Written by: Melissa L. White
Marguerite and Agnes huddled around the sink in their couchette, washing their feet as the train pulled into the station. They had learned that custom from an Indian woman in the restroom at JFK Airport. “Wash your feet before you arrive in a new city and leave behind whatever dirt and dust you’ve collected on your journey.” It worked. Nimes, Marseille, Nice. They tried it with each new city on this leg of their trip, and invariably they met a local who took them to places they never would have found on their own.
They pulled into Monte Carlo with only a little over four hundred dollars left between them, and a credit card which Marguerite’s fiancé had given her for emergencies. It didn’t take them long to find the Plaza Hotel. The rooms were expensive, but they indulged themselves with Marguerite’s credit card.
“I feel guilty, using his Visa card when it’s not exactly an emergency.” Agnes said.
“Don’t worry about it,” Marguerite replied. “He can afford it. Besides, it makes him happy when he feels needed and appreciated.”
Agnes laughed. “I certainly appreciate him right now. I am so ready for a luxurious bathtub, aren’t you?”
“Let’s go shower and hit the beaches,” Marguerite said.
“Okay Maggie. Sounds good to me.”
The girls left the lobby, walked through the dining room, and went outside to the veranda overlooking the beach.
“Check this out,” Marguerite said, gazing through a telescope. She pointed it down to the beach where a group of women were sunbathing together. Agnes bent down, looked through the scope, and saw that several women were topless.
“Hmm,” said Agnes. “Looks like an interesting beach.”
The girls left the veranda, heading for their room. They rode the mirrored elevator in silence, gazing at themselves as they ascended to the eleventh floor. When they found their room, they were pleasantly surprised by all the velvet and satin.
“Far cry from the youth hostel circuit,” Marguerite said. She put her backpack on the bed and began unpacking her wrinkled clothes. She smoothed them out with her hands then put them away in the antique chest of drawers.
Agnes unpacked the one dress that she had brought with her and hung it up in the closet. It was a pale-yellow crushed silk sundress, and a few new wrinkles didn’t even show on it. That was precisely why she’d brought it on the trip.
“Let’s eat out tonight at a fancy place,” Agnes said. “We can use your plastic, and when we get home, I’ll pay you back.”
Marguerite agreed. “Why not?” She threw open the curtains and gazed out the window at the ocean down below. “Monte Carlo was never meant to be experienced on a shoestring budget.”
They showered and changed into their swimsuits then hurried down to the beach before the afternoon sun waned too far behind the cliffs.
“Look at this beach,” Agnes said, stopping at the edge of the veranda to take off her tennis shoes. “It’s not even real sand, it’s just rocks.”
Marguerite sat in a deck chair, pulled off her shoes, and stuffed them into the bag. “It’s pretty though,” she said. “I’ve never seen rocks this color. Silver and pink.”
“It’s the way the sun hits them,” Agnes said, hopping from one foot to the other. “Damn. It’s too hot.”
Marguerite stepped off the deck into the pebbled sand and started running toward the ocean. “Not if we hurry,” she called over her shoulder. But as she got further away from the deck, her feet began to burn. So, she turned around and high-tailed it back to the veranda. “My god,” she cried. “It’s like running through coals!”
They quickly put on their tennis shoes, unconcerned with how ridiculous they must look wearing their swimsuits and sneakers on a beach where most of the women didn’t even bother to wear the top half of their bikinis.
They spread their mats on a little raised plot of beach, far away from the crowds near the veranda and the waiters, serving lemonade and champagne.
“Look,” Agnes said. “You’d think Monte Carlo wouldn’t need this.” She pointed to a huge U.S. Navy aircraft carrier anchored offshore in the distance.
“Why in the world are they here?” Marguerite asked. “It’s not as if we’re in a hostile nation.”
“Who knows,” Agnes said. “Maybe the Admiral wanted to see the casinos, so they stopped on their way back from wherever they were.”
“Let’s swim out there,” Agnes said. “Just to see if we can do it.”
“Okay,” Marguerite said. She ran to the ocean with Agnes right behind her. They splashed into the surf and swam out as far as they could before getting tired.
