The night has passed, the first threads of daylight creeping into the sky, and it is tomorrow now, and their anniversary is over, and five years have become six without his presence, without his face, without his asking if she’s had enough, and the world slips, because it is unfair, it is cheating, it is wrong.
He was supposed to come, that was the nature of their dance. She did not want him there, has never wanted it, but she expected it, he has made her expect it. Has given her a single threshold on which to balance, a narrow precipice of hope, because he is a hated thing, but a hated thing is still something. The only thing she has.
And that is the point, of course.
That is the reason for the empty glass, the barren plate, the unused chair.
She gazes out the window, and remembers the look in his eyes when they toasted, the curve of his lips when they declared war, and realizes what a fool she is, how easily baited.
And suddenly, the whole tableau seems gruesome and pathetic, and Addie can’t bear to look at it, can’t breathe in her red silk. She tears at the laces of the corset, pulls the pins from her hair, frees herself from the confines of the dress, sweeps the settings from the table, and dashes the now empty bottle against the wall.
Glass bites into her hand, and the pain is sharp, and real, the sudden scald of a burn without the lasting scar, and she does not care. In moments, her cuts have already closed. The glasses and bottle lie whole. Once she thought it was a blessing, this inability to break, but now, the impotence is maddening.
She ruins everything, only to watch it shudder, mocking, back together, return like a set to the beginning of the show.
And Addie screams.
Anger flares inside her, hot and bright, anger at Luc, and at herself, but it is giving way to fear, and grief, and terror, because she must face another year alone, a year without hearing her name, without seeing herself reflected in anyone’s eyes, without a night’s respite from this curse, a year, or five, or ten, and she realizes then how much she’s leaned on it, the promise of his presence, because without it, she is falling.
She sinks to the floor among the ruins of her night.
It will be years before she sees the sea, the waves crashing against the jagged white cliffs, and then she will remember Luc’s goading words.
Even rocks wear away to nothing.
Addie falls asleep just after dawn, but it is fitful, and brief, and full of nightmares, and when she wakes to see the sun high over Paris, she cannot bring herself to rise. She sleeps all the day and half the night, and when she wakes the shattered thing in her has set again, like a badly broken bone, some softness hardened.
“Enough,” she tells herself, rising to her feet.
“Enough,” she repeats, feasting on the bread, now stale, the cheese, wilted from the heat.
Enough.
There will be other dark nights, of course, other wretched dawns, and her resolve will always weaken a little as the days grow long, and the anniversary draws near, and treacherous hope slips in like a draft. But the sorrow has faded, replaced by stubborn rage, and she resolves to kindle it, to shield and nurture the flame until it takes far more than a single breath to blow it out.
XIV
New York City
March 13, 2014
Henry Strauss walks home alone through the dark.
Addie, he thinks, turning the name over in his mouth.
Addie, who looked at him and saw a boy with dark hair, kind eyes, an open face.
Nothing more. And nothing else.
A cold gust blows, and he pulls his coat close, and looks up at the starless sky.
And smiles.
PART THREE:
Three Hundred Years—And Three Words
Title: Untitled Salon Sketch
Artist: Bernard Rodel
Date: c. 1751–3
Medium: Ink pen on parchment
Location: On loan from The Paris Salon exhibition at The British Library
Description: A rendering of Madame Geoffrin’s famous salon, brimming with figures in various stages of conversation and repose. Several recognizable personages—Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot—can be discerned among the group, but the most interesting inclusion is the three women circling the room. One is clearly Madame Geoffrin. Another is believed to be Suzanne Necker. But the third, an elegant woman with a freckled face, remains a mystery.
Background: In addition to his contributions to Diderot’s Encyclopedia, Rodel was an avid draftsman, and appears to have made use of his rendering skill during many of his installments in Madame Geoffrin’s salon. The freckled woman appears in several of his sketches, but is never named.
Estimated Value: Unknown
I
Paris, France
July 29, 1724
Freedom is a pair of trousers and a buttoned coat.
A man’s tunic and a tricorne hat.
If only she had known.
The darkness claimed he’d given her freedom, but really, there is no such thing for a woman, not in a world where they are bound up inside their clothes, and sealed inside their homes, a world where only men are given leave to roam.
Addie saunters up the street, a stolen basket hooked over the elbow of her coat. Nearby, an old woman stands in a doorway, beating out a rug, and laborers lounge on café steps, and none of them so much as blink, because they do not see a woman, walking alone. They see a young man, barely more than a youth, dawdling in the dying light; they do not think how strange, how scandalous it is to see her strolling. They do not think anything at all.
To think, Addie might have saved her soul, and simply asked for these clothes.
It has been four years now without a visit from the dark.
Four years, and at the dawn of every one, she swears she will not waste the time she has in waiting. But it is a promise she cannot fully keep. For all her effort, Addie is like a clock wound tighter as the day draws near, a coiled spring that cannot loosen until dawn. And even then, it is a grim unwinding, less relief than resignation, the knowledge that it will start again.
Four years.
Four winters, four summers, four visitless nights.
The other ones, at least, are hers, to spend as she likes, but no matter how she tries to pass the time, this one belongs to Luc, even when he is not here.
And yet, she will not declare it forfeit, will not sacrifice the hours as if they are already lost, already his.
Addie passes a group of men and tips her hat in greeting, uses the gesture to pull the tricorne lower on her own brow. Day has not quite given way to night, and in the long summer light she is careful to keep her distance, knowing the illusion will falter under scrutiny. She could have waited an hour longer and been safe within the veil of night, but the truth is, she could not bear the stillness, the creeping seconds of the clock.
Not tonight.
Tonight, she has decided to celebrate her freedom.
To climb the steps of Sacré Coeur, sit at the top of the pale stone stairs, the city at her feet, and have a picnic.