“The Waiter” (Conclusion)

The widow’s back was to him as she puttered about making tea. François sat straight with his hands on his knees, politely resisting the urge to inspect his shabby surroundings. He had only visited once or twice since becoming her neighbour. Bringing Odette to stay had encouraged the old dear to leave her musty rooms and rejoin society, such as it was in this small company. A passing acquaintance had grown into friendship—more for Odette than François, though he had appreciated Mme. Bernier’s generosity from the beginning. Anxious that he would starve for leaving his mother, she had brought him leftovers every evening, setting them on a tray outside his door to await his return from work. The soup was always thin and the bread inevitably stale, but the dishes were dutifully washed and returned each day, set on their tray outside her door when he left for work. He did not know how long he had been in residence before they had actually spoken to each other.

She brought empty cups and a biscuit tin to the table. “There was an accident at the factory,” she said out of nowhere. “An explosion of some sort, they never did tell me exactly how it happened. They brought M. Bernier to the hospital first, of course, but the hospital sent him home to die. The doctor said it was more merciful to let him perish in his own bed. I was distraught. I am no nurse. I had no idea how to tend a dying man. He was angry, I was angry. It was a mess! A mess,” she repeated, shaking her head at the memory. She put her hands to her cheeks and continued to shake her head.

François fetched the teapot. He poured her cup first, then pried off the lid of the biscuit tin. He was astonished to find it stuffed full of samples from the boulangerie: crunchy hazelnut fingers and sugar-sprinkled discs, cream-filled cones and tiny almond tarts.

“Stéphanie,” said Mme. Bernier, though he had already deduced as much. She tapped his arm and indicated a piped shortbread dipped in chocolate. “A man won’t go hungry with a wife who bakes.”

“Do you bake, Madame?”

“I did,” she replied. “My plum clafoutie was famous on our street. I made it for every occasion. I even made it for M. Bernier’s funeral. He preferred apple, but he was not there to complain. I was still angry, you see. Even after he accepted his fate, I kept on—for his sake, I believed, but it was really for my own. I was angry at the doctors and the factory manager, and at God. Oh, I was angry at God. I was furious with Him, absolutely enraged. Do you think God cared? Do you think He suffered for my anger? He did not—but M. Bernier did. His last words were a plea, not to God, but to me. ‘Forgive me, Marie,’ he said, as if death was his wish, his fault.

“That was twenty years ago, young man. For twenty years, I have regretted that my husband died begging my forgiveness. He spent his last days fighting my anger when he should have been nurtured by my love.” Mme. Bernier paused for a trembling sip of tea. She swallowed with an effort and all but waved her wizened finger under her guest’s nose. “If you love her, François, love her. Save your anger until she is gone.”

“What then, Madame? What do I do with it then?”

The old dear sighed and stared sadly into the leaves at the bottom of her teacup. “Let it go, young man. Forgive, and let it go.”

* * *

“You’ll take care of her, won’t you?” Odette asked. She had slept well past noon, well past his shift at the boulangerie, almost well into twilight. She looked no stronger for the rest, and on his way up the stairs, he had heard her coughing before he reached the top.

He managed a smile that was not wholly false. “We shall take care of each other—won’t we, Marie?”

“I’ll be the envy of Paris,” Mme. Bernier replied with a wink.

Odette laughed. It was a mistake, for her breath caught in her throat and became a volley that she promptly tried to catch in her cupped hands. The cough had radically changed. Now it was deep and hoarse and racking, the blood occasionally accompanied by small clots, as if bits of lung were escaping her chest with every heave.

Mme. Bernier passed a handkerchief to François. He sat with an arm about Odette’s shoulders, waiting for the fit to subside before he dried her mouth and reached to wipe her hands. She curled them into fists atop the blanket and pressed her head hard into his shoulder. She was crying. “I want to be at the Moulin; I want to dance!”

He hushed her in a soft murmur, having learned that keeping his voice low eventually calmed her. More and more often, a moment’s hysteria erupted in the wake of an attack. It might be brief, but brief was no less violent and her strength was better employed in the space between bouts.

She fell to weeping in his arms, her sobs mingling with ill-suppressed spasms until his patience won out and she went lax against him. He stroked her hair with his fingertips. Mme. Bernier relieved him of the handkerchief and applied it to the task herself. She took special care to polish Odette’s wedding ring, sliding it along the finger to clean beneath it. François noticed that it went with alarming ease; she was skin and bone in his embrace, but he hadn’t thought a hand so slender could lose that much substance.

“I want to dance. François, I want to dance.”

He brushed his lips over her hair. “Don’t you hear the music?”

“I do,” said Mme. Bernier.

François smiled at the old dear. “A waltz, I think.”

Mme. Bernier began to hum in three-quarter time. Her voice was creaky with disuse and cracked on the higher notes. François, recognizing the tune, joined her. His voice was better. Stronger and more resonant; the pleasant tone of a natural tenor.

Odette whispered. “I hear it.” She plucked excitedly at his shirtfront. “I hear it, François!”

“Then dance with me, demoiselle.”

“Yes, oh, yes!”