“Oh, Nessa,” Marguerite cried, “I can’t swim any further.”
“Okay, Maggie,” Agnes said, “Let’s go back.”
They turned around and floated back towards the beach; then they rode the waves toward the shore when they got close enough to body surf. The rocks crunched beneath their sneakers as they walked back up the beach toward their mats.
They grabbed their towels from their bags, dried off, then lay down on their mats, facing away from the Navy ship in order to watch the sunset behind the villas and palm trees.
“This is the life,” Agnes said.
“Sure is. We should’ve done this ages ago.” Marguerite sighed and lay back on her towel.
Just then two young men came strolling down the beach in plaid swim trunks and high-top tennis shoes. Their milky untanned bodies all but glowed in the amber haze of dusk. Agnes nodded at them then said, “Don’t look now but we’ve got visitors.”
Marguerite sat up, pulled a compact from her bag, and watched them approach over her shoulder.
“Oh no,” she whispered. “They’ve got dog-tags and matching tattoos.”
Both girls giggled.
“Anchors on their biceps, no doubt,” Agnes said.
“I can’t tell how far away they are, from this angle,” Marguerite whispered. She glanced back over her shoulder. “Oops, here they come.”
“Hello ladies,” called one of the sailors.
The girls didn’t answer. They waited until the sailors were closer, then turned around on their mats, facing them.
“We just left the Carnival in Nice and we heard there was a great happy hour here at the Plaza every evening at dusk. Care to join us?”
Agnes tried to think of a diplomatic way to decline, but Marguerite said, “Sure, we’re staying here, and we hadn’t even heard of the happy hour.”
Agnes stiffened. How much information did Marguerite feel the need to give to these strangers?
“I’m Andy, and this is Jimmy,” he said, then reached down and picked up the girl’s bags. He slung them both over his right shoulder and said, “Ladies?” holding out his arm as if to escort them.
Marguerite stood. “I’m Maggie, and this is Nessa.” She shook hands with Andy and Jimmy, making it extremely awkward for Agnes not to do the same.
“Nessa?” asked Jimmy. “That’s an unusual name.”
“It’s short for Agnes,” said Marguerite.
“I’m from Cleveland,” Andy said, shaking Agnes’s hand.
“Nessa and I are from Texas,” Marguerite said.
“I’m from Topeka,” Jimmy said. He took Agnes’s bag from Andy and reached down to grab her straw mat off the beach. He rolled it up and stuck it in her bag before she could ask him not to.
“May I?” Agnes said, taking her cover-up from her bag.
“Crazy thing happened this morning on board,” Jimmy said.
“On board?” asked Agnes.
“Yeah. We’re sailors on that aircraft carrier right there offshore,” Jimmy said, pointing to the ship. “One of the planes rolled off. Just like that. Eighty-five million bucks sank down into the ocean.”
“Was anyone hurt?” asked Marguerite.
“No,” Andy said. “Stuff like that happens a lot. You just never hear about it.”
“Good,” Marguerite said. “I don’t want to hear about it.”
“Why not?” asked Agnes.
“Because I’d rather not know if the Navy is screwing up.”
“Yes, but don’t you think they should be a little more careful?” opined Agnes. “I mean if a corporation lost eighty-five million dollars by letting a plane sink into the ocean, don’t you think there would be some accountability?”
“That depends on what company it is,” said Andy. “Anyway, who wants a beer?”
“I do,” Marguerite said.
“I’ll take lemonade,” said Agnes, sitting down in a chaise lounge. Jimmy sat down beside her. He reached into his pocket, pulled out a few bills, and gave them to Andy. “I’ll take a beer,” he said.
“Come with me,” said Andy.
Jimmy hesitated, then winked at Agnes.
Andy and Jimmy went to the veranda bar and ordered their drinks.
Marguerite sat down on the edge of the chaise lounge next to Agnes.
“Are you hungry, Nessa?”
Agnes leaned in close to Marguerite and whispered, “Hungry for some real conversation. These guys are boring me to tears. I keep floating up out of my skin, just trying to stay awake.”
