COUNTDOWN: 13 DAYS

Gaston was amazed when he woke and his very first thoughts were all cheerfully —

Belle! Belle! Belle! Belle! Belle! Belle!

He leapt from bed. There was a lightness in him, a breathlessness that she brought on. He wanted to see her. Eschewing his mirror, he thought about heading straight to her home — but no, it was too early for that. Besides, he should probably get dressed first. Showing up naked wouldn't look good at all. Unless the rumors about her were true — they did say she was always reading dirty books.

Indeed, he'd made some inquiries at the tavern last night. The girl was admitted to be good looking, but she was not well liked in the town. That was no problem to him — he didn't like the people who didn't like her.

He paused to admire his reflection, trying to imagine how Belle would react to the sight of him. She'd quit being so coy if she had any idea of this, surely! He then considered stopping by her house after breakfast… ah, but she said she would be helping her father for a few days. As much as it annoyed him, he could understand that. It then finally dawned on him that he too had pre-arranged commitments for the day.

He saw his red and gold shirt hanging over a chair, where he'd put it to dry after it had been soaked through with the rain. He wanted to relive that memory of wearing it at Belle's. It seemed clean enough; he put it on once again.

After dealing with the gaggle of teenage girls prying panes from his window to get a look at him, Gaston put himself together and emerged from his bedroom. Crossing towards his modest kitchen, through the sitting room, he glimpsed the little portrait of his mother upon the mantelpiece.

When he was small, he had thought his mother, with her dark hair and long eyelashes, was the most beautiful woman in the entire world. It had filled his tiny heart with pain to think that someday she would become old and ugly. Luck had it that she never did — she died at age thirty-eight, while Gaston was still a teenager. His father had already died long before, and his brother had never really been there at all. It put Gaston on his own at a rather young age. He did, notwithstanding this, have a support system — aunts, uncles and cousins who lived nearby and checked on his wellbeing. It was one of them who suggested that LeFou should stay with him.

Said cousin was making his way up the steps at that very moment, bearing the daily box of delivered eggs. He was quite strong for his size, as life as Gaston's caddy demanded he must be. The arrangement had made more sense when it was established: before the now-hulking Gaston had begun working out and eating enormous quantities of eggs, he had been a small, slender boy; and shortly after the death of his mother, he had broken his arm. The realities of daily life involved hauling water into the house, carrying groceries, delivering laundry to the washerwoman and taking it all back home; an injured teenager (who was, in addition, so depressed by recent events that he was little motivated to do anything at all) needed someone to help him. LeFou didn't get on well with his own mother, and the opportunity to live somewhere without parents seemed like a dream come true. He jumped at the opportunity to help his cousin; and life with Gaston had actually worked out rather well. Notwithstanding, the two boys had an inclination to roughhousing that, as Gaston became larger and stronger, perhaps transformed into bullying since LeFou didn't have a chance in hell of defending himself anymore. Still, LeFou's mother beat him worse; and Gaston offered him prestige and a real opportunity to be useful that he didn't find in his own home.

"Ah! LeFou, you're still here," said Gaston.

LeFou dragged the crate to the table. "Why wouldn't I be?" he asked, as if startled.

"Well," said Gaston, "I told you last night that you will have to move out. I'm going to be marrying that girl, Belle."

Gaston had mentioned her to LeFou the day before, and the announcement had come so suddenly that LeFou wasn't sure if it was serious. "Still on about this Belle, huh?" he said, surprised.

Gaston was already imagining what she would feel like in his arms. "She is so beautiful, LeFou," he said, with almost a dreaminess in his usually macho tone.

Certainly she had to be, LeFou thought with dismay. The name Belle meant nothing to him beyond its literal connotation, and he had no idea who the mystery maiden was. He pictured in his head a sexy stunner, maybe a redhead, with lidded bedroom eyes and a figure that could provoke the wrath of the morality police even dressed in a nun's habit.

"We're supposed to go hunting with Dic this morning, so — I won't have time to pack for a while," said LeFou, his deceptively sharp mind helplessly clawing for some argument against Gaston's plan. Really, it was quite logical. Gaston had met a girl, and his house would need to be devoted to his future family. It was bound to happen eventually; the fact that Gaston had just seemed to be gay had always kept LeFou from taking it as a serious possibility. That disdain for the women who flocked him had led many in town to presume that he was homosexual. Gaston was always horrified when he got word of the rumor, for he certainly didn't imagine himself so.

LeFou shook his head, contemplating it all. What was the the deal with Gaston that he wanted to marry the first girl he ever… what had he even done? Gaston had admitted he only first met her the previous day. She certainly couldn't be pregnant yet.

A few hours later, after their morning hunt was finished and they were moving through the village street towards home, LeFou got to see the little charmer for himself when Gaston pointed her out. His heart sank.

"What? The inventor's daughter?!" he cried, utterly aghast.

"She's the one!" Gaston radiated. "The lucky girl I'm going to marry!"

LeFou was literally floored at this — Gaston had been holding him up to see her, and he carelessly dropped his cousin at the final words.

Belle. She was that Belle. "But, she's — "

"The most beautiful girl in town!" Gaston proclaimed, tossing his gun deliberately towards LeFou and nailing him in the nose with it.

"I know!" bleated the injured LeFou, retrieving the weapon, "But — "

Gaston was beginning to pick up that LeFou was really disagreeing with him. "That makes her the best. And don't I deserve the best?" He snatched his cousin by the collar and lifted him, challenging him to object to that.

"Well of course! I mean you do, but I'm just a — "

Gaston released LeFou and reclaimed his rifle. "Right from the moment that I met her, saw her — I said 'She's gorgeous' and I fell…" As he talked of Belle's beauty, he caught sight of his own in the reflective base of a silver pot that was displayed at a shop. Damn, he looked good. If Belle could just get a look at him from this exact angle…

By the time he looked away from his reflection, he realized that Belle had disappeared from sight. He was quite anxious to talk to her — the fact that she was out and about implied she'd finished whatever she needed to do with her father, and was available to socialize again.

He raced after her, trying to catch her. Folks kept getting in his way, despite that they all turned their heads at the pretty young Belle when she passed. He elbowed and pushed them aside amidst cries of "'Scuse me — please let me through — " — for his mother hadn't raised him a total savage.

He could hear the whole town talking about how bizarre Belle was. It annoyed him. To think — some pervert in a pillory thought Belle was the weirdo? If anything, her outlier status should be a mark of pride amidst a batch of lowlives, losers, fatties, wastrels and lechers! Still, Gaston resolved he'd try to let her know what was up… especially since a lot of the talk seemed to be centering on her books, and Gaston could certainly get behind the disapproval for those horrid things. He recalled his school days — like most boys in the village, he'd been made to attend some schooling — and how the teacher would beat him with a cane to force him to read those boring tomes. Belle (a female who hadn't been forced into the horrors of the schoolroom) didn't realize what she was doing, clearly. She'd probably ruin her gorgeous eyes staring at pages all the time, and would end up wearing glasses. Ick.

The crowds were so thick that Gaston had to break into a building and climb over the rooftops to be able to follow her unobstructed. He could hear her, moping aloud how she wished for a different life. It fueled him; he too knew that loathing for their town. He felt renewed assurance at this sign of their mental and physical rapport.

He didn't want her getting home where he would have to deal with her gross old father yet again. Leaping from the roof-tiles to land before her, he wasn't even out of breath when he cried in semblance of suave casualness: "Hello, Belle!"

"Bonjour, Gaston," said Belle, not looking up from the book she was reading.

His lack of interaction with women other than his long-dead mother made their ways seem very mysterious to him. And Belle was constantly acting in strange feminine ways.

Like one teases a pet cat, Gaston snatched away Belle's book just to annoy her. While she very politely asked him to return it, Gaston began to examine the text. There were rumors that Belle was always reading smut and erotica, and he was trying to confirm whether it was true. Of course the first thing one would look for were the illustrations — and he didn't seem to find any.

"How can you read this? There's no pictures!" he complained. Smut or not, the pretty taille-douce pages were always the best reason to have a book around.

"Well, some people use their imaginations," answered Belle in a patronizing tone.

Imagination. God, was that what she was devoting her notoriously absent-mind to? The girl didn't know the dangers of that. Already she wasn't seeing what was right in front of her — instead she was busily looking at printed letters that conjured phantasms into her brain.

"Belle, it's about time you got your head out of those books and paid attention to more important things…" he tossed the book away into the street. "Like me! The whole town's talking about it." He watched Belle crouch and pick the book out of the mid-street mud puddle. God, woman, just leave it; why would you even want it in that state? "It's not right for a woman to read," he persisted, flinching in horror as he imagined such atrocities and what they would make of her. Especially if she was reading as much smut as everyone said she did. "Soon she starts getting ideas… and thinking…"

Belle began wiping the mud from her book with her clothes. Gaston groaned at how she was making herself all muddy and stinking with road waste.

