(Lest They Leave - Chapter 12)

[madscenes]

CHAPTER INDEX

CHAPTER 12




What the King’s verdict on their connection ended up being, she wouldn’t find out until a week later, when the heat lifted over Paris like the lid on a pot and the first rain had fallen, bathing everything in a shine, like newly polished rhinestones and diamonds, like the ground were a glittering evening dress, shimmering on a dancing body. It reminded her of dance parties. It reminded her of the Charleston – and so, it reminded her of both Armand and Eloisa, side by side, like comparable experiences in her life.

She had received an official invitation to the Molière premiere at the small niche theatre, where Eloisa was working at the moment, as had Charles; she’d stumbled across the recognisable slip of paper in a stack of newspapers and business correspondences on his desk, and it had filled her with both an excitement and a dread that she couldn’t put her finger on or even describe properly. It ignited something rebellious in her, something that wanted to fight the systems under which she was placed, her brother’s systems, Eloisa’s systems, and her own systems, too.

Something that wanted to be free of all that.

Still, a week before the opening night of The Forced Marriage, during the afternoon while Charles was out, because her brother still failed to return before midnight most days, but just as much to stay out past dawn most nights, Armand showed up at their townhouse, alone, unannounced, Claire coming rushing out into the garden where Sylvie was sitting at the garden table, sketching a long-stemmed rose plucked from their own rose beds, in charcoal, her fingers striped black from her choice of medium, the maid curtsying quickly and muttering, excitedly, “You have a visitor, mademoiselle.”

Putting her charcoal down and wiping her fingers in her smock, Sylvie stood up, leaving her materials out. The wind was placid today, placing a glass atop the corner of the paper should keep it in place and after doing so, she looked at Claire who tried tempering her delight. “Who is it?” she asked. She already suspected. No one else would inspire this kind of reaction, the whole household had invested itself needlessly in her one romance, really – well, the only one that was public knowledge.

She hated that sentiment. Public knowledge.

Secrets implied some degree of shame, didn’t they? Privacy implied either that you didn’t want to show the world, or that the world had no interest in seeing.

“It’s monsieur Dubois,” Claire answered, and without being told, she began gathering Sylvie’s charcoal box, her sketch pad, everything. Sylvie felt warm all over.

“Armand,” she concluded, the maid nodding. Armand had never shown up for a meeting with her without making a prior appointment first. He adhered to protocol and etiquette, the way he had no doubt been brought up to. Like Sylvie had often been called, by the aunties, her teachers, complete strangers and lastly, Eloisa, Armand was really the well-mannered and sweet one, and you’d think that was how they fit. Sylvie, however, thought that this was probably the most Sylvie-like thing he had ever done – doing something not because of upbringing, but because of inclination. He’d wanted to come, she suspected, so he had come.

It made her smile, as she went inside to the lobby, at the end of the main hallway, by the foot of the stairs that led up.

Upon seeing her, he smiled, too. And he didn’t apologise for arriving unannounced.

Sylvie hugged him. She chose to. It was the closest they had been since he came home from Africa, even when they’d said goodbye after his parents’ impromptu supper invitation last week, they had stuck to a handshake and half a la bise. It felt very comfortable, very safe like this.

With his arm still around her waist, he drew back enough to ask, “Do you have time?”

“I would have left you here to rot, if I didn’t,” she replied, laughing.

He gestured in the direction of the grand ballroom and the gardens beyond it, just a subtle handwave. “The same walk as last time?” he suggested and she thought, last time seemed like such an eternity ago, didn’t it? It had been so long at this point and yet, not long at all.

“If I remember the way,” she said, jokingly.

“I have faith, Sylvie,” he responded, amusement fading slowly. Sylvie took his arm, then, even before he’d offered it to her.

By the time they stepped out into the garden, Claire had cleared the garden table completely, though they headed past that as well, towards the planted beds and the roses that had only been in early bloom last time they were here, right? She thought she remembered the sea of small buds under the moon, Armand and she had discussed what colour they’d turn out to be, eventually, because Sylvie didn’t know, she didn’t remember, it was never the roses she came for, when she visited her family’s house over summer, all these years. He’d understood. Of course, he had.

