The Miller's Letters

I had my nose in a book The Miller's Letters when I saw faded blue jeans step up to the table to the left of me. Then, he knelt, a face. I turned to meet his smile with a smile.
"Whatcha readin?" he asked.
"Oh, it's The Miller's Letters."
"That old musty classic? It's not too boring?" He whispered. We were, after all, in a library.
"No. I like it. It's romantic. The author finds an abandoned mill in Provence and decides to live in it alone. He spends his time writing and he feels alive for the first time."
"Well, if you like that kind of thing."
"Oh, yeah, I feel like I'm in the candle-lit mill, sitting beside him at his writing desk."
He let out a stifled laugh.
"Hey," he asked, "you wanna go get something to drink with me?"
"No, I'm too busy."
"Well, how about a concert on Friday?"
I thought about it, not sure if I wanted to endure yet another concert that I couldn't wait to end, my ears buzzing, wasted time.
But I was trying to make new friends. He seemed genuine.
"Okay," I said, hoping maybe the concert was a classical one.
He picked me up and we opened the door of the venue, music so loud, I held my ears. I couldn't hear what he said to me. It was dark. Cigarettes burned red, held, then dropped. Blacklights beamed florescent bras and underwear strung on the ceiling and walls. Beers passed in plastic cups, dreadlocks, musicians on stage in zoot suits screaming, "Merci a Tous!" after each eardrum battering song, stares from boys in black and converse shoes, whiffs of cannabis. I'm dressed for a classical recital, my olive green leather bag gripped tight, I ask,
"Would that be okay if we left early?"
"A beer first?" he shouted close to my head.
"Oh! No, I just want to go."
We walked out onto the still parking lot, heels clicking, smiling, twirling, squeeling at being free, fresh air, eyes to stars.
"Was that hell?" He asked concernedly.
"I wouldn't say that," I said, wanting to say that.
We went to a bar instead, adding water to anisette, turning it chalky white, taking the cylindrical glass to our lips, talking, watched the bartender clean glasses with a white rag.
I continued to meet this man consecutively every weekend and when summer came he invited me for a week in Provence where his brother lived.
I was excited about discovering another part of France and besides, I liked this man, he was gentle and kind.
So we departed by train, leaving early, arrived there by afternoon. His brother, tan, confident strutter, greeted us at the train station, kiss on each cheek. We went to pick up baguettes to go with dinner and then to his home.
We sat at the table. He offered to take us on a hike the next day, he was off work.
We were delighted and I soon found myself walking down a sunlit, brambly, lavender fringed path and face to face with the mill I read about when I first met my new companion.
There it was, abandoned, with a marble plaque, "Here lived A-D- author of The Miller's Letters...."
I got chills, pictured the admirable man inside, writing, living his very own independent kind of life.
I couldn't have imagined that when I was reading so absorbedly about this mill, that I would shortly after be standing in front of it and I thought about this for the rest of our time in Provence.
I bought a copy of The Miller's Letters for my very own and I cherish it. When I look at it, it reminds me that life is magic if only I concentrate on something, and then have the courage to say, "yes."