Ch 5

I waited twenty minutes in a light drizzle for Florine to show up at the front steps of the university, as she had requested. A few years had passed since we had met on purpose, and the last time had not gone well, so I was not hopeful that this meeting would be enjoyable.

Florine would never know how much I had truly cared for her. Perhaps not loved–which was why our paths no longer crossed in the first place–but if there was one person that I did truly care for in my own selfish way, it was Florine Fabienne.

In the twenty-odd years I had lived in Paris, she was the closest I had come to truly being in love with another person. It was so close to love that it hurt, but I was fairly certain she hurt worse when we were no longer in that blissful state, which was why I was surprised she had sent me a note.

My first instinct upon seeing her was to smile like a damnable fool, pleased to be in her company once more. Somehow, in those first fleeting moments, I forgot everything that happened in between and recalled only the good parts of our time together, the whispered words and laced fingers, the shared dreams of a future not meant to be ours.

She didn't seem to notice my expression, but she was always far more proper and straight laced, at least in public. Behind her closed bedroom door, we had been insatiable, both of us tangled in the sheets for hours, unable to get enough of one another's willing flesh.

Florine was also the only person with whom I had ever enjoyed full conversations with during intimacy, and a time or two, while enthusiastically cradled between her thighs, we made plans for supper or walks in the park.

"Phelan," she said. Her voice was colder than the spring air, her expression severe. It gave me pause and vanquished my thoughts of our time together when we were much younger and filled with hope of staying together forever.

Given that we hadn't seen each other in quite some time, I wasn't sure why she was already displeased with me. As far as I knew, I hadn't done anything to earn her wrath, aside from perhaps breathe.

"You look lovely," I said.

Her expression didn't change. "I am aware," she said.

There was nothing I could say to that, so I crossed my arms and waited for her to speak.

She spent an uncomfortable amount of time simply staring at me, as if she needed to make certain I was the person with whom she wished to speak.

"Who punched you in the face?" she asked.

I didn't bother to touch the bruise. It had become more blue over the last two days and I wasn't sure if it would deepen to black or begin to turn yellow and fade.

"No one punched me," I said impatiently.

"Someone slapped you? I can't imagine why you would deserve that."

"I'm certain you cannot."

Florine inhaled. Her gaze lowered to my left hand, her features softening ever so slightly.

"Have you been to the opera recently?"

She looked at me down her nose. "I have."

I waited for her to elaborate, to give me at least a morsel with which to continue the conversation. There had been more than physical attraction between us, something deeper that I found lacking in all others, but when I looked into Florine's eyes, there was no trace of affection. In her gaze, there was only the ending of our time spent together, no hint of the laughter or warmth I still recalled.

At last I looked away, unsure of why I still wanted to search for something that we had lost.

"Marco would like to attend the university next fall," she said, apparently no longer interested in exchanging life stories or pleasantries.

"Excellent. The admission office is through this entrance, second door on the left."

"He would like a referral."

"I would have to see his portfolio if you are asking for me to be his referral."

Her posture changed, the grip on her yellow parasol tightening, and for a half a second I thought for certain she would strike me with it out of anger.

"Why?" she asked.

"Why would I need to see his portfolio?"

She nodded once.

"Because that is necessary for all incoming students per the dean of students.."

"He is your son," she said, keeping her voice low.

My heart skipped a beat, my knees momentarily weakening. I maintained my gaze, but felt myself retract ever so slightly, an unbidden, cowardly retreat. He was seventeen years of age, wasn't he? A year from adulthood. He was not so far from the age I had been when he was conceived, which was an altogether frightful thought.

Our son was seventeen years old and I had never said a single word to him.

"If he would like to meet with me personally–"

"No," she severed my words with impressive precision before I could fully speak.

"I am of service to you, Florine, and your son." I offered a bow, though in hindsight I supposed it came across as condescending in nature.

Her lips thinned. "My son?"

I opened my mouth, despite having nothing to say, and tasted the rain.

Florine stepped closer to me and this time I was certain she would not simply strike me with her parasol, but beat me senseless.

