Castle of Water

by Dane Huckelbridge

  “De rien.”

  “Sounds like it would make a beautiful story.”

  “Oui, ce sera une histoire très belle, mon chéri.”

  35

  The second time it happened was two months later, when they were together on the slender deck of the Askoy III. Barry’s fishing excursions had initially been solitary affairs, but after several trips out to the reef, he began to take note of all the sea life that skittered below in the coral. With only the one pair of contact lenses he was wearing remaining from his initial three, he was understandably reluctant to engage in any activity that might put them at risk. Sophie, however, whose vision was unerringly set at twenty-twenty, had no such compunction. When Barry mentioned the crabs and lobsters and conchs he had witnessed just a short dive from the surface, she volunteered for the job. And as such, perhaps once a week, she would accompany him out in the boat, bobbing like a pearl diver between the throws of his net to see what she might find below.

  This day in particular had been especially good, as in addition to Barry’s three netted snappers flopping on the canoe bottom, Sophie emerged from a dive with an enormous rock lobster writhing in her hands. She tossed it over the side before climbing in and wringing out her hair. Once the lobster was corralled near the prow, she reclined at the opposite end to let the sun dry her skin. Barry, meanwhile, prepared the net for another throw. A distant shelf of cloud hinted at rain, but for the time being, the day was brilliant and clear.

  “So what do you think would have happened after that first night?”

  “Hm?” Barry’s eyes were fixed on a tangle in the net, with his fingers patiently at work on the filament.

  “After the first night, and the kiss in Paris. After I find the painting. What would happen next?”

  Barry took a seat beside the twiddling lobster and the flopping fish and considered the question—weeks had passed since their first musings on the subject. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Of course I want to know. I told you the first part. Now, it’s your turn.”

  “Okay,” Barry said, continuing with the snag in his net, “I’ll tell you.”

  “Please do.”

  “Well, naturally, his visa would expire. He would have been in France on a tourist visa, which is only good for three months, so after that, he would have to go back to New York. You’d promise to write and keep in touch, but neither one of you would know what was going to happen.”

  “So what would happen?”

  “At first, nothing. He’d move into his new little studio in the East Village, you’d keep working in Paris, and the two of you would go on with your lives. But neither one of you would be very happy, and every night you’d stare at the painting he made for you, which you’d keep over your bed. One day you’d happen to walk down rue du Château d’Eau, where he used to live, and you’d decide to write him a letter.”

  “Not an e-mail or a phone call?”

  “No, letters are more romantic.”

  “God, you Americans. Why does everything have to be so romantic?”

  “Maybe we read too much Hemingway.”

  “Pfff. More like Hollywood. But go on. What does it say?”

  “That you miss him. That you want to see him again.”

  “And what does he do?”

  “He invites you to come visit him in New York.”

  “La Grosse Pomme?”

  “Yep. The Big Apple. You would have plans already to take a little vacation to Lisbon, to see your friends from when you studied, but you’d rethink it. You’ve never been to New York, you’ve only been to America once, and you do miss him quite a bit. So, instead of Lisbon, you’d buy a ticket on Air France to New York City.”

  “Yes!”

  “Indeed. And the whole flight, you’d be nervous, and you’d wonder if New York would be like it is in the movies, or completely different, and you’d wonder if you’ll still like him, or if maybe your feelings have changed.”

  “Would my feelings have changed?”

  “Nope. He’d meet you at the gate, and you’d rush into each other’s arms.”

  “But I would be very jet-lagged, non?”

  “Well, you would be, but you’d also be very excited. Like I said, it’s your first time in the city. And for your first date, he’d take you to get a real New York hot dog at Gray’s Papaya.”

  “Avec beaucoup de moutarde?”

  “With lots of mustard.”

  “And what else?”

  “To eat?”

  “Oui. Tell me, I’m starving. I want to imagine it.”

  “Of course, a hamburger at Chumley’s, the one with the buttered English muffin as a bun, and with bacon on top.”