He stood. He lifted her from the bed. She slid her arms about his neck and closed her eyes. Mme. Bernier played the concertina. François played the violin. He waltzed about the tiny apartment with his wife cradled in his arms, spinning and swirling in a Sunday scene of watercolour silks and black bowler hats, of white-aproned waiters and cut-glass claret. He closed his eyes as he moved through the steps, remembering.

The sun warm on his back. The melody soaring above the rhythm. Skirts brushing against his trouser legs, rasping as they went. The lingering taste of coffee on his tongue. The bliss in Odette’s smile when she tipped her face toward his. Her smile changing; melting, her eyes darkening as her gaze fell into his. “I love you, François.”

The violin ceased. The concertina became the wheezy echo of an old woman’s breath. The sun went down and bitterness formed at the back of his tongue. The weight in his arms was no weight at all and yet his chest ached as if he carried a block of stone.

He stopped circling the room. Slowly, he opened his eyes. Odette’s head lay in the hollow of his shoulder, her curls tumbling over his sleeve. He did not look down. He looked to Mme. Bernier instead, seeing the future in her hands pressed to her lips and her eyes meeting his through a thickening veil of tears.

“Did you hear what she said, Marie? Did you hear her say she loved me?”

The old dear nodded quickly, spilling tears over her cheeks and between the fingers of her clasped hands.

He did not ask again.

* * *

Months later, after Odette had been laid to rest in the churchyard of her childhood and her father had invited her husband to supper, he found the basket beneath the bed. A dropped cufflink had bounced from sight, and on hands and knees, François reached into the shadows to feel for it. Brushing his fingertips against something else, he closed his hand and sat back on his heels to inspect his discovery.

It was a length of bright green wool, hopelessly snarled in a brave attempt at knitting that measured at least a yard when stretched. Mystified, he poked his fingers through the larger holes and marveled at the knots in between.

“I’m off to the church, François,” Mme. Bernier announced from his door. “Don’t tarry too long; you mustn’t be late for your own wedding.”

He turned. “Is this yours, Marie?”

The old dear, dressed in her Sunday best though it was the day before, looked stricken. “Oh, my.” She ventured a few steps toward him, wringing her hands. “Oh, my,” she repeated.

François smiled wistfully. “She couldn’t knit, either, could she?”

“She tried,” Mme. Bernier sighed. “Night after night, I sat with her and showed her the stitches, but she never quite understood them. It was meant to be a scarf. She wanted to make it for your birthday.”

“Today is my birthday,” François murmured, looking at the wool in his hands.

“Is it?”

He nodded.

“Well, then.” The old dear fell speechless. François continued to study the impossible wreck of knotted yarn, and a radiant smile slowly formed as it dawned on him that she had loved him after all.

It was the colour of absinthe.

THE END

 May 23, 2016

“The Waiter” (Part III)

He returned from an appointment and found her standing, fully dressed, in the middle of the apartment. “Take me dancing,” she said, firmly.

Astonished, he looked to Mme. Bernier, who shrugged and shook her head. “It’s a miracle,” the old dear declared. “She knocked on my door and demanded that I do her hair.”

She was incandescent once more, shining bright and white beneath her skin. François was completely flummoxed. She had been asleep when he left, breathing so faintly that he worried he would be gone too long. She had gained no weight since his departure, but she was statuesque and simmering, a beauty so intense that he felt the heat where he stood. Her eyes fixed on his, fierce and drowning. “Take me, François.”

He murmured to Mme. Bernier. The old dear nodded and promptly pulled out her knitting. Odette was at the mirror above the washstand, pinning her hat in place. Her hands trembled as she worked, and it was on the tip of his tongue to caution her when she spun on her heel and flashed him her most winsome smile. There was no tremor in her voice.

“Husband, I am ready.”

She insisted on walking along the crooked street to the boulevard and across the square, rather than taking a hansom as he suggested. Odette leaned into him, less for support than from affection, he thought, since she did not drag on his arm as she often did at home. She walked with pride, head up and eyes forward except when she turned to smile at him. “You are the best man I have ever known.”

François smiled back, too anguished to speak. She complimented him and she voiced her gratitude, but she never said the words he yearned to hear. She did not believe in love; he remembered her saying. She did not believe in romance.

If only he had had more time.

They heard the Moulin well before it came into view. More than concertina and violin, the melody was layered with laughter and conversation, punctuated by crystal and crockery jostled on the trays of waiters as graceful as the dancers whirling in and out of their path. Odette quickened her pace, eager to be among them. “It’s been so long,” she said. “Hurry, François, before the music ends.”

He waved to his friends from the café, who recognized Odette and might have speculated amongst themselves though none of them showed her any disrespect. It was good to see them, they were told, clapping shoulders and shaking hands. Odette was kissed more in those moments than she had been kissed in six weeks of marriage. She bloomed from the attention—but she danced only with François.

“Are you happy, ma chèrie?” he asked during a pause for some refreshment.

“Oh, yes,” she replied, glowing with it. She had removed her hat and a curl had come loose to caress her cheek. He smoothed it back, letting his fingertips linger by her ear. Their eyes met and held, and François’ heart slammed against his ribs, then Odette broke the spell with a rueful laugh. “This café au lait is pitiful.”