"You will write him a referral, regardless of whether there is a portfolio made available for your assessment. You will speak highly of him, as he deserves, and ask that he be admitted for the fall semester, with whatever art instructor is not named Monsieur Kimmer. Do you understand me? You will do this for my son because I demand it." Her nose was suddenly inches from mine, her eyes cold and narrowed. "And because in seventeen years, I have never once asked you for a damned thing."

She was correct. There was never a request on her part for funds with which to raise her child alone as shortly after we both knew she was in a family way, her parents became aware and pushed her wedding up several months to avoid scandal.

Her husband had died shortly after, leaving me to wonder if their marriage had ever been consummated. It didn't much matter; she had been married and the child she carried was given a respectable surname.

"Florine–" I started to say.

"You may call me Madame Fabienne," she insisted.

My heart stuttered. Her tone was unusually frigid, the look on her face distorting her features. I couldn't help but think that her anger was not entirely with me, but it wasn't my place to investigate further.

"Madame Fabienne," I said, the formal address bitter on my tongue. "The dean will not allow Marco to be admitted without at least a dozen examples of his preferred medium and a critique of his talent made by myself or the other instructor. There are guidelines, and they are not set by me. You must understand–"

"Find a way around it."

I scoffed. "Can he draw? More than stick figures and basic shapes?"

She took a deep breath. "It is all that he does, for hours and hours a day, sitting in the garden when the weather allows, wasting his time with this frivolous endeavor."

I looked away from her, from the woman who had been my muse and my lover so long ago, back when she saw my art as a gift, not a waste of time.

"Yes, but is he good?" I risked a glance in her direction.

For a long moment she stared through me with an unnerving gaze, as if she watched the blood pump through my veins, heart and arteries, circulating through me. I was a carcass to her, one that she wished to put to use for her son's gain.

"He lacks confidence," she admitted. "If his drawings are criticized or he is told there is not enough talent, it will break him."

"Is he taking lessons?"

Florine studied me again, same as before.

"I could refer you to someone with experience," I offered.

"Yourself?" she snidely asked. "How generous."

I couldn't continue looking at her, greeted with unwavering malice. "Not necessarily."

"Tell me, Monsieur, what does it feel like to live day in and day out with no knowledge of your own…"

I took a step back, as if creating space would lessen the blow, and she paused, collecting herself.

I felt my own tense features soften at last, relieved that she had reconsidered her words. Perhaps I was more to her than blood and a beating heart at her disposal.

Florine shifted her weight. "I apologize as I have forgotten that you are not the type who feels much of anything," she continued. "Unless it is of the flesh."

The words stung. From a distance I had been as interested in the child as society allowed. I saw them together in the park, surprised every summer when he had sprouted up a bit taller, when he went from sucking on his fingers to full sentences. I recalled he was six when he no longer walked at her side, holding her hand and thirteen when he walked behind her, head down as if he marched to his execution, embarrassed to be escorting his mother when he probably wished to be causing a racket with his friends.

It was an odd sensation to look at this boy, this person whom I had put into my lover's womb, and had nothing to do with him all seventeen years of his life. Every birthday I wished to send him something: toys when he was younger, monetary gifts and a note when he was too old for playthings.

The ache for a life I was not part of was unique, a hole that was left wide open and grew more vast every time I saw him at his mother's side.

"How…how is he?" I asked. "Well, I hope. I've seen him–"

"Phelan Kimmer," she said. "If you want to know how my son is, you can set up an appointment and ask him yourself."

"When?" I swallowed, a nervous buzz filling my insides. I wanted to see Marco. Truly, I wished to see him once. He didn't need to necessarily know who I was or why I wanted to meet him. Florine could have very well said I was her distant cousin visiting from afar and that would not have been enough, but it would have something. It would have been something indeed, more than I'd ever had previously.

She looked me over, her expression calculated and cold.

"When he is admitted to the university per your recommendation, which I fully expect will be done in the next thirty days."