After ten minutes of idle small talk, they finally came to a halt beneath the pergola, on which her mother’s much prided jasmine grew, in season now. The Jasmine Festival had come and gone in Grasse, it had been reported in the newspapers and on the radio. A fantastic jasmine year, they had promised. Look forward to the perfumes to come. And Sylvie thought of Eloisa’s heavy scents, floral and seductive. It was jasmine! Would a good jasmine year benefit her, then? Would it benefit Sylvie, in extension?

“Are you wondering why I came?” Armand asked, after having looked around with some admiration; evidently, he liked jasmine, too. The flower, not the wearer of it. A brief moment, briefer than a second, the time it took to hesitate, Sylvie saw him as she imagined her mother would have seen him, through the same nuance of blue eyes. The perfect gentleman. If they weren’t at the bottom of the Atlantic now, her parents would certainly have been wondering why Armand came, they would be hoping, she was sure.

For a very different reason than Charles, who only had hope for his business.

“I have a good idea,” she told him, shaking her head slightly, not to say no, but to show her amusement. How he was foregoing all protocol, only to live up to the ultimate one, the most common of common practices. Everywhere in the world, guys and girls got married, after all. Everywhere in the world, she imagined, guys asked girls to marry them.

“Have you considered it?” he inquired gently. A slight breeze blew through the garden and Sylvie thought of her art materials that Claire had saved beforehand; above their heads, the frail jasmine dropped petals in a white downpour, some landed on Armand’s broad shoulders, some in his hair. Sylvie imagined she looked the same. She lifted one hand to brush them off of him, shoulders first, then his head which he bowed so she could reach more easily. As she withdrew, he caught her hand in his. Held it. She was being held. Her expression softened. The smell of jasmine was prevalent. It felt like her mother’s spirit, watching over them now. “I have, but I haven’t,” she replied, trying not to be too harsh with him, with the way he was grasping her hand softly between his own. Hers was so small, and his were so big. “Do you understand?”

A nod. “Because of Eloisa Paolo?” he wanted to know, next, and his use of her name, making it not only a known but a spoken thing between them had Sylvie look frantically over her shoulder, making sure Léon wasn’t nearby; Claire might have her suspicions, but having them confirmed was another matter altogether. His grip on her hand tightened. “Don’t worry, Sylvie. It’s not a problem, I was the one to tell Eloisa the date of your birthday.” Licking his lips once, nervously, he insisted: “I know.”

Sylvie stared at him. She remembered Eloisa’s sources, her secrets. “You?” she repeated, in disbelief.

“Mademoiselle Paolo and I have a history,” he said, and at the look that overtook her face, the quiet despair, he quickly continued, “Not the kind you’d think. We share some circles of acquaintances; you may know who I’m referring to.”

Thinking of Giovannina Roux and the girls at her girls’ club, the one place in the whole known world where Sylvie had felt the same sense of shared experience that she did with Armand, she realised, of course that was not an experience women could keep to themselves. Men wouldn’t let them, first off, and maybe men also had the right, in this specific case. She swallowed heavily. “You…” She didn’t know how to phrase it. Politely, at least. She had heard the vulgarities, like anyone living among vulgar people. People who didn’t understand.

There was a reason he hadn’t expected her to be exclusive. He, too, had had an agenda. Her mouth thinned into a line, such a classic display of anger, he recognised it as well.

“I’m not asking you to marry me to secure my own position,” he insisted. Sylvie pulled her hand from between his, his hold leaving her skin prickling warmly for a second, then she was left colder than before. She was freezing, actually. She turned her side on him, looking out over the peaceful view of a newly-watered, blossoming garden that bore no telltale signs of having just survived a drought. Nature repeated its own cycles of doom and destruction so easily, man should be envious. Man was always scuffled and bruised, by comparison. “I’m asking you to marry me, because I believe I can give you the same freedom you can give me, and I want to, Sylvie, I want to, because I think you des–”

Interrupting him, she said, curtly, maybe sounding a little bit like her brother for once: “It’s not freedom, if you’re in hiding, Armand.”

