The Intended

Digital Art Collage by Stella Kalaw

I scanned the crowd coming down the escalator in the arrivals level at Dorval airport. I was meeting three men.

Arriving were two men from the Berlin headquarters—one the event speaker at the product launch and the other, the International VP of Marketing—accompanied by their Canadian distributor, a client of my PR agency. I spotted my client on the escalator. When he noticed me, he began to gesticulate energetically, pointing to a man who stood in front of me, his face in profile. I reached out and touched his arm. He turned towards me, and I instantly knew: he was The One I had been waiting for my entire life.

I can't quite articulate the subliminal notion that somewhere—beyond the love for my husband—there existed The One, and that one day, he would magically appear.

What a cruel cosmic joke! I am 25 years married; he is on his third wife. I live in Montreal; he in Berlin. I am the daughter of Holocaust survivors; he is a tall, handsome, debonair German.

The product launch was a success, and he, the VP of International Marketing, and I left the media relations to my staff. We spent most of the evening talking to each other. I learned about his wives, that he’d lived all over the world and, as an international marketer, had travelled to every corner of the globe. Our conversation was improbably intimate for two people who had just met. We joked and teased and laughed—his voice seductive, Continental with no hint of a German inflection. It felt as if we were simply catching up after a long separation.

At the end of the evening, I was invited to join the team for a drink. I went reluctantly. Soon, the racy jokes began, something I was accustomed to, not him. He grew rigid by my side until the piano man played some Latin rhythms when he rose and offered his hand.

“Shall we dance?”

I was terrified. My husband only ever managed a slow shuffle at weddings. I tried to explain, but he was persistent. I reasoned: either I embarrass him or myself. So, I stood and followed him onto the empty dance floor, imagining the worst.

He took my hand in his and placed the other around my waist slowly, as if gathering a curtain, and held me firmly. Surprisingly, no part of his body touched any part of mine that shouldn’t be touching. As he moved with certainty. I followed, morphing into Ginger Rogers, floating like a feather. The piano man segued from one rhythm to another and I continued to magically follow with ease. And then, the music slowed. He curled his palm until the back of my hand lay against his pounding heart, breaking the spell. I panicked. It was time to leave. We returned to the table, and I said my goodbyes.

As I was getting into my car, he appeared outside, ostensibly to smoke a cigarette, and asked, “Won’t you come back for one more dance?”

In my head, Leonard Cohen began singing Dance Me to the End of Love.

“I can’t,” I said, and drove home. That night, I tossed and turned, but his pounding heart found me no matter where I turned.

He was gone the next day. A month later, I faxed him a business letter. In the final paragraph, I inserted, “It’s rare to meet a kindred spirit…”

I received a Christmas fax from him that year and the following year. But in the third year, no Christmas greeting, although I didn’t notice as I was in the process of leaving my husband. Then in March, a fax arrived. He was coming to Montreal for two days on business. Could we meet?

Over dinner, we sat ignoring a table laden with food so engrossed were we in telling each other stories. We learned, that we both loved Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen, Gordon Lightfoot; shared favourite songs; and oh yes, he was leaving wife number three. That prompted me to ask what made him contact me after so much time. He pulled a paper from his wallet, the folds of the fax worn thin.

“I had a Canada file, although I was not doing any business there, with just one sheet of paper.”

He showed me my letter.

“But why?” I asked.

“There was this line that began, ‘It’s rare to meet a kindred spirit…’ that said so much more than I could hope for.”

I had found a man who could read between the lines! Thus, began our long journey. Although neither of us had children, we had other obstacles, not the least of which, he now lived in Cologne and I in Montreal. Where could we make a home—if it came to that? I was leaving my husband to learn how to be alone, to write, to explore who I was.  

I moved to Provence for half a year, and he would drive down from Cologne to spend time with me. For two years, we met every few months in Europe or North America. Then, we parted. He had met someone new, but we never really let go. Like the tide, we sometimes rushed together over email and, at other times, pushed away. Although he was living with someone else, I never doubted that he was The One. I had taken a leap of faith in loving him, and I knew that although I had found my soul mate, it didn’t mean I got to keep him. I was content to know that he existed and believed without any reason that someday, he would return.

It took eight more years before we came back together. And that’s where we’ll stay. But that’s another story.