Prev: Sue/Sue Now: Kuccedes Friendship Next: Klaine
14 Reasons I Love You
6. How many ways do I love you? Let me count the ways. Too many to speak of, dear girl, and so many ways I don't know how to put into words. But I suppose...for a long time I was happy in a confined world. I had forgotten how to live, you see, I only knew how to exist. But you. You give me courage, you give me hope. There is a big, wide world out there, and you're in it, and I want to be with you.
It was Valentine's Day again.
Kurt stared out of his apartment building's window, down the dizzying heights, to the ground below, with all its little people. Unbidden, his mind flashed back some nine or ten years.
Kurt shook his head manically, ridding himself of his thoughts. Was this what his days had boiled down to? Making a living in this new land, America, like his dreams had always told him - spending his days in this dreamland trying to forget the past? He leaned his head against the wall, and sighed.
A jet roared noisily overhead, and Kurt jerked awake, letting the curtain of his balcony fall in white waves, like so many petals of white flowers, the white flowers for death and remembrance, the field of white flowers to remember the lost and fallen. His breaths came shallowly, quickly, more difficult and choked up - zeppelins, their hulk looming, looming over his home, that sleepy village, picking through the ruins, through the ruins, through the ruins...
Valentine's Day.
Kurt marked it off his calendar with the red pen, and did his daily ablutions. He tried not to look into the mirror, for fear of what he might see there. Or what he might not see - such as a purpose.
Kurt's boots find purchase on the slick surface of the asphalt below, but his mind cannot grasp the days slipping by. The most he does to mark the passage of time is to cover each day with red pen on a calendar, but without purpose; there is no destination he is looking forward to, nor anything to count down from.
Day in, day out, they all seem the same to him. Pallid white sunlight, overcast days, shadows long and thick, gathering on the ground. Wake up in the morning, go on shift, endure his boss's harrassment of him for being a 'pretty boy' and for his open homosexuality, go home, watch soap operas in a language he only half-understands, fall asleep, sleepwalk to his bed, until the morning comes with pallid sunlight and the six o'clock news, repeat.
Chicago was a city of cafes and theatres, painful to his eyes but soothing to his ears. Every cafe he passed, he would look inside and see happy memories, nostalgia, stories told, answers lost. In his head he could hear the bump-thwack of the looms, blooming in his head, blossoming into full-blown memory...
But enough.
Valentine's Day.
Perhaps...
Kurt eyed the hearts on the street, the shops all decorated in pink and silver, primrose and white gold, hearts etched and interlinked and elongated to match the design of every shop. Candy floss vendors, on the sidewalk, swirling their fine sugar into art, into hearts. These didn'ttwang his heart, for his valentine had never subscribed to any of this: no, his sleepy hometown had never been so commercialised. Valentine's Day had been a time to return to the sleepy cafes, their bakeries making fresher bread and rich coffee (hard, after the rationing had begun), the lucky ones passing out small blocks of chocolat - chocolate, Kurt reminded himself. He was not in Canada, but America - Frenchmen were looked down upon, unconsciously.
Except for-his mind, on autopilot, warned off the name, warded off the pain.
Let those young couples on the streets, all happy and passionate and fake at the core, have their commercial products embossed with hearts.
No, Kurt wasn't bitter at all.
Valentine's Day would not be a day of happiness for him, but a day of remembrance.
He turned around and went in search of a cafe.
The small cafe he arrived at sat in between two taller buildings; its interior was dimly lit, with only windows to let in natural light, the natural light that slanted in at late afternoon and early dawn, l'heure d'or et l'heure bleu. Unlike the brightly lit ones that advertised special coffees at special prices, this one sat home-like, not promising anything, but not lying, either.
It felt like home.
Kurt laid a hand on the lintel before he stepped in, and breathed in air that tingled, as if shocked.
The tiles were the same.
The walls were the same.
This cafe...
He half-expected to be able to walk up to the counter and to speak in his French-accented English that he had had when he was younger, and for Amelie to answer him, to reminisce about their boys, who they had both lost to the war, by the end.
But there was a girl at the counter with her nametag reading 'Rachel', instead, and Kurt was drawn out of his fantasy of the past.
"Hello?" he called. "I'd like a cup of your coffee, please."
"Anything special?" the girl said.
Kurt thought back to the coffee. The boy he had lost in that stupid war...Kurt had never drunk coffee then. And then Blaine...Blaine had known his coffee order. But he had to forget Blaine, now.
"...No."
"It'll be here in a minute," Rachel said, faux-cheerfully.
"Merci," Kurt said.
"Pardon?" Rachel said.
"Oh, sorry," Kurt said, his tone artificially light, a lump in his throat forming. Simply fantasies. Fantasies... "The cafe...reminded me of my childhood."