  “More.”

  “Probably a giant corned-beef sandwich at Carnegie Deli, on rye bread with a side of pickles. Late-night Chinese at Wo Hop, crabs in black bean sauce and Peking duck. Maybe bagels at Murray’s covered with cream cheese, and fried chicken down at the Great Jones Café.”

  “Oh, la la. What time of year would it be?”

  “Winter.… No? Okay, spring. He’d take you to Central Park to see the blossoms, and then to the Met to show you his favorite paintings—you’d always argue about that, because you’d like the Hockneys and the Warhols and the Jasper Johnses, and he’d much prefer the Munchs and the Cézannes and the Gauguins. But you’d agree to disagree, and you’d talk about art and aesthetics over big cups of coffee at Caffe Reggio in the Village. And then, at night, he would show you downtown, and you would go to the seaport, beneath the big towering lights of the skyscrapers and the spindly masts of the old boats and the bridges twinkling with cars, and he’d kiss you, and you’d realize that you didn’t want to leave him, that you weren’t ready to go back to France.”

  “So I’d just stay?”

  “No, you couldn’t. You’d just have a tourist visa, too. So you’d have to go back. And saying good-bye at the airport would be terrible. But you’d both know that something had changed. And two months later, after being heartsick and miserable every single day, he’d get a surprise. You’d tell him that you found a job at an architecture firm in Brooklyn, and that you were moving to New York.”

  “Whoopee!”

  “Damn right. And you’d move in with him in his little apartment in the East Village, and he’d teach you how to throw a baseball in Tompkins Square Park, and you’d go to get pancakes covered in maple syrup every Saturday morning, and tartines and croissants every Sunday.”

  “What would the apartment be like?”

  “I don’t think it would be very nice when you first moved in. After all, he’d be used to la vie bohème and all that, you know, bare mattresses and old rickety tables. There’d be paint spatters on the hardwood floor, and the walls would be dingy, and his bathroom would be a mess. You’d get in a big fight your first week there about cleaning it up and redecorating, but finally he’d give in, and eventually have to admit that you made the place pretty cozy.”

  “There would always be fresh flowers, non?”

  “Naturally. You would keep tulips in a vase on the table, and the fire escape would be covered with honeysuckle and lavender, with a little herb garden that you would pick leaves off of for cooking.”

  “And the bedroom would have to be painted blue. Like the ocean.”

  “Of course.”

  “And we would have a record player?”

  “Without a doubt. Lots of fado records, lots of chanson, all those guys you like, Jacques Brel and Yves Montand and that Charles guy.”

  “Charles Aznavour?”

  “Yes, him, and that song you always sing when you’re taking a bath, what’s it called?”

  “‘Emmenez-moi’?”

  “Exactly, that one. You would listen to them over dinner, while you sat at your little table next to the kitchen.”

  “We would never have to eat bananas if we didn’t want to, correct?”

  “Maybe some banana bread now and then, and the occasional banana s
plit, but never more than that.”

  “And we would be happy in the apartment?”

  “Yes, very happy.”

  “Would I see things outside New York?”

  “Well, obviously. In the summer, you’d go together to the Jersey Shore, and spend the weekends in a little beach town called Avalon, where you would watch the sunrise on the boardwalk and get ice-cream cones in the afternoon. He would show you how to catch crabs with a piece of string and a chicken leg on the docks.”

  “But we probably wouldn’t eat that much seafood.”

  “No, you’re right. You’d eat steaks, mostly. Big thick sirloins you’d grill together in the backyard, until they were charred on the outside but still red and juicy on the inside, and you’d eat them with grilled asparagus, and mashed potatoes covered in butter, and you’d drink ice-cold beers and big glasses of dark red wine.”

  “This is getting better by the minute. Where else would we go?”

