Free Whatever Lola Wants by George Szanto

dawn they found their way to Les Halles, the great fruit and vegetable market, already bustling with farmers in from the fields, the freshest tomatoes and lettuces, artichokes and carrots, seven varieties of beans and four of peas, and onions and scallions and early potatoes and more, and more. Another perfect café, hot onion soup and fresh bread. A banquet.
    They walked along rue de Rivoli to the Place de la Bastille, down the rue de Lyon to the Gare de Lyon. Over the summer he would come to Lyon to be with her, she would visit him in Freiburg. “After that …” They would talk of such things over the summer.
    He exchanged his old ticket for one on the present train. He bought a book for the trip. They found his platform, his car, his seat. They went back out onto the platform. Milton said, “Luckiest thing, each of us from our private parts of the world getting on the same boat.”
    â€œNot luck. We made it happen.”
    â€œWe did. We organized it. Together. We created the possibility.”
    A call from the conductor for all passengers to be on board. Theresa and Milton kissed, then just held on to each other. A squeal as the train began to move. Milton squeezed her tight, let go, jumped onto the rolling car. He turned and waved, blowing her another kiss. She waved back as the train pulled away. Her eyes were wet. Her fingers found the pendant, the bloodstone, hanging on its chain. She stroked it lightly. She cried half her way back to her hotel.
    â€¢
    I stopped there, for two reasons. First, because they were newly in love. I knew what would happen, at least in the short run—their meetings over the summer, their wedding in the fall. No doubt wonderful for Milton and Theresa, but watching the early stages of love can get cloying. Second, and more importantly, something else was going on at the same time. Someone else’s memory, and the corner of my eye had caught it.
    â€œYou saw a lot back there,” said Lola. She looked wistful.
    â€œA bit.”
    â€œThe memories of both of them.”
    Lola was right. “Yes.” I’d blended them in my mind.
    â€œIs there more?”
    â€œLet’s leave Milton and Theresa for a bit. There’s another memory from back then …”
    â€¢
    Beth Cochan put the phone down. She watched Johnnie bounce a ball against the wall of the garden shed down the grassy slope. She tossed back the last half inch of her schooner of Tanqueray and didn’t pour another because it wasn’t noon yet. She called, “Johnnie!”
    Johnnie walked slowly up to the house. “Hi.”
    â€œYour present’s waiting. At my lab.”
    After a couple of seconds he said, “Please, can you bring it?”
    â€œYou want it?”
    He nodded again, hesitant.
    â€œWe have to go get it.”
    He looked away from her. “What is it?”
    â€œYou’ll see.” She laughed lightly.
    He thought for a while. “Can we just get it and come right back home?”
    They drove in her open-top red and white Bel Air through hazy spring sunlight down to the lab in the old factories. The city had redone the mill yard, Joe Cochan had told his son, since textiles were in deep decline. Johnnie saw rolls of wool sliding down a steep brown hill. The city gave us a first-rate deal, Joe had said, half rent for a decade. So Joe, six years back, had moved Cochan Pharmaceuticals from Montreal over to Sherbrooke. He’d gutted the old weaving and cutting and sewing sweatshops and built laboratories. A lab for Beth too, as well equipped as the others, best of its kind in North America. CochPharm filled up a quarter mile of mills.
    Johnnie hated going inside, through the new pine doorway down the long white corridor to his mother’s lab. Nothing really scary, logically he knew this, no chemicals making smells, nobody cutting up monkeys. “Dogs and cats! And juicy rats!” the kids shouted at him. His teacher Mrs.