He became very quiet. Straightening up slowly, he looked off in the same direction she just had. Sylvie wondered what he saw, whether they saw the same thing out there. Once, she wouldn’t have had a doubt, now she couldn’t tell anymore. He’d had secrets from her as well. He’d used her as well. Men and their agendas, huh?

“Have you told Eloisa this?” he asked after a while of tense silence. There was no blame to it, just genuine curiosity. One thing they could both imagine, was how Eloisa Paolo would react to such a statement, right? Eloisa had her own freedoms, she had defined them her own way.

Shaking her head, Sylvie admitted, “Not so directly, but I will. I’ll convince her. She thinks I’m good, Armand.”

“Because you are.”

Sylvie smiled, despite herself, small and soft, the way he would do it, normally. “Are you… stuck on someone?” She couldn’t find a better way to put it. Armand didn’t seem to mind.

“I stick to different people in different ways. There is a man, if that’s what you want to know.” His explanation was practical, very matter-of-fact, not as if he didn’t care, but maybe as if he cared a little too much. It was followed by a pause, then he added, cautiously, “But I do care about you as well, Sylvie.”

It was not an attempt to try to convince her. He wanted her to know, and now she knew, and it didn’t change anything, because they would still live a lie. Maybe not to each other, but to everyone else. They would live a lie to the world.

“I want to live true, Armand,” she said, it was her final word. “I’m sorry.”

“I understand,” he replied, and Sylvie thought, of course you do, my nice and bright and ducky guy. The wind made the jasmine drop another rainfall of petals, but this time he brushed himself off.

She saw him out through the garden gate. It functioned like an escape route, discreet and quick, although the staff was going to talk anyway. After another, lonelier, walk through the gardens, Sylvie called Claire to her quarters and had the maid return her art materials, so she could try to finish the rose before evening.

As she worked, she kept thinking about the jasmine vines, old and heavy with flowers. So heavy it dropped armfuls of petals at the slightest touch of a breeze, it did so to unburden itself.

Who wouldn’t?


~*~


Charles came home early that day; it wasn’t five minutes past six in the evening. Sylvie thought he must have heard of Armand’s visit.

He found her in the kitchen, like the first morning after her arrival, with the dressmaker, but unlike then, all those months ago, Sylvie didn’t get up to greet him; she continued to eat the small portion of roasted nuts that the cook had put out for her, not to ruin her appetite, picking them up one at a time, crunching them with a delighted expression.

“Leave us,” Charles told the cook, although she was in the middle of the salmon mousse. He nodded harshly towards the door, while she nodded in acceptance, curtsied and left, the mousse remaining behind, half-turned in its bowl. Once the door had fallen shut behind the old woman, he fixed Sylvie with a look. As usual, it was unreadable, but darkness and depths had their own distinctive language. Sylvie was beginning to understand. “I’m told Armand was here,” he said.

“He was, but he left hours ago,” Sylvie replied, picking up one more nut, another, the last one. The ceramic bowl empty now, and she left it that way on the table, turning towards Charles slowly. She wasn’t smiling.

He wasn’t either. “What did he want?”

Sure, she could’ve gotten cheeky with him, asked, aren’t you friends? Shouldn’t you ask him that, but Sylvie was tired of playing. She wasn’t seven years old anymore, her parents were dead and gone, and Charles was a poor substitute, at the end of the day. He had done little but to send her as far away as possible, so he wouldn’t have to deal with her. If he was truly her Atlas, he should’ve gone that whole way himself.

The Titan was the one to stand at the ends of the earth, extreme west. Somewhere in modern-day Morocco, the academics argued. Yes, she had studied her classics, too, all right.

“He wanted to marry me,” Sylvie replied instead.