“I’ll make you a proper one when we get home.”

“The boulangerie is closed.”

“I have a key.” He pictured them stealing into the darkened shop, imagined her perched on a stool while the steamer spat and hissed at his command. She would cross her legs, showing off her ankle in its neat buttoned boot, and cup her chin in her hand to admire his mastery of the machine. You have an artist’s hands, she would say, sighing as if she longed to have him touch her with them. Perhaps he would oblige, beginning with her hair, stroking his fingertips over her cheek and down her throat to the top button beneath her chin. One by one, the pearls would pop. His fingers would slip inside her collar while she untied her ribbons. Her skin would burn icy white in the subdued shadow; her hair tumbling free of its pins and over his wrists. She would stand up and kiss him, her own hands hovering at his waistcoat before she embraced him, before she covered his hands with hers and guided him in close quarters, carving a path through their clothing, their lips ever touching, her mouth open and yearning, his name an impassioned murmur deep within her throat.

“François …”

He opened his eyes. The tumult of the Moulin assaulted him and for an instant his senses were scrambled beyond comprehension. Dazed, he fixed on the eyes fixed on him. Odette, buttoned and beribboned as she had not been in his dream, had abandoned her gaiety to regard him with solemn intent.

“We must go home.”

He bumbled to his feet, muttering apologies as if his thoughts had been plain for her to see. As he rose, the pitiful café au lait sloshed into its saucer, untouched after the first imperfect sip. The cup was porcelain, white dotted with pinprick scarlet. He did not recall the ornamentation on being served, and when Odette stifled a cough with her hand, her glove came away similarly speckled.

“Mon Dieu.”

“It’s nothing,” she insisted. “I only need to rest.”

He stammered. “Of course, of course.” He tucked her hand into the crook of his arm and led her in haste toward the exit. On the sidewalk, she made him pause to let her breathe. She struggled a bit, but steadied after a few focused inhales and managed a brave smile.

“There, you see?”

“I should not have brought you here,” he scolded.

“I wanted to come. Please don’t be cross, François. It’s done me a world of good, far more than being cooped up with Mme. Bernier all day. You must bring her to the Moulin when I am gone. She met her husband here, you know. She says she’s not been back since he died, but I’m sure he would not have wanted that. He would have wanted her to dance and make friends, and perhaps to meet someone else. He would have wanted her to be happy.”

François was silent. Negotiating the pavement took all his attention, especially while trying to ignore the point she had begun to make with her uncharacteristic prattling. When he said nothing, she put it so bluntly that it bruised.

“One can only grieve for so long before it becomes self-indulgence.”

* * *

Odette did not join him in the empty boulangerie. He worked the steamer methodically, focused on his hands as they measured the coffee and poured the milk, and when he tried to imagine her perched on the stool with her legs crossed and her chin cupped in her hand, he failed.

Mme. Bernier had put her to bed while he was downstairs. “Is she asleep?” he whispered, on the chance that she was.

Her eyes opened before the old dear could reply. “Not before my café au lait.”

“Madame.” With a sardonic flourish, François presented the cup on its matching saucer.

Odette did not take it. “You’re angry.”

He wanted to deny it, but could not. “Aren’t you?” he asked, instead. He set the beverage on the bedside table.

“I was,” she admitted. “Now I am simply afraid.”

“I am not angry with you, Odette.”

“I know, but I am afraid nonetheless. I don’t want to die while you are angry, François.”

“Then don’t.”

Her dark eyes filled with tears. He turned away, unable to bear it though he knew there was no manipulation. Mme. Bernier startled him at his shoulder. He had forgotten she was there, and realized now that she had become a part of their odd little family, and that her presence was welcome despite his private despair.

She took his arm and led him the few steps beyond Odette’s hearing. “Be angry afterward,” she admonished. “To be angry now does her more harm.”

François merely shook his head, helpless. He had not understood what he felt until Odette put a name to it. Identifying it seemed to empower it so that it swelled in his chest and throat, and threatened to close off his air. Tears stung his own eyes. Mme. Bernier smiled kindly and sent him across the hall to her apartment while she settled Odette for a nap.

to be continued ...

“The Waiter” (Part II)

“I want you to be safe and loved,” he had told her—and he had kept his word.

She had stayed, he surmised, because she had nowhere else to go. Trying to repay him had proved disastrous; she was a poor cook and kept house no better, but she was not lazy. She was inept. Her chief talent lay between the sheets, and he had come from work one night to find her awaiting him in the nude; spectacularly so, he had to admit. A practical man would have taken advantage, but romantic François was still a virgin. Unable to speak, he had quickly removed his coat and draped it over her. She had donned her shift while he was in the lavatory, and though nothing more had been said, François had sensed a relief that surpassed his own.

No one had come looking for her. No one asked after her. The four who had ruined her soon found another to misuse, a girl of sixteen who believed their patter as Odette had done, and who was equally doomed to disappointment. François had not tried to warn her. She would not have listened. “I wouldn’t,” said Odette, when he had proposed to attempt.