  “Of course he’d take you to his family’s farm in Illinois to meet his relatives and see where he spent all those summers as a kid. He’d show you the creek back in the woodlot where he used to look for arrowheads with his dad, and the cemetery beside the Baptist church with the tombstones so old you couldn’t read them, and the pond where he used to gig frogs, and you’d learn to drive a tractor with his uncle and make strawberry-rhubarb pies with his aunt and his mom and you’d go with him and his parents to Calhoun County when the peaches were ripe and you could pick them off the trees and buy them in wooden crates to take back for cobbler.”

  “Would his family like me?”

  “Yes, they’d all love you. You’d never have your French attitude with them, only with him. And even though he wouldn’t admit it, he’d kind of think it was sexy.”

  “What do you mean, ‘French attitude’?”

  “You know. The incessant pouting, the vast indifference, the insufferable nonchalance about everything.”

  “Pfff. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Hey, it’s not me, it’s him.”

  “Well, he sounds like a connard.”

  “You’re right. He is.”

  Sophie smiled, leaned across the hull, and kissed Barry softly on the scar on his cheek.

  “Je t’aime.”

  Barry blushed a deep red beneath the burnished mahogany of his face, smiled shyly in return, and resumed his work untangling the net with his sea-gnarled hands. “I love you, too.”

  With a cheerful snatch of Charles Aznavour’s “Emmenez-moi,” Sophie dipped a leg over the side and prepared for another dive. But Barry, suddenly as alert as a bird dog, stopped her. “Weather’s turning. We should probably head in.”

  Not long before, Sophie would have debated the point. After all, the sky was still a hale shade of robin’s egg, and the sun was still brightly shining. But she’d seen how Barry’s days on the water had heightened his instincts and how his nights on the island had honed his senses. So she pulled her leg in and picked up a paddle, while he undid the riggings on their tarpaulin sail. And sure enough, within minutes, as the two of them stroked their way steadily in from the reef, the turquoise waves turned steely beneath the incoming clouds, and a sudden wind sent a duo of terns reeling above them. In the rising tide of gray, a single clap of thunder tolled, a solitary harbinger of the coming rains. It rolled across the water with a resonance that brought a shiver of goose bumps across the rowers’ brown backs, and they did not breathe easy until they were pulling the canoe across the sand, once again safe at home.

  36

  The third time it happened was four months after that, in the pleasant shade of the coconut grove. It had taken considerable campaigning, but Sophie had at last convinced Barry to relocate their home from the sunbaked beachhead to the cool and breezy glade. Naturally, she had taken charge of the design, and with little more than a frame of ‘ohe bamboo, a tarpaulin, and palm thatch, she had conceived of what might be called a midcentury modern bungalow. Barry’s half-remembered Boy Scout lashings helped to keep the thing together, but the final structure, complete with porch, stone oven, and translucent blue skylight, was entirely her creation. She’d even made a wind chime using various lengths of bamboo, and at night, when the winds inevitably came, the darkness was filled with its marimba-like song.

  They were still redecorating their new house when Barry asked Sophie the question; she was in the midst of positioning one of his clamshell paintings above the doorway and didn’t quite hear him over the radio—severe storms in the region had been predicted by the weather service in Tahiti, and the shortwave was tuned to the news station in Papeete.

  “Quoi?”

  Barry lowered the volume on the radio and said it again. “I wanted to know if you’d stay in New York. At the little apartment in the East Village. You know, after you and the American moved in together.”

  “Forever?”

  “I guess. Or would you want to go somewhere else?”

  Sophie tilted her head to check the levelness of her hang, then righted her posture and gave it some thought. “Well, this girl you met in Paris would certainly miss France, even though she loves New York. And at some point, sure, you would both definitely go back to live there.”

  “Where would they live?”

  “You have to ask? Château d’Eau, of course.”

  “In a water tower?”

  “No, idiot, Château d’Eau. The same poor little street where you fell in love, and where you made your first painting of her. You’d rent the exact same apartment above the courtyard, and you’d set up the extra room as your studio to work in while she found a job at an architecture firm in Paris.”

