“Indeed.” Max grinned. “But while Ponce de León went looking for the secret of eternal youth, we are going in search of the opposite. And for that, campers, we shall have to make our way to Austria.”
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
Five Years Ago
The group arrived in Vienna just as the cafés were filling up with the afternoon crowds. According to Max, there was only one criterion for choosing a café in Vienna—the ruder the staff, the better the coffee. But with most of the cafés already overflowing, he had to relax his standards. He led the group to the back of a 1950s-style café that had enough empty seats.
Shelley waded through the hum of conversation and the clinking of coffee cups. She settled into a dark bentwood chair. The troposphere of cigarette smoke coiled over her head. She tugged at her ponytail and sniffed; she was going to have to shampoo twice that evening.
The waiter smiled and politely offered her a menu. She resigned herself to a cup of freshly brewed mud.
Max ordered a round of mélanges.
“So where is this mysterious Fountain of Old Age, Max?” Jonathan arranged his heft on a chair made for someone half his size. “I, for one, would like to keep a fair distance from it.”
“Oh, come now, Jonathan, I’m sure a splash or two won’t hurt. What are a few good years in exchange for a little adventure, eh?” Max said.
“That, my young friend, would determine how many years I can still spend out of adult diapers,” Jonathan said. “But why go all the way to Austria to learn how to grow old when you have two fine elderly specimens right here?”
Rose turned up her chin. “Speak for yourself, dear.”
The waiter returned and gingerly set their cups on the table.
Shelley braced for sludge and took a sip. The brew of steamed milk and strong coffee had not been diluted by the waiter’s charm. She licked the froth off her upper lip.
“If you don’t mind my asking, Jonathan,” Simon said, “I was wondering if you feel any different now than when you were younger?”
“That’s an interesting question.” Jonathan took a sip of his coffee. “I’ve certainly never been happier than I am now, though I think that has more to do with finding my Rose than with my age.” He gave his wife a squeeze. “She keeps me young.”
“Spinach blended with wheatgrass and carrots helps, too.” Rose winked. “And sex—at least thrice a day. Or four when there’s nothing good on the telly.”
Dex snorted coffee onto his lap.
The group’s laughter stirred the cloud of smoke hovering over their table.
“To reruns.” Brad raised his cup.
Max tipped his cup to Shelley and grinned. “I’ll drink to that.”
The evening’s church bells pealed through the cobbled Austrian streets. It echoed, Shelley thought, from a time and place far more distant than the monastery Max parked in front of.
Dex whipped out his camera, then positioned Shelley in front of the compound’s yellow and cream facade. She tried not to look too irritated as he snapped away. His little crush on her was starting to get annoying.
“Campers, welcome to the Benediktinerabtei unserer Lieben Frau zu den Schotten,” Max said.
“Um, Max, you lost me at Beneweinerschnitzel.” Dex set his camera down.
Shelley escaped to Max’s side.
“The Benedictine Abbey of Our Dear Lady to the Scots, also known as the Schottenstift or the Scottish Monastery,” Max said, “which is rather curious considering that it has never had a single Scottish monk in it.”
“Why the name, then?” Simon asked.
“The monastery was founded in 1155 by Duke Heinrich II and was run by Irish monks who came from a monastery in Regensburg, Germany. At that time Ireland was known in Latin as ‘Scotia Major,’ or ‘new Scotland,’ and so the Germans called the Irish ‘Schotten’ or ‘Iroschotten.’ During a period of reform in the 1400s, the Irish monks were replaced by Benedictine monks from Austria,” Max said. “Thus we have standing before us an eight-hundred-and-fifty-year-old misnomer: a Scottish monastery without any Scots, founded by German-Irish monks given the boot by the Austrians who presently occupy it.
“As this is a working monastery, campers, I have to inform you that their accommodation guidelines are, shall we say, conservative,” he continued. “Only married guests are allowed to share rooms.”
Simon smirked. “Don’t worry about it, Max. I’ll be happy to fall asleep to the clanging of bells instead of Brad’s snoring for once.”
“And I for one am positively ecstatic at the thought of not waking up in a puddle of Simon’s drool,” Brad said. “Plus, any place without hay is a welcome upgrade from sleeping in a cow stall.”
Shelley bit down her disappointment. “You certainly have a penchant for choosing the most unusual places for us to stay in.”
“Isabelle’s ancestors were a diverse lot, as you probably know by now,” Max said. “And at one point in this monastery’s colorful history, one of them happened to be its abbot.”
