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Cliff was happy to say he’d moved on. That didn’t make it very true, but it was the mantra he’d been repeating for the month he’d worked in Paris. (He’d liked the city so much that it was worth staying in...not because he was waiting for anyone.) Working from his little out-of-the-way house was nice and peaceful, but...well, his mind kept drifting. Drifting back to the club, to the prospect of having a child, to the prospect of her. So when he had just finished writing in the middle of a stormy night and had taken to cleaning up the kitchen, the knock on the door surprised him very much—although that was nothing compared to the shock he received when he opened it to see— “Sally?”
She regarded him briefly, bed clothes and knotted hair, and he dumbly noticed that she was soaked to the bone.
“Did you...walk here? In the rain?”
“Well,” she scoffed, “that’s not the welcome I expected at all from a man who begged me to run away with him.”
He could only gawk. “What are you doing here?”
Sally reached into her pocket and frowned. “Oh dear, I’m out of gin. Do you have any?”
“What, you got tired of the gin all the other men gave you at the Kit Kat Klub?” The retort was out of his mouth before he could stop himself, sounding terribly bitter.
She shrugged. “I got tired of Berlin.”
“Let me guess. You tried looking into ‘politics’ and decided it was better to work elsewhere.”
“I-I didn’t…well...” Cliff could see the chill running down her spine, see the sickening memories playing in her head. Oh, so she’d finally looked in a newspaper. She took a breath, managing to hide the hitch so well that he wouldn’t have heard it if he hadn’t been listening, and when she spoke again, it was with a smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Oh please, Cliff, forget about all that. I’m here now! let’s enjoy what we have…in Paris.”
“You hate Paris,” Cliff managed.
Sally snorted, crossing her arms. “Did I say that? I was just being dramatic—Paris is as lovely as ever.”
“You’re dripping wet.”
“It’s refreshing.”
“And broke.”
“When have I not been?”
“Before you had your fur coat,” he said bluntly, and Sally was quiet.
Maybe it was the rain, or maybe he’d finally been able to come to his senses for the first time since she’d arrived, but Cliff was very aware of how frail Sally was, despite her mouth being set in a defiant line, face relaxed. Thunder boomed again from outside, and Cliff had a sharp realization—a stab of pity, pride, annoyance, something—as if it had struck him across the face; it was pouring outside, and Sally didn’t care. Or more specifically, she did care, just…was willing to go through it. And suddenly he noticed she was shivering. No, not shivering, trembling, and how her clothes, much more worn than usual, hung off her frame a bit. He noticed how she was thinner, how her hands fidgeted with each other nonstop, how her eyes, once he looked past their defense of confidence, were rimmed with red and looked very, very, frightened.
It was how she’d looked after the night at the doctor’s. Like something unspeakably terrible had occurred, and she was desperately trying to pretend it hadn’t.
After another minute, Sally turned her nose up, piquing an eyebrow in his direction. “If you’re done staring at me, I would very much like a spot of gin.”
“Come in,” Cliff said without thinking, still fixated on her. He blinked. “Wait, I don’t have any gin.”
She stepped inside and chuckled, but it was forced. “You never did have any, dear. Oh, how I miss the good old days of the Kit Kat Club. Those were the times, I tell you, the best of the best. Parties! Gin! Men! Although of course, that one doesn’t matter now that we’re here. You know, back at the beginning of the club, I heard that Herr Shultz—“
Cliff couldn’t take it. “Sally, what happened?”
She froze. The air hung with a painful silence, until she cleared her throat and said, “…to what?”
“To everything! To the club, the parties, Herr Shultz—“ He let out a slightly insane laugh and collapsed into a chair. “…To you.”
“Oh.” Her face fell for a moment, and the expression he’d seen before was back—the one with horrible things repeating themselves over and over in her head. She swallowed, turned away, and continued in a shaky voice. “W-well, I suppose…yes, I got tired of the club. Set out to find something exciting, and that something exciting was you. Can we please just forget about the club for—”
“Sally.”
“…Can we please—“ Her knuckles were white from gripping the chair.
“Sally, look at me.”
“P-please just forget...“
“Look at me.” She did, finally, turn her head very slowly, and Cliff felt an unexpected knot inside his stomach at the sight of just how hard she was fighting to keep it all together. She was at war with herself, pleading with her eyes to keep the tears caged in, knowing once she started, she wouldn’t stop.
Sally cleared her throat and stared at the ceiling, biting her lip.
“Sally…what on earth are you doing in Paris?”
“I have nowhere else to go,” she said very quickly, then closed her eyes as if that had been too much information.
Cliff opened his mouth to scoff but stopped when he realized what she meant. His eyes widened. “They came for the club, didn’t they.”
“Don’t be silly, darling—”
“The Nazis! They came for him, didn’t they.”
And then finally she nodded, slowly but deliberately, probably unable to give him more than that.
