First Impressions: A Firebird Ficlet

The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Instead. I ran through the multiverse until I reached St. Petersburg, and the grand duchess, and Lieutenant Markov.

He hasn't been dead for a month. How can you even consider being with someone else?

Except Paul isn't "someone else."

I think.

"We should eat." Paul sounds resolved – almost resigned. "Everyone needs to eat."

I slump down in the car seat, hugging my pearl-gray cardigan around me. "Sure."

At least Paul knows where to take me. We both like this gourmet pizza place in Oakland, not far from the theater. Although there's usually a line, we manage to get in right away; this is the one lucky break we've gotten all night. I'm not sure we could've made it through a twenty-minute wait outside. Not only is the pizza delicious, but the ambiance inside is great too – brick walls, comfortably weather-beaten chairs and tables of wood, candles on the table, and hanging plants overhead that somehow create the illusion that you're dining on a deck outside.

"You like vegetable pizza," Paul says, then frowns. "But you're not vegetarian."

I shrug. "I like the veggies."

"Then we'll get that."

"If you'd like something else – "

"No. This is fine." Most guys would say that either sulkily – silently almost demanding that you give up what you want for them – or cloyingly, like you ought to be so impressed by the fact they even care what you eat that you instantly drop your panties to the floor. Paul really means it. He doesn't want anything I don't want.

And now I'm reminded of Lieutenant Markov again, who would have given up everything for me. How can I forget about him so quickly?

But I haven't forgotten him. I'm trying to get him back.

The Paul I knew in Russia wouldn't have believed the Paul sitting before me now was someone else; he believed that he was on some deep level fundamentally the same as every other Paul that could exist in the entire multiverse. He knew that I was both his world's Grand Duchess Margarita and myself, and it made no difference to him. He would love every version of me, everywhere.

I close my eyes as I remember his final words: Every Marguerite.

"If you don't – feel well," Paul ventures, "we can go home." He sits across from me, menu in his hands, looking as helpless and wounded as an insect pinned to a specimen board. When he saw me sitting there with my eyes closed, he must have thought I was wishing to be anywhere else.

But there's nowhere else I'd rather be, no puzzle I'd rather solve. "No. It's okay. I was just thinking."

"About what?"

"About how this got started." I wave my hand between us. "You and me."

"Oh." That must have encouraged him. For the first time since we left my house, Paul wears the shadow of a smile.

"When did it start for you? And how? The way you felt about me, I mean." Then I wrinkle my nose. "Wow, when I say it out loud, it sounds crazy pushy."

"No, it's all right! I want to tell you." Yet he doesn't seem to have the words. Paul sits there for a few long seconds, considering. I like that he takes care with what he says, that he doesn't just blurt out the first thing that comes to mind. He only wants to tell me the absolute truth. Finally, he begins, “You were different. You always were. The day I met you – you came in from Angela’s house, wearing that orange dress, the one with the lace – ”