The girl peered at him. "You're not that old."
Kurt smiled sadly. "I've seen...more than you would think."
The mud, snow, the dirty slush, the bombs, the fire, the broken bodies and blood, old friends, new friends, old loves, dead and dying...
Rachel drew back, shaken. "I'm sorry," she whispered.
"Whatever for?" Kurt asked. "It's not your fault."
"I'm sorry that you had to go through such things."
She turned and went into the kitchen, and Kurt swallowed, tears pricking at the corner of his eyes. The concern of a stranger...it had been so long, since he'd felt that. America, for all its supposed 'kindness toward others', was very cold toward a foreigner.
"Here," Rachel said, returning a moment later. "Mocha coffee with caramel swirling and powdered sugar on top. Enjoy!"
Kurt took the mug in his hands, looking down at the concoction.
"No, really," Rachel added, softer. "Enjoy it."
Kurt smiled, wan. "Thank you, Rachel."
"You're welcome."
Kurt turned, and took long, slow steps toward the table in the corner, the one next to the window. He sank into the plush seat and hunched forward, taking one small sip. It was too sweet, much too sweet. Rummaging in his bag, he found the one bar of dark chocolate he always carried, and unwrapped the foil. He placed a block on the top of the coffee, and watched it sink into the coffee and melt.
Kurt inhaled, remembering chignon et cafe et chocolat, and watched the steam from his coffee rise.
A week after Valentine's Day.
It was the weekend, and Kurt did not feel like he wanted to stay in his apartment in his sleeping clothing all day. Nor did he feel like cooking, slaving away in the kitchen simply to forget, to forget.
He...needed a friendly face, even if an unfamiliar one.
His steps led him back to the cafe, even as his heart rose into his throat. He lifted a hand, and paused, feeling so much older in front of the cafe door. What was he thinking? This wasn't Valentine's Day. He didn't need to put himself through thinking about the memories, thinking about all the things that could have been. Bitter chocolat and coffee and chignon. He didn't have to think about any of that. And he would, if he stepped into this cafe, again.
He was only twenty-two, but he felt forty, fifty, sixty years of age, as if his smooth skin was wrinkled and spotty, his gnarled hands clutching at a staff. As if he was ready to slip away into the next unknown.
He...
He...
Should not be thinking. Pushing open the door, he walked in.
It quickly became a habit. On Saturdays he would put on his coat, and his feet would take him through the increasingly familiar route to the small cafe. He would talk briefly with Rachel, find his way to his table, and sit to watch the pedestrians pass by, twirling his finger through the coffee's rising smoke. Rachel rarely gave him the same coffee twice, seeming to delight in creating ever more ridiculous concoctions. Kurt appreciated it, he did, but could not seem to express his praise, even though the words fought at the roof of his mouth. Instead, he could only give small smiles when the coffees broke through his melancholy or startled him.
Rachel seemed to crave his approval. He knew not why. Even with other customers in the small cafe, Rachel would look after him, look to him. He did appreciate it. He did smile, or take her hand at times.
At the table, when his coffee's steam no longer rose, he would take a small sip, and then another, and another, until the mug was empty. He would pay, always the same coins, meticulously counted out, and slid across the counter with the coins between his fingers. Looking down at the coins like so, Kurt was always reminded of placing the coins on their village's boys, the coins to pay the ferryman.
Then he would turn around, and place his boots on the hot ground outside, out into the midafternoon sun.
Saturday again. A week before Valentine's Day again. A card deck of Saturdays, today; sans one Joker, the Joker that laughed at him, laughed at him, laughed at Kurt, where once he had been the Joker, now the old man, still a Fool, still.
His feet took him on the familiar path, treading the concrete pavements and the cracks, the planted trees shooting out of the ground.
He took his coffee (several layers of crystallized fondue, today) and sat down.
Propping his head up, Kurt turned to face the road, face the pedestrians walking by.
Crunch.
Crunch.
A smell came to him, a smell reminiscent of the faire in his hometown, children laughing and playing, and the smell of popcorn. Yes, that was what he smelt now: popcorn.
"Hey, why the long face?"
Kurt turned, puzzled, and looked up. A powerfully-built black woman stared down at him, and promptly slid into the plush seat opposite him.
"The name's Mercedes, and I can't stand seeing anybody so young and good-looking as you look so down."
Kurt looked away, and breathed in slowly.
"Hey," Mercedes said, and reached out a hand, pulling his chin back toward her. Kurt froze, feeling vulnerable for the first time in a long while. This position, it reminded him...mais ne pas se souvenir du passe. "Look at me. Why're you feeling so sad?"
