Babayaga

of any importance until he shared it with her. Adèle was his sole audience, his only validation. He had no eyes of his own and he was completely deaf without her. He was nothing, truly, but a vessel that carried his small puzzles and great triumphs home to her. Only after she absorbed them or interpreted them or merely smiled at his detailed and perhaps occasionally tiresome recital of them did the many dimensions of his existence finally bloom within him as well, opening up like rosebuds in water. This was, he realized, a perspective of their relationship he had never appreciated before, because he had never been so very far away from it.
    A great wave of exhaustion overwhelmed him and he lay down on a park bench across from a vision of the Place d’Italie. He liked the neighborhood quiet like this, without the cars endlessly running around the city circle. Closing his eyes, he found himself thinking about all those people who were always on the move, continually driving and darting about the city streets and the country roads. Where are they going? What do they need? They wanted bread and cheese and wine, they sought laughter and sex and company, and then they chased the money they needed to start it all over again. It was a mad carousel, rotating faster and faster to an accelerating scream of a calliope song; the music never stopped, never rested, and now he was so very tired.
    He did not know how long he slept. He felt the wind blowing softly against his body and heard the distant whinnying of a horse. Coming to, he was alarmed to find that his tiny body was on the verge of slipping off Will’s head as the strand of hair he was only tenuously attached to was now waving wildly in the wind out an open car window. Vidot pulled hard and managed to climb up the cord of brown hair back to the safety of the scalp. Gathering himself, he was frustrated by the fact that he was still trapped in the confines of this little flea body, yet his brief sojourn as a human had lifted his hopes considerably, for now he knew that he was still, in his soul and spirit, essentially, a man. The rest was only a trick.
    He worked his way up to the peak of Will’s brow and took a look around. They were traveling through the night in a Chevy Bel Air, out past the city limits. The passengers were a cast of characters that had by now become all too familiar. Will was in the passenger seat, Zoya lay across the backseat sound asleep, and Oliver was driving, rambling on in his droll, desultory manner. “Impressive, really, I must say. Never had a woman fight like that for me, even when I was truly in love.”
    “When was that?” Will sleepily asked.
    “Oh, some time ago now,” said Oliver, “when I was first in Paris. I met her when she was studying at the Sorbonne. You would have adored her, Will. Jacqueline was beautiful, black hair, pale skin, your Zoya reminds me of her a bit. My Jacqueline was more petite, but with the same broad cheekbones and the same perfect nose. I fell hard for her right away. We had mutual friends, all ex-pats, and we would take our wicker baskets filled with fruit, bread, brie, and champagne down and picnic in the Luxembourg, playing boules or badminton and lounging about like creatures off some Bastida canvas. At night we’d sit and play canasta in the Spanish cafés while the Gypsy guitar players strummed. I pursued Jacqueline quite energetically, but she was a wary one. I suppose I had a reputation for being a bit louche, even back then. But eventually my charms did win her over and she started staying at my flat, first a few nights a week, then every night. Things grew fairly domestic. Frankly, until then, I’d always been the sort of boy who races madly about, forever late to the station. But the whole pace of life changed with Jacqueline, seconds seemed to tick slower, and while she stayed busy with her studies, I began writing, real writing, not the trite stuff, but actual earnest stabs at it. I sent packets off to New York and London editors who were honestly encouraging. I have to say, my life was as solid as it’s ever been, I was wide-awake in the world. Then, as I grew comfortable, for the first time in my life I was finally able to let my true self emerge.”
    “That sounds great,” said Will.
    Oliver gave him a dark grin and his voice dropped a bit. “Yes, it does, doesn’t it? Though in this particular case my true self turned out to be a complete ass: sarcastic, remote, and glacially