His whole posture relaxed. His shoulders dropped, his tense back loosened up, he lifted his chin and he actually, Sylvie almost couldn’t believe it. Horsefeathers! Charles smiled. At her. It broke her heart, but where that chasm used to hold a deep sadness for him, a yearning to take the yoke away from him and give him a sense of gratification, now her heart was broken, rather, from a deep-seated anger, a disappointment she had no words for, no name, only this need not to play games, not to be anyone’s pawn, to be free and to love freely, live truly.

No more pretences. Least of all for her brother’s sake. He would have to settle with his own.

Then, he saw her expression, and he stopped smiling so immediately, you might convince yourself it was something you’d imagined, like visiting far-away, foreign nations, like being known as Eloisa’s favourite, not only among Madame Roux’s girls, but in general. In public. Impossible things. So they liked to say, at least.

“What?” he asked, rudely. “What happened?”

“I turned him down,” she responded, like it meant nothing, when it meant everything.

“What?” he repeated, stupidly, staring at her, the darkness of his eyes storms and hurricanes that left him as the last man standing, always. “Why would you do such a thing, Sylvie?”

“Because I have someone else,” she told him, not getting into her whole revolutionary philosophy of loving free, living true, which he wouldn’t understand anyway. Besides, this was Armand’s secret as well. She had no right to that.

And she owed him as much, to be his hider of secrets. He’d trusted her with that, like he had held hers until now, gently between his hands. Her nice, bright and ducky guy.

None of her brother’s bad weather could shake her conviction in the experience they shared, Armand and her. Just because she wasn’t marrying him. Just because she wasn’t accepting their lies, neither Armand’s nor Charles’, she could still sympathise. She simply wanted her own truth. She demanded it. She’d think, at this point, she’d waited long enough, right?

“I don’t care. Have your someone else on the side, then. If Armand wasn’t prepared for that, he’s an idiot.” Charles was walking up to her, grabbing her by the arm and dragging her out of her chair. She scrambled to her feet. “You call the Dubois house, and you fix this, Sylvie. Right now.”

“No,” she yelled, so loudly it hurt her own ears. Was that the shout of the rebellion? Was that the voice of freedom? No, she’d said, to all three things. She wouldn’t keep anyone like some dirty secret. She wouldn’t fix this, because there was nothing to fix and oh, Charles, don’t you dare, Armand was the farthest from an idiot she or anyone could imagine.

“I’m your guardian,” he said, raising his voice, too, until it was almost a shout. “You’ll do as I tell you!” He shook her. Sylvie broke away from him and stumbled off to the side.

Staring at him, tears in her eyes, she thought of Eloisa. Eloisa who let herself be touched by those hands. Kissed by those lips. Who let herself be fucked by this man, standing in front of her. Eloisa who settled with that, but Sylvie was done settling. She was done being a guest in her guardian’s house. A guest in her own life. She wanted to be free, and she was going to take Eloisa with her, even if she had to drag her, carry her on her back. If Charles could carry all the world, Sylvie could carry all her love.

“If you want your coffee plantations, Charles,” she whispered, shaking, “Marry into that family yourself. I’m not working for you, I’m not your maid. I’m your sister and you owe me at least that respect.”

On the table, the mousse was turning slowly into a thinner jelly-like concoction. Sylvie thought of the cook who would return to this mess and with no one to help her save it. That was how Charles treated his staff. And that was how he’d treated her, since then. Since the boat sank. As something disposable.

“Who are you seeing, who’s this guy I need to chat up?” Charles asked, his voice controlled once more, quiet, but dangerously so. Sylvie shook her head hard, it meant no, no, no, you’re wrong, you’re completely off! It meant, I fuck your girlfriend, Charles. But that wasn’t what she said, what she said was this:

“It’s not a guy. It’s Eloisa.”

A moment passed, then another, then Charles laughed at her. Openly, no reservations. It was a hard, unamused laughter. All the things she got to see today, that he had never shown her before. Should she by some definition be thankful?

“You and Eloisa?” he asked, once the laughter died, and it died suddenly. “Give me a break.”

