Transits by Jaime Forsythe Page A

discarded.
    Don't be confused by the disparate nature of their drunken dialogues. The fact that he remembers one thing and she remembers another does not necessarily mean that one of them found more meaning; it just means they came from completely different places, used different maps to travel to the point where they met,
where we begin
.
    The precarious nature of modern love. Love that involves nausea and euphoria, laughter and lament. Love that involves a Georgian restaurant in a basement in St. Petersburg, Russia.
    Their first dinner together, a meal in a Georgian restaurant in a basement in St. Petersburg, Russia. While they are laughing over a thousand nothings, impossible in-jokes between people who barely know each other, the stern-faced waitress never smiles a single time. Not even once during the entirety of the meal. It becomes a game between them, a game that eventually unites them, trying to get waitresses to crack a grin between courses. This particular waitress doesn't, instead takes the empty plates and counts up the cheque, a cheque he requests and reads for in Russian.
    Love that feels foreign.
     is very far from home. is not very far from home. Take note, reader: from where we begin, themathematics of this suggests that their homes are very far apart. Regardless of this, they are both presently refusing to think about home, avoiding the notion entirely. They are instead collaborating, scheming, creating fiction, creating failure.
    The mathematics of distance is this: he will meet someone else in Moscow and she will meet someone else in Toronto. Let us, before we begin, remember the precarious nature of modern love. Don't be consumed by the pre-destined nature of this ethereal modern love moment. Don't be fooled. He will make love to another woman and she will make love to another man. Despite the pre-ordained, despite his use of the word “destiny” and talk of “fate,” they will betray each other within weeks.
     notices a younger couple seated at a table near them—he is Russian and she is American, both barely out of their teens. The young girl is smiling coyly towards her companion, curling her hair around her finger, and pushing the remainder of her meal around the plate with her fork.
    They will all betray each other within weeks. Beauty will beget bile, and bile will beget that which was born to be broken.
    â€œ, isn't it beautiful?” says, watching the second couple smile with all their saccharine sweetness and sighs.
    â€œIsn't what beautiful?”
    â€œThe way he's suddenly changing her life, the way she's falling in love. You know that she will go back to the States and tell all of her girlfriends that she met a Russian poet and he changed her life.”
    â€œNo,” says flatly. She will come to learn that he always speaks this flatly, this matter-of-factly.
    â€œNo?”
    So let us, before we begin, think about love.
    â€œNo that's not beautiful because
this
is beautiful. That—
that
is nothing more than
us for dummies
.”
    Her Part One
The Grand Hotel Europe
    Some thoughts on “home.”
    â€œThere is nothing in the world that can make you feel more at home than actually being at home. This assertion will seem false once you step across the threshold of the Grand Hotel Europe in St. Petersburg. You may be thousands of miles from home, yet will feel as comfortable as if you'd never left.”
–The Grand Hotel Europe Website
     has a theory.
    Things of any importance have to happen in certain venues, spaces that by their very nature represent transition and change, for better or for worse. Train stations and airports secure an obvious position on this list, as do hospitals and churches, courthouses and funeral homes. Lovers meet, marry, birth, fade and die. Any scene in any film or book of any value involves a venue of this kind of