Shelley studied the ceiling. It was white, like all of the walls in the spartan quarters of the Benediktushaus, the monastery’s guest facility. Her room was bare except for the hard bed she was lying on, a pale wooden desk, a nightstand, a crucifix, and the quiet that filled every inch of the small space. The silence soaked through her faded college sweatshirt, under her teddy bear pajamas, and deep into her skin. It drew her into herself and into a place of pause—which might have been a good thing, Shelley sighed, if only she could reflect on something other than Max’s long fingers. Foot rubs would never be the same again.
Mustard-slathered bratwurst. The thought popped into her head randomly and Shelley grabbed on to it like a lifeline. She forced herself to ponder how she might actually resemble the sausage if she walked over to the room’s only window in her red sweatshirt and wrapped herself in the yellow drapes. It was either that or succumb to less pious fantasies involving the same window, Max, and her—without the sweatshirt or anything else. She grabbed a Bible and attempted to lose herself in the book of Genesis. The fact that she did not understand a word of German made it more challenging. A loud knock startled her from chapter 2, verse 18. She fell off the bed.
“I think I may have heard the distinct sound of a bottom getting bruised,” Max said when Shelley opened the door.
“I, uh … dropped the Bible.” Shelley ignored her throbbing tail-bone. “You’re not supposed to be here, you know.”
“Glad to see you, too.” He ran his fingers through her hair. His fingertips grazed her nape. They lingered there.
All thoughts of bratwurst vanished along with Shelley’s ability to string words into a sentence. “Did … you … um, anything … want?”
“Yes.” Max shut the door.
A FLIGHT TO THE PHILIPPINES
Now
Oh … I see,” Paolo said, “so that’s when you and he … uh …”
“Talked,” Shelley said, “until morning.”
“Of course.” He grinned. All traces of his earlier strife were gone. He seemed as relieved as she was to move farther away from the Basilisk.
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
Five Years Ago
Shelley had steeled herself for a confession about three wives, a mistress, and ten illegitimate children when Max had said that there was something he needed to tell her. He, unfortunately, was not in any rush to put her out of her misery. Her insides twisted as they sat wordlessly on her narrow bed in the only way two grown adults could fit—with Max leaning against the headboard and her back wedged tightly against his groin.
The beginnings of a cramp twitched in her thigh. She shifted to her side and let her face rest on Max’s chest. His heart echoed in her ear. Its rhythm soothed her, lulling her to the edge of sleep. Talking didn’t seem so important now.
“Egg timers,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“Egg timers. They’re absolutely brilliant, don’t you think?”
“Um, I guess so.�
� Shelley yawned. The miniature hourglass had not helped her cooking much, but it was quite handy when she played Boggle.
“It reminds you of what’s really important.”
“It does?” she asked. Max’s revelation was turning out to be less than anticlimactic, but she would take his musings on egg timers over confessions of a sordid past any day.
“Absolutely, luv.” He fished a tiny hourglass from his shirt pocket.
“Uh … you carry an egg timer with you?”
“Doesn’t everyone?” Max turned the timer on its head. The white dust began to spill through the glass funnel, and he held it in front of her. “What do you see?”
“Sand.”
“Yes,” Max said. “And?”
“More sand?”
“And the past,” he said.
Shelley furrowed her brow at the timer.
“Tiny grains of choice bumping into one another, flowing into what happens next.” Max set the timer on the nightstand. “It’s fascinating to watch.”
“And all this time I was just waiting for eggs to boil.” She watched the sand free-fall and realized that there was a strange truth in what Max had just said. The smallest of the decisions she had made in the last few days had helped to funnel her to this place—to this bed—grains away from whatever was going to come next.
Max leaned forward. Shelley felt his breath on the side of her neck. The tip of his nose traced the curve of her shoulder to the soft spot behind her ear. Her pulse throbbed in her throat.
He tilted her face to his.
Shelley closed her eyes and wondered if a monastery was a more suitable place to kiss than a hayloft. She bit her lip to stop it from quivering. Max kissed it free and explored its edges. She ached for more. If he kissed her any more slowly, she was going to burst from need.
Max saved her. He teased her mouth open and drank her in—deeply and urgently—with a thirst Shelley thought she would never fill. She pulled away, panting. She glanced at the egg timer. The sand had settled at the bottom of the glass. “What happens … next, Max?”
He whispered into her hair, “It starts again.” He flipped the egg timer over.
She closed her eyes, then took an extra deep breath for good measure and waited to be drained a second time.
Sand continued to pour.
She peeked through an eyelid.
Max reached for the egg timer and set it in her hand. He leaned back against the headboard. “Yesterday flows into tