AN: At first, I'd like to thank all reviewers and apologize for not having updated in almost two months. That's what happens when both the author and the beta-reader are busy : )

However, while I was waiting for G W Failure to revise my drafts, I reread the whole story and realized that it needed some improvement here and there. I mostly made small changes (adding a few lines and details, changing the sentence structure, etc.) but there are two things I need to tell those of you who don't want to read everything all over again: 1) Rose and Jack's landlady now has a name – Mrs. Sullivan and 2) Jack is currently reading "A doll's house" by Henrik Ibsen.

Wiping the Slate Clean

The next morning, Rose had gotten up early to buy fresh bread and marmalade that she was now arranging on the table. It was her turn to prepare breakfast and she fulfilled it with diligence.

Pleased with her work, she turned around to Jack who was still lying in bed, his naked body only half covered by the sheet. He had stirred when she had entered the room and mumbled a "good morning" but hadn't fully woken up yet. What a late riser, she thought to herself as she let her eyes wander over his slender frame for a brief moment.

Looking around the room, she caught a look at herself in the mirror and smiled.

There had been a time when she had looked like an Edwardian geisha. That was before the reflection of an exhausted survivor with the dark rings under her frightened eyes had taken the place of the geisha's face. But now, both reflections were gone.

Instead, the image that greeted her every day was that of a young bohemian with a heap of curly red hair framing her slightly tanned face. It reminded her of the girls Jack used to draw in Paris… adventurous, spirited and achingly beautiful.

She knew that townspeople shot her glances as she passed by and that not all of them were approving. An adult woman who'd refuse to wear her hair back was an obscene image to many of them. But sometimes, she just didn't feel like pinning up her hair. She inwardly laughed about Mrs. Sullivan who'd not very subtly ask her every morning if she needed anything, "a glass of milk, the church brochure or maybe some nice pins for her hair…" But every time, Rose would refuse politely and leave her fiery curls as they were.

She smiled brightly at her new reflection, confident that she had never looked better.

Why should I care about what other people thought anyway? She thought defiantly. There was only one person whose opinion mattered to her at the moment. The one that was still snoring softly at 9 AM. She rolled her eyes and sat down beside Jack on the bed to wake him up.

xxxxx

The days were hot and the sultry air left no doubt about it: the good old summer time had definitely set in.

With every ray of sunlight, a dolorous memory seemed to dissolve in the hot summer air. When Rose bathed her feet in the lake, it didn't feel painful but soothingly cool. Her nightmarish experiences from the other day didn't reoccur and she actually felt silly for it.

Today was one of the days she and Jack spent at the nearby lake, eating blueberries they had gathered from nearby bushes and chatting about everything under the sun.

Rose took the opportunity to talk about her favorite paintings with relish. Her mother had once called her love of art obsessive and unhealthy. Even her father had rolled his eyes whenever she went on and on about the luminous beauty of Vermeer's early portraits or the gloomy romanticism of Franzisco de Goya.

In Jack, however, she had found an intent listener. He was amazed at how much Rose knew about art. She was well informed about every motif that had caused a furor in the French capital during the time Jack had spent there – and many more. Never had he more enjoyed to hear anyone talk about the world of art than her. He marveled at the sound of her voice that at least in his mind perfectly reflected the warm glow of van Gogh's Café Terrace at night and at the turquoise depth of her eyes when she spoke of Monet's water lilies. It was magical.

Another topic they never got tired of chewing over was Jack's past. Rose was eager to know everything about his bohemian life in France and Jack was more than willing to share his adventurous tales – as long as they didn't bring back memories of his perished friend Fabrizio. She took in his every word with enthusiasm. Like a child in a variety show she'd listen to each of his stories in awe and when he was finished, she'd demand more.

"What happened to the sculpture of the love-struck captain? Did you ever see it again? And what happened to Victor and Francoise? Did they ever meet Monet in his garden in Giverny?"

"If you keep asking me like that, I'll soon run out of stories," he remarked jokingly but Rose was far from being anxious about that. "If that happens, I'll simply ask you to tell them all over again."

Needless to say, he never ran out of stories. The memory of his artist life in Europe provided him with a seemingly infinite number of anecdotes.

"Even if nobody wanted to buy them, Mél knew well how to make use of the dresses she designed," Jack chuckled and Rose frowned a little at hearing her name. Mélanie or Mél, as he had told her the day before, was a tailor who dreamed of becoming a fashion designer. And she was Jack's former girlfriend.

"All her dresses had big pockets hidden under the skirts and she used to wear them on big banquets, preferably weddings of the upper middle class where no one would pay attention to another unfamiliar face. When she came home in the middle of the night, the pockets of her skirts were filled with cake and we ate until our stomachs were aching."

