Je Vois La Vien En Rose

It was June, on the French side of St. Maarten, our table on the second-floor terrace overlooking the quiet street below, across from the nearly empty beach. The sun had spread across the horizon as we sipped our wine; and the restaurant belonged to us, the season over months ago. I don’t remember how we ended up in this small restaurant on a nondescript corner street on an island with a split personality. We were indifferent tourists who didn’t care when a sudden wayward afternoon shower jolted the heat of the equatorial sun. The twilight arrived before our first dish, as we listened to the hysterical sound of the birds hiding in the nearby trees, both of us laughing at their crazed noise; the bottle of red wine helping. An eloquent moment captured like a still life painting in the colors of our shared memories. We were in Paris again. Dinner in the student quarter in the shadow of Notre Dame, except we didn’t have to speak French in Je Vois La Vien en Rose. That June week we shared on St. Maarten, when the days were never long enough and the nights far too short.