Skype Face

“Love almost always leads to heartbreak.”
—Raoul Felder, Esq.

She had read to her lover on Skype. She had cried to her lover on Skype. She had made love to her lover on Skype. She had held out her hand and tried to caress her lover’s Skype face, leaving dirty fingerprints on her screen.

For weeks she had prepared to meet her lover on the other side of the world, so she could touch his face in real life. She had dropped bags of clothes into charity bins, pulled graveyard shifts at a second job, planned going away drinks and dinners and coffees and rushed hugs on street corners. She had sent resumes to potential future employers. She had started a fund for future family reunions.

“He’s coming!” she announced on Facebook, which sounded like she was talking about the rapture, which she was. She was referring to the coming of a man she had only met a couple of times. A man for whom she had relocated. She had perfected French for this man. His pixilated Skype face faded easily from memory, but as she walked around New York City, his working man smell of grease, cables and tools seemed to follow her.

The lovers lived on opposite sides of the Atlantic Ocean. When only one lover has to move, relocation breeds resentment. The woman, whose lifestyle is considered more fluid, whose career is considered more dispensable, whose fear of losing a beloved is greater, is often the one to relocate.

She had tried moving to Paris, but her fierce loyalty to herself made it seem like a victory for him. He had tried moving to New York, but as a fan of two-hour lunches and the government’s support of artists, he didn’t fare too well. Their latest scheme was to snatch smaller and smaller pockets of time with each other over the coming year until his contract finished and they could move together as one to Australia.

Australia would feel foreign and strange. It was a location where both would have to start again. Where her first language was spoken, where his first language was taught at school. A short airplane ride away, there were islands where French was spoken. Both would have people who could nurse them through their culture shock as Australia was a place where French and American ex-patriots had made their home.

She had arrived in their new land alone and devoted herself to finding a perfect shared home in a perfect neighborhood in perfect proximity to their future child’s future school. Her excitement rose as the date of his arrival drew near. She had been there alone for a month, and still he had not bought a plane ticket. She believed him when he assured her he would be with her soon. She believed him enough to announce it on Facebook.

“He’s coming!” she wrote, and yet he had not ‘liked’ it. Over time, his Facebook page appeared neglected. Their Skype dates became less frequent. Her international texts went unanswered. She emailed him asking once and for all when he would arrive. He wrote back and said, “I’m not coming.”

She punched the memory of his Skype face, and the dirty finger-printed screen cracked. Her laptop was broken and her status remained.