Rose couldn't help but feel a pang of jealousy when she saw the huge grin Jack had plastered all over his face as he brought back memories of this girl. She decided that it was time to change the topic. "Did any of your friends manage to live only from their art?"

"Only Victor. I don't know if I already mentioned him. I was his roommate for some weeks after I had to move away from the 12th arrondissement during last year's flood. Victor lived in a small flat on the Montmartre hill and thus was not affected by the rising water."

Rose nodded, understanding. "The great flood of Paris. It was the headline of almost every journal in Philadelphia."

Jack went on. "When I first met him he was struggling like all of us with his realistic sculptures. He was fairly successful after he turned to Cubism, though. I've never seen anyone change his artistic style as fast as him."

"How did that happen?"

"Before moving in, I had already heard that he was obsessed with a sculpture he was carving, the sculpture of a young woman holding a violin as she is just about to draw the bow across the strings. He had been working on it for several months already. It was perfect in every way but he became obsessed with it to the point where he hardly ever left the house. He was never satisfied, always striving for more details, more realism. He'd even get up at night to work on it and at first, the hammering and carving and chiseling in the adjoining room used to wake me up but somehow I got used to it."

He paused for a moment, watching her take a couple of blueberries out of a small tin can. "You want some, too?" she asked.

"Um, later maybe. Anyways, one day I asked him to throw a party to get him out of his isolation. Surprisingly, he accepted. So we invited everybody and everybody came. We were living on the third floor, but it was a balmy spring night, so we all gathered in the courtyard. It was great fun and a good-humored Victor was chatting and drinking beer and absinthe like the rest of us. By midnight, we were all so drunk that we didn't notice Victor's absence until we heard loud drunken singing from his room. Then we were startled by an ear-battering crash from upstairs."

"Oh my god!" Rose covered her mouth with her hand.

"So we ran upstairs to his room and there he was: His statue in pieces and he sitting amidst it. We were staring at him, deadly-silent and then heard him say, almost apologetically: 'I only wanted to dance with her'."

This surprising comment made Rose laugh so hard she was choking on her blueberries. Jack needed to clap her on the back several times before he could finish his story.

"And then Victor was dancing savagely around the stone pile like around a fireplace. At first everybody was in shock but sooner or later, we all started imitating him and were dancing and jumping and running around the remains of his work. The party simply went on and Victor was happier than I had seen him in weeks.

When the party was over, he invited everybody to take pieces of his statue as trophies. Mél took the right half of her face. I chose her hand that still held part of the bow. A few men almost got into a fight over who would take her breasts.

Then those who were still able to walk went home and the rest of us just slept right on the spot. It took us until the next day to fully grasp what had happened. My head felt twice its size and the others didn't look much better off. Nevertheless, we were all anxious as to how Victor would react now that he was sober.

We found him where we had left him: In his room, ordering the stones, that were left, in a comical rearrangement. Then he was looking back at us with a solemn expression on his face. Like a prophet right after receiving a vision from god. That was the moment he converted to Cubism."

Rose nodded in fascination. She just couldn't get enough of these stories. "I guess I don't have to even mention that my stay at Paris wasn't half as exiting," she said after another mouthful of berries.

Jack nodded thoughtfully. "We get to see as much in one day as most people do in a year," One of his Parisian friends used to say and Jack always added with a meaningful grin: "You must be talking of a very boring day!" However, he hadn't believed in his wildest dreams that his dubious experiences would one day serve to capture the attention of a fine lady like Rose.

In retrospect, even the hardships he had endured during his time in Europe seemed like harmless diversions of venturesome bohemians. Instead of discouraging people, they added to the unique charm of their unorthodox lifestyle. Hunger, cold and permanent precariousness were as essential to the Bohemian existence as youth, freedom and artistic escapades.

If living au jour le jour is what makes Bohemian life fun, misery is what makes it real, Jack thought. That's probably why I have never been ashamed of being poor. He thought of Victor and Mél and the other people he had met in Paris. Victor was the offspring of a wealthy pharmacist family, intelligent and well-educated. Mél was a charming and imaginative girl who could have married up easily. Both were living among rootless ruffians like him because they had chosen it. And Rose… Rose had given up more than he could ever begin to wrap his mind around.

"Now we've been talking about me the whole day. Why don't you tell me more about your trip to Europe?" Jack suggested.

Rose sighed. "I'd rather hear your stories, Jack. I don't even want to think about the past anymore! I want to start anew, in this world, in your world. I've burnt all my bridges behind me."

Jack frowned a little at her comment. He knew she has burnt all her bridges. He understood why she has done it. He was just unsure if it was a good idea to pretend her life on the other waterside had never happened. She clearly didn't belong there, but she didn't fully belong to his world either. At least she wasn't yet as much at ease in it as him.