  “A good one?”

  “The best, of course. Every fashionable boutique would beg her to design their store, and all of the best hotels would demand her services, although she would much prefer to do special community projects and small homes for people she liked. And you’d be doing well, too. Your paintings would start to get some attention. Your first public show would be at a gallery in Bastille. You’d do big canvases, huge abstract landscapes in black and white, like the ones you do up in your little cave, but unlike anything they had ever seen. People would start talking, and gradually, they would start asking about purchasing them for their collections. You would begin getting letters and phone calls from art galleries, and then museums. Little ones at first, then big ones, but the money and the notoriety wouldn’t mean that much to you. The satisfaction of painting and doing what you loved in life would be enough.”

  “Sounds a little unlikely, doesn’t it?”

  “Well, you asked, and I’m telling you. And you would have a pretty good life together, you and this woman. You would both love the old bistros and cafés in the tenth arrondissement, with all the drunks and the artists and the writers and the bobos, and with the teenagers asking for cigarettes from the tables on the terrasse, and the old men at the counter counting their coins for a pastis. You would also have picnics on the Canal Saint-Martin, with bread and cheese from the market at Chez Julhès, and watch le pont tournant open and close when the boats went by.”

  “I thought you said I was too romantic. This sounds like a very idealized version of Paris, if you ask me.”

  “Yes, I suppose, but that’s how it is. And of course, you would certainly have to meet her family, too, just like she met yours.”

  “Let me guess—she’s from the south.”

  “But of course. She’d take you to her house in the village outside Toulouse to meet her parents and her brother and her grandmother. You’d bring a bottle of good bourbon for the father and the brother, and fresh flowers for Maman and Grand-mère, and you’d all eat confit de canard by the fireplace, followed by a plate of very creamy cheese, and a big baba au rhum cake with flaming sauce. They’d have a dog named Pat that you’d try to pet even though you’re allergic, and your eyes would swell up and you’d break out in a rash and you’d be very embarrassed about it.”

  �
��How’d you know I’m allergic to dogs?”

  “Lucky guess.”

  “I see.”

  “But you would all have fun together, and you’d drink and listen to old Jacques Brel records, maybe some Georges Brassens and Yves Montand, too, like you said, and when the bourbon ran out, you’d switch to Armagnac. The next morning, you would go to the Pyrenees to see her family’s village, and you’d walk up into the mountains, through the Cirque de Gavarnie, and she would show you where her grandfather’s ashes were scattered, beneath the Brèche de Roland, because he loved the mountains so much.”

  “Do you think we’d ever get married?”

  “I think so. You’d probably ask her father’s permission, even though it was old-fashioned, and you would most likely use one of your family’s old rings to propose.”

  “Like the little ruby ring my great-grandfather gave to my great-grandmother before he left to fight in France in World War One?”

  “Yes, exactly like that.”

  “And how would I propose? Would it be a surprise?”

  “Yes. You would wait until after Christmas, and hide it in a galette des rois.”

  “What’s that?”

  “It’s a king cake. Normally you hide a little figurine inside for good luck, but you would hide the ring and make sure she got the right piece. Only she wouldn’t notice it, and she’d actually almost eat your great-grandmother’s ring.”

  “Almost eat?”

  “Yes. Because she’d pull it out of her mouth, and you’d go down on one knee and put it on her finger, and she’d say oui, oui before you even asked.”

  “Would it be a big wedding?”

  “No, I don’t think so. Just a small, beautiful wedding in the south, with both of your families and a few friends. You would have the ceremony under an olive tree in the garden behind her house, and afterward, when the sun was setting, you would all sit at a long table in the field next door for dinner. Her mother would prepare a ratatouille in an enormous pot, and her father would roast a big gâteau à la broche over a fire. To make it a little bit American, there would be a grill outside, and you would serve barbecue for the main course. Maybe some of that pie your grandmother used to bake, too.”