A scene draft snippet from one of my story ideas.
“Here we are, trapped in the amber of the moment. There is no why.”
― Kurt Vonnegut
Venice, Italy
Baglioni Hotel Luna
31 December 2021
He studied the picture as he had a thousand, thousand times. The only one he had of her taken in Paris, 6 December 1904, just before that evening at 5 Avenue Carnot.
The sterile photo lacked the color of the banked embers of her hair, but he loved the light cast and shadow on pale flesh… the strength of her shoulders. So real to him still, the taste-memory of kissing her lightly freckled skin, nuzzling down to slip the cloth from her breasts with his lips. Closing his eyes, he felt her chest move against his. Rising and settling with the thrum of each beating breath. That moment slowed—he held her again, but not for long enough—between the tick and turn of the hands of the clock. For decades, time and time again, the touch—the feel—of her and the beat of her heart had led him across continents hoping to find her. San Francisco, New York, Buenos Aires, London, Berlin, Rome, Shanghai, Singapore. She was lost in time that was running out. He had one more chance. If he could only save her tonight. Where it all began over a century ago, in this place, this hotel. Where it—she—would finally end at the midnight dance.
