Andrea Marcusa
Risks
Let’s pretend that metal never met stone, and you didn’t crumble to the ground. And Malcolm never skittered beneath the bed where he stayed for days. Your hair never turned sticky and ruddy red, and there was no need to shake your shoulders, pleading for your eyes to open. Because despite the illusion of sleep, they never did.
Let’s pretend you listened to your physician and had not waved off those tests, calling them the alarmist ravings of medical nerds. Let’s pretend this risk you were taking—one in a long, lucky list of them—was undone by a flicker of instinct, some divine whisper, or perhaps my fervent urging. Let’s pretend we postponed our Paris flight and learned, even though you were only forty-seven, that your discomfort wasn’t simple indigestion. And now, months later, the three of us, not just me and Malcolm, are back in Paris, in our favorite room, #4A.
You are sitting on this terrace with Malcolm at your feet purring, and you’re calling him your Fat Persian King. You lift your glass, not wine but sparkling water, and with a touch of irony you assess the exquisite bouquet, the lively mouthfeel, alternating between curses and thanks to what you now call the magical medical gods. Let’s pretend you look out over Paris’s blue-and-gold dusk, then at me, and say, There’s no bliss like this! You reach for my hand, and I join you at the rickety balcony table, then gaze out at the ribboning streets, the sidewalks filling with couples, and hold your hand tight.
Indoors, on your side of the king-sized bed, sit the stack of novels you always bring and never read. Beyond that your shaving kit spills its contents onto the bathroom sink. The tiny closet brims with our clothes.
Let’s pretend you finish your glass of water and come in from the terrace. We leave Malcolm lazing on our bed, head to the lobby and feel the whoosh as the door opens onto Avenue Kléber. Let’s pretend we glow in the lamplight and shimmer in headlights as we walk arm-in-arm. The only ambulance siren, miles and miles away.
Andrea Marcusa’s writings have appeared in The Gettysburg Review, Moon City Review, Milk Candy Review, Ghost Parachute, Citron Review, and others. She’s received recognition in a range of competitions, including Smokelong, Best Microfiction, Cleaver,and Southampton Review and is the author of the chapbook “What We Now Live With,” (Bottlecap Press) She’s a member of the faculty at The Writers Studio.
For more information, visit:
andreamarcusa.com
or see her on Blue Sky:
@andreamarcusa.bsky.
Banner Art:
from A Boulevard in Paris, Konstantin Korovin, 1939