“I don’t care if you believe it,” Sylvie told him, burying her hands in the fabric of her skirt, the knee-length yellow flapper-style dress feeling like too little and too much weight around her torso at the same time. She felt too heavy and too light, simultaneously. “I just want you to know that I’m a girl who likes her fanny licked by other girls, and that’s why I said no to Armand.”

The hurricane was back on Charles’ face, the stormy clouds. “Don’t be obscene!”

“It’s true.”

“It’s disgusting.”

Swallowing hard, she gave him a brief moment to look her in the eye after having said those words, then she turned on her heel and headed for the door, slamming it open and letting herself be embraced by the long hallway that led from one end of the house to the other, she could just keep running and she would soon be in her own territories. Of course, the house was his, but there was a lock on the door to her room, she could shut him out for a good while like that. Charles had respected his own property too much to tear it down, until now.

It was their father’s and their mother’s house, after all. First.

He didn’t follow her, but he yelled her name after her more than once, she didn’t count how many. Sylvie any number of times wouldn’t change her mind.

It felt like there was no going back from here. Marseille was of the past. The Sylvie who came from that part of the country was of the past in the exact same way.

New Sylvie needed a new life, built from the foundation and up. This old house? It housed nothing but ghosts.


~*~


Hours passed and Charles didn’t show up at her closed door, he didn’t even give her the chance to be properly, pointedly angry at him. Instead, as early evening transitioned into late evening, Claire passed her observations from the house, how Charles had been on the phone for quite a while and then prepared to leave hurriedly, night business, he’d told Léon, don’t expect me home until morning. He’d forgotten his hat. That was the kind of hurry he’d been in.

All Sylvie could think was, he’s going to see Eloisa. That was his ‘night business’, wasn’t it? Always. She hated it; she hated herself. She couldn’t stand the thought that, after turning Armand down and after rejecting her brother, she would still lose Eloisa to the very ideals for which she had made those choices, those sacrifices.

Because whether Charles used his new knowledge about his girlfriend, Sylvie’s girlfriend against her or carried on like nothing had changed, Sylvie would lose. Apparently, that was what it meant to be a girl in this world. The same freedoms weren’t afforded you.

You had to bargain for everything.

So, once the house had settled back into its own quiet pace, Sylvie emerged from her quarters and let Claire lead her to the telephone in the ‘secret’ little nook, sitting down on the chair next to the table on which the apparatus stood and, looking over at the maid, she said: “Can you pack two bags for me? I must be able to carry them myself, but I will need enough clothes and necessities for, maybe, a two-week trip, do you understand?”

Claire nodded, but couldn’t help herself. “Where are you going, mademoiselle?”

“I don’t know,” Sylvie replied, picking up the receiver, “Isn’t that the mystery?” Thrilling, isn’t it, she’d said once to the ticket inspector in the train on her way here. Her phrasing had taken on a new tune since, but the meaning was the same. She was ready for the unknown, the big, terrible, fantastic unknown.

She was more than ready.

Claire left her, looking downcast, but determined even so, and Sylvie trusted her with this task. With a little bit of her future. Waiting for the connection to be established, she asked the operator for one Elisabetta Paolo, and was immediately referred. There was static for a little while, then someone picked up at the other end. Sylvie’s heart pounded. Would it be –

“Eloisa Paolo speaking,” came Eloisa’s slightly hoarse voice. She sounded curious, as if she couldn’t imagine who was calling at this hour. She also sounded slightly out of breath, as if she’d been running to get the call. For whose sake would she do that?

“It’s Sylvie,” Sylvie said. A pause.

“What hour is this to call, really now, chérie,” Eloisa laughed, but she was evidently not amused. Sylvie’s breath trembled out of her, and she couldn’t hold it back, she couldn’t help herself either, just like Claire before.

“Are you alone?”

“Am I alone?” A sarcastic huff of breath. “I’ve just got home from the theatre. You do know our premiere is in a week, little Sylvie, I sent you that invitation myself.”

Feeling her breathing level out a little, she looked down at her shoes, the hem of her skirt, the colour coordination between the mustard yellow of the former, the dark brownish nuance of the latter. She’d thought she looked like a queen bee, when she’d dressed in the morning. So many hours ago. How much things could change in a short amount of time, so much you wouldn’t believe.

