't remember the last time she wore it like that. Straightening it is just another way she tries to keep an iron grip on the few things in her life she still has a semblance of control over.
Past experience has taught them both that there's no way to control life. You can't hold it. It just keeps going on. The things you value most here and now can just as easily be gone tomorrow. He has learned that lesson the hard way, yet every time it sneaks up on him again, it cuts like the first time. The knot currently sitting in his stomach attests to that.
He shoves the thought away quickly, letting his eyes trail down her glowing olive skin and stop at the faint glance of gold around her neck instead. Her star of David necklace. The one she would rather die than take off. The one he had wrapped up in festive, sparkly paper and put on her desk – without a card – on Christmas three years ago after the one her late mother had given her was lost in the infinite sands of a far-away desert.
His eyes wander further. The shirt she's wearing is emerald green, the color of hope. He faintly recalls her briefly wearing a silky dress in a similar color when they were first forced to spend a night together in a hotel room. It was quickly replaced by white sheets tangling around their sweat-glistening bodies.
Finally, she opens her mouth, drawing his eyes up towards her bright smile. Her voice is lilting, soft and smooth when she speaks the words that are meant to ease the sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach.
"Don't worry. We will be okay."
He's not sure if he believes it but wakes before he can tell her.
As the dream fades, he chases it, forlorn mossy green eyes snapping to the seat next to him. The woman sitting there looks nothing like the one he has seen in his dream. It serves as a painful reminder that he is on his own in his quest to find her, no matter how many people surround him. He fights the irrational urge to get up and search the entire overbooked plane for her, knowing full well she's not on it. Instead, he settles for averting his gaze skywards, steadfastly ignoring the black night outside and the deep turquoise of the immense ocean some thousand feet beneath him, that is keeping them apart.
It's like a sucker-punch the second time it happens. Barely a week after he boarded the plane home, while she watched from the tarmac, alone and heartbroken, eyes glistening with tears. Barely a week after they said their final goodbyes and he was forced to leave her behind. Barely a week after he felt a piece of himself getting torn away with every mile that stretches between them.
Although he had vowed to always watch her back, this time the choice wasn't his to make. She insisted on embarking on a journey of self-discovery. Something she can apparently only do on her own, without anybody there to tether her to a past she'd rather forget. So, despite his best efforts to convince her to come home with him, there's nothing left for him to do other than to turn his back on her. It's the hardest one-eighty of his life.
Ever since he got on that plane, he feels as alone as she had looked that day.
It hardly seems fair for life to go on as usual without her. For him it loses all meaning. He has no one to impress anymore, no one to act up for in order to put a smile on their face. Apparently, the change doesn't go unnoticed.
In an attempt to cheer him up, his friends convince him to go to the new bar they discovered downtown. The place is small but crowded, blue and green strobe lights bouncing around the dancefloor frantically. He can only see brief flashes of faces and bare flesh as he walks through the mass of people, searching for the booth his people have settled into.
He's shoving his way through a particularly dense group of what appears to be a bachelorette party, all the while trying not to spill the beverages he's carrying, when a girl in a long-sleeved, black mini dress catches his gaze. For a brief moment, he is sure it's her, convinced she has changed her mind and come back. She had worn a similar dress with an unusual golden statement necklace when they had danced in a club in Europe not unlike the one he's in now.
Memories of that night flood his mind. The German bartender serving their Martinis. Her not-so-subtle movie reference. Since when do you know your Bond? Then, her entire body tensing. That romantic jazz song crooning in the background when suddenly the next move crystallized in his mind. Pulling her toward the dancefloor. They're playing our song, sweetcheeks. Her lithe body rigid in his arms as she tried taking the lead. But he wouldn't let her. Twirling around, eyes constantly roaming the dusky club for their suspect, coming up empty. Slowly feeling her relax into him. The room going more and more out of focus as their eyes drifted more and more into each other until finally they were all each other could see. Unbroken eye contact while their tune carried on playing. The words clear as a bell.
I'm glad there is you.
A sharp elbow to his ribcage violently jerks him from his daydream. But the air leaves his lungs for an entirely different reason. The loss of the memory of her warmth against his chest makes the hole she left feel almost palpable. He takes a swig of beer, trying in vain to fill the emptiness that has settled in his gut all the while struggling and failing to breathe normally. The feeling reminds him of having the pneumonic plague.
Miraculously, he manages to make it out of the dancing mob and join his co-workers at the table they have claimed for the night. Putting on the fake smile he has perfected over the years, he hands everyone their beverage and joins into their easy small-talk. No matter how hard he tries to distract himself, though, a small part of his brain keeps thinking about that little black dress. He shifts around in his seat to get a better look at the dancing crowd. People-watching, he thinks. He has always been good at lying to himself.
In reality, he knows he isn't fooling anybody. The only reason he is turned toward the floor is the faint glimmer of hope he still holds of seeing her again.
He welcomes the third time it happens, though it still manages to throw him off kilter. For it happens unexpectedly and with no warning. Her unpredictable nature had always managed to catch him off guard.
It's just another day at the office, only it doesn't feel like it. The glare of the skylight overhead irritates him. Maybe it's because he hasn't slept in days, maybe because he knows that the only person who would be able to brighten his mood won't be waiting for him when he gets to his desk. The thought of her makes him almost miss his floor, but he slips through the cracks before the silver elevator doors can close in on him.
The morning goes by in a drag. He's just turned in his report from the day before and is about ready for his second cup of coffee. With a heavy gait, he heads to the break room, hoping the caffeine will wake him from his haze. When he gets there, he startles. At the small round table in the middle of the room sits a dark-haired woman. It's the same spot she sat in, that time he told her about the last movie he'd ever seen with his mother. The Little Prince.
"That which is essential is invisible to the eye," she had quoted from the book that inspired the movie and that was the closest he'd ever come to just giving up the pretense and spilling his feelings to her. He hadn't, though. Now he wonders why he never did. He was the fool at the back of the room waiting for a chance to begin, too caught up in what-ifs to realize his chance had been there all along and now it has passed him by.
He's about to gather his courage, walk over and tell her what he now feels a burning need to say, when the woman turns around and he accidentally makes eye contact with her steel blue orbs. It's not her, he tells himself. It's never her, only ever a fleeting and imperfect reflection of his deepest desire.
Once again, he is hit by an overwhelming urge to see the real her, feel her, taste her. Instead here he is, alone between orange office walls. Despite the warm paint color, his insides feel cold. The building seems like a sorry imitation of what it used to be with her energy bringing it to life. In fact, his whole life appears that way. He's slowly starting to question whether the time they had together had been nothing but a very vivid dream too. After all, it's like he's the only one who even acknowledges her existence.
No one else ever says her name. It's like she's dead to them. But he keeps her alive in his mind. Too alive, perhaps. Heck, he names a goldfish after her just to have an excuse to say her name every day. It leaves a bitter aftertaste in his mouth, his desperation. Yet he holds on to it, because without her steady presence, he would be treading water. It's a cold comfort, he knows. She took his warmth away with her.
Unable to stay in the trap of his regrets, he leaves the break room without the coffee and chocolate bar that drove him there in the first place. But the shadow of her almost-presence follows him out like a storm cloud.
He sits back down at his desk. Across from him, the empty chair where she used to work. Or throw office supplies at him. Sometimes both at the same time. That he can still conjure up that image of her piercing stare, deliberately wandering between him and the paperclips in front of her, makes him breathe a little easier. Like the yellow skies in the eye of a hurricane. Maybe, he decides, it's better to actively keep the invisible ghost of her memory around, then to let her fade away completely. After all, that which is essential is invisible to the eye.
Looking away from his mental picture, he turns to open his desk drawer. The skylight bounces off something gold within it. Her necklace is tucked away safely, always next to him. A memento he keeps from a relationship that never had a chance to happen.
By the fourth time it happens, he has gotten used to it. It's been three years since they said goodbye, but he's never stopped looking for her. Even when he should know better.
He's sitting alone on the black leather couch in his living room, stiff drink in one hand and tv remote in the other. It's one of those rare days when nothing on the screen manages to capture his fancy. He briefly considers turning to his Netflix queue, but decides that he doesn't have a big enough attention span left. Instead he turns to ZNN, craving the white noise provided by the news anchor. If he had once embraced the peace and quiet of the sanctuary that's his apartment, nowadays he just seeks for ways to fill the void.
Really, it's all her fault. She was the one who had come barging into his personal space, laying her head on his pillows, waking up twisted in his bedsheets after another nightmare, drying herself off with his high-thread-count Martha Stewart towels after her morning shower. Now, whenever he looks at his kitchen counter, he imagines her standing there, folding laundry. Whenever he takes out his old baseball, he remembers playing with it before hearing her muffled sobs coming from his room and getting up to check on her. Whenever he scans his empty fridge for left-overs he can hear her voice chiding him for not keeping fresh groceries around the house.
Her presence is everywhere in his home. And yet she's nowhere in sight. She can't be. After all she died in the fire that left her daughter motherless two weeks ago.
Their daughter, he reminds himself. Tali. Her name doesn't quite roll off his tongue yet. The concept is still so foreign. He didn't know about the little girl until after he got the news that she was the only survivor of the burning inferno. The only good thing coming from their passionate goodbye. The only thing of her mother's that hasn't been destroyed by flames. Well, that and the pendant that is currently dangling from Tali's fragile neck. It was the only natural conclusion for him to give the gold necklace to the little girl, reuniting her with her mother's memory.
Now whenever he looks at Tali, he sees her. Wild, curly hair, dark, expressive eyes, a rosebud mouth and the golden star pendant glistening around her neck. In a way, he guesses, he got the love of his life back after all. Even if everything inside of him longs to get to share their bundle of joy with his partner. He feels her loss like a hole that can't be filled. Especially now that he got confirmation of her fate.