“Floating?” asked Marguerite.
“Yes, hovering above their crew-cut heads waiting for something real to happen.”
“So, they’re just fake guys to you? They’re not real?”
Agnes shrugged. “Not exactly the type of guys I expected to meet on a beach in Monte Carlo.”
“Oh,” Marguerite sighed. “I guess I see what you mean.”
Just then Andy and Jimmy returned with their drinks. Andy reached into his pocket and grabbed a set of pink plastic Mardi Gras beads. “I won these in Nice,” he said. “At the carnival.”
He gave them to Marguerite.
Jimmy pulled a set of Mardi Gras beads from his pocket. He reached out to Agnes and slipped them over her head. She removed her sunglasses so the beads could slip down into place around her neck, but as she did, her hand brushed against Jimmy’s hand.
At that moment she felt a bolt of electricity race up her arm and into her body as if she’d touched an electrical outlet and gotten shocked.
“Whoa,” Agnes said. “Did you feel that?”
Jimmy stared at her then adjusted the beads around her neck. He nodded and smiled.
At that moment, Agnes felt as if she was being sucked out of her adult body and transported to Kansas, to a wheat field where she was now a seven-year-old girl, chasing a seven-year-old boy who was running through the head-high stalks just ahead of her. He turned around and shouted, “Hurry up,” and she could see it was Jimmy; his bright blue eyes the same as they were on the beach in Monte Carlo, only a little brighter, a little more full-of -life. But still unmistakably the same blue eyes.
He stopped just ahead of her, his baggy overalls hanging loose around him as he bent over and picked up a lumpy brown frog. He held the frog out to Agnes. They were standing in a sea of wheat in the middle of Kansas, where the stalks grew taller than either of them.
When she took the frog, a strong Midwestern wind rippled through the wheat, blowing it all around them like wind over the waves of an ocean. Then it whisked them back to the beach in Monte Carlo where Jimmy was giving her another set of pink Mardi Gras beads.
She held them up to her cheek, still hearing the wind whisper through the wheat, and she smiled at him. She smiled at the reflection of innocence in his eyes; the reflection of a young girl taking a gift from a young boy. Laughing with the sheer joy of being alive.
“Thank you,” Agnes said, and took a sip of her lemonade. “Thank you for that gift.”
With an entirely new frame of mind, Agnes listened to Jimmy’s stories the rest of the evening, then when the sun went down, she and Marguerite joined Jimmy and Andy for dinner. Agnes had so much fun, she asked Jimmy for his address, so she could write to him when she got home.
“What if I give you my cell number?” he whispered, then leaned in and kissed her.
She kissed him back, full of longing and desire. In that kiss, she felt all the joy, sheer abandon, and youthful energy that she’d felt when she envisioned running through wheatfields with Jimmy as a child.
With that kiss, a surge of energy and emotion emerged from deep within her and shot down to her fingertips. She touched his cheek and he immediately shivered. She knew then that he was just as much of a “hopeless romantic” as she was, so she reached out and hugged him. Embracing Jimmy with all her strength, Agnes whispered, “If I give you my cell number, will you text me each morning, and greet me with this much energy and excitement?”
Jimmy pulled away from her slightly, just enough to look her right in the eyes, and he said, “Yes. I’ll text you every morning, until I can convince you to join me on my next leave. And every leave after that, until you decide you can finally tolerate me enough to be my wife.”
“Wife?” She looked up at him, shocked.
He kissed her forehead. “I knew the moment I first saw you that you were the girl I will marry someday. If you’ll have me.”
Agnes smiled, remembering how her first impression of Jimmy was so different from what she was feeling right now. She took out her phone and handed it to him. “Put your number and address into my contacts.”
He grinned, took her phone, and entered his contact information. When he gave her phone back, he immediately sent her a text.
It said simply:
“Here is a poem I love by Anais Nin. It’s called RISK.
And then the day came,
when the risk
to remain tight
in a bud
was more painful
than the risk
it took
to blossom.”