I nodded once, knowing in that moment that I would never properly meet him and that Florine would never forgive me for a rule I was not able to bend for her son.

oOo

Thursday I suffered through a single class and had the rest of the day at my disposal, for which I was thankful. It was warmer than it had been earlier in the week, but the rise in temperatures came with an incessant drizzle, as though the clouds had decided to spit on Paris for eight hours straight.

Frustration thrummed through me, a buzz that was worse than a fly in my ear. I walked past my apartment building, sufficiently soaked by the drizzle, and down several streets until I was by Neptune's Grotto.

It was, by far, the most pathetic theater in Paris and quite possibly all of France had to offer. The name had been changed to something different when it changed owners, but to me it was always going to be Neptune's and it was a musty, dark little theater with water-stained seats and rotting wooden floors peeking out through the threadbare woolen carpets that were probably infested with fleas.

If a ghost was going to haunt a theater, it would have been Neptune's. The place looked like a graveyard for aging actors and composers well past their prime. It deserved a mischievous ghost to haunt its dilapidated bones.

I was surprised to see a sign offering the glorious little theater up for auction. Who in their right mind would purchase this place?

I was not in my right mind, and considered the prospect, but I already had one rotting house in northern France and didn't need a second one consuming my time. Still, I considered the possibilities. Perhaps I could summon a ghost of my own to haunt my newly acquired theater.

He dwells in the shadows.

Yes, because he is dead.

I winced at the thought. Never did I think of my brother as dead, despite that being the most likely scenario. He had completely disappeared, not a single trace of him, and some nights, when I sat sketching his likeness, I wondered if he had ever truly existed.

Perhaps I had not brought the newborn back inside like I had convinced myself, though the details were grotesquely imprinted in my mind.

He had been wet. That was what I recalled first. Covered in some slimy substance that plugged his nose and clung to the crevices of his scrunched face. For being newly born, he had managed to scratch up his cheeks with his sharp nails, like the claws of a kitten. His head was completely bald and an odd color, blue veins visible through his skin while at the same time being very red.

I knew there was something amiss when I sat on the back stair with this wet, wailing mass in my arms. I rubbed him dry as best I could, his pink body squirming, his eyes pinched so tightly shut that I thought he was most definitely blind.

And then there was his deformed lip and a strangeness to his face that didn't clear up no matter how much I attempted to rub his face clean of the unnatural appearance. I thought perhaps the damage had been my doing, that I had ruined him.

"Are you a girl or a boy?" I remembered asking him.

His eyes opened and he stared at me. I pulled him away from my body and waited for him to kick his wrinkly little feet to get a view of his anatomy. There was a thick rope made of flesh attached to his stomach, the end of which was bleeding. Below that, I wasn't able to see, but I had made up my mind.

It was a girl, I was certain. A dreadful sister when I desired a brother. Only a girl would wail with this much enthusiasm. I looked again, turning him so that his feet were in the air and his head closer to my knee. My god, he had wrinkly, white feet. But besides that, he had the same anatomy that I had–and that he was sprinkling a steady stream of urine onto the already wet blankets. I could not have been more overjoyed to discover I had a shriveled upl screaming baby brother.

From there I remember little else, aside from that I loved him. I loved him because when I spoke, he listened, and because for the first time I could recall, I no longer felt the oppression of my desolate life in a cold house where the only voices I heard were raised and the only touch I experienced was harsh.

For some reason, I called him Erik, and for three and a half years, he was mine. He was my everything. He was my soul.

He isn't dead, I told myself. He's probably… in New York City, working as a banker, and he has twelve children, all of whom give him a tremendous headache.

But who would marry someone with those types of scars? I hated myself for such a cruel thought, for thinking of my brother as unlovable to someone else when I had done nothing but love him.

Then again, I thought, who would wish to marry me, without those types of scars? I was grotesque in a worse way, I was certain of it.

"Are you going to purchase this rat infested hole?"

The voice startled me from my thoughts and I turned at once toward Guin, who was crossing the street.

"Do you want to pay for half?"

"And be your partner?" she wrinkled her nose. "Heavens, no."

