by Nancy Adams
“Do I know him?”
“No,” Claire said sharply. “Plus, I don’t really want to talk about the father. Is that okay?”
“Of course. I’m sorry.”
Claire grinned warmly at Paul. He was so sweet.
“Anyway,” Claire began in an earnest tone, “you do understand that only you know about it and that you mustn’t share it with anyone.”
“What a shame,” Paul exclaimed with a smirk. “I was gonna put an ad in the college paper! It’s a good job you stopped me!”
“Thank heavens!” Claire exclaimed, playing along.
“Of course I won’t tell anyone.”
“Thank you, Paul. Although you could go a little softer on the sarcasm.”
“A bit too much, huh?”
“Yeah, just a little,” Claire smiled.
“Look,” he said as he reached across the table and took her hand, “whatever you need, however I can help, I will. I’ll be there for you.”
Claire couldn’t help but beam widely and she reached her body across the table and embraced Paul in a hug.
It felt good to have someone that she could share this with.
Some form of support.
PART TWO
CHAPTER SEVEN
Six months after their initial reunion, Jules and Juliette were returning to America. Venice Beach, Los Angeles to be precise. After they’d left Santa Maria, they’d traveled alongside Claude and Margot, riding south through Colombia into Peru and then down into Bolivia, before turning into Brazil and traveling across the vast Amazonian country to Rio De Janeiro. This the two couples did entirely on motorbike, which at times was exhilarating, and at other times infuriating. Once in Rio they’d all enjoyed two weeks of fun on the beaches and in the various dancing clubs, although the senior couple—Jules and Juliette—often found themselves crawling to bed much earlier than their younger counterparts. From Rio, they’d finally flown back to LAX.
Claude and Margot had stayed behind in South America, deciding to take a trip south through Uruguay into Argentina, before returning up along the Pacific coast through Chile. They’d be another few weeks out there. Jules and Juliette were offered the chance to stay on with them, but the two were eager to end their days of transient motorbike rides through the Amazonian wilderness. They wished to stay static for a while, and Juliette missed her little beachside apartment. She’d not been there for nearly a year and missed the simple ease of having her own home. Plus, now she wouldn’t be so lonely there. She had Jules.
It was morning when the two touched down in LAX, and the sun had only just risen above the city. Moving quickly through the airport, they were soon sitting in the back of a taxi on their way home. Juliette snuggled herself into Jules’s flank and the latter smiled brightly as they moved through the early morning streets, winding through the city and out toward Venice Beach.
“Have you missed L.A?” Juliette asked him as they drove along the Santa Monica freeway.
Jules had been gazing out of the window for some time at that point.
He turned slowly to her and beamed, “Yeah, I guess. It’s been a long time.”
“How did you like Florida?”
After his release from the Louisiana penitentiary, Jules had gone to live in Florida during his year-long parole. For six months he was in a parole house living with other ex-cons who were being rehabilitated into the community. It was through his parole officer that Jules found work. After the six months, he moved into a small apartment were he lived until the day he could leave and find Juliette.
“It was okay,” Jules replied, regarding his time in the Sunshine State. “Not quite the same as the west coast. The wildlife's amazing, but the people are pretty fucking nuts! The fishing was real good though.”
“You catch any alligators out there?” Juliette asked playfully.
“Actually, it’s funny you should ask. I was working for four months with the Fish and Wildlife Service out in the swamps. It was hard work, but well paid. It’s that that allowed me to save up to come to Colombia. Anyway, we had to catch any animals that had wandered into the neighborhoods, onto people’s land. One old lady came home to find a six-foot alligator had gotten through her cat flap and was sitting in her living room. I caught that one myself.”
Juliette laughed as she imagined Jules chasing an alligator around an old woman’s lounge.
Not long after, they arrived at the apartment and Juliette let them in. They dumped their bags in the bedroom and Jules made himself comfortable in the sitting room while Juliette made them black coffees in the kitchen that adorned it. When she entered the sitting room with the drinks, she found Jules had opened the blinds of the large bay window and was gazing outside at the boardwalk and the early morning beach, his gaze journeying out toward the horizon.
“Heck of a view you got here,” he remarked as Juliette came up behind him with the coffees.
When she was beside him, Jules took one of the coffees, before returning his gaze to the view. Juliette stood next to him, sipping her coffee and enjoying the sight of the beach, which was already filling with joggers, cyclists, skaters and dog walkers, either on the boardwalk or the sand, the low sun lighting everything in a somber haze, the clumpy clouds that hung in the sky shaded by sunbeams in pinks and bronzes, flocks of seagulls scattered in the air and on the sand.
Without turning to her, Jules suddenly said, “Juliette, tell me about the time when you first knew that we were meant to be together.”
“Oh, Jules,” she let out with a gentle groan, “surely you don’t want to hear that old story again. I remember the first time I told it to you and you laughed at me.”
“Yes, but I was too young then. Too cynical toward that type of thing. But later on—especially when I was in prison—I began to see it as something wondrous. If it hadn’t been for that moment of serendipity, we’d never have gotten together. So please tell it to me again.”
“Well, if I’m going to tell stories, then I’d rather we were seated.”
Juliette went over to an easy chair that sat behind them and began dragging it over to the window. On hearing the sound of the chair scraping, Jules turned. Seeing what she was doing, he placed his coffee on a small glass table and helped her move the chair so that it was facing out the window.
“It’s big enough for two,” Juliette informed Jules as she signaled for him to sit.
“Thank God you’ve dropped a few pounds since we last met, my love,” Jules replied cheekily before sitting himself down.
“You should never joke about a woman’s weight,” Juliette playfully scolded as she sat herself delicately on his lap. “It is like her age; never to be spoken of!”
“My apologies, my love,” Jules wheezed as Juliette made herself comfortable, snuggling into his flank and pushing him to one edge of the chair, until she had her head rested neatly upon his chest.
For a while they were silent, both gazing out of the window at the horizon, the sun’s silver-streaked reflection shimmering upon the water.
“So anyway,” Jules began after their initial pause, “you was gonna tell me the story of how you first fell in love with me.”
“Yes, I was,” Juliette said warmly. “Are you sitting comfortably?”
“Always when you are by my side, my darling.”
A yawning smile opened up on her face.
“So,” she then began, still smiling, “the story of the young American kid and his silly art stall. So, the first time I ever saw you was in the cafe, catching a glimpse of you as you stood gawping at me.”
“I wasn’t gawping,” Jules let out. “The world had stopped turning. I was stunned.”
“You were gawping, Jules.”
“Perhaps a little. Anyway, go on.”
“So that was the first time. A cute guy, but nothing other than that. Plus, you looked to be in extreme poverty by the state of your threadbare suit, and at the time, I was a young girl looking for fortune. I’m afraid that as cute as you w
ere, you certainly didn’t look like a fortune!”
“Thank you,” Jules said gruffly.
“Oh, Jules,” Juliette cooed. “You can’t blame a young girl for her blindness.”
“I guess not.”
“Anyway, after that, you popped up on the street corner opposite Marco’s and the girls began talking of the charming American painter and his bad Italian. I, myself, decided to ignore you and continue with my life, merely giving you a sideways glance every so often. But that all changed one night. It had rained heavily that day and you must have lost countless pictures to the elements, scrambling about as the clouds opened up, trying to grab up your pictures and stuff them into your folder so that you could take them to shelter. I remember looking out of the window, the rain being blown sideways by angry gusts of wind, and I saw you clambering about the street trying to catch various artworks that were being blown around. Some of the other girls came and joined me on the windowsill and began giggling at the sight of your desperate attempts, others finding it sweet.”
“How did you find it? Me running around like a blue-ass fly?” Jules asked, already aware of the answer, but wanting to hear it from her own lips.
“I,” Juliette began in a solemn tone, her eyes settled upon the shimmering surf outside, “sat and watched you with a feeling of sadness pervading throughout me. Sadness at the sight of the desperate boy so far from his home, trying to make a living doing the one thing that he loved more than anything else, and not even having the weather on his side. You seemed so down on your luck and I feared that if autumn was hurting you, winter would be far more crueler. It was then, as I watched you, feeling immutably sad for this forlorn boy while the others giggled at you, that the spirit world appeared to act in the way that my mother had always told me it did.”
Jules’s countenance took on a full grin. He loved to hear of her spirit world. In his youth, it had filled him with mirth. But over the years, like all her other qualities, it only endeared her to him even more.
“Suddenly, a gust of wind blew one of your pictures from the street,” Juliette went on with her tale. “It traveled straight up in the air, spiraling across the street as if aided by some ghost, and then landed against the pane of glass that was right by my head, the sopping picture sticking there so that I could see it. The sudden appearance of it surprised me slightly. I got up and slowly stood back until I could see what was drawn on that piece of wet paper. I can tell you now that I gasped, slowly bringing my hand to my mouth. For there, staring straight back at me, was a picture of myself, of my face, and it was like looking straight into the eyes of my reflection, such was the perfection of the rendition. I’d seen portraits that you’d made of the other girls when they’d sat for you. But those pictures had captured only the general beauty and ambiance of those girls; they were full of lies. You’d flattered them too much and your skill had been in flattery rather than art.”
“Those girls only sat in front of me for a few minutes,” Jules said. “I had a little bit of time to draw them something nice that gave them a smile as they left with it, no more. But you, my love, your vision was seared upon my soul like a brand. I had all night to paint you from my mind—from my soul. Tell me about your first impressions of the portrait that glared at you through the glass.”
Juliette closed her eyes and brought her mind back to that time, to that place, the wet picture gazing at her from the window. A smile erupted upon her lips and she began, “The picture facing me on the window was a carbon copy of my countenance, every line a perfection to my whole. But there was more. It was my soul. You’d not only captured my likeness, you’d captured my soul and placed it all within the look upon my face and in my eyes. Never before in my life had I seen myself in such clarity, in such purity. I remember that tears began to fall from my eyes and the other girls began peeking at the picture themselves, gasping as they realized that it was me, all of them admiring it, until someone opened the window and carefully fished the rain-soaked picture in off the glass. I had never once sat for you. I’d barely even spent a second in your company, just passing you on my way in and out of Marco’s. But there I was in full reproduction in such a way that it looked like I’d spent the last ten years of my life sitting constantly for you. It was as if this complete stranger knew me better than any man—or person for that matter—that I’d ever met in my life. From your fleeting looks at me, you had reproduced my soul on paper.”
Jules grinned wildly and squeezed his love within his arms, Juliette nestling herself further into him in response.
“It was this,” she said from within his arms, “that planted the seed of light in my heart and urged me into your arms. The portrait was a sign.”
“And after that,” Jules continued for her, “you began talking to me at my little stall. That first time I watched you leave those big red doors and come over to me, I thought that my heart would stop for good. Whenever I’d spotted you before, you’d always headed off in another direction, but that time you came straight across and began looking at my pictures. When you turned and spoke to me, my tongue went numb.”
Juliette recalled the incident with a gentle smile.
“You stood there,” she said, “glaring at me and trying to talk. I found it so sweet that the smart-mouthed American was lost for words. I asked you if you’d like to come for coffee and you simply nodded and walked me to Luigi’s Cafe around the corner in complete silence. The whole time we walked you didn’t say a single word and kept glancing at me, before looking away when I turned to you.”
“Your presence overawed me. Heck, your presence still overawes me. Even now, as we sit here watching the sun, I feel like the luckiest guy in the world, and it’s all thanks to a gust of wind. If it hadn’t’ve happened we would have never gone to Luigi’s that first time and we would’ve never started dating, and you would’ve never saved my life.”
“The spirits were kind to us then,” Juliette remarked solemnly.
The two dissolved into silence and sat together gazing at the horizon, home together once more after nearly seventeen years.
CHAPTER EIGHT
It was the day of Jess’s fifth birthday. In the gardens that sat to one side of the Cliff Face house, groups of screaming, playful children ran everywhere along the manicured lawns. In the large swimming pool, they swam and splashed joyfully. In one corner stood a petting zoo with children feeding lambs, goats, and other little animals. All around were banners proclaiming Jess’s birthday and the garden was filled with bouncy castles, carnival games, a temporary McDonalds to serve the children with whatever junk food they desired, and a whole team of child supervisors running around after them. At least forty children raced around the place. Almost all of them had never met Jess Burgess before, and were mostly the children of prominent people within the company, shipped in to add bulk to the party list. Everywhere, mayhem reigned and children darted about, amazed by the incredible party, often walking straight past Jess without even realizing that the event was in her honor.
It was time for the birthday girl to blow out her candles. The supervisors, led by Maud, were rounding the children up and organizing them into a large crowd that stood in front of the cake, Jess standing awkwardly on the other side of it, a little embarrassed by the throng of staring faces. Among them, however, one face was missing: Sam’s. Maud told one of the supervisors to keep everyone waiting until she returned, before going off in search of the billionaire. As she did, Jess stood looking around for her absent father.
Maud made it into the house and then to the elevator. She swiped her thumb over the security pad and was surprised when the access denied tone went off and the pad shone red. She tried again, and once more it denied her access. Filled with frustration, Maud pressed the button for the lab’s intercom. At first, no answer. So Maud began tapping it repeatedly.
“Hey,” Sam’s muffled voice eventually mumbled over the intercom. “What’s up?”
“Jess is about to blow her candles out,” th
e angered au pair informed him. “And seeing as how you’ve missed all the rest of her party, I thought that maybe you could spare a minute for at least being there when she blows her candles out.”
There was no answer. Maud considered tapping her finger more and more on the buzzer, but she knew that it would be no good. In the last six months since the accident, Sam had gotten worse. He’d fallen into the habit of locking himself up in his lab at all hours and sitting drinking on his own, often sleeping the whole day and night down there. He’d spend hours watching old movies of him, Jess and Marya. Even old Cliff Face CCTV footage of his lost wife, or footage of her giving interviews on television, any footage he could find of her. He would sit in his underwear watching hours and hours of family videos. Watching it all over and over—in a loop—as he nullified his mind with alcohol.
Occasionally, he would pull up footage of Claire from when she’d stayed at the Cliff Face, accessing it from the security cameras. He’d spend hours watching her, bringing his mind back to that time. Then he would feel the shame of it all once more, feel like some sordid voyeur as he watched her, and turn it all off in disgust.
Even now, as Maud waited impatiently for an answer, he was watching videos of Jess’s former birthdays, Marya there in the background with Sam, watching over their daughter with beaming faces. It was strange that while his little girl awaited his arrival at the celebration of this latest passing of another year in her young life, he was downstairs drowning himself in the past and ignoring the real Jess in favor of the more nostalgic version of her that lay within the films.
Maud kicked the elevator door in frustration, turned and walked back out to Jess. When she reached the girl, she had the ignoble task of informing her that her daddy wouldn’t be coming.
“Why not?” Jess asked, tears welling in her little eyes.
“Because daddy’s unwell,” Maud lied. “He’s very ill downstairs and can’t come up. He’s scared that he’ll make everyone ill if he does…”