She does not know the word.
“A single long story,” he explains, “something of pure invention. Filled with romance, or comedy, or adventure.”
She thinks of the fairy tales her father told her, growing up, the stories Estele spun of old gods. But this novel that Remy speaks of sounds like it encompasses so much more. She runs her fingers over the page of the proffered booklet, but her attention is on Remy, and his, for the moment, is on Voltaire. “Are you going to introduce yourself?”
Remy’s gaze snaps back, horrified. “No, no, not tonight. It is better this way; think of the story.” He sits back in his seat, glowing with joy. “See? This is what I love about Paris.”
“You are not from here, then.”
“Is anyone?” He has come back to her now. “No, I’m from Rennes. A printer’s family. But I am the youngest son, and my father made the grave mistake of sending me away to school, and the more I read, the more I thought, and the more I thought, the more I knew I had to be in Paris.”
“Your family didn’t mind?”
“Of course they did. But I had to come. This is where the thinkers are. This is where the dreamers live. This is the heart of the world, and the head, and it is changing.” His eyes dance with light. “Life is so brief, and every night in Rennes I’d go to bed, and lie awake, and think, there is another day behind me, and who knows how few ahead.”
It is the same fear that forced her into the woods that night, the same need that drove her to her fate.
“So here I am,” he says brightly. “I would not be anywhere else. Isn’t it marvelous?”
Addie thinks of the stained glass and the locked doors, the gardens, and the gates around them.
“It can be,” she says.
“Ah, you think me an idealist.”
Addie lifts the coffee to her lips. “I think it comes more easily to men.”
“It does,” he admits, before nodding at her attire. “And yet,” he says with an impish grin, “you strike me as someone not easily restrained. Aut viam invenium aut faciam, and so on.”
She does not know Latin yet, and he does not offer a translation, but a decade from now, she will look up the words, and learn their meaning.
To find a way, or make your own.
And she will smile, then, a ghost of the smile he has managed to win from her tonight.
He blushes. “I must be boring you.”
“Not at all,” she says. “Tell me, does it pay, to be a thinker?”
Laughter bubbles out of him. “No, not very well. But I am still my father’s son.” He holds out his hands, palms up, and she notices the echo of ink along the lines of his palms, staining the whorls of his fingers, the way charcoal used to stain her own. “It is good work,” he says.
But under his words, a softer sound, the rumble of his stomach.
Addie had almost forgotten the shattered jar, the ruined honey. But the rest of the feast sits waiting at her feet.
“Have you ever climbed the steps of Sacré Coeur?”
II
New York City
March 15, 2014
After so many years, Addie thought she’d come to terms with time.
She thought she’d made her peace with it—or that they’d found a way to coexist—not friends by any means, but at least no longer enemies.
And yet, the time between Thursday night and Saturday afternoon is merciless, every second doled out with the care of an old woman counting pennies to pay for bread. Not once does it seem to quicken, not once does she lose track of it. She can’t seem to spend it, or waste it, or even misplace it. The minutes inflate around her, an ocean of undrinkable time between now and then, between here and the store, between her and Henry.
She’s spent the last two nights at a place in Prospect Park, a cozy two-bedroom with a bay window belonging to Gerard, a children’s book writer she met one winter. A king-size bed, a pile of blankets, the soft hypnotic tick of the radiator, and still she could not sleep. Could not do anything but count and wait, and wish that she had said tomorrow, had only to bear one day instead of two.
Three hundred years she’s managed to suffer time, but now, now there is a present and a future, now there is something waiting ahead, now she cannot wait to see the look on Henry’s face, to hear her name on his lips.
Addie showers until the water goes cold, dries and styles her hair three different ways, sits on the kitchen island tossing kernels of cereal up into the air, trying to catch them on her tongue, as the clock on the wall inches forward from 10:13 A.M. to 10:14 A.M. Addie groans. She isn’t supposed to meet Henry until 5:00 P.M. and time is slowing a little more with every minute, and she thinks she might lose her mind.
It has been so long since she felt this kind of boredom, the stir-crazy inability to focus, and it takes her all morning to realize she isn’t bored at all.
She’s nervous.
Nervous, like tomorrow, a word for things that have not happened yet. A word for futures, when for so long all she’s had are presents.
Addie isn’t used to being nervous.
There’s no reason to be when you are always alone, when any awkward moment can be erased by a closed door, an instant apart, and every meeting is a fresh start. A clean slate.
The clock reaches 11:00 A.M., and she decides she cannot stay inside.
She sweeps up the few fallen pieces of leftover cereal, sets the apartment back the way she found it, and heads out into the late Brooklyn morning. Flits between boutiques, desperate for distraction, assembling a new outfit because for once the one she has won’t do. It is, after all, the same one she wore before.
Before—another word that’s lost its shape.
Addie picks out pale jeans and a pair of black silk flats, a top with a plunging neckline, shrugs the leather jacket over the top, even though it doesn’t match. It’s still the one piece she cannot bear to leave.
Unlike the ring, it won’t come back.
Addie lets an enthusiastic girl in a makeup store sit her down on a stool and spend an hour applying various highlighters, liners, shades. When it’s over, the face in the mirror is pretty, but wrong, the warm brown of her eyes cooled by the smoky shadow around them, her skin too smooth, the seven freckles hidden by a matte foundation.
Luc’s voice rises up like fog against the reflection.
I would rather see clouds blot out the stars.
Addie sends the girl off in search of coral lipstick, and the moment she’s alone, Addie wipes the clouds away.
Somehow, she manages to shave off hours until it is 4:00 P.M., but she is outside the bookstore now, buzzing with hope and fear. So she forces herself to circle the block, to count the paving stones, to memorize each and every shop front until it’s 4:45 P.M. and she cannot bear it anymore.
Four short steps. One open door.
And a single, leaden fear.
What if?
What if they spent too long apart?
What if the cracks have filled back in, the curse sealed around her once again?
What if it was just a fluke? A cruel joke?
What if what if what if—
Addie holds her breath, opens the door, and steps in.
But Henry isn’t there—instead there is someone else behind the counter.
It is the girl. The one from the other day, who sat folded in the leather chair, the one who called his name when Henry ran out to catch Addie on the curb. Now she leans against the till, paging through a large book full of glossy photos.