“Why not?” he had demanded, and she had laughed before decrying him as a boy with no experience to support his wisdom.

“Of course, that’s not what I think anymore,” she had added, fearful of offending him.

François had reassured her. He had made a point of blending with the scenery and feigning indifference to the conduct of the café’s patrons—particularly the late night miscreants whom Odette had known so well. He liked the music, and some of the bawdy talk amused him, so he had managed to avoid intervening until one girl in particular had unwittingly captured his heart.

“What was it?” she asked him. “Why was I different from the others?”

“It was your accent,” he replied. “Remember, the absinthe made it more pronounced.”

She regarded him doubtfully. François stared back, refusing to bend. Odette held his gaze until she saw the truth behind it, then she dropped her lashes and let the matter rest.

As a surprise, he had taken her dancing on a Sunday afternoon and been surprised, himself. Odette did not know how to dance. She could kick and cavort and flip her skirts above her knees, but a proper waltz was as foreign to her as the receipt for her beloved café au lait. François had promptly enlisted the aid of a musician friend and set about teaching her the steps.

She had loved it.

From there, they had gone dancing every week, fitting it around a picnic or a stroll along the Seine and once, just once, when they returned to their little apartment above the boulangerie, Odette had taken his face in her hands and kissed his mouth so tenderly …

… and then she had fainted at his feet.

The doctor had come at once. Odette had roused before his arrival, but showed an uncommon stubbornness in answering his questions. François had waited in Mme. Bernier’s apartment and the arguing was easily audible through the adjoining wall. Confronted on his departure, the doctor had openly condemned Odette’s past behaviour and brutally recommended that preparations be made.

François had been so stunned that spindly Mme. Bernier had been called upon to steady him. The old dear had then descended the stairs, berating the doctor as she went, and François had crashed into the apartment as if he had been shot in the back. “Did you know?” he had demanded.

“I’m sorry,” Odette had said.

“You knew?” he had cried. “All this time, you knew and you said nothing?”

“Now you know!” she had raged back at him. “Throw me out!”

“I won’t. I can’t!” He had been near tears with shock and shame and an awful wrenching helplessness. “Odette, I love you!”

“Then let me go,” she had said, so coldly that he had known better than she that she was lying.

She had been true about one thing, though. She was grateful to him. She might even have been fond of him, but she did not love him.

* * *

She tired easily. Her appetite waned. She closed herself off from him and spent hours staring out the window, as silent and beautiful as falling snow on a frosty night. Now that her secret was known, her strength was not spent on pretense, and once in a while, she felt well enough for a brief outing. François brought her to the Moulin for café and music. Sometimes she rallied for a dance or two, and in those moments he almost believed that she was deceiving herself, that she was in love with him, her face was so radiant as she spun and swayed in his arms.

Mme. Bernier took it upon herself to mind Madame when François was at work. He came home at night to find them playing cards and drinking tea, but there was something odd about the tableau that he suspected involved the splash of green wool peeping out from beneath the bed.

He quit the café and took an apprenticeship at the boulangerie in order to be at home in the evening. The baker’s daughter taught him to make bread, and Odette observed that Stéphanie was in love with him. “It doesn’t matter,” he said, turning red to the tips of his ears. “I am not in love with her.”

“You might be, one day. Aim high, François. You deserve better.”

“Better than the baker’s daughter?”

“Better than me,” Odette said, before she dismissed him in favour of the view.

François had not thought about it overmuch. Idle dreaming had been a luxury in his father’s house and his job at the café had earned him more scorn than money. His brothers all worked in the same factory as the old man, for marginally better wages and far less satisfaction, but François had wanted something different. Not something more, necessarily, but something else, something brighter and more vibrant than industrial grit and numbing routine.

Saying so aloud, however, had been a mistake.

“Your father is as ignorant as mine,” Odette said, sadly.

François wondered if he had misread her and she did not want to go home after all. Then he realized that she would not have married him otherwise. “Do you love your father?” he asked.

“I did. Now I care less about his forgiveness than I do about finding a place in hallowed ground. You have given me that, François. I know that when I am gone, you will see me safely home.”

He had already arranged for a cart. When the time came, he would bear her body back to the man who had raised her, present himself as her husband, and see to it that she was buried with dignity in the churchyard of her childhood. He envisioned it over and over in the night, listening to the irregularities in her breathing as she slept.

Mme. Bernier now sat with him of an evening. She had offered to come at dawn, while François was occupied at the boulangerie, but Odette slept well into the morning and he was able to be with her when she woke. Stéphanie had badgered the baker into acquiring a steamer; without it, François feared his wife might not wake again, he was so convinced that the lure of his café au lait was the thing that roused her. There were no more outings, no strolls along the Seine or picnics in the park. Mme. Bernier insisted that she walk around the apartment, but she gradually grew too weak to manage even that. Standing became a rare triumph. François was obliged to carry her to the lavatory, where Mme. Bernier shooed him out for modesty and aided her in his place.

“She does not produce much,” the old dear confided.

“She does not consume much,” François replied.