As he was still pondering this thought, she slipped out a sheet of paper and a pencil and began scribbling a few lines on it. Then she gazed at the horizon thoughtfully for a few seconds before she continued writing. "What are you doing?" Jack shot her a curious gaze but as she was only smiling at him quizzically, he had to lean closer to get a look at what she was writing.

"Grand Canyon. Montmartre. Santa Monica Pier. St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. Cairo…" he read aloud. "Are you making a list about the places you want to go next?" He asked her, amused.

"Well... maybe," came her response.

He laughed. "I used to make lists, too, you know. They changed more often than the weather and in the end, life always took me someplace else."

She looked at him thoughtfully for a moment. "Then I know what to do," she said and turned the page to write a big X on the backside.

"What does that stand for?" Jack asked with a bemused look on his face.

"Life. The unknown. Chance. Fate. However you want to call it," She burst into a giddy laughter that Jack quickly joined in.

"I like the way you think." He reached out and touched her face with his palm. "And one day we'll go to all those places," he said, contradicting his earlier statement. "Oh, and by the way, I have already seen St. Peter's Basilica."

"You have?" Rose's mouth fell open in surprise. She had understood long ago that in Jack's case 'no money' didn't equal 'bound to stay in one place', but it still amazed her to no small degree to how many places he had already been to. "What was it like? How did you even get there?"

He took a deep breath. "It's a long story." Rose folded her legs under her dress to shift into a more comfortable sitting position. "That's what I had hoped for."

xxxxx

Rose woke up in the morning with a gnawing hunger. A glance at Jack who lay beside her made her remember why. They had skipped supper last night when they had been preoccupied with other, more interesting activities. She felt the blood rush to her face at the memory.

"Jack!" she shook him lightly. "Your turn to buy breakfast."

But instead of getting up, he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her closer. She felt her stomach grumbling angrily as he began nuzzling her ear.

"Jack?" she said with a hint of annoyance in her voice. "Not now. I'm hungry."

"There's half a loaf of bread on the table. We didn't eat it yesterday evening, remember?" he mumbled, close to her ear.

"It's stale." She disentangled herself from his embrace and got up, turning her back on him as she started to gather her clothes that were lying all about the room.

"It's not. You've just bought it." Jack responded genuinely surprised while she was getting dressed furiously.

"That was one day ago!" Rose cried exasperatedly and spun around to face him.

"But that's what I was saying," he defended himself as he lifted his hands apologetically.

She looked at him like was out of his mind. Her notion of the word 'stale' was obviously quite different from his.

"Gosh, Rose, let's not fight about bread, all right? I've eaten bread that was much older than this." He quickly got up and started getting dressed himself.

"We're not fighting about bread. You've promised me you would get some today and now you're just too idle to do it!" she said, raising her voice.

Jack blinked, irritated. She was right, he had promised to go but not in case they still had enough to eat at home. Why should I do something that is utterly unnecessary? he asked himself as he buttoned his shirt and trousers. Besides, there was something about Rose's tone that was bothering him.

"Well, if you want to get special treatment, you might go back to Philadelphia and see if one of your former servants is still inclined to give it you," he said sarcastically. However, it shocked him how bitter his voice sounded. This was not how he had intended it. He stood there for a moment, uneasy, avoiding her gaze.

When her voice cut the silence, he knew for sure that he had gone too far. "So that's what you think, huh?"

"Rose, I," he began, but she walked right past him and sat down at the table. She took the knife and began cutting slices of bread, slowly and methodically.

Jack let himself fall on the chair next to her, trying to solve the enigma that her face was to him at that moment. Her expression betrayed almost no emotion. Jack assumed that she was struggling with some sort of internal conflict and he cursed himself for having caused it. He opened his mouth, ready to give her every apology she needed when she cut him off a second time.

"It's all right. I was acting like a spoilt brat, so I deserve to be called one," she said calmly but without looking up.

"No. I know what you are and what you are not. You are not a spoilt brat to begin with, and even if you were, I shouldn't have said those things. I mean, after everything that we went through, aren't we supposed… not to have petty arguments like this?"

"I accept your apology if you accept mine." She put away the knife and lifted her face. Their eyes locked, finally. "I don't want to be the silken princess any longer. I had more than enough of this role. I love you and I want be with you, embrace the life you live even if it means to be uncomfortable." She sent him a tentative smile that he returned.

"I know," he stated a little smugly but nevertheless, enormously relieved.

"You know? Now what's that supposed to mean, huh?" She tittered and reached out to pinch his arm.

"Never mind. I love you, too," he got up from his chair to kneel down beside hers. Laying his head in her lap, he encircled her sitting figure with his arms.

"Yeah," she said, running her fingers through his hair. "I know."