Clement Part 2 - 5-5-2012



Sunset from Barracuda in Playa Samara, Costa Rica

The sun touches the horizon and sinks beneath it. Purple and navy replace soft orange and lavender.

“Where do you live in Paris,” I ask. Clement smiles sweetly as she describes home. She lives in a picturesque quarter of Paris – a flower shop in the ground floor of her apartment building and a bakery next door. A grocer 100m from her front door means she doesn't need to leave her little city within a city. “There is a park 300 meters away from my apartment. It is very nice. In the summer, children run, people eat...”

“And sleep?” I tease.

She smiles again. “Yes, and sleep.”

The sky is dark now, the sun gone and Samara's lights blinking alive. I ask about the boyfriend she mentioned offhandedly at La Vela Latina the previous night.

“How did you meet your boyfriend?”

“I met him in New Caledonia. He was the friend of a coworker. We were friends for one month, just friends, and then we decided we like each other.” She sips her beer.

Clement fell in love with a New Caledonian local who was 20 years older than her with two kids aged 18 and 25. Clement and he professed their love for each other when they were in New Caledonia. “It's complicated,” she tells me softly. “He says he will come to France but I don't think so. His children are in New Caledonia. When we talked yesterday, we talked only about what we did in the day. I tell him I love him and he does not know what he wants. How can you be 50 and not know what you want?”

She continues, “there is another woman who is trying to come back to him. I don't like her, I am very jealous. I call and she pick up the phone and she treats me like his friend.” It's complicated,” Clement tells me again, softly.

She stares out at the night, her voice barely above a whisper.“I am on this trip for myself, not for him. So I do what I wish. I want to dive, so I go dive.” She is going to visit a few other spots in Costa Rica before moving onto Panama, Nicaragua, Belize and perhaps someplace else. She has two months before going back to France, two months to find closure on her trip.

She tells me more and I listen. The talks quietly of her love for her boyfriend, their past and the confusion of their future. She tells me about the diving she wants to do and I wonder if she'll find peace or an escape if she just visits enough beaches. When she stops speaking, we sit in silence together for a long while, sipping in our beers and the burgeoning night before departing.