They talk about these things. They talk about ‘love on first sight’. Fireworks, violins in the sky, the whole nine yards. They write about it, sing songs about it, stage plays, make movies, but they never say it as it is. They never say it’s sitting in a diner, reading Yeats because you’ve got an exam coming, sitting in a diner drinking a milkshake because you like it, thank you very much, they don’t say you’re sitting in a diner reading Yeats, drinking vanilla and then the door opens and she walks in. They never say it as it is.
*
Bennie was in a good mood. No ‘good’ was not the right word. To explain Bennie’s mood, you had to explain Bennie, and explaining Bennie started with explaining her name. Bennie was in fact Albany, Albany Lord. Albany Lord, Albany from Albus, latin, white. It was ironic because Bennie was all but white. She was… now how do you call it. Nutwood. Praliné, but the caramel ones. She was dark on the white scale, but a smooth, even, ‘yummy’ colour as her Maman said, on every other. People asked if she was from the Caribbean, others talked to her in Portuguese expecting she was from Brazil. People expected a lot of things.
So here’s Albany, alba, white, and here’s Bennie Lord, black, noire, and whatever other words are out there to make Bennie cringe and blush. Yes, she can blush, thanks for asking, you just don’t see it a mile off like you do with Christine, but Christine could walk into a Poe and be Madeline, though that was a bit unfair. Bennie didn’t want Christine dead under a pile of rubble. Bennie liked Christine, because Christine understood Bennie in a curiously diachronic way. There, she finally used that word, yay!
So yeah, there was that. And there was Paris. There was always Paris. There was always that little lilt in Bennie’s English that yelled Vive la France! to the rest of Les Etats Unis. Bennie grew up in the Rue St. Béatrice, not far from the Patisserie Hermasse and the Boulangerie Martel. Madame Hermasse and Monsieur Martel were once married. The vows were said, wedding bells rang, the young couple moved in. Twenty years later, Madame Martel moved out and opened her own shop, selling simple homemade cakes and pastries, with her husband’s blessing of ‘You’ll never make it’. It was equal to the dépêche the Kaiser sent to Franz Joseph down south. Trenches were dug up soon after, and an endless war began. And above these post-marital hostilities, the Lords lived like rich refugees in Switzerland, watching the mayhem below. For ten years, those after the three in Munich and before the six in London, Rue St. Béatrice was Bennie’s home, world, universe. In Paris the Lords were Les Americains. In London, suddenly, they were ‘that French family in Nr. 20’.
So there was that. And then, for some reason, Bennie decided she would like to see what was on the other side of the Atlantic, if it really was the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. She signed up and was accepted and crossed the ocean. She landed on the soil so many other foreign feet had trod, landed in a jet plane and took up house on campus, and encountered her roommate Stacey. Stacey, or Stace’ first question was ‘Where are you from?’ and since it had become so common, her accent still slipped into alluring Gallic lisps and e’s, Bennie answered ‘Paris’ without thinking. ‘Texas?’ Stace answered and at first Bennie didn’t understand. Then she smiled and realized why her mother had – bitingly – said ‘Have fun explaining everything.’
‘No, the real Paris,’ Bennie explained.
‘With the tower?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Cool! So why’re you here?’
‘Pardon?’
And it was the French pardon, with the nasal aloofness of unexpected surprise.
‘I mean, come on, what did you leave France for?’
‘I’ve been in London these past years.’
‘So why not stay in London?’
How explain to this blue-eyed babe that she wanted to see what was beyond the horizon?
‘I’m on an exchange programme.’
‘Oh, ok. Cool. I’d like to do an exchange some day, y’know, maybe tour Europe, see the Oktober –thing, you know, just hang out. Were you there?’
‘Where?’
‘The Oktoberfest.’
‘A few years ago. We were visiting a friend.’
‘Really? Sweet! How was it?’
Loud, drunk, cheeky Italians everywhere. Traditional food in the house that was famous, cafés lining up streets like some corner in Paris, kissing Sebastian in that bar and smiling when he said he could show her the city the next day. The ancient churches, that castle that had something to do with nymphs and that restaurant with the perfect linguine. Sebastian’s flat near the river, the wide bed, the soft pillows, the coffee in the morning. Flying home with the others teasing her to the bone, knowing she had his number, certain she’d never call.
‘Nice,’ Bennie said.
‘I really want to go one day. I say, are you going to that writing thing later on? They say it’s a requisite.’
And that was the beginning of her life with Stace. Stace was sweet, Stace was fun, Stace sometimes said incredible things. Bennie liked Stace. She tried not to laugh at her in her head. Stace was adorable. Stace was Stace. And so there was that as well.
So, when Bennie walked into Louis’ diner that evening, dressed in a red-and-white outfit, fifties’ style, she was in a good mood. It was a mood that had everything in it, Albany, Paris and Stace, and yes, J.J. who kissed her lips before he opened the door, J.J. in a 50s football outfit, jacket, jeans and all, J.J. who held her hand, J.J. tall, dark and handsome, J.J. the other’s called Zen, J.J…. there was a lot to J.J. Bennie couldn’t explain. But there was J.J. that evening and Stace and the others, and they all walked into the diner together in their fifties’ outfit because Colwell’s party was always a theme party and this time it was the Fifties and they were all in petticoats and high collars, bobbie-socks and pig-tails. So they walked into Louis’ and Bennie was in a good mood, a calm mood, a mood that had everything in it, she walked in and scanned the tables and saw him and thought, ‘He’d fit right in’. She saw him and felt, he was the kind of picture you wanted to have on your screen, so when your computer fell asleep you could look and look and look again, enjoying the scenery. She saw him and thought and felt and looked back at J.J. and the others and wondered that she’d never seen him before, but you never knew with these things.
*
She was with a whole crowd, all of them cool and laid back, all of them fit to slip into a music video and fill out the screen. They never explained how they did it, how they kept it, how they made it, how they simply stayed cool, no matter what they did. They laughed and smiled and teased, and some of them were as pale as milk. They were part of it, but still, without the core, dark and glistening, the pale flesh surrounding them would be nothing. They never explained how it was done, it just happened right in front of you and you couldn’t get up to join because that would be stupid and you’d never fit in. So you just sat and watched and saw that smile, you sat and watched and waited for her to look your way, but she never did, she was all eyes for that hunk at her side. You waited and watched, inconspicuously – now was that i-c-o or i-c-u? – you waited and watched, but nothing happened, she just kept that perfect smile and you lost all the taste for your milkshake, you wished for whisky instead, bourbon and big game hats, something that could let you lean against an oak-wood counter and look like another breed of cool. You thought of the Club back home and any thought of wood panelled smoking rooms was destroyed by the golf buggy hopping down the hills. No, you could never join them, you could never do it, you were the species of the perpetually drab and un-cool.
threegoodwords©2014
‘People are like raindrops.’
three good words 
