Free The Book That Matters Most by Ann Hood

notebooks from his inside pocket and carefully tore out a page.
    â€œHere,” he said.
    Before she could read it or even respond, he nodded a goodnight and walked off.
    Ava stepped under the one light beaming above the door and read what John had written.
    Think only of the past as its remembrance gives you pleasure .
    â€œJohn?” she called into the darkness.
    But he was gone. She folded the paper in half, and placed it in her coat pocket.

Maggie
    Of course, he was married.
    Although she didn’t learn it that first night, it became clear soon enough. The apartment on rue Saint-Antoine was a second flat, the one that Julien kept for his work, which involved art installations. He represented artists, and the loft was full of oversized masks and paintings in vivid Caribbean colors or bold abstract images. Julien told her that he kept it for his work, but she never saw him actually work there. Sometimes he arrived, out of breath from the one-hundred-step climb, carrying a canvas. Sometimes he left with a piece of the art fromthe apartment. But he never spoke on the phone or looked at papers or brought artists inside. Once, he went out on the small balcony and called down to someone standing near the Saint-Paul Métro stop across the street. “He could come up,” she’d offered. And Julien had laughed and tousled her hair and said, “Impossible.”
    She decided she loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone before.
    She lay on the hot pink sofa that formed a large U in the center of the loft, stoned, watching him want her, watching his desire grow, become fierce. His wife must be older, like him. Of course he couldn’t get enough of Maggie, who never refused him, who let him do anything he wanted to her. He brought her such good-quality drugs that sometimes they knocked her flat for days. When that happened, everything turned soft and gauzy. His voice sounded as if he were at the other end of a tunnel, his body moving on her felt like they were underwater. One afternoon, whatever he gave her to smoke, cooking it so carefully in a tiny pipe for her, holding it so gently to her lips, cupping her chin in his large callused hand as she inhaled, whatever it was, it produced a halo around him, a golden light so beautiful that she believed he was truly sent from heaven.
    That was when she knew for certain she loved him.
    She told him so too.
    She said, “I love you I love you I love you,” and he grinned, showing all of his adorable crooked teeth.
    â€œMa petite chatte,” he murmured, nuzzling her neck. “Tell me again.”
    â€œJe t’aime,” she whispered, holding onto him as tight as she could, as if he was an anchor, holding her in place.

    â€œ M ore of that,” she’d told him as he left. “ J’en reprends.”
    He did bring her more of that, and she began to lose track of time.
    â€œYou’ve been gone so long,” she’d say to him, and he would laugh and say, “But I was just here last night.”
    â€œWhat day is it?” she asked him one morning in the big white bed.
    â€œSunday,” he said. “And I can stay all day today.”
    â€œWhich Sunday?” she asked him.
    â€œWhat does it matter, mon petit pamplemousse ?” he said, tenderly stroking her cheek. “Everything you need is right here.”
    When he left to go to the bakery for fresh croissants, Maggie tried to think, tried to make her brain land on something concrete. She remembered that he’d cooked a baked pasta. Yesterday? Last week? She’d watched him as he boiled the tiny shells in milk and garlic. Her mother had just boiled them in water, but not Julien. She remembered how sometimes he looked like he was under a strobe light when he moved, how she’d watched from the hot pink sofa as he moved around the kitchen leaving those streaks of light as he did. She remembered that one afternoon, alone, she’d written a