by Serena Janes
Luc knew she would. He looked up at her gratefully, everything a little blurry because of the tears in his eyes, and raised her hand to his lips.
“Mon dieu. I’m such a fool, aren’t I?” He smiled and shook his head. “And you, as always, are so patient with me.”
Then he changed the subject. “I thought you had a date tonight?”
Anna had been seeing a lawyer for the last six months. She thought it might be getting serious.
“He had to cancel,” she said as she shrugged. “And that’s fine. I was looking forward to a quiet night anyway.”
Luc thought she’d been looking happier lately. He hoped things would work out well for her.
“You haven’t said much about Simone,” Anna said. “I’m guessing she took it badly when you told her about your American?”
Luc sighed, and looked down to inspect his fingernails. “That’s an understatement. It was pretty bad. I don’t really want to talk about it.”
“Okay. I can imagine. She’s high-strung, I know.”
Cahors was not a large city, and Anna had known Simone before Luc had begun seeing her.
He put his head in his hands and grimaced. More than high-strung. Borderline unmanageable is more like it. I think I’m lucky to have escaped.
“Well let’s just hope she doesn’t turn out to be another Marta,” Luc said grimly, straightening up. “I couldn’t handle anything like that right now.”
Anna raised her eyebrows in alarm. “Do you think she could get that bad?” Marta had made all of their lives hell for almost a year.
Luc shook his head. “No, I guess I’m just seeing the worst side of everything right now. She’ll be fine.”
Anna stood up and began to clear the table. “I think you need a break in your routine. Get away from all of this. What about a road trip?”
Luc looked up, alarmed. “But what if Joanna….?”
Anna stopped what she was doing and looked down at him. “What? Tries to contact you?”
Luc nodded, feeling even more foolish. The chances of that happening at this point were slim. And if she did, Joanna would reach him through the email address or phone numbers on the card he’d given her.
“Don’t worry. You can check email wherever you go and I’ll pick up your mail. If a letter comes I’ll email you.”
“And Daniel?” He didn’t feel good about running out on his son at this difficult time in the boy’s life. But then he hadn’t been much of a father lately.
“He’ll be fine. Your brother’s going to take them all to down to Nice next weekend—remember?”
“Oui. Oui. Okay. Good.”
Luc paused, thought about it some more, then nodded again slowly.
“Yeah. Sure. I need diversion, I guess.”
He drained his glass and got up to help Anna with the dishes.
Chapter Six
Brenda had been right. Jo was much better off at the office than she was mourning alone at home with only her dog to talk to. It felt good to be surrounded by the disinterested fellow employees of the successful Westcoast lifestyle magazine, people who’d never heard of Luc. Evenings were still very hard, but during the day Jo was so busy she could put her most of her pain aside.
She began to take an extra special interest in her colleagues’ love lives, something she’d never done before. Soon she realized that disappointed and broken hearts were the norm, rather than tragic one-off events.
One of the young graphic designers, Kayla, started coming to Jo for advice. Jo didn’t know if she should be flattered or alarmed. What did she have to teach a young woman about love? Part of her wanted to tell Kayla to go visit the Black Virgin of Rocamadour.
That’ll straighten her out! Show her a thing or two about priorities. Without gut-wrenching, heart-stopping, jean-creaming lust, there’s no point in carrying on with a relationship. No matter how good the guy looks on paper.
Instead, she said very little to Kayla, only offering her ear and the occasional stock supporting phrases every girl needs to hear when she’s doubting herself. Jo realized that although she was an emotional wreck herself, at least she wasn’t twenty any more. Twenty was tough, she remembered.
Otherwise she worked contentedly and efficiently alongside Brenda most of the time. But when it was time to write her Dordogne Valley travel piece, she began to suffer at work, as well as at home, from the pain of loss and regret.
As the days passed, her heart hurt more acutely than ever. She became adept at conjuring up an image of Luc, dark hair shining, blue eyes laughing, his sweet seductive smile with that crooked little tooth that made him all the more appealing. She could almost see him, almost smell his animal scent. She could invoke his strangely wonderful accent and his deep, gentle voice.
As the weeks slipped by she felt not less desire for a man she’d barely begun to know, but more. Her body literally ached when she realized she would never see him, hold him, again.
She studied the photographs she’d taken in the Dordogne, making paper copies of all of those with Luc in them. She taped them to the wall in her study, fashioning a little shrine. She spread the red bandana out on her desk below.
In the middle of her photo shrine she stuck a picture of the Black Virgin. After all, Jo reasoned, she was the reason everything turned out the way it had. And now the Virgin was wreaking her revenge. Punishing Jo for running away from what could be the best part of herself—her primal sexuality.
Irrational as it was, Jo accepted her punishment. She would suffer an ever-growing, inextinguishable love and longing for the only man in the world she was made for. The man she’d run away from. And who would never, ever take her back.
Where is he? What’s he doing? What did he think when he saw I’d gone? What could he think?
She wondered if Madame Guillmont, the proprietor of the gîte where they spent their last day, told Luc why she had to leave. But then she remembered that Madame probably didn’t know why she’d stolen away with James like a guilty thief. It was likely that James wouldn’t have said that Jo’s father had died. James was a very private man.
Luc must hate me now. Did he really care for me then? Or was he just feeding on the lust that was driving us both a little crazy?
And what about his other relationship? Was it over, too? What was her name? Simone?
Ten, twenty, a hundred times a day she thought that if Luc had really meant what he said to her that last time they made love, he would have tried to contact her by now.
I love you, he’d insisted. I must. How else can I explain this crazy thing I’m about to do?
She had to find a way to see him again. Clearly, he wasn’t taking the initiative.
He knew her last name. He knew the name of the magazine, Inside/Outside. If he wanted to, he could find her easily enough.
But there had been no message from Luc. No email. No snail mail.
He must have come to his senses. Realized it wasn’t love at all he was feeling for me. Only lust. Therefore temporary.
Maybe he was glad to get out of our messy little affair, she sometimes thought. And the idea made her sad.
Because with every day that passed Jo believed even more strongly that what she shared with Luc had indeed been exceptional. She looked at couples she passed on the street, or sat beside in coffee shops. Did any of those people feel for each other the way she felt about Luc? She couldn’t imagine feeling that way, for anybody, ever again. He was her perfect fit—her Yang to his Yin—and she’d left him. Without a word.
She was in hell.
Pragmatic Brenda wasn’t shy about telling Jo she was a fool to pine after Luc.
“You have to forget about him, sweetie. You have to. It’s wrecking you to mope around like this.”
“I’m not ready to give up,” Jo insisted. “How can I explain it, Bren. I don’t think you’d understand. He was the one! The perfect man for me in every way. It can’t be over yet. It just can’t.”
“But there are other ones
out there. Plenty of them. You could have any man you wanted, Jo. Or woman,” she added in a lower voice. “You know that.”
“I don’t care. Surely you can see that!”
“Exactly, and it’s killing me to see you so unhappy.”
Jo looked at her friend. Yes, Brenda was suffering, too.
But what can I do? I love him. I love him. I love him.
And it’s hell.
There was one thing she could do, Jo decided. Luc was a living, breathing human being. He lived and worked somewhere. She had to be able to track him down, somehow.
She convinced Brenda to help her work through the labyrinth of French federal bureaucracy to make an educated guess where she might find Luc’s office in his hometown of Cahors. It wasn’t a large city, and there could be only a few buildings that might house ministry offices.
Grumbling, Brenda gave in and, with the help of her computer geek nephew, soon presented Jo with copies of the kind of information she needed.
But nowhere, in any of the printouts she scanned, did Luc’s name appear. It was as if he didn’t exist.
“Maybe you dreamed him up, sweetie,” Brenda teased. But when she saw the look on Jo’s face she softened her approach. “Look. The French Feds might be quite secretive about their employees. There might be a Freedom of Information kind of restriction in place.”
Jo nodded, mute.
“Or maybe…” Brenda lowered her voice, “he doesn’t work for the government at all. You think he’s an archaeologist? Maybe he’s a truck driver, and was afraid to tell you.”
“He’s not a truck driver,” Jo said. “He’s very well educated, articulate. And he’s been to Seattle. He delivered a paper at a symposium at the U of W a few years ago.”
“On what?”
“The archaeology of the Scottish lowlands,” Jo answered.
“Okay, okay. Just checking. It’s pretty weird that we can’t find a trace of him, though. What’ll you do now?”
Jo didn’t know. After checking through several possibilities, she carefully copied out the mailing address of the office Luc was most likely to use, if he in fact did work in Cahors.
In the weeks since she’d been home, she’d been composing a letter to him in her head. And the more she worked on it, the more she came to see that it wasn’t the kind of letter she could send as an email. It was right, rather, that she write her words out on a piece of paper, buy a stamp, and mail it the old fashioned way.
One night, after a quick dinner and a shortened walk with Sammy, she cleared a space on her kitchen table and wrote her heart out. It wasn’t a long letter, but in it she told Luc she loved him, briefly explained why she did what she’d done, and asked for his understanding and forgiveness.
Then she ripped it up. If her letter was being sent blind to some anonymous office mail clerk, with no promise of reaching its addressee, shouldn’t it be a little less personal? She quickly redrafted a shorter note. It said essentially the same thing, but in veiled terms.
She added her return mailing address, her email addresses, and several telephone numbers. She didn’t want to be accused of not making herself available.
Finally, just in case her letter went to the wrong place, she wrote another one, care of Madame Guillmont. The old lady was very fond of Luc, and would likely forward him his mail. She carefully worded a short note to Madame, enclosed Luc’s letter inside a sealed envelope and addressed the whole to the gîte in Martel.
On her way to work the next morning, hope and fear welling in her chest, she dropped the two envelopes into a mail box.
If I don’t hear from him within a few weeks, I’ll know either he lied to me about his employment or he hates me.
While she waited for a response she grew even more agitated. She became extremely picky about her food and couldn’t eat much of anything. As a result, she had no energy. Nightly insomnia became the norm, rather than the exception. Every few days she visited her mother and swam laps in the family pool, trying to tire herself enough to sleep. She took Sammy on long walks every day after work.
After the two-week mark had passed without a word, she sank into complete despair.
He doesn’t want me.
It was horrible. Her stomach hurt all the time and she began to look like hell—too thin, with dark circles under her eyes, hair and eyes dull with mourning. But now she really had to face facts.
She knew she had to give up the hope that she would be reunited with the only man in the world she wanted. In the old days women could join a convent, shut themselves away from the world and suffer their unrequited love in silence. But Jo had no such luxury. She had to get up every morning, walk Sammy, then go into the office where she’d be bombarded with supportive questions and comments from her colleagues, who liked her, and her boss, who loved her.
And then there was her family. And friends. Everyone supported her through this difficult time, standing by, watching her heart break a little harder with each silent passing day. But none of them could help her.
By now James had melted silently into the background. Jo had given him so little thought that she’d barely noticed when he stopped calling and emailing. She was completely focused on her feelings for Luc.
Finally, it was Brenda who intervened, saving her from herself. She started by telling Jo how much she liked her work.
“Your pieces on the Dordogne are really great. I’ve been thinking about doing some follow-ups.”
Jo simply nodded, too sad to enjoy the praise. Brenda said she was interested in the Black Virgin angle of Jo’s articles.
“Maybe the two of us could go to Spain,” she said over lunch one afternoon. Jo was trying to eat an enchilada, without much success. “There’s got to be some Black Virgins there.”
Jo looked up from her plate. Spain. Why not? I’ve got to move on.
Not really caring where she went or what she did, Jo mustered some fake enthusiasm for the sake of her best friend. And so, not even a month after she came home from France, she took poor Sammy back to stay with Alex and found herself on a jet headed to Seville. With Brenda.
Jo and Brenda had met at university. Jo was finishing her undergraduate degree with a major in fine arts and journalism, and Brenda was in the middle of her MBA. Jo often thought it was unlikely two such dissimilar women would ever become friends, but they did. Their friendship was an unequal one, however. Brenda grew to love Joanna, as deeply as any lover. As soon as she realized the depth of her friend’s longing, Jo came clean. She was completely hetero, she explained one night over two bottles of Procecco. And she didn’t see that changing any time in the conceivable future.
Jo loved Brenda, too. She loved her wit and uncompromising style, and her tough, cruel-edged sense of humor. And she loved the way that Brenda was always there for her. Brenda gave Jo the closest thing to the unconditional love she received from her father, and after his death Jo grew even closer to the feisty little woman who would never ask too much of her, yet give her everything.
Brenda’s family had money, and with their help she created Inside/Outside, making Jo an offer she couldn’t refuse—editorial freedom, a generous salary, and flexible hours. And the two women made a good professional team, despite their close personal attachment. Both were thrilled when the magazine began to grow in circulation. It was almost as if it was their child, conceived together and then released into the world.
This was one of the reasons Jo was not in a hurry to accept James’ marriage proposal. He wanted her to quit the magazine. And Brenda.
Once they got married, James thought Jo would give up her job, get pregnant and focus on making a life with him and their family.
Then it would be goodbye Brenda.
But things hadn’t worked out for James. Jo thought he must have given up on her when he realized the only way he’d be able to see her was to stalk her.
“And I know his pride won’t take him down that road,” Jo said to Brenda as they sipped Rioja at thirty-five thousan
d feet and plotted their trip along the Ruta de la Pueblos Blancos—the Route of the White Villages in Andalusia.
Jet lagged and slightly hung over, Jo and Brenda dragged themselves through a walking tour of Seville on their first day in Spain. The city was crowded with tourists, and very hot. They stood uncomfortably in long line-ups to see the grand cathedral and the spectacular Alhambra.
Then they made a side trip to the tiny church of San Lorenzo to see a painting of the Black Virgin of Rocamadour. As Jo studied her wizened little face, a flood of regret and grief washed through her. The virgin still held sway over her body, Jo knew, but she’d be damned if she’d let her control her head for the rest of her life. She knew she had to break free of the grip of the Virgin’s cult and begin to enjoy her life again.
Without Luc.
That night, over a quiet seafood dinner, the two tourists reviewed the many hundreds of photos they’d shot throughout the day, disappointed at their lack of skill.
“Especially the interiors, “Brenda said with a frown as she flipped through Jo’s shots of the cathedral’s magnificent nave. “They’re too dark and grainy. Shit, shit, shit. I don’t know enough about cameras to know if I should just buy a better one, or what kind to get, or anything.”
“Neither do I,” said Jo, her attention momentarily caught by a good-looking man seated at the bar. Men in Seville were so well-groomed, she thought. Even average-looking men seemed handsome to her in their neat suits and expensive shoes.
Looking back at her friend she offered, “I’m sorry I’m no help. I’m such a klutz with cameras.” But she was only half paying attention to Brenda. She was thinking that it was good to catch herself looking at men again. Apparently she wasn’t ready to roll over and die after all.
Yes—life has more to offer me. Maybe it’s time to move on.
Over a sinfully rich flan, Jo and Brenda agreed they needed to hire a professional photographer to accompany them on their tour of the White Hill Towns. “It’d be a bonus if he or she could drive, too,” Brenda said.