As the train rumbled along the French countryside, my exhaustion from the sleepless night in Pamplona evaporated. Warm wind whipped my hair as I glanced out the window and felt a zing of enchantment at the scene outside: the quaint houses, rolling green pastures, and charming church steeples. I walked out of my compartment to find an open window. With no glass between me and the outside world, I rested my elbows on the open window and inhaled the fresh meadows, warm bread from a bakery, the train steam…. Young people, about my age of 20, stood at every open window, speaking in different languages and laughing, their faces glowing with with that excitement that comes from meeting new people and visiting places you’ve never been.
I glanced at the person who had just joined me at my open window, and did an inner happy dance when I realized it was a very handsome boy. He turned warm dark eyes on me, smiled, and said, “Hello,” in a lilting Scottish accent.
When I say “smiled,” I mean the kind of smile that melts me, like I’m butter and he’s a freshly baked croissant still hot from the oven.
“Did you see the bulls?” he asked me in his friendly hot-buttered accent since we were traveling to Paris from the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona.
“No, I didn’t see one bull,” I smiled back, “Only men acting like bulls. I mean, literally, pretending they had horns and charging red scarves.”
He laughed, and we talked for three and a half hours, never running out of things to say. I told him I was in Paris for the summer going to school, and that I had gone to Pamplona to follow in Hemingway’s footsteps after reading “The Sun Also Rises.”
He told me he was from Glasgow, and was backpacking before heading home to start school himself. He told me he was born and raised in Scotland, but his family was from Pakistan, and that he grew up Muslim.
I told him I grew up moving around the west coast of the U.S., my family was from Utah, and I had grown up Mormon.
Occasionally the train toppled us, knocking us off our feet, and every time he would reach out a hand to help me stay standing. His touch was like a Crème Brulee torch, and I was the sugar on top.
We became pen pals. Over the years, he wrote to me about attending weddings in Pakistan, becoming a financier, and moving to London. When he came through Hollywood in the mid-90’s with friends, he came by my apartment to see me.
When I was heading home from Nairobi in 1999 and stopped in London overnight, I arrived to my hotel and was given three white envelopes sealed with gold. They were all messages from my Crème Brulee torch. I called him from the lobby phone, and he came and picked me up and took me around London. We went to get ice cream, saw a psychic, and walked through the park. It had been ten years since we met on the train, and we still never stopped talking, only now we talked about his upcoming marriage, his job, my belly dancing career, and my time in Africa. We went to an optometrist shop and bought special glasses to watch the eclipse that was happening that day, marveling at the magic happening in the sky above us, laughing at the way each other looked in the bizarre glasses.
Once again we parted.
Two years ago, I found his email in my contact book and emailed him. He immediately called me. This time I told him about the annihilation of my life: my father dying, my marriage imploding, the death of my best friend. He told me about his twins and the joy and terror of raising a child with severe special needs. We talked on What’s App for two hours.
Last week, out of the blue, he sent me a video from somewhere in the English countryside, of him and his teenage children roasting marshmallows for the first time. He asked if I had a boyfriend yet. I said yes, and sent him a photo of me draped across a wooden statue of a ship captain from my most recent trip to Mexico. He sent me emojis of laughter and said, “I see you haven’t lost your sense of humor,” and I read it in his scottish accent.
I never felt I needed to have a romance with my torch, but I felt connected to him as a kindred spirit.
When I travel, my eyes open wide, my heart opens wide, and my arms open wide, and that’s when the magic happens. So, now when I yearn to hit the road, but I can’t because of children or sick parents, I pad into my kitchen and make a crème brulee and think about a warm summer night in France and the boy on the train.
