We gather around the hard white tables, the patio chairs angled and inviting, calling sit here, sit here.  The solo travelers sit apart, not engaging.  It reminds me of John’s mom so long ago setting a table, serving a meal–everything a presentation, forks and spoons and knives and napkins placed so precisely.  I felt uncomfortable, fork and knife in hand, not knowing where to place them standing in the cool blue of her kitchen, morning.  Or nighttime after dinner always a sweet.  Cold cool stainless cups kept in the freezer, thin frost forming, a layer of icing.  The ice cream a perfect single scoop in the small dish, savored with tiny little spoons, each tangy spoonful slipping on the tongue, a sliver of ice melting; holding it there like that, like it was something.  Not devoured standing at the freezer digging into a carton late at night.

My childhood home was raucous: each pushing and shoving trying to get at what they wanted.  Rushing down the stairs at Christmastime, the boxes waiting under the tree:  That’s mine! grabbing.  At the end of the night each handed a package: same size and shape and told to open at the same time; our father or mother shouting One, two, three–Go!  Those were always a disappointment: something she had sewn that you didn’t like: for the girls matching pinafore dresses complete with white bodices attached like Little House on the Prairie; for the boys, not matter what it was, left languishing.  Later we lined up in front of the built-in bookcases filled with my dad’s mysteries or a set of encyclopedias replaced periodically with new ones in their dark blue bindings.  He loved to read, mostly mysteries, sitting in the orange faded chair in the living room, smoking his pipe, beside him the glass ashtray overflowing where he tapped his pipe a clink against the glass; the muted-green drapes pulled closed blocking the light.  Waiting for what was to happen, or what could or might come next.

Christmastime at John’s everyone gathered in the living room the night before, Christmas Eve, in their best clothes, putting on their faces as each gift was passed one by one while the others watched; reflecting what they wanted to see.

At the breakfast counter on the patio in the hostel, two American boys march in, in their baggy shorts and oversized tees in their oversized lives.  One grabs at the cheeses with his fat fingers, taking half the plate disturbing the presentation so perfectly placed (I have taken care to leave what remained in careful formation).  They are talking about doing this or that, and bringing this odd breakfast back home.  I ask from my table: Where are you guys from?  They look at me, surprised that I am here, listening.  They didn’t realize they might be understood.  They gather their plates and sit apart from me, four small empty tables away.  They are silent now.  I look away.  The blond one looks down at his phone.

Years ago I stayed in Paris,  carrying coins late at night to a pay phone, dropping them in the slot, hearing their clink clink as they fell, to talk to Sam on the other side of the world, far from me.  Talking or crying, always missing something–him, me; while he admonished:  Don’t cry.  You’re in Paris, to model, to do things.

A year later he comes to see me and we are flying through the streets on a motorbike, my arms wrapped around him, holding on, free.  We turn the corner and there I am on a billboard, someone else.  Sam stops the bike and we take a picture: me in my oversized black-and-yellow-bumble-bee jacket bought at a Paris flea market that I wore everywhere.  Behind me, another girl.

On the patio at the hostel, I clear away my dirty dishes; I want to leave things as I found them: calm and neat, waiting.

I want to say to the boys still silent at their table Enjoy your stay! but I don’t, removed from them by years or gender or experience.  It doesn’t matter.  I’m gone.