“Eloisa, can I come visit?”

“Now?” Eloisa wanted to know, trying to sound nonchalant, but Sylvie recognised the worry. “Why?”

“Something happened.”

“What happened, topolina?” It was almost tender, almost caring. All these continuous almosts. Sylvie wanted to cry, very badly.

“Let me visit, please. I want to see you. I want to tell you myself.”

For a long moment, there was nothing but static on the line, nothing but silence, and she was so tired of the waiting game, of always being patient and good, but it was all she knew, all she’d tried before, so she stuck to it now. For the girl whom she was stuck on, right? It seemed only fair. Finally, Eloisa spoke, her voice very direct, almost cold. Charles spoke that way. If he comes to your door before me, Sylvie wanted to beg, turn him away, but she couldn’t make herself. Eloisa made those calls and those choices herself.

“Meet me on the corner of Rue Crémieux, I’ll pick you up. Within the hour, chérie.” And she hung up. Leaving Sylvie with no options but to obey, that was how loving Eloisa worked, she suspected, unless you didn’t have that kind of relationship with her.

The kind Sylvie had. The kind Sylvie wanted to have.

She slowly hung up herself, went back to her room and found that Claire had readied two manageable suitcases for her, filled to the brim, with everything, mademoiselle, the maid assured her. Sylvie broke down in tears and flung herself at the older woman, hanging from her frame, crying into her shoulder. Claire soothed her quietly, stroking her back without any words. Just her presence. Her acceptance.

After Sylvie had composed herself, they took the suitcases to the automobile which looked like it had just returned from dropping Charles off wherever he’d gone, Sylvie didn’t ask Edgar where; rather, she looked at him pleadingly with her luggage, one suitcase in each hand, and begged: “Rue Crémieux, Edgar. Please.”

“You’ll get me in trouble, mademoiselle,” he concluded. This time she didn’t promise to put in any good word for him, because it was obvious to everyone here, Claire, Edgar and herself, that she had no plans of coming back. Her words would be far away, along with her.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking down, feeling shameful. These people were her family, they had welcomed her so warmly to this house, and now she was paying them back by leaving them, and to clean up her messes, too.

“Well, monsieur Gallard is never going to upgrade to a 5CV anyway. I might as well apply for a new job, if I want to get my hands on that car.” Edgar sighed but in a joking manner, winking at her when she slowly looked up once more. He opened the door to the backseat for her, taking her bags and throwing them in behind her, slamming the boot shut. Then, he exchanged a few words with Claire, too quietly for Sylvie to catch them and besides, she really wasn’t trying anyhow, before turning the crank on the front of the car hard a few times, climbing into the driver’s seat to take the steering wheel and start the automobile, the usual way. It fired up with a tired roar. “Rue Crémieux, you say,” he yelled back at her. She nodded, gratefully.

He nodded back at her and took them out on the road.


~*~


“You told him about us?”

Eloisa stared at her, stunned. Other than her expression of shock, she looked more like an ordinary person tonight than Sylvie had ever seen her before, none of the theatrics. She was clad in a pair of loose men’s pants and a shirt that was too big, and Sylvie tried not to wonder whose it was, because she could think of only one answer. It was one she didn’t like at all.

After she had been dropped off on the corner of Rue Crémieux, she had been left waiting there for the quarter of an hour, before Eloisa had showed up, wrapped in a long fur coat and with no jewellery on. She had waved at Sylvie, waiting a good dozen feet down a side road, expecting her little mouse to come running to her. So, Sylvie did.

The small worker’s house that Eloisa lived in was painted a bright blue, like the sky over Rome in summer, she commented, leading Sylvie inside. No French sky can fully match that, believe me. Inside, it was kept simple, almost ascetic, only the most necessary furniture. Eloisa’s clothes, strewn everywhere, was all that betrayed the kind of money she had at her disposal. Through work. Through the benefits of the kind of work she did.

