The Artist

Dark Nights and City Lights

The next couple of months were bliss.

Paulette’s apartment was up near Coit Tower, the highest point of San Francisco. It’s a big tourist site, and is always crowded during the day. But Paulette knew the guys who worked there, so they gave her permission to go up there at night, if she wanted to.

It was magical up there. I had only seen the city by looking up at it, and it had never once looked up at me. So the night when Paulette brought me up there, the sky was unusually clear, and I could see all of San Francisco. I had never experienced anything like it. Everything seemed so small from up there, and I, a mere human, felt huge. With Paulette beside me, I felt infinite.

That was the night we made love. We didn’t “do it” or “have sex.” No. We made love.

And then I knew I had everything.

Paulette and I were in love, plain and simple. I wanted to be with her all the time, love her all the time. This was our time, and I didn’t want to waste it, in case anything happened that would separate us. For what I wanted to be a lifetime, Paulette and I spent loving each other. Not young love, not puppy love, family or friend love. Pure love.

I should have known right from the start that it couldn’t possibly stay like this. Something would come between us. I didn’t know what or when, but I should have known it would happen. I just didn’t want it to.

So when it did happen, it hit me like a slap in the face, and left a deep black mark.

***

Paulette was painting. She was painting from a picture she found in her night table drawer. It was a picture of her family all together, smiling and happy.

I was drawing. I was drawing her.

She was crying.

“Paulette?” I asked, “Why are you crying?”

She wiped her eyes and put down her paints.

“I’m sorry, I just get emotional sometimes,” she answered blandly.

I frowned. She wasn’t opening up to me like she usually did. Something was not right.

“Paulette, is there something you want to talk about? Something you’re not telling me?”

She stared at me for the longest time. Her eyes didn’t have any emotion in them. They weren’t angry with me for asking, pleading for me to help, or anything else. It was like she was staring straight through me, like I wasn’t even there.

“Paulette…are you okay?”

Nothing.

“Paulette, snap out of it,” I said.

She didn’t move. She just kept staring.

“Paulette, I love you. Please tell me what’s wrong, tell me what you’re thinking. Come back to me, “ I pleaded.

Now I was crying. I was kneeling down before her, try to get her to look me right in the eye. I was shaking her, but she didn’t respond. She didn’t do anything. I was hugging her, telling her that I loved her and that I wanted to be with her for the rest of my life. She was stiff and motionless. Nothing fazed her, nothing I did got her out of that trance.

I had to pick her up and carry her into the bedroom. I changed her into a nightgown, and put the covers over her. I was still crying, and she still wasn’t saying anything. I fell asleep with her in my arms. I don’t know if she ever closed her eyes.

When I woke up the next morning, she was gone.

***

I ripped the apartment apart, looking for any trace of her. A picture, a painting, anything. She left me with nothing but my own drawings. Everything that belonged to her was gone, and I was left in an empty apartment. She must have piled her things into her car and drove off somewhere. She didn’t have much, so it made sense that it would fit in that little car of hers. The only things she left were the appliances, the blanket, and the bed.

I searched the entire city for her. I walked up and down every hill trying to find her. I asked any person I could find if they had seen her. No one had seen her. I tried calling her, but her phone was off.

I went back to her apartment. It was so empty without her things, without her. I sat down on the living room floor and spread the hundreds of pictures I had drawn of her on the floor around me. This was all I had left.

I looked at each and every one of them in silence. If it was all that I had left, then I was going to make the most of it.

I may have lost her, but I never lost her memory.