"...It's a long story," Kurt said, finally, and took a sip of his coffee to hide from saying any more. It burned his tongue, made him wince at the strength of it, steam rose into his face, and a chunk of fondue fell off the tip and plopped into his coffee. A dollop of cream leaped up in response to land on his nose, and Kurt nearly went cross-eyed trying to see where it was.
Mercedes laughed, a full-bodied sound that soon had Kurt laughing too, his own laugh rusty and raw.
"That's not right," Mercedes said, when Kurt had fallen silent again. "Someone's laugh shouldn't sound like that. And, I think, I've got time. What's this long story?"
Kurt looked down.
"I'll sit right here until you tell me," Mercedes said, and crossed her arms.
Crunch.
"And eat my popcorn. Nothing gonna tear me away from my popcorn."
Kurt laughed, a little more naturally, a little less rustily.
"I'm here on Tuesdays, too, seven o'clock and after."
Even though he hadn't said anything the first four visits, Kurt found himself anticipating Saturdays and Tuesdays more than any other day. The red pen on the calendar took on a new meaning, and Kurt watched the clock on Tuesdays like any other worker, took less shit from his boss on Tuesdays.
Slowly, slowly, Mercedes coaxed his story out of him.
"Que devais-je faire? -What was I supposed to do?" Kurt almost shouted, on his feet and glaring down at Mercedes, tears running down his cheeks. "Leave him on his own? Not to walk? I never considered that. Never. I may have regretted loving him so much when he left me, but I would not have given up a minute with him, not one."
His voice echoed in the little wooden cafe, and Kurt sat down, heat rushing to his face.
Rachel, who had been cleaning a table next to them with swipes of her cloth, had not even pretended not to listen.
Mercedes regarded him with a steady gaze. "If that's all, Kurt," she said, "Then why are you like this?"
Kurt slumped. "I haven't told you about...afterward."
The war. The war struck them all, from the oldest to the littlest babes in their mothers' arms. Kurt rubbed his eyes as he talked, staring out the window and never, never, looking to Mercedes.
"The war - it...it scarred all of us. It was as if we were in a cage, and everywhere we turned, bars, closing us in. We could see the outside, but we were reminded, always reminded, of someone we'd lost."
Kurt stared down at his hands. "I...there was a girl I'd met in...middle school? High school? Something like that. Her name was Brittany...she...she had been broken far, far worse by the war than I had. Her long-time boyfriend, RT, he...lost his legs in the war, and got gangrene, and when he came home, he died practically in her arms. She nursed him until the day she died. She wasn't...she was never really what you'd call smart, but she loved him."
He took another sip of his coffee, the foam staining his upper lip for a moment before he wiped it away.
"She'd been there for so long," he said, staring without looking, without registering. "She'd been broken for so long. I thought I was broken then," he whispered, "But I - next to her -" He shook his head and looked down, at his callused hands. "I started taking care of her, like I'd taken care of my boy. She'd sing this little song over and over, a song that her boyfriend wrote, when he was in our school's jazz band..."
He hummed a passage, and Mercedes stiffened. Kurt clasped his fingers. Unclasped them. Clasped them again.
"Today's a saint day," Mercedes sang quietly, and Kurt looked up, his eyes wide.
"That..." Kurt said. "Where did you learn that?"
"You...I..." Mercedes said, seemingly at a loss for words. "I should show you a YouTube video, soon. It's a viral hit. That song..." Her eyes were kind, but glistened with tears. "But what...what happened to her? Why couldn't you stay with her?"
"One day," Kurt said, "I came to her house. I was a block away when an ambulance came past, an ambulance from a big city, not our town. Brittany was gone. I never knew what happened to her, after that."
Mercedes laid a hand on his again, her eyes gentle. "I know what happened to her, afterward."
Kurt raised eyes to her, a glimmer of hope shining there. "Truly?"
Mercedes nodded.
They sat in silence a while longer.
"But that's not all, is it?" Mercedes asked, looking at him. "The way you are...it isn't just because of Brittany, and your boy."
"...No," Kurt admitted.
It took four more visits before he could speak about Blaine Andersen. All the while, Mercedes simply sat with him and ate her popcorn, or drank their coffees before paying separate bills and leaving separate ways.
After the war had ended, inconclusive, incoherent, parts of sanities screaming away at each other as the body bags were loaded into graveyards, a closed-casket mass burial, Kurt walked away from his sleepy hometown. Most of the youth left over in their country did, flooding away from it, a desolate homeland, a graveyard. The border in contest closed down from lack of use. They left the dead to their haunts.
Kurt went southwest, heading across rivers and oceans into France proper, the France that had lent a hand for its colony, sending in its Foreign Legion.