Sylvie averted her eyes.

“It… slipped out,” she whispered, bowing her head; she was truly ashamed of herself. If she could keep Armand’s secret, why not Eloisa’s? Just because a part of her had thirsted for the expression on Charles’ face when he realised. Just because she’d been that selfish. “I’m sorry, Eloisa.”

The other woman turned away for a moment, her hands gesturing wildly in front of herself, though Sylvie didn’t hear any accompanying muttering; it was like her hands did the talking, the rest was kept more private, closer to heart. Where it was safer, would probably be her guess. Sylvie swallowed and looked down again.

It was a cheap victory she’d earned herself in this regard, wasn’t it?

“Well, no matter,” Eloisa finally said out loud, turning back around, back to her smiling, teasing self. “Little Sylvie, where are you going with those heavy suitcases?”

Looking at her with some degree of wonder, because she hadn’t expected her forgiveness to come so promptly, so implicitly, if it was going to come at all, Sylvie replied, trying to make herself deserving of Eloisa’s absolution by being completely forthcoming, completely honest: “London, in the morning.” A moment of hesitation, then, more carefully, “I was hoping you’d come with me.”

She’d planned everything already. She’d called the train station earlier in the evening, before Charles came home, enquired when their earliest train was leaving, from what platform as well as the price of the tickets. Her allowance covered a one-way fare for the both of them, and that was all she needed. She’d figure it out from there. Paris had opened her eyes, now she needed to cover new ground, lay a new foundation.

Preferably with Eloisa, but even without her, she was still going. She’d decided. Eloisa owed her nothing; she started the change in her, that was it, the least that Sylvie could pay her back, was to keep cultivating it. No more unruly seas, no more women without faces. No more self-portraits in which she didn’t see herself.

No more empty family homes. No more brothers she didn’t understand. Who didn’t understand her.

No more Armands either, unfortunately; Armands who did understand, but who weren’t ready to follow her. To a freer, truer existence. She wanted that for him, of course she did, and she hoped someone would give it to him someday. She would have liked it to be her, sure.

There were many things Sylvie Gallard would have liked, you could say.

What she got was this; Eloisa looking at her for a very, very long time, no smile on her face, not the slightest hint of laughter, which Sylvie suspected wasn’t only a good thing, not only a sense of understanding between them, it wasn’t consideration of her offer, it wasn’t a willingness to say yes, to share a future with Sylvie in some foreign country where she only spoke the language poorly. It was all the no’s, all the cons, all the objections and hesitations, too. “I can’t stop you, can I?” Eloisa finally murmured. Her voice was soft. “You’re going with or without me, aren’t you, chérie?”

Sylvie nodded. Tears were pressing against the back of her eyes, and she blinked them down. They refused to go away, unlike her. Please, it meant, that wetness, that blur to her vision, please don’t let me go alone, please come with me.

“Will you believe me when I say, starting over somewhere foreign and strange is a hard exercise and you may not gain what you want from it?” Eloisa moved over in front of her and lifted both hands, cupping Sylvie’s face between them, pushing her hair out of her eyes, those strands of gold, riches like the ones the actress was gifted by all kinds of admirers. She looked down at her, and she smiled, there was no edge to it, just a reluctant feeling of giving in. Acceptance. Hungering for it, Sylvie reached up, too, and ran her hand through the thick, amber-reddish strands of Eloisa’s hair, soft, well-cared for. She had come a long way in France.

Evidently, it could be done.

“I believe in us,” Sylvie replied.

“You silly, little mouse,” Eloisa sighed and leaned in to kiss her on the mouth. It was a completely normal kiss, to fit her clothes, her makeup-less face. Sylvie had never wanted something as much as she wanted this brief instance to last forever.

The normalcy of it. The freedom in that.

Holding the other woman, one arm curled around her shoulders, Sylvie clung to her and pleaded, being indeed a very little mouse, silly and undeniably female. Their breasts pressed together, their entire fronts. “Please, Eloisa. I believe in us, but I also need you to do so.”