Still, she stepped closer, and together we stared at the sad building in between owners, most likely collecting deep pools in the aisles of the auditorium.

"What do you think it's like inside?" she asked suddenly.

"Filled with mold and ghosts."

"Ghosts?" She arched a brow. "I don't believe in ghosts."

"These are amorous ghosts, enjoying their affairs in the afterlife uninterrupted from the crumbling opera boxes with those settees perfect for conceiving children."

"Lovely." Guin turned and looked at me. "Not naked in front of your class today, I see?"

"No," I said. "Fully clothed and wandering the streets in the rain."

"You should dry your wet clothes before you catch an illness."

"Over your fire?" I asked, my tone far dryer than my soaking wet clothes.

She shrugged. "If you want."

I wasn't sure what I wanted. I surely didn't need to be in her apartment or have her in my life, but the offer was tempting. Rarely did I sleep with the same woman twice in the same week as it formed a pattern and the habit, I knew, would be difficult to break. There were plenty of women I saw multiple times, but not exclusively and never like this.

Guin didn't wait for me to decide. She turned on her heel and proceeded back across the street. I admired the building for a moment longer, waiting for her to disappear from my sight and save me the trouble of following her like a stray dog.

When I turned, she was tucked beneath an awning out of the rain, her gaze fixed on me.

My afternoon, it seemed, had been decided for me.

Her apartment building was much nicer than mine despite the less than desirable location in the theater district. There was an empty planter outside of the door and a cozy lobby with a striped cushioned bench for sitting and staring at the lifeless patio and corner of the street.

Guin said nothing as we walked to her apartment. It was uncomfortable silence, but not so uncomfortable that I excused myself and walked in the opposite direction.

She said nothing as we walked into the lobby and down a long hall to her first floor apartment, which was located at the end and was probably easier accessed by a different door, but I didn't point it out to her.

Once we were inside of her flat, she removed her coat, held out her hand for mine, and placed them on a rack, which she moved closer to the fireplace.

Then she turned, crossed her arms, and looked at me for a long, peculiar moment while I admired her living space. There were no paintings or drawings on the walls. The couch had two cushions in the same dark blue and the rug was thick and white. There was nothing out of place within her home, which made it appear as though no one truly lived there.

"I would prefer you on top," she said.

I raised a brow. "I thought I was here to dry my clothing."

She laughed, rich and musical, and stepped toward me. "Is that all you wish to do?"

I forced a smile, despite feeling an ache deep inside, the hole from the broken or missing pieces. If I had been someone different–a gentleman who entertained the idea of relationships, I would have asked about her life. I would have taken an interest in her while fully clothed and she would have asked me about myself and the life I lived, meaningless but honest, would have been far more complicated that I wished to delve.

"I suppose I should ask how you are doing," I said in an attempt to be polite, if not a little cheeky.

"I will be better when you are not dripping your wet clothes all over my expensive wool rug."

We undressed ourselves over small talk, both astounded by how much rain had fallen since last night. The puddles on the street may as well have been lakes. Oh, but I do hope the weather is better tomorrow! I suppose we will see what Friday brings.

Thankfully we reached her bedroom before further talk of the weather, and without further ado, she was in my arms and I kissed my way down her soft, exceptional breasts and abdomen.

She laid on her back, one hand behind her head and both knees bent. Her feet were arched, toes down and heels up like a dancer.

"Are you good at everything she asked?"

"Are you?" I retorted.

She lifted her head and looked at me. "I suppose we can compare notes."

Her tone lacked any indication of romance. Most women preferred to at least play the part of a voracious lover who wanted her hero to please her in ways she had never experienced. I enjoyed the ridiculous notion of two virgins enjoying the pleasures of the flesh for the first time, a tangle of arms and legs on rose petals and luxurious sheets.

My first time had been clumsy, quick, and somewhat humiliating as I hadn't wanted to fully undress, concerned by my white thighs and sparse chest hair. Most likely I owed that poor creature an apology for subjecting her to my first attempt at intimacy.

I wished I had known that I could use my tongue and lips for more than conversation, that there were sensations delivered through every nerve in the body that would have turned those awkward fifteen minutes into a far more enticing night.