She enjoyed the smell of bread baking, but refused to eat it. Each day, François made a baguette for her and she always gave it to Mme. Bernier. Stéphanie, who made the best sweet pastry in the neighborhood, tried to tempt her with beignets and frangipane, to no avail. François ate them instead, at her behest. “You must eat,” she reminded him. “It does me no good for you to starve.”

Their early days together had been awkward, but not difficult; not like this. They had been strangers then. Conjuring something to say had been a strain for entirely different reasons. At the time, he had been mystified and a little wounded, but now he understood her reticence. She had hoped to spare him by keeping distant. She had spoken of leaving but lingered longer and longer, until they were strangers no more and had become friends, one in love and one afraid to die alone.

“If you had known,” she said one night, “would you still have saved me?”

François did not hesitate. “I would.”

She lay on her side, facing him in his chair, her hand tucked between her cheek and her pillow, her hair a tumbling stream of curls over her shoulder. She burned less brightly these days. Her eyes were darker and her face more aggressively sculpted, but she was still hauntingly, desperately, beautiful.

She held him in her gaze for a long, silent moment. He thought that she might say it at last, but she sighed and closed her eyes as if she could not bear to look at him.

to be continued ...

“The Waiter” (Part I)

“You cannot give her that,” said Mme. Bernier. “She can barely take my soup.”

François was not surprised. Few could take Mme. Bernier’s soup. He moved to the bed by the window and placed a gentle kiss on Odette’s forehead.

Her lashes fluttered like startled birds. François whispered. “I’ve brought you a café.”

She relaxed instantly into a smile. Mme. Bernier hurried to prop her upright, stuffing the pillow between her shoulders and the iron bedstead. François proffered the cup he had procured from the boulangerie downstairs and Odette’s pale hands closed about it. “I saw you in the light,” she murmured.

He tried not to appear chilled by her statement. “I have a surprise for you,” he said.

Odette was breathing the steam from her coffee, her eyes half-closed in blissful oblivion. At the prompt, her brows lifted inquiringly and François gestured to the figure waiting by the door.

“This is Père Emil.”

Her eyes widened. “So soon?”

François hastened to reassure her. “No, no, chèrie. He has come to make you my wife.”

“Oh!” It was Mme. Bernier, exclaiming into her hands. Odette said nothing. She sat frozen, staring at the priest with the café forgotten in her hands. Père Emil drifted closer, his face as kind and earnest as François remembered from his boyhood. Odette was too baffled to protest and gave him her hand when he offered an open palm of his own.

“Mademoiselle, it is my deepest pleasure to meet you.”

Her dark eyes sought François. He smiled nervously. He had wanted to marry her from the moment she had entered the café on the arm of one of her painter/poets, the dissolute foursome who had shared her affection at the expense of one true love. She had been beautiful then, young and vivacious, the muse they had named “Anise”. So many nights she had spent, kissing and carousing in the company of pretentious imposters who had talked of holding a salon to rival the Impressionists yet produced not a single painting among them. She had posed for them, she said, though the only work François had seen of her was a sketch by Auguste Renoir that hung now on the wall of this tiny apartment. “She is too melancholy,” the artist had lamented, but François had emptied his pockets to persuade him, and Odette’s smile at his persistence had changed the master’s mind.

He loved her now more than ever. “Please,” he whispered. “Marry me, Odette.”

Mutely, with tears in her eyes, she nodded.

François stood by the bed. Mme. Bernier stood as a witness. The café au lait grew cold on the nightstand. Père Emil spoke with reverence to the sanctity of marriage and waited patiently while vows were repeated first by the groom, then by the bride. Neither of them wept, but Mme. Bernier sobbed for both of them.

François had bought a ring at the pawnshop; a plain gold band, it was a perfect fit. “You know me so well,” Odette remarked as it slid into place on the appropriate finger.

The priest pronounced them man and wife. “You may kiss the bride.”

They looked at each other. François swallowed, but the lump in his throat refused to budge. Odette rescued him by embarking on a mild coughing fit that required the aid of the cold café au lait and sent Mme. Bernier scurrying to her own apartment for more soup. Père Emil produced a pocket kerchief which he inspected closely when it was returned.

It was dry.

“Merci, mon Père,” François said on seeing him to the door. “I am in your debt.”

“What shall I say to your mother?”

“Say that I shall be home for Easter.”

The priest inspected the boy’s face as intently as he had inspected the kerchief. François gave him nothing; his countenance remained resolute despite the probing gaze. Finally, with no further word, Père Emil took his leave.

Mme. Bernier returned with a chipped tureen in her hands and half a baguette tucked under her arm. “For your supper. It’s not much, but I wasn’t expecting a wedding.” She carried both to the table, then frowned at the bride. “You will eat, mademoi—madame. Your husband will make sure of it.”

Odette was contemplating her wedding ring and did not reply. François escorted the old dear to the door, sent her on her way with consent to look in tomorrow, then bolted the door behind her. He lingered for a moment, his brow resting against the wood, until Odette’s voice crossed the short distance between them.

“My father can hardly refuse me now.”

“He will not dare,” François said, quietly.