Tutting, Eloisa kissed her forehead, her brows, her eyelids that closed under the proximity of her breath, mouth, nose, chin, her whole face in a rain of kisses, like the jasmine petals earlier in the day. Was that really only this afternoon? What kind of tricks was time playing on them, on her?

It wouldn’t stop, but it would gladly hurry, it would forget its hat in its urgency as well. Like Charles had. Wherever he was going, wherever he was now.

Her heart ached. Oh, the ambivalence of wanting and not wanting at the same time.

“You’re blemishing my spotless career, topolina,” Eloisa said with a sharp-edged smile, bordering on derisive and stepped back, away. Her premiere was next week, Sylvie’s invitation had been left behind at the townhouse, the fake Coffee Baron’s fake manor house. The fake family’s fake home. She wasn’t planning on staying around in time for it, was that asking too much? Were the both of them… in reality asking too much of the other? Was that a reason to leave, all on its own?

No doubt, the theatre had a substitute ready, though who could truly substitute for the great Eloisa Paolo? Only, there was an important distinction to be made between the reality of the surrounding world and theirs, shared, now. In reality, no one could cover for Eloisa. In their reality, where something might still have to take her place by Sylvie’s side, if the actress wouldn’t come, someone would have to. Cover. The hole left behind.

Maybe there was more than one world, after all. There was, if nothing else, a long silence. A wait. A final surrender.

“But fine, I’ll come with you. England is the birthplace of Shakespeare, everybody knows,” Eloisa gave in, eventually. A Shakespearean actress belongs there, was the subtle suggestion, Sylvie imagined. What did Molière matter in comparison? Oh, couldn’t she just see Eloisa on all the stages of London? She could definitely see herself in the background, painting. Portraits of the great miss Paolo’s characters, Juliet, Ophelia, Emilia… Memories of Titania and Cleopatra in the mix.

Shadows from another time, another place. They covered a lot of ground.

Sylvie clapped her hands, eagerly. “I’ve reserved tickets for us, we simply have to pick them up tomorrow before departure,” she beamed, feeling light and hopeful for the first time that day, since she had seen Armand out the door, and Eloisa watched her for a moment, head cocked to the side, eyes deep, dark, unreadable. She must have gotten that from Charles, too. She must have looked at him too closely at times.

“No, no, no. No ‘we’, chérie,” Eloisa interrupted her. “If you’ve run away from home and your brother knows about us, here’s the first place he’ll go to look. You must spend the night somewhere else, then pick up the tickets at the train station tomorrow. I’ll meet you there.” A pause, rhetorical. “Then, we’ll go.”

“Somewhere else?” Sylvie asked, uncertainly.

The other woman gestured in the direction of the streets further up east, Rue Abel and that area. “There’s a hotel three streets over, it’s very good, you can bill it to Charles.”

“But,” Sylvie began.

“No, no, no. No ‘but’. This is my one condition. Either we do it my way, or we don’t do it at all.” Eloisa sounded inconvincible. Sylvie blinked back more tears, but ended up looking down, nodding. In this, she had no vote, she could acknowledge that much; she’d used hers already. Her voice. Her words. She hadn’t used them very cleverly, either.

“All right,” she said.

Eloisa laughed, a deep throaty laugh, and stepped back up to her, lifting her chin and kissing her, deep on the mouth, so Sylvie lost her breath and forgot all tentativeness she might be feeling about the plan as it looked now, revised. She didn’t care how they got there, she just cared about reaching their destination. Being on her way. Meanwhile, Eloisa pushed her down on the nearest sofa, a low-legged, red-velveted thing, leaning in over her and kissing her way down the side of her neck, her breathing was hard against her ear, she licked Sylvie’s pulse point lazily, like they had that kind of time. With her mouth, she took her apart, until she returned to a height where it was possible for her to turn her head and find Sylvie’s lips again.

They kissed, desperately.

Just seven more hours, Sylvie thought, gasping against the actress, their exhalations hot and mingling, seven more hours, after a whole lifetime of waiting. Which meant, another dawn. Nothing more.

Another sunrise.