And yet he can't shake this feeling that she's still around somewhere. He can't fathom a world without her in it.
On the TV, the ZNN reporter is chatting on about some new terror threat in France, as surveillance video footage of its capital city flashes across the screen. He almost drops his crystal glass, amber Bourbon sloshing dangerously, upon seeing the grainy security camera image of a familiar petite woman in a dark green blouse, buying a newspaper at a stand in the background. It can't be, he tells himself.
He reaches for his daughter's diaper bag. The picture he found in it the night after she moved in with him, depicting her mother sitting behind him on a scooter with the Eiffel Tower in the background, magically draws his eyes. He'd been unable to take it out of the bag where her hands had put it, her fingers had touched it. She had always loved Paris, he muses. And just like that, he realizes where he needs to go.
The fifth time it happens, he can't believe his eyes. He has almost given up hope by now.
He's sitting in a cafe on the streets of Paris with Tali. They're having breakfast there just like every Sunday morning for the past month. It's June and spring is starting to give way to summer. The sky is tinted blue, not a cloud in sight. Warm beams of sun make his skin tingle. There's a vibrancy in the city air. He barely listens to the traffic and the chatter all around him. It fades to a mere hum in the background as he concentrates on feeding his toddler a crêpe without making too much of a mess. He's in the middle of wiping powdered sugar from Tali's mouth, when he suddenly hears a voice smooth as Tennessee Whiskey somewhere behind his back. His mind comes to a screeching halt and there's only one thought bouncing through his head: it's her.
He glances at her from across the street, following the sound. She looks just like the woman he's been dreaming about for years. And she's heading towards him. For a split second, he's frozen on the spot, convinced his mind is playing a trick on him again. It isn't until Tali's high-pitched cry of "Ima" that he breaks out of his reverie.
The little girl has already run into her mother's embrace and he's rooted on the spot, staring dumbfoundedly at the heartwarming reunion. It's like a cliché straight out of his beloved movies. Three years of being adrift, in a sea of people, yet completely alone because the only person that mattered wasn't there. Three years of searching, hoping, fooling himself into thinking he will see her again. And just when he's about to give up, there she is. His very own silver lining.
She's walking straight towards him, eye contact unbroken as she hoists Tali on her hip and bridges the distance between them. A faint smell of sandalwood, shea butter and the sweet tang that's always been uniquely hers waft over to him. Her skin is tanner than the last time he's seen her. Sun-kissed strands of wavy chocolate hair hang loosely over her shoulders. Her body as trim as he remembers, but somehow softened in all the right places. She looks relaxed, at peace in a way he's never seen her before. Her eyes shine brightly. He's at a loss for words.
He's fantasized about this moment often enough to know that this time it's different. It feels too real, too tangible. Her image is accurate in its entirety, she's complete and whole before him in a way his subconscious had never quite been able to conjure up. After all these years, all the fruitless searches, she's the one who found him.
"You're alive," he chokes, once he figures out how to get his mouth moving again.
"Yes." She ducks her head, crinkles he's never seen before appearing on the corners of her eyes. He drinks in her every feature, committing it to memory just in case. She doesn't seem to know how to elaborate on his question, so he rakes his brain for what to say next. There're too many words, yet not enough.
"So, how was your summer?" He settles on the phrase that to anyone else would be completely inconspicuous, but for them holds an indescribable meaning. He can hear her breath catching in her throat. Her eyes snap up to meet his again, their depths taking him in, swallowing him whole. And just like that, it's like she was never gone.
Unaware of the reunion between her parents, Tali starts wriggling out of her mother's grasp, in an effort to get back to her abandoned breakfast. The Parisian sun bounces off the thin gold thread around her neck, which her parents' keen eyes don't miss.
"I see you gave it to her." She touches the olive skin of her neck, which still feels like a weight is missing even three years after she stopped wearing her pendant.
"Yes. She deserved to remember you in some way."
"I am glad you did. I knew you would keep it safe. Just like I knew you would keep her safe, while I was… gone." It's her apology for letting him think she was dead. Shame is tinging her cheeks slightly red, as she averts his gaze.
"You didn't have to leave." She knows he isn't talking about her faking her death. He understands that she had to do that to protect her daughter from the darkness of her past. No, he's referring to that night on the tarmac.
"Yes, I did. I was not who I wanted to be. I was not the person you deserved. I had to change."
"Why?" His voice is barely above a whisper, as if the slightest disturbance could wake him up and rip her away from him again. He isn't sure exactly what he's asking. Why didn't you let me help? Why didn't you come back before now? Why did you leave me to drown, chasing your memory when I could've had the real you all along? Why should I believe you're real now?
But he didn't need to whisper. This time he isn't dreaming. She is right there in front of him, her eyes glowing warmly in the sunlight and her voice silky smooth when she answers.
"For you."