Silence fell. When François faced the room at last, his wife was staring out the window. He had not imagined she could become more beautiful, yet illness had made her incandescent. She burned by the glass, white skin and dark hair, shadows etched, starkly alluring, in the bones of her face. He longed to kiss those bones, to caress them with his lips as he had only dreamed of doing because she had come to him ravaged and unwilling despite the offer she had made. Hoping to make her love him first, he had declined and now it was too late.

“What do you see?” he asked.

“Paris,” she answered. She glanced at him. “And you?”

“I see the most beautiful woman in the world.”

She made a sound that should have been laughter but emerged as something else. “You have been too good to me, François. I do not deserve your kindness.”

“It is no kindness.” He moved from the door, stepping softly on the bare floorboards. Arriving at her bedside, he put out a hand. She gave him hers. He brought it to his lips and she flicked her forefinger at his moustache. Duly dissuaded, he sat on the bed and held her hand instead.

“I won’t be too long,” she promised.

He smiled. “Take as long as you like.”

Odette tipped her head against the bedstead and sighed. “I would take forever if I could.” Her gaze sharpened, startling him with its fervour. “I would take you, François.”

He tried to make a jest of it. “Were you not listening to Père Emil? You have taken me.”

“I thought you were a boy,” she went on as if he had not spoken. “The others, Henri and Georges and that ridiculous Jean-Claude, I thought they were men, but they are the boys and you are the man. I see that now. I see everything so clearly, François. So clearly. Will you forgive me? Can you forgive me?”

“Ma chèrie,” he said gruffly, “you must forgive yourself.”

Fresh tears rose in her eyes. She held his gaze for a moment more, then looked quickly away, through the window to the gaslit streets of Paris.

“You left home for love,” he reminded her.

“I left one fool for another and became a fool myself.”

“Am I a fool, Odette?”

She blinked and glanced back at him, a corner of her mouth curling in a reluctant smile. “The biggest of them all,” she said, and he laughed aloud because the joy at her teasing was greater than any offense he could have taken.

to be continued ...

“The Waiter” (Preface)

It’s been a while since I posted a serial. Seems like forever since I finished a story short enough to be posted in eight segments or less. (I tried twelve, once, but it went on too long.) Thanks to my older older brother, who expressed some interest with an exercise I posted in 2013, “The Waiter” starts tomorrow and runs to the last Saturday in June.

Endings are not my strength. I can’t even say good bye to my co-workers when I leave for the day; I quietly shut my door and slip away when no one is looking. No wonder I have so many half-finished projects. At some point in our relationship, I quietly shut the door and slip away.

A good story, however, and/or a strong character will insist that I complete a piece—and that’s what happened with tomorrow’s offering. When I wrote both the initial exercise and its follow up, I approached it through the heroine’s eyes. Like her, I disregarded the boy who fell in love as a lightweight, sweet enough but lacking the depth that makes a hero interesting.

Wrong-o. Turns out that he has as much or more depth than any of my more compelling heroes. I am learning that a short story is but a few scenes from a character’s life. The time that François spent with Odette was a turning point in his existence. He has no desire to tell any more than that, and so I wished him well and let him go … but not before he insisted on having his say.

Enjoy.

“The Green Fairy Speaks”

Already the light is changing. It seems darker when I wake and begins to fade before I want to sleep. François is now perennially haloed, though it may only be his hair. He is the picture of tow-headed, my boy who is more a man than any of the men I have known, Georges and Henri and that ridiculous Jean-Claude. They are the boys, more passionate in their notion of fame than their pursuit of it. They spoke of art, of holding a salon to rival the Impressionists, yet produced not a single work between them.

I see that now. I see so much in the changing light, sitting at the window with a café au lait to warm my hands.

Mme. Bernier scolds that I should not take coffee when I cannot take her soup. François says that no one can take the old dear’s soup, and continues to bring me his magical potion despite her protestations.

She teaches me to knit while François is at work. I am making him a scarf in secret, of red wool to brighten his winter coat. He quit waiting tables to take an apprenticeship at the boulangerie when I fell ill. The baker’s daughter is in love with him, but he does not see it. She begged her father to procure the steamer François uses to make my coffee. I do not believe that she begrudges me.

She can afford to wait.

From my window, I can hear the music of the Moulin. François took me there one Sunday afternoon and taught me the steps to the waltz. He was amazed that, after a year in Paris, I did not know them. I knew how to kick and cavort and flip my skirts above my knees, but not how to waltz.

I learned quickly, I loved it so, and he is a patient teacher. Something happens to him when he takes me in his arms. He becomes more than my boy, more than my angel.

He becomes my lover.

The other day he arrived home with a priest and a pawnshop wedding ring. I tried to dissuade him, but he insisted and now I am his wife. It feels no different than it did.

Perhaps it is un peu plus triste.

He loves me, I know, though I don’t know why. He has promised to take me home. After we said our marriage vows, I suggested that my father cannot refuse me now. François said quietly that he will not dare, not when I am returned to him honourably wed with a grieving husband.

The light keeps changing, dimming sooner and sluggish to ignite, but it burns brighter than the dawn around my François.

