Jason
This story is incomplete…
Jason never cared much for American tourists. They were flashy, scantily-clad, slovenly, and left gum plastered to the bottoms of cafe railings. As a little boy, he had spent hours peeling them carefully off, piece by piece, while his mother met with her colleagues at the Cafe de la Lune. He would listen to her discuss the latest fashions, fads, and trends, before dealing out her business advice about the best rising stocks, and offering to handle all the details, if the parisians just put their trust in her capable hands.
“One day soon, Jason,” she’d tell him, as they walked home together through the rosy hues of Paris at dusk, long after everyone else had had dinner, and long before the party scenes poured out on the streets, “Mama will get us to America. Just you wait. We’ll live in an apartment above Time’s Square, and Wall Street will welcome us with open, warm, diamond-clad arms!”
Jason’s eyes were a soft, almost gray, brown, full of fawn trust, and with a warm look, he would ask her to describe Time’s Square. He would only half-listen to her answer, preferring to marvel at the whiteness of her neck, and the golden tints of her shiny brown hair. Gloria Remy, a girl no older than twenty-three, was a goddess in her own right. But how Gloria responded to those simple questions of her son: how she lived in a fantasy world far, far away: how she poured out her picture of New York: impressive, bright, shining with the light of a million stars! “See those stars Jason?” she would point to the dim sky above. “It’s nothing to the stars of Time’s Square!”
And she was right. Jason learned to his terror, after three years in the golden bustle of France’s jewel, that Paris could not hold a candle to the flash and shine of New York; neither the sky above, nor the quiet, meandering, street-light glowing streets; they were like a fireplace to a floodlight. New York was daylight in the night, and a neon rainbow in the day.
“Isn’t it marvelous?” cried the rapt Gloria, hurrying her son down street after bustling street on their way to their new home, after the seven and a half hour coast-to-coast flight. His small legs struggled to keep up, while he dragged his suitcase behind. They had packed light, since she had an internet friend who would take them in for a few months, until they got on their feet. Only clothes, toiletries, and Mama’s book on Wall Street Economics made the cut.
She refused to get a cab - she wanted to walk. “This is it! This is what we’ve been working for! No more small time investors. We’ve hit the big leagues now.” Gloria knew everything about America, including colloquial phrases and sports teams. She had been preparing for this all her life. For years, no one even asked where she was from, so perfectly had she meticulously cast aside her provincial Belgium accent.
For Jason, the flood-light years of neon New York passed in a whirl of overwhelm, and a gradual withdrawing more and more into himself. His mother seemed to thrive, yet he always wondered if the madcap schedule brought her real happiness. Every night, she would flash her red lipstick smile, plant an affectionate peck on his cheek, and leave him alone with the online roommate, to live what kind of night life? He never knew. He never asked. And guiltily, those evenings with the quiet roommate were the best of his life. For once, he could sit quietly in a corner, pore alone over his homework, and lose himself in literature. The roommate owned great literature.
But this situation was too good to last. After awhile, a flesh-and-blood diamond-clad man entered their life, and never left. His watch had diamonds on it. His smile flashed like diamonds. His eyes sparkled when he looked at Gloria - at least at the beginning. He was a real New Yorker: a Wall Street man.
Gloria stopped going out every night. They moved into a bigger apartment. Good-bye to roommate and excellent literature.
“Here,” the quiet, mid-thirties french woman said, as he struggled not to cry when he hugged her farewell, “take thee Dickens. Oui, do you not know beauty is everywhere, so long as you have ze good friends? Treasure them, mon chere.” It was a long speech for her, but she liked Jason.