Agnes read the poem, then read it again, slower this time. She leaned up and kissed Jimmy again, with the passion of a woman leaving her lover for an extended amount of time, unsure when they would finally see each other again.
“I love that poem.” Her eyes brimmed with tears, and this shocked her. She looked up at him and said, “I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m finding this terribly difficult, not knowing when I’ll see you again.”
Jimmy touched her cheek with the backside of his hand, gently running his hand down the smooth curve of her cheek and chin. Then he said, “No matter how long it takes, we’ll find a way to be together. That’s a promise. And I’m a man of my word.”
Agnes smiled. “I believe you. And I also believe the time has come for us to blossom.”
Jimmy laughed. “Right on. I’m calling you Agnes Nin from now on.”
She laughed. “I will write you little poems like that, and text them to you each morning.”
He kissed the tip of her nose. “Nothing would make me happier.”
“Me too,” she said. He took her hand, and they walked down the brick street towards the dock, just as the sun was beginning to rise in the east.
Though they’d known each other less than 24-hours, they’d both been a little “blown away” by how deeply they’d begun to care for each other. As they were nearing the dock, the Navy’s last tender boat sounded its final horn. Four short beeps then one long blast.
“That’s ‘last call!’ I gotta run, if I miss this ship, I’ll have hell to pay!” Jimmy kissed her again, then took off running towards the dock.
Agnes stood on the curb, watching as Jimmy ran up to the tender boat, and jumped onboard just as the boat was starting to pull away from the dock.
She laughed. Then waved.
He waved back.
They stood waving at each other until the boat pulled too far away for her to see him clearly. Then her phone beeped.
She glanced at her phone and laughed. The text from Jimmy was an emoji of a heart engulfed in flames.
She texted him back, with three blazing hearts. Then she texted the following:
“My first poem to you:
Roses are red, violets are blue.
If it hurts this much to watch you leave
What’s a girl to do?”
She stood on the curb, watching as the tender boat grew smaller and smaller, heading back out to the U.S. Navy ship, anchored offshore in the distance.
Her phone pinged again with a new incoming text. She closed her eyes, and whispered a quick prayer thanking God, for letting her find so much happiness. Then she opened her eyes, realizing full-well how quickly she was letting go of the “risk” it took to blossom. She read Jimmy’s text and laughed out loud, just as the sunrise burst through the pink and purple clouds dotting the horizon, unafraid to take the risk of giving her heart to this stranger.
Melissa L. White
Melissa L. White is a screenwriter, novelist, short story writer, and essayist. Her Biopic Screenplay about female artist, Georgia O’Keeffe, won BEST SCREENPLAY DRAMA, and BEST BIOPIC at the 4Theatre Film Festival in June 2023. Her LBGTQ+ rom com script, “Modern Marriage” won 4th prize in the Writer’s Digest Annual Screenwriting Contest 2021. And Melissa’s recently published essay, “Can AI Learn How It Feels to Cry?” just won Second Prize in the Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Contest 2023. She lives in the Los Angeles suburb of Encino, with her fiancé, Mark, an award-winning commercial photographer.
Recent publications are listed below:
Front Porch Review – Literary Journal, Vol. 15, July 2023, Essay, “Can AI Learn How It Feels to Cry?” – https://frontporchreview.com/can-ai-learn-how-it-feels-to-cry-melissa-l-white/
Ariel Chart Literary Journal, February 1, 2023 – “Thank You, George Lucas,” (Short Non-Fiction Essay), https://www.arielchart.com/2023/02/thank-you-george-lucas.html
Oyster River Pages – Special Issue 5.2, Jan. 4, 2022: Breaking Bread – “Small Victories,” (Short Story), https://www.oysterriverpages.com/fiction-52/small-victories
Litbreak Magazine – Summer 2021, August 22, 2021 – “The Road Back” (Novel Excerpt) https://litbreak.com/the-road-back-novel-excerpt/
Litbreak Magazine – Summer 2021, August 22, 2021 – “To See a Huge World Outside Us” (Essay) https://litbreak.com/i-radiate-love/
Find more of her on:
Instagram: @melissa94901
Sapphire Selections 