I will dance with him one last time, here in his tiny apartment while the music drifts toward us on the breeze. I will take his hand and he will put his arm about my waist, and we will spin and whirl in a blur across the floor. When I stumble, he will catch me. He will sweep me up into his arms and continue the dance, waltzing me closer and closer to the ever changing light.

It is not so dark now.

“The Green Fairy Speaks” (Preface)

A few years ago, I heard a song called “Dark Waltz” sung by Jackie Evancho on PBS. It was eerie as heck, hearing this very grown up lament sung by an eleven-year-old girl who sounded like a thirty-year-old woman. I tried to find her version of it on Youtube, but found this one instead. The video is glorious, the song perfect, and while not sung in the same mezzo soprano as the kid’s, Viktoria Tocca’s rendition does justice enough to the sentiment.

Who knows why something doesn’t ignite right away? I loved the song on first hearing, but wasn’t inspired to write from it until a few weeks ago. While one might automatically think “vampire”, the lyrics actually struck me as something that might be applied to someone on the precipice between this life and the next. It’s sad, it’s haunting, it’s romantic… as my Nicole would say, le sigh.

Imagine my surprise when a character I hardly know stepped up to finish a story begun more than a year ago, where a Parisian waiter named François rescued a girl named Odette from the clutches of her artist admirers. I wrote a fairly lengthy sequel to the original piece, but less has turned out to be more. It goes up tomorrow.

And so their story ends.

Enjoy.

"Cafe apres le Nuit"

The Green Fairy turned, inevitably, with the coming of winter.

She went early to the café, her head bowed and hooded, her boots crunching in new-fallen snow. The proprietor let her in and she sat by the window, close enough to feel the chill off the pane. She ordered claret. She was given coffee: dark, strong, deliciously bitter. Like her men, she thought, wearily.

Like me.

She was tired of being their muse. Tired of being handed from one to the other, of being admired and abused, of the continual play between drunk and hungover. She was nineteen and felt ancient. Ragged, wrung out, on the brink of being tossed aside for the next shiny new trinket. She had not bothered with a mirror this morning. Her hair was uncombed and her dress lacked the odd button, and for once, she did not care. Pierre had let her in, expecting a favour in return. Tonight? She wondered, eying him behind the bar. She decided not. He was too cautiously avoiding her gaze. Wisely, she realized. Tonight was Henri’s turn, and Henri disliked sharing her with his companions. He would not willingly forfeit her to the café owner.

He would not fight for her, either.

She sipped scalding coffee as the café stirred around her. China clinked and steam hissed from the counter where the exotic grounds were brewed to magical elixir. The back door slammed and murmured voices drifted her way, heralding waiters arriving for the midday shift. Snow fell indifferently outside, frosting the street in pristine white. Fresh. Unspoiled. As she had been, when she first came.

“Why did you come?”

She looked up, sharply. The boy François stood by her chair with a cup of heaven in his hands. “Is that for me?” she asked, hopefully.

He set the cup before her. She almost wept at the sweet creamy scent wafting upward in the steam. Her favourite, as only the boy could make it, her sublime café au lait.

Pierre appeared behind him. “Drink up and be gone,” he advised, gruffly. “We open soon.”

She understood. She could not be seen by respectable customers. Only after hours, when the artists and writers arrived to quaff forbidden absinthe and smoke opium cigarettes, when the music was racy and the laughter raucous, was her presence truly welcome, at least for as long as she continued to beguile.

She had not expected the attraction to fail her first.

“Go back to Georges,” the boy whispered.

“Georges is a snoring pig.”

“Go to Paul, then. Or Henri. It’s his night, is it not?”

She glanced up in surprise. “How do you know that?”

François flushed like a shy girl, but he was in it now and could only go forward. “I know,” he said, simply.

She looked hard at him, seeing him clearly for the first time. A genuine boy, straight and slender with ingenuous eyes and a pale wisp of mustache adorning his upper lip. “What business is it of yours?”

“None, I admit. How can I not know when I am here every night that you are?”

“Go away,” she said, dismissing him as irrelevant.

He made to obey, then hesitated. “Where will you go?”

“I don’t know.”

“Then come with me.”

Again, she looked up, this time astonished. “What?”

“Come with me.”

“How old are you?”

“Eighteen.” He stood a little taller as he said it, as if being eighteen made him a man of the world.

She smiled. “You can’t even grow a proper mustache.”

“Does that make me less a man than the apes who paw at you every night?”

Her smile vanished. “Don’t speak to me that way!”

François stepped back, turning from her as if she had cut him when he had been the first to draw blood. She put out a hand to stay him.

“The truth, it hurts when spoken harshly by one so tender.” She rose from her chair. “I must go. Thank you for the café au lait. No one makes it better than you do.”

“Don’t go,” he blurted. He shook his head briefly, impatient with inexperience. “I mean, wait. I’ll fetch my coat. You can’t go back to Georges.”

