I'm shocked. And I'm not. She is just as I remember her. And completely transformed. A stranger. And someone I know. The truth and its opposite are flips sides of the same coin, I hear Saba say.
"Hello Willem," she says. "My name is Allyson."
Allyson. I say the name in my head and a year's worth of memories and fantasies and one-sided conversations are revised and updated. Not Lulu. Allyson. A strong name. A solid name. And somehow, a familiar name. Everything about her seems familiar. I know this person. I'm known to this person. It's then I understand what I was dreaming about this morning, who it is that's been sitting next to me on that plane all this time.
Allyson walks in.
The door clicks shut behind her. And for a minute, they're in the room with us too. Yael and Bram, thirty years ago. Their entire story rushes through my head, because it's our story, too. Only now, I realize, it was an incomplete story. Because so matter how many times he told it, Bram never told me the important part. What happened during those first three hours together in the car.
Or maybe he did, only without words. With his action.
"And so I kissed her. Like I'd been expecting her all that time," my previously melancholy father would say, always with wonder in his voice.
I'd thought the wonder was for the accidents. But maybe it wasn't. Maybe the wonder was for the stain. Three hours in a car, that was all it took. And two years later, there she was.
Maybe he was overwhelmed, like I am overwhelmed, bythat mysterious intersection where love meets luck, where fate meets will. Because he'd been waiting for her. And there she was.
So he'd kissed her.
I kiss Allyson.
I complete the history that came before us, and in doing so, begin one all of our own.
Double happiness: I get it now.
Single and double happiness met in this kiss and made time fluid again, all that day and the journey that got us to this moment was searing in this kiss, I could feel it , I could taste it and I've never felt so alive and so right in my life.
When it stops she has her hand on my heart like that morning and my hands are still holding her face, our shallow breaths somehow are mingling in the air, and I just don't think, I just say it.
"The stain led to double happiness". I take her soft hand where her birthmark is and I kiss it. She is misty eyed and a look of confusion passes her eyes.
" What?"
She is thinking and then all of a sudden in that honesty of hers starts talking: "It was a very long journey here, a year and I mean you probably moved on, well I think so anyway, I saw you yesterday after the play and…
I go back to the events yesterday, and after the play I just talked with…
I stop her right there "Kate is a friend and in a way, she is my commitment voice and I think my conscience that is why I think I asked her to be my director anyway" It looks like a door has been opened for her so I step closer and hold her, and tell her a summarize of the story of all the feelings coursing through me, "In a way I never stopped looking and yearning for you. I decided that if fate happened I will be damn sure to make it a reality and be ready for it and also be ready to deserve it, to deserve happiness, to deserve you". Maybe is because I did the play yesterday but once again Shakespeare summons my emotions better that I do.
"The little strength that I have, I would it were with you"
She looks up and seems radiant, like something is being set right in her head and says. "It was all for you… I love you"
She smiles and says, "So yesterday, your Orlando was for me?"
"Yesterday you were Rosalind and today you are the best reality that I've could ever conjured, Allyson". It makes her so real, I feel so happy to be able to finally say her name.
We kiss again, and this time is like we have all the time in the world, and when it stops she says:
"If I am Rosalind then, now tell me how long you would have her after you have possessed her"
I smile "I will do everything to make it to forever and more than one day"
We laugh and embrace and then she says: "We could have one day, what do you say Willem do you want to get lost with me?