Cliff whistled softly. “They’re all gone…”
Sally immediately squeezed her eyes shut, but her head still bobbed up and down once in confirmation, and it suddenly became much harder for Cliff to swallow. The light, the laughter, the energy; the Kit Kat Klub was a place people could go a feel safe, and it had been Sally’s shield to the outside world. Sally kept staring at a spot on the floor, her voice returning. “Well anyways, the story about Herr Shultz is far too outrageous for this time. I wasn’t even there when it happened, and now the club has a strict no-birds policy, so we don’t have to worry—“
“Oh, Sally…” He stood up, reaching to take her hand, but she stepped away, mumbling weak protests. She was shaking, cold, starving, and still pretending everything was going to be alright, still on the edge of the dream her life had been not so long ago, refusing to open her eyes and see what a nightmare everything was. Cliff exhaled slowly. This was going to hurt, but it was why she’d come. Because somewhere, some part of her wanted to wake up, and he could do that.
He closed his eyes for a moment, preparing for her reaction, and it took a couple of tries to get the words out—partly because he didn’t quite want to know the answer himself. “Did they get Herr Shultz and Frauline Schneider?”
The color drained out of her face. “W-what?”
“Herr Shultz. Frauline Schneider. Are—“ he nearly choked, but knew the question had to be asked. “Are they dead?”
Her shaking doubled. “I don’t know.”
“Yes you do.”
“…I-I don’t care.”
“Yes you do.” He sighed. “Sit down.”
“No.”
“Sally, please. It will help. Tell me what happened.”
“No.” But she had sat down, in the chair next to his, and this time when Cliff reached for her hands she didn’t pull away—how were her fingers always so cold—then he guiltily realized she was still drenched and gently pulled her out of the chair to lead her to the fireplace. Something about the warmth, maybe something about the wooden floor even, maybe nothing, but it was all just a little too much, because he’d set the fire and turned around to see her face contorted into a silent sob, her hands pulling at the carpet. She stayed that way, frozen for a solid minute until it was broken with a single tear, dripping silently down her cheek. And then came two more, until finally the first sound escaped, one that wrenched his heart out. It was followed by another until she couldn’t stop, couldn’t even protest, could barely breathe when Cliff wrapped his arms around her.
To Cliff’s surprise, he wasn’t angry at her in the slightest. For all the time he’d spent imagining seeing her again…how that might go…this had not been it.
She began to talk after a bit, detailing the story of how first the audience began to dissipate, how she’d been too blind and stubborn to notice anything, how dancers kept disappearing. And then—she’d managed to tell him, choking on her words,—the Emcee didn’t show up, one day. Or the next, or the next after that. And then a week later, the Nazis made an appearance at the club, turning it into a bloodbath and shutting it down. Frauline Schneider was taken out of her home, publicly shot, and the other residents were kicked out. Herr Shultz, last she’d known, was alive but on the run.
So she’d taken the train to England, terrified and exhausted and cold, wandering around in search of work for a few days, sleeping with men on the streets to afford meals. And then discovered her ticket to Paris, to him. But she missed them all. The homesickness, the stress, the grief, everything had kept piling and piling and piling until she’d finally shown up at his door, a haven where it almost felt safe again. The whole story shouldn’t have taken more than ten minutes to recount, but they ended up spending an hour on the floor while she wept. He let her mourn for Frauline Schneider, for the dancers at her club, for the Emcee, until she couldn’t possibly anymore. Then he turned her chin up to face him, using one finger to tuck a stray piece of hair behind her ear, and she offered a watery smile.
His heart skipped a beat. No, no no, he’d forgotten this was Sally Bowles, he’d forgotten how easily she could make him speechless, how, even after her throat was raw from crying her voice was the most beautiful thing in the world to him. But there they were, sitting on the floor by the firelight, their hands touching, and suddenly the thing he wanted to do most in the world was lean over and kiss her.
All it would take was—
No. That couldn’t end well for either of them.
He straightened and cleared his throat, and she did the same, standing up, a flush rising to her cheeks that seemed almost apologetic. "Cliff, I..."
“You know…I think I might have some gin in a cabinet somewhere if you’d like,” he said quickly.
She opened her mouth to respond—then closed it almost as quickly, settling into the armchair as he got to his feet and dismissing him with a wave of her hand. “Gin…sounds like the best thing in the world.”
Cliff smiled, shaking his head as he ventured over to the cabinet. He returned with two glasses of gin, stopping in his tracks when he caught sight of her fast asleep in the armchair, curled in on herself. The fire crackled nearby, bathing her in a warm glow, and all Cliff could do was stare at her. Still stunning, still surprising, still…Sally.
He smiled again, placing the gin glasses on the table and spreading a blanket out to put on top of her. “Oh, Sally,” he mused, “Whatever was I going to do without you?” She didn’t respond, of course. But she was here, she was safe, she had seen the world around her, and she had come to him, finally.
It was the end of the world, and Sally and Cliff were in Paris.