Read Online The Gap of Time by Jeanette Winterson - Free Book Online

of dark angel. We didn’t sin, or fall from grace; it wasn’t our fault. We were born this way. Everything we do is falling. Even walking is a kind of controlled falling. But that’s not the same as failing. And if we know this—gnosis—the pain is easier to bear.”
    “The pain of love?”
    “What else is there? Love. Lack of love. Loss of love. I never bought into status and power—even fear of death—as independent drivers. The platform we stand on, or fall from, is love.”
    “That is romantic for a man who never commits.”
    “I like the idea,” said Xeno. “But I like the idea of living on the moon too. Sadly, it’s 293,000 miles away and has no water.”
    “But you have come here to see me because you want me to marry Leo.”
    “I’m just the messenger.”
    —
    They walked to a restaurant in a triangle where some boys were playing boules. A man was exercising two Dalmatians, throwing a red tennis ball. Black and white and red. Black and white and red. The evening was cooling.
    They ordered artichokes and haddock. Xeno sat beside MiMi while she talked him through the menu.
    “What about you?” MiMi asked Xeno.
    “I’m moving to America—the gaming work is there.”
    “But you’ll be around?”
    “I’ll always be around.”
    What would it be like if we didn’t have a body? If we communicated as spirits do? Then I wouldn’t notice the smile of you, the curve of you,
the hair that falls into your eyes,
your arms on the table, brown with faint hairs,
the way you hook your boots on the bar of the chair
, that my eyes are grey and yours are green,
that your eyes are grey and mine are green,
that you have a crooked mouth, that you are petite but your legs are long like a sentence I can’t finish,
that your hands are sensitive, and the way you sit close to me to read the menu so that I can explain what things are in French,
and I love your accent, the way you speak English, and never before has anyone said “ ’addock” the way you say it, and it is no longer a smoked fish but a word that sounds like (the word that comes to mind and is dismissed is love).
Do you always leave your top button undone like that? Just one button? So that I can imagine your chest from the animal paw of hair that I can see?
She’s not a blonde. No. I think her hair is naturally dark but I like the way she colours it in sections and the way she slips off her shoes under the table. Disconcerting, the way you look at me when we talk.
What were we talking about?
    She ordered a
baba au rhum
and the waiter brought the St. James rum in a bottle and plonked it on the table.
    She said, “Sometimes I’m Hemingway: 11 a.m. a Chamberry kir with oysters. Later, for inspiration, a rum St. James. It’s a brute.”
    Xeno sniffed it. Barbecue fuel. But he poured a shot anyway.
    She drank her coffee. A couple walked by fighting about the dry-cleaning. You meet someone and you can’t wait to get your clothes off. A year later and you’re fighting about the dry-cleaning. The imperfections are built into the design.
    But then, thought Xeno, beauty isn’t beauty because it’s perfect.
    MiMi was sitting with her knees up, bare legs, her eyes like fireflies.
    Xeno smiled: what was number 13 on Leo’s list?
You are beautiful
.
    —
    They had finished dinner and were about to walk away from the restaurant, when from a window across the sandy square that was a triangle someone started playing a Jackson Browne number, “Stay.”
    Xeno began to dance. MiMi took both his hands. They were holding each other, smiling, dancing. “Stay…just a little bit longer.”
    “Would you like a copy of Gérard de Nerval?” said MiMi. “I have one
chez moi
.”
    —
    They walked hand in hand back to the apartment on Saint-Julien le Pauvre.
    The staircase was dark. Xeno ran his hand up the seventeenth-century iron banister that curved up the building as the narrow staircase rounded the landings like a recurring dream and the doors were closed onto