He met a boy there in that French high school, Blaine Andersen of the slicked-back hair and ready smile, and they sang flirty duets (Mercedes choked into her coffee) and they knew each other's coffee orders and they were so very alike and the days passed with fun and it was halcyon...
Kurt had loved him, and a part of him did still; just as he had loved his lost boy in the war.
Mercedes laid a hand on his, neither giving comfort nor advice, simply offering presence.
Kurt drank his coffee in one shot. It was too sweet for his mood, too sweet for the pallid light outside that breathed pessimistic reality, instead of optimism. He wasn't that young, anymore.
"I'll get you a refill," Mercedes said, and walked up to the counter. Her steps echoed on the tile, thud-click, thud-click, bump-thwack, bump-thwack, and Kurt could hear again the sound of the looms.
Kurt watched the blonde woman at the counter step aside for Mercedes before resuming her conversation with Rachel, then stared down at the dregs of his coffee in his cup.
"Strong, long black coffee," Mercedes said, returning with two double shotglasses, which she placed gently in front of him.
"Tell me more about Blaine."
Over the next ten visits Kurt spilled everything he had known about Blaine's life and personality. Then, why, when, and where Blaine had left him, for an Asian boy who he slept with after a drunken Spin The Bottle night. Mercedes watched him calmly, emptying her tub of Garrett's popcorn every visit, and Kurt learned to keep talking until she was done. If not, she would ask piercing questions that hurt and made him question why he did the things he did. It was easier...easier just to keep talking, and strangely, the longer he talked, the easier it seemed to face the memories that he kept tightly locked inside his heart.
Over the four visits after that, Kurt told Mercedes what it had been like, to want to make Blaine so jealous that Blaine would take him back that he would date a metrosexual friend of his. Wryly smiling down into his coffee cup, Kurt told Mercedes what dating Jesse had been like. To his gratitude, she laughed at the story, chuckling quietly between bites of popcorn.
"What are you doing with your life, Kurt?"
Kurt looked down at his hands, bereft of the coffee mug. (Rachel had already collected it and left to see her blonde friend. Lover? Kurt couldn't tell. It wasn't his business, anyway.)
"I don't know, Mercedes. Merde," he sighed. "What have I become?"
"What do you want to be?" her gaze was unrelentless, fixed on him.
"...I don't know."
"I think, Kurt, you should try to find love again."
Kurt stared at her. Then he stared at his hands.
"...I..."
Kurt marked off another Valentine's Day with red pen, and swung his legs to the floor. After going through his daily ablutions, his feet trod the familiar path back to the cafe. It was a Tuesday...Mercedes would be there.
Loving anyone else? That would be impossible. Who could match Noah? Blaine? No one, that's who. No one...
Kurt readjusted the sling bag on his shoulder, holding his precious things from his hometown, the symbolic bittersweet bar of chocolate that he would melt into his coffee. The things that he wanted to show to Mercedes, to remember, remember, on this Valentine's Day.
The cafe's welcome chimes jingle-jangled as he walked into the cafe, treading the familiar tiles, and the other girl at the counter looked up.
Kurt had never really paid attention to her, especially since Rachel was the one mostly to take care of him. But she...was she...
"Amelie?" Kurt whispered, his heart thumping fast in his chest, tears pricking at the corner of his eyes.
"...Yes? I'm Amelia." the girl at the counter said, stepping forward. "...You're Kurt, right? Rachel mentioned you."
"Amelie, mademoiselle, bonjour," Kurt said.
Amelia tilted her head to the side. "I took French in high-school, Kurt, but I," she smiled, embarrassedly, "I've forgotten most of it."
"Oh," Kurt said. He sucked in a breath, placing a hand on his chest. His heart was still beating too fast, but...
"Amelie, I'm sorry to pry, but do you have a boyfriend called 'Jet'? A dangerously reckless boy? Black-haired?"
Her eyebrows furrowed. "His name is Jed, but otherwise...yeah," she said, shaking her head. "I'm sorry - have we met before? Or have you met Jed before? How did you know that?"
Kurt's eyes closed briefly, in pain and memory and remembrance, and finally, some sense of closure, a circle.
"Amelie," he said, and rummaged in his sling bag, and found it.
"Please," Kurt said, offering her the dark chocolate, that bittersweet bar, in his two hands. "Take this, and share it with your boyfriend. Enjoy your love," he said, smiling sadly. "For my sake. Please. Take the chocolat."
"I'm sorry for your loss," Amelia said, and took the chocolate, placing it safely into a pocket, treasuring it.
Her eyes projected reassurance, this familiar stranger -
Kurt smiled, shedding his fears and sorrows and measuring the positives, treasuring the past. He was French, after all, and he would love again.
Prev: Sue/Sue Now: Kuccedes Friendship Next: Klaine