"Gaston, you are positively primeval," she smiled.

Gaston's heart fluttered. Positive was a good thing, right? "Why thank you, Belle!" he said, brightened by her compliment. "Hey, whaddaya say you and me take a walk over to the tavern, and take a look at my trophies?" He'd wanted to show them to her last night, and now, since she was most plainly free… apart from that book she kept preferring to him, which he snatched from her hot little hand once more…

"Maybe some other time," said Belle. He could feel her squirming out of his grasp, and she wrested her book back. "Please, Gaston. I can't. I have to go home to help my father. Goodbye."

Needed to help her father, when she clearly had all the time she wanted to spend at bookstores? A rather miffed Gaston placed his hands on his hips as he began to realize that this helping her father bit was nothing but a ploy to blow him off.

LeFou suddenly emerged from behind, evidently having heard the end of their exchange. "Ha! That crazy old loon? He needs all the help he can get!"

Gaston burst out laughing at his cousin's joke.

"Don't talk about my father that way!" scolded Belle.

Gaston immediately perceived his in. "Yeah!" he cried, bashing his cousin over the head and imagining that he and Belle could both enjoy beating him up. "Don't talk about her father that way!" He looked to see how she was reacting. Good? Eager?

"My father is not crazy!" she cried angrily, hands on hips. "He's a genius!"

Barely had she finished her sentence before there was a large BOOM in the distance and her cottage exploded with smoke. Gaston couldn't help but laugh again — Maurice was notorious for blowing up his property. Belle raced off to check on her house whilst Gaston and LeFou tried to stop giggling over it. That timing had been just too perfect.

Once they finally calmed down, LeFou declared, "Well, guess she's as crazy as the old man. Let's get this stuff back home — "

LeFou had gathered up the goods and started to turn around when he felt his feet leave the ground. Gaston had him by the neck, and lifted him up to eye level.

"Belle is perfect!" he bellowed. "She's the only one in this town who compares to me! The most gorgeous woman I've ever laid eyes on! She's going to become my wife, just you wait and see!"

Gaston chucked LeFou into the mud as he'd done with Belle's book. Furs and hunting supplies went flying.

As LeFou pulled himself from the muck, he realized that Gaston wasn't going to be put off of Belle easily. He had never seen Gaston in love before, and wasn't completely sure how to handle it. "Gosh, Gaston! I didn't mean to offend you! But you know that she's — "

Gaston stood over his cousin and hit him once more. "Perfect," he repeated.

"Sure! Sure!" cried LeFou with his ham-hock hands raised protectively. "But — you can't say you want that old coot as a father-in-law?"

Gaston paused his thrashing to consider that. It was true: marrying Belle would mean taking on Maurice as a relative. But then, LeFou and the rest of the LeGume's — who were no prizes themselves — were going to become Belle's people in turn, so it was a fair sacrifice on both sides. Gaston would be saddled with a crazy, fat, gross old man who was always blowing his nose and getting his mustache full of snot; and Belle would have alliance to a bunch of redneck alcoholics with a genuine incest baby (LeFou). Not to mention Gaston's unmentionable brother, Michel…

"For Belle, I'll do anything," said Gaston, with a note of confidence above even his usual. He started to envision her at his side, proud to be his female, himself serving as the arm candy to a beauty like that. His chest began to feel tight and his entrails filled with heat.

He wanted to look at her again. Now. Nothing could keep him away.

When Gaston and LeFou approached the little cottage, they witnessed something unexpected. Maurice was riding away on his big Clydesdale-type horse, with some kind of wood and metal contraption pulled behind in a little wagon. Belle waved goodbye, calling out wishes of good luck to him.

"Goodbye, Belle!" Maurice called back. "And take care while I'm gone!"

Gaston's heart fluttered in that strange way it had been doing for the past day. "Well!" he said to LeFou. "Do you hear that? Looks like her father's going to be away for a while!" To him, Maurice was proving to be something of a rival for Belle's affection. With him out of the way, surely Belle would be much more eager to proffer her undivided interest and attention.

An idea started forming in his head; to call it a thought would be an exaggeration. No, it was only a vision of what he wanted, and a pure instinct led him to start fulfilling it, like an artist who must jot down his imagined picture before it is lost from memory.

Imagination. Just like Belle wanted him to have.