"Your skin is freezing," I said when my lips brushed against her shoulder.

She ran her fingers through my hair and sighed. "My most sincere apologies. Perhaps you should skip the foreplay and simply drape yourself over me so that we may share heat."

"I'm not much warmer," I murmured.

It felt like kissing a statue, her skin was so smooth and cold like marble. Or a corpse.

I opened my eyes to see the rise and fall of her breaths and the way she arched her back for me. My hands moved over her body, across breasts and ribs and the curve of her stomach where there was finally a bit of warmth to her flesh. I circled her belly button and watched her quiver with anticipation.

In my mind I made up a story of two strangers lost in a snowstorm, first needing each other for warmth and survival in an abandoned cabin somewhere in the Swiss Alps, then needing each other intimately when the heat turned to passion.

The fictional person that I became in her bed hadn't been with a woman in quite some time. He had to learn the female form again, the generous curves and intimate parts that she guided him toward with encouraging sighs.

Guin's hands tangled in my hair, pulling harder than was comfortable, and I sucked in a breath.

"That…that hurts," I said, my lips brushing the inside of her thigh with each word.

For a moment she made no attempt to loosen her grip, then lifted her hand and settled it behind her back as if she was unhappy with my remark.

"Shall I continue?" I questioned.

Her knees parted, which I supposed was her answer.

"You seemed like the type who would enjoy it rough." Her voice was hoarse with desire and I considered her words. I couldn't decide if her assessment was flattering or insulting and decided I didn't want to ask.

Mentally I returned to the couple stranded in the Alps, a nameless man and the woman he had discovered nearly frozen to death. Or perhaps he had been discovered by her. It didn't matter. They were naked in bed for warmth and blazing inside thanks to the fire lit in the hearth, the embers popping and shadows dancing across the room.

Guin's breaths were coming faster and harder. Please don't stop, please just a little more, please…

The words were cut off by a moan and the tidal wave that started in her hips. She grabbed me with both her hands, fingernails digging into my shoulders and through the first layer of skin.

It was a good sort of pain, a tempting type of sensation that sent me up her body, a trail of kisses leading back to her lips. Her nails sent a shiver down my spine and I pulled her beneath me, her legs spread and body warm against mine.

"Do you want me to…?"

"Next time," I said, finding foreplay unnecessary when the length of her body matched mine.

Mentally I returned to the Alps, forgetting her features by burying my face against her shoulder. We were different people with different lives, people who desired love and affection, who would kiss and caress when they were satisfied and discuss…

The emptiness returned. I buried myself within her and returned to the image of a lover that would share my life, not simply a bed. It was both devastating and alluring, physical and still intangible. She wrapped her legs around me, her back arched, and breaths heaving. I felt her tremble, heard her whisper against my ear, and surrender completely–at least in the physical sense.

OoO

It was after six when I found myself seated on the edge of Guin's bed while she lounged, her fingertips tracing the marks left behind by her nails on my flesh.

The only sound was her breathing and the hushed drag of her nails down my spine. The embers popped every so often, the fire roaring with such heat that I felt perspiration on my brow.

"Does your arm cause you pain?" she asked.

"Sometimes," I answered.

"It is rather unsightly. Do you find women ever refuse you because of it?"

"Not typically."

"But you are aware that women would prefer it if you didn't touch them with that hand?"

"I don't believe it has ever come up, actually."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Well, then let me be the first to say I would prefer not feeling the scars against my flesh."

I appreciated honesty, but her words were not necessary, particularly since I had no intention of seeing her again.

I stared at my bare feet and felt as though I had forgotten something. Gloves in my studio at the university, possibly? My hat on the hook at home? My wallet was safe inside my trouser pocket, drying in the other room. Keys? No, I had my keys. I remembered digging into my pocket several times in search of them as I'd forgotten them once a year earlier and had been forced to call my cousin for assistance as he had a spare…

Valgarde.

My heart dropped into my abdomen like a rock.

It was Elizabeth's birthday and I had forgotten.