She could, but she would pay. Georges habitually passed out on her breast and woke in the morning eager to finish what he had begun, only to spend himself in a brutish rage when she was not roused quickly enough. He would forgive her for slipping out while he slept if she did not return too soon. Returning now, though, would subject her to attentions more urgent—and even less effective—than usual. She could try Henri, she supposed, but she was not up to appeasing his manhood with the required blend of praise and ardent moaning. Jean-Claude performed like the virile hero in a play, sometimes dressed for the part and spouting his own poetry as he thrust. And Paul, Paul was likely the safest of the four because he liked to look and feared to touch, being attracted to boys yet willfully unaware of it.

“Why do you bother with them?” François asked, walking her through the snowy streets.

She sighed. “Because they bother with me. They buy my clothes and my meals and all I need do is be their inspiration.”

François was silent. She fell silent with him, knowing as well as he did that the life of a muse was vastly different from the life she was living. She may have started on the right course, but somewhere along the way, she had lost sight of herself.

“Why did you come to Paris?” he asked at last.

“I followed my heart. Regrettably, when I knocked and his wife answered the door, my plans changed.”

“You couldn’t go home?”

“I thought perhaps I could make something of myself. This is Paris, after all. A world of opportunity, full of potential for a pretty young thing. I didn’t know how cold it would be, or how cruel.” She shook her head clear of broken dreams. “Why did you come?”

“I was born here,” the boy said.

Startled, she glanced up at him. He walked with his head up and his eyes forward, his profile as clean and pure as the snow clinging to his lashes. A waiter in a café, his coat was wool but well-worn, his boots scuffed and sporting new laces. He wore no hat, baring his fair hair to the elements in a most un-Parisian fashion. “I thought you were from the country,” she said.

“Like you?” He smiled when she balked. “The absinthe recalls your accent.”

“When did you learn to speak?” she inquired, tartly.

He laughed. “I learned not to. Here we are.”

She stopped with him. “This is a boulangerie.”

François grinned, digging in his coat pocket. “Upstairs,” he said, nodding to an alcove by the display window. Artfully arranged loaves of bread and trays of pastries so dazzled the eye that no one who was asked could say a door, let alone an alcove, existed beyond the entrance to the shop. François slid a key into the lock and motioned her ahead of him. She went carefully up the stairs, feeling her way after the bright snow light.

“In the morning,” he said, unlocking one of two doors when they reached the second floor, “the smell of baking bread fills the apartment and lingers all day long. It’s the most comforting smell in the world.”

It was making her hungry. François ushered her over the threshold, leaving the door open as he showed her about his home. Small, neat, smelling of bread and sweet pastry, its simplicity made her want to smile and weep at once. The lavatory was shared with the other tenant, a little old woman who brought leftovers from next door almost every day. “She fears I don’t eat well,” the boy confided, chatty with nerves but utterly charming for it. “I ask you, how does one live above a boulangerie and not eat well?”

“I’m not good at riddles,” she replied, unable to disregard the single bed in the corner. She confronted him. “François, have you ever been with a woman?”

He blushed so fast and so violently that she had her answer before he could lie. She thought he might stammer a bit or stay quiet, but he did neither. “I didn’t bring you here for that.”

“I know. I wouldn’t have come otherwise. I can’t repay you for your kindness.”

“Accepting it is payment enough. I want you to be safe and—and—” He cut himself short, clearing his throat and half-turning to the door. “I must get back before Pierre dismisses me. My home is yours, mademoiselle. Please, make yourself comfortable.”

“Should I be here when you return?”

He turned back, suddenly unable to make his eyes meet hers. “I hope you will, but that is up to you. There is no obligation, mademoiselle. I have only wanted to do something kind for you.”

“You do that every night, François. You make the best café au lait in France, let alone in Paris. I’m sure that no one else savours it as dearly as I do.”

“I don’t make it for anyone else,” he said, softly. His eyes came up at last, sky blue and shining. “I make it only for you.”

She smiled. “Je sais. Merci.”

He nodded, suddenly awkward, and turned to go.

“François—”

He faced her again, his blond brows raised above those sweet eloquent eyes.

“You said you want me to be safe and—something. You didn’t finish.”

“I don’t know your name,” he said.

“They call me Anise.”

“I know what they call you. That is not your name.”

“No,” she allowed, suddenly fearful of this intimacy. She had come to Paris on the heels of romance and been dismayed. Disappointed. Disillusioned. Romance, pah. There was nothing but lust and power and misdirected dreaming. How often had she glanced past this boy and laughed at the soul in his eyes? How often had she bared her flesh and taunted him with the others who begged for it? How often had she hurt him with her carelessness, her bawdy drunken behaviour and derisive jeering, yet through it all, every night without exception, at closing time, there was the café au lait, made just for her, delivered in silence and tasting of love.

“My name is Odette,” she said.

“I want you to be safe and loved, Odette.”

“By you, François?”

“By whomever you choose,” he replied. He paused, but when she said nothing, he inclined his head and pulled up the collar of his coat. He left his key on the table by the door. She watched through the window, waiting until he appeared from the alcove and retraced their steps to the café, nodding politely to passersby and deftly sidestepping the horses in the street. He looked neither up nor back, and when he returned hours later after closing the café, the snow had stopped and she was still there.

copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig