A French Kiss in London

by De Ross, Melinda

  In such a short time, that woman had become the center of his universe. He relived each moment spent with her, beginning with the instant he’d first seen her, looking so distant and cool. He reminisced every small progress and the necessary efforts to remove her shield of indifference. Every time they had made love…

  Had everything been in vain? When he’d ran like a teenager to buy the ring, he was so sure that Linda loved him, that she would say I do, that she wanted to become his wife. Yet now, he wasn’t sure of anything. He was only conscious of an utter desolation, a state of uselessness and misery, which had descended over him.

  He raised his head slowly, looking around his office, aware stronger than ever of all the pressure and responsibility weighing on him. He’d spent all morning with the clinic’s manager, as well as with a couple of his most trustworthy workmates. He’d told them Jean-Paul’s story and they had put together a plan of action.

  Suddenly, he was seized by an impulse to get away from all this, to walk away, maybe to run away—even if that made him a coward in his opinion. But it was a choice between taking a break far from everything, or losing his physical or mental health—entirely or partially, he didn’t know and didn’t want to find out.

  He stood up, abruptly. Without a backward glance, he got out of his office, slamming the door behind him.

  Chapter Twenty

  Linda took another sip from the whisky glass on the counter, staring alongside Pirata at the diamond rising from the tiny velvet box placed right in front of her. After another swallow, she winced in disgust. She didn’t like alcohol and had never gotten drunk in her life. But now she was doing her best. She couldn’t manage to pass the first glass. However, it was only six o’clock in the evening. She had all the time in the world.

  She inhaled deeply and grabbed the glass firmly, trying to suppress another involuntary grimace, when the shrill of her new phone broke the silence. She looked at the display and closed her eyes. It was Giovanni.

  No matter how much she adored her brother, this was probably the only time in her life when she didn’t want to speak to him—or to anybody else, for that matter. Knowing he’d worry if she didn’t answer, she sighed and reached for the phone.

  “Hello.”

  “Hey, Sis, how are you?” he asked cheerfully. “I tried to call you last night, but couldn’t. I was beginning to worry.”

  “Uh, my old phone broke. Fortunately, I managed to save my memory card and kept my phone number. How are you, fratello mio?” she asked, struggling to conjure, or at least fake a good disposition.

  Giovanni wasn’t easy to fool. He knew his sister too well. Even with a few thousand miles between them, he immediately felt that something was wrong.

  “What happened?” he asked her, this time in a dead-serious tone.

  After a few moments of silence, she lowered her head on the counter with a soft thump.

  “Oh, my darling brother…I’d give anything to have you here with me. You’ve no idea how much I need you to hold me.”

  “Talk to your brother, baby. Tell me what’s wrong,” he pleaded, attempting to transmit to her his spiritual warmth, emanated only by his voice in the receiver.

  She took another swallow of whisky, then said on a gust of breath, “I’m a wreck, darling. I had a wonderful man, but I’ve ruined everything. Now, I doubt he even wants to know I exist. And he’s damned right to feel that way. I have extremely bad luck in every relationship. I’ve come to think love is just not for me. Maybe I’m too much of an idiot to deserve something so beautiful.”

  Giovanni remained quiet, while his sister told him about Gerard, about their relationship and the way it had ended. After she fell silent he said, “You’re right in one regard, Sis. It pains me to say it, but you’re a little idiot.”

  Although she had made that statement earlier, Linda protested defensively.

  “You would have reacted just the same if you’d seen what I’d seen, and you know it, Giovanni. If you’d see your girl mouth to mouth with another man, the first thing you’d do wouldn’t be to stop and ask yourself if there’s a logical explanation.”

  “True, but that’s not what I was referring to when I called you a little idiot.”

  “What then?”

  She took another mouth full of whisky and refilled her glass.

  “After the man explained what happened and asked you to marry him, instead of begging him to forgive you and say I Do a thousand times, you let him walk away thinking you didn’t love him enough to become his wife. Don’t you think this is a demonstration of supreme stupidity?”

  “I’ve no idea. Is it?” she asked Pirata, rubbing her nose against the cat’s pink one, surrounded by white whiskers. She burst out laughing, finding this scene utterly hilarious.

  “Linda, what the hell are you doing?” her brother snapped, sounding alarmed by her strange behavior.

  “Ah, nothing. I’m just drinking a glass of whisky. I was thinking I might try to get drunk and I believe I’m on my way,” she giggled. “It tastes horribly, but it’s…the-ra-peu-tic,” she carefully emphasized each syllable.

  “Linda,” Giovanni told her in his most serious tone, the one he used with his employees. “Stop drinking, right this instant! You have my word that, if you don’t stop, I’m taking the first plane to London and I’m going to give you the mother of all beatings. Stop it right now!”

  She stopped, her glass on the way to her mouth, then she put it on the floor.

  Pirata jumped down to inspect it, his whiskers twitching, but he immediately withdrew, shaking himself in disgust.

  “All right, all right…I’ve put it down. The glass, I mean. I don’t like whisky anyway, it burns my throat.”

  Giovanni sighed. She could almost visualize him banging his head against the nearest wall. She began laughing once more at this supremely amusing image.

  “Listen to me carefully,” he ordered, accentuating each word. “Go and sleep. In your bedroom. In your bed. Not on the floor, not on the stairs. Tomorrow when you wake up, you’ll feel horribly. But you deserve it. After you restore yourself with a cold shower and two Aspirin, go and see Gerard. Tell him how much you love him, for Heaven’s sake! Tell him everything you’ve told me. Ask him to forgive you for doubting him, for letting your past stand in the way of your relationship. Do you want to marry him, Linda?” he asked, knowing that, generally, alcohol brought to surface truths hidden deep into drunken people’s subconscious.

  “Yes, Giovanni. I do, with all my heart. My life simply has no purpose without him. Not even my work, nothing brings me joy if he’s not there to lighten my life,” she said, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Then tell him that. Not now,” he added quickly. “I don’t think it’s prudent at all to drive, or speak to anyone at the moment. But tomorrow, when your mind will be clear, go and look for him. Tell him you want to marry him. And then call me. Got that?”

  “Yes. Thank you, my darling, I wish so much that you were here…”

  “I will be, at your wedding,” he pledged. “Now go and sleep. Promise?”

  “Promise. I love you, mio fratello.”

  “I love you too, cara mia. Sleep well.”

  She put down the phone, then came to her feet slowly. The counter’s triangular surface seemed to rotate and transform itself in amusingly abstract ways. Supporting herself against every object of furniture, and laughing even as tears trailed down her cheeks, she climbed the stairs to her bedroom.

  Once she got there, she promptly fell face down on the bed. Her last coherent thought was that her sheets still wore Gerard’s perfume.

  She wasn’t sure what had awakened her the next day—the strong light coming through her windows, or the dull pain threatening to split her forehead in two. She opened a cautious eye and rolled it with dizzying pain toward the nightstand clock. It was past lunchtime. She was still face down on the bed, fully clothed. At first, she wasn’t capable to remember even her own name, but slowly her awareness
installed, and with it her memory.

  When she reconstituted all—or nearly all—the facts of last night, she groaned and reached for a pillow to bury her head underneath it.

  Pirata, who was probably stalking her for hours, took advantage of this miraculous moment of lucidity and started caterwauling, attacking her eardrums.

  “Hush,” she begged him, wishing badly to simply dissolve into the mattress. She lifted her head with a deliberation as agonizing as the vertiginous pain in it. She even prayed for that infamous object to slide off her shoulders at once and roll under the bed.

  The sense of responsibility prevailed. Moving with the same cautiousness, she dragged herself to the kitchen and fed the cat, who was still meowing accusingly. After that, she managed to get back in the bedroom. She undressed, swallowed a couple of Aspirin tablets and crawled under the shower, letting the almost cold spray bring her body in a state of functioning, by using shock therapy.

  After fifteen minutes of alternating cold and hot water, she got out of the bathroom feeling considerably better. The Aspirin took effect over her headache, but over her stomach as well, so she ate a croissant with orange-jam.

  She returned to the bedroom and stopped in front of the mirror, where she studied her face carefully. The blue eyes staring back at her were red and shadowed, making an unpleasant contrast with her pale, tired skin. Her lower lip hadn’t healed. It still had a red, ugly mark, and so did her knuckles, from when she’d smashed her fist against Gerard’s Jeep.

  She lowered her gaze to the jewelry box straying among her cosmetics. For the first time she took out the ring. In a reverential gesture, she slowly slid it on the fourth finger of her left hand. It fit snugly, that fine gold circle with its perfectly proportioned diamond. Gerard knew so well each inch of her body. He had probably measured her finger discretely when she was unaware.

  Tears threatened to flood her eyes again, but she blinked them back. She squared her shoulders and began aligning her makeup kit. She didn’t stand a chance of succeeding in what she’d set her mind to do looking like this.

  She applied the makeup thoroughly, covering as much as possible the traces of a drunken night—an experience she wasn’t going to repeat or tell anyone about. Then she brushed her hair, letting it fall in soft, shiny waves down her back, the way Gerard liked it.

  She glanced through the window. Contrary to her first impression, the light was in fact weak and the sky covered by dark clouds. A storm announced its oppressive presence.

  She went to the closet and put on a white, knee-length dress. Over it, she pulled on a white sweater, knitted like a fine cobweb.

  Consulting her watch, she saw it was almost two o’clock. She grabbed her keys and handbag, then hurried to her car.

  She drove to the clinic, feeling her pulse accelerated and butterflies in her stomach. To her surprise, when she got there, Carolina informed her that Gerard hadn’t come to work, but had called to say he was taking a few days off.

  Perplexed, Linda paused for a moment, hands on the steering wheel, not knowing what step to take next. After a few moments, she put the car into reverse and headed toward his flat. She was afraid something was wrong. Gerard wasn’t the man to take time off, especially when he had such an important project on a roll. She thought remorsefully that she hadn’t even asked Carolina about the children, about the progress of Gerard’s treatment, and about the new formula they’d brought from Romania.

  She was going to make it up to them, she promised herself. She was going to ask him to tell her everything. The important thing was that he should be safe, that nothing bad should have happened.

  She reached his building, double-parked the car and jogged up the stairs to his flat.

  Facing his door, she took a few calming breaths, feeling her pulse beat faster than an invisible hammer in every point of her body. Even her earlobes throbbed.

  She knocked softly on his door. No one answered, so she knocked again, this time louder. She pressed the doorbell several times with no results.

  Worried beyond measure, she took out her phone, wanting to call his cell. Just then, she noticed an old man who was getting out of an adjoining apartment. The old man spotted her too. Analyzing her from head to toe, he asked, “Are you looking for someone, Miss?”

  “Yes, I’m looking for Mr. Gerard Leon.” As if it wasn’t obvious, since she was knocking on his door. “Do you, by chance, know where he is?”

  “Yes. In fact, I saw him just this morning,” replied the old gentleman, shifting an umbrella from hand to hand. “He said he was going to visit Stonehenge, but I advised him to stay home, considering the weather conditions. You see, it’s not prudent to sit in an open space or field during a storm, because…”

  “Stonehenge?” she interrupted, incredulous. “He went to Stonehenge?”

  “Indeed. I was just saying so, Miss. In spite of my advice, he told me he was determined to visit Stonehenge, though I kept trying to convince him. He has all the time in the world to go see that place in a nice weather. Not now, when it’s obvious we’ll have a nasty storm and…”

  “Thank you very much for the information,” she interrupted again and flew down the stairs, already calculating the time it would take to get to Stonehenge.

  She started the engine and the GPS, hoping that this time technology would be her friend, not her enemy. After her own estimations, confirmed by those of the guiding device, the trip was going to take a couple of hours. Once she entered the London traffic, she thought the approximate time was just an optimistic appraisal.

  Although it was barely afternoon, the light was low and the sky remained covered by clouds. A latent, oppressive tension seemed to hover in the air, which was charged with static electricity.

  When she got out of London, the road cleared somewhat and she advanced easier. She turned on the radio, in an attempt to rush time and shorten the distance quicker. She had no idea what she was going to say to Gerard. She had no plan. Everything she had was in her heart. She prayed to God He’d help her transmit to the man she loved everything she felt. With words, with facts, or simply through the inexplicable spiritual communication that connected them from the day they met.

  Lost in reveries of the moments spent by his side, she followed mechanically the instructions of the GPS. Unnoticing, she crossed the landscapes with the speed of the lightning that split the sky here and there, closer and closer, followed by booming roars of thunder.

  At one point, she gazed somewhere to her left and slowed down involuntarily. In the middle of that green abyss, the stone giants stood proud, contoured over the background of a sky covered by gray-bluish clouds, the same color of the huge megaliths. Finally, she had reached Stonehenge.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  She parked the car on the side of the road—no doubt illegally—behind Gerard’s Jeep. Then she climbed out and headed slowly, deferentially to that bizarre place, whose existence or mysterious purpose hadn’t yet been elucidated by the banal humankind.

  Contrary to her expectations, the place was deserted, no doubt due to the imminent storm. Probably today, people righteously assumed it was more prudent to stay at home instead of an open space, in the company of the stone monsters, which were sleeping their millennia sleep on this large green field.

  But are they really sleeping? And are they monsters? she wondered, flooded by a peculiar feeling. Ever since she’d had that odd experience in the Hoia-Baciu forest, she tried hard to see a beautiful, benevolent side in anything that otherwise seemed threatening or potentially dangerous.

  Detached from reality for a split second, in her mind’s eyes she envisioned a cortege of enigmatic Celtic priestesses—les halouines, undulating among the megaliths in a strange ritual dance, under the surreal light of a full moon.

  Who could know how many secrets these stone soldiers hid? How many pieces of history they’d witnessed for centuries? And how many of these had been atrocities, human sacrifices with obscure purposes? she thought gloomi
ly, shaken by a strong chill. She noticed the weak afternoon light appeared to dim with every step she took toward the stone circle. She couldn’t see Gerard anywhere, but she headed determinedly to the motionless giants.

  They seemed enormous, these mysterious monuments. Although, technically, the tallest stone wasn’t more than eight meters high, Linda had the impression that their tops—rounded by centuries and weather—entwined with the similarly colored clouds split by lightning. It was an astonishing, breathtaking sight. Perhaps in a different circumstance, the place would have seemed an apocalyptic vision. But now, when she was crossed by a strange reverential respect, the stone circle fascinated her.

  She had the inexpressible feeling that inside the circle time itself was an abstract, unstable notion. She had read, of course, the books written by Diana Gabaldon, that talented author, possessor of an extraordinary imagination and a formidable gift of words. Nothing seemed impossible here, not even fantastic travelling through time and space.

  A clap of thunder shook the skies and seemed to echo off the stone surfaces. In that instant she saw Gerard. He sat in the middle of the circle, on a stone that presumably had served as an altar for the Druids’ sacrifices. Seeing him there, still, with his back turned to her, she felt her heart pounding stronger than ever.

  She ran toward him and he turned around in surprise. For a long moment, he watched her speechless. He jumped down from the stone, then walked to her, stopping a few feet away.

  She gazed at him with such deep yearning that she felt herself melting because of her love for this man. His face was covered by stubble and dark circles shadowed his eyes. The passion and love she read in their exotic green urged her to take a step toward him. Then another.