It was the 12th of February, and we decided to go out for a nice dinner in Sainte-Anne.
Unfortunately, all the nice restaurants were closed or not open yet, so we decided to kill some time and have coupled of beers on the beach.
One thing led to another, and we ended up at the beach bar, having some additional cocktails there whilst watching the sun go down.
In lieu of any decent alternatives, we decided to have our late night snack at Cafe L’Americano, THE bar / restaurant / nightlife hot spot in Sainte-Anne.
We kept the drinks coming while waiting for our food to arrive, and decided to join a couple of Frenchmen on the neighboring table to entertain us until our food would arrive.
The consumption of ever flowing beverages took some toll on her tiny Asian body, and so it wasn’t long until she started to insult our “hosts” – even though they were too self-absorbed to notice it.
Once our food arrived we relocated to our own table, but soon she had set her eye on the next distraction, a lonely diner on a table just outside on the terrace.
She decided to pay him a visit and sit on his lap, making all kinds of flirty advances so the poor guy started blushing and did not know how to react.
Using her power of deduction she convinced him that he wanted to go to the store to buy us some cigarettes, but once he left, she started to dance in the sand in front of the cafe.
I watched her and started to dancing with her, when all over sudden she froze and looked at me with her eyes wide open: “Who are you?” she asked in disbelieve, “Are you a real person?”
She turned away and started walking away, fast paced, intend of leaving me behind, but with no apparent direction in sight.
I followed her, confused, bewildered and intrigued at the same time: What was going on here, what was happening to me?
She zig-zagged between the vendor booths at the beginning of the beach, sometimes walking circles as if she wanted to return, but upon spotting me, she reversed course and headed out to the beach again.
When she turned towards me, her face was wild and her eyes wide open, but it seemed she had no idea where she was walking, more staggering than walking a straight line.
At one point she ran in to the metal shank of a parasol that was grounded in the sand, hurt her leg and foot and started bleeding, but kept on walking, as if nothing had happened.
A bunch of locals were sitting by the beach, smoking a joint and drinking some booze, so she paid them a visit and i hurried to close in, to make sure she would not get into trouble.
She tried to snatch their drinks or get a drag from their cigarettes, i talked to them to let them know everything was okay. They laughed at the “crazy woman” and not long she lost interest and moved along.
Arriving at a secluded end of the beach she started to strip down and walked in to the water, swimming and finally turning on her back watching the stars, she seemed to calm down.
I undressed myself too and joined her for a night swim, she swam towards me, wrapped her arms around me and started to cry. I stroked her hair and held her in my arms.
After a while she calmed down, pushed herself off of me and swam ashore. There she broke down in tears, sobbing on the ground in a fetal position. i spread a scarf like a blanket over her and set down, holding her, comforting her and giving her warmth.
Suddenly she stopped sobbing and stared at me again with wide open eyes: “What do you want from me?” she hissed, “You don’t love me, you will leave me, like the others before!”
She got up and sat on the big rocks on the shore, not noticing that some of them were pointy and sharp as knives.
She started laughing and composed herself, sloppily getting dressed and ready to return to the Cafe.
I hastily collected all the things she had dropped, and joined her back to L’Americano, where our food in the meantime had gone cold.
She was in a good mood again and ordered a beer, starting to dance, moving her body smooth to the beats, a delight for sore eyes and a present to the crowd.
She walked around and ignoring me, she spent so much more attention on the mostly male audience, watching her and the spectacle she was to them.
Every now and then she grabbed one by the hand and made him turn her around, almost stumbling to the floor at the end of each turn, onetime falling into a table and hitting down some chairs.
At one point the barkeeper cut her off, so she went to the end of a bar where a big local guy was talking to a metropolitan french girl.
They shared a joint, and she had a few sips of his drink, and they seemed to have a good time.
Left alone at the center of the bar, i watched the room and the exit, to make sure she would not vanish again, before Fred our host could arrive and pick us up, as i had requested him while she was dancing.
Wen he arrived and wanted to take us home things took a turn: The local guy had already made up his mind to take her home tonight, and refused to let her go. When she decided she wanted to leave with Fred, he claimed that she just broke his phone and owed him 200 €.
Fred wasn’t having it, and the two dark man build themselves up in front of each other, each trying to over tower the other one with their physique.
“Run to the car!” Fred hissed, and out of the venue we ran and crouched behind a parking truck, before we managed to get into our own car and Fred drove us away.
She mumbled some sentences and hit me a few times, just to get a reaction out of me, and when I did not engage, she grabbed my hat of my head and threw it out of the window of the moving car. “What the fuck…?” was all i could say, while Fred speeded towards home.
She stared at me, I could feel her piercing look, while I stared straight ahead, in disbelieve of the turn this night took.
She cried again and sunk down in her seat, passing out in the corner at some point, even before we managed to arrive at home.
Fred carried her lifeless body to our room and placed her on our bed. Then he shook his head and hugged me. No words where necessary, we both knew what he meant.
When I came back from the bathroom after brushing my teeth the room was destroyed. She must have woken up and found time to get undress, toss over some suitcases and tear down the mosquito net that guarded our bedstead.
She then passed out again, and so I found her, bare naked, laying in the middle of our bed, surrounded by chaos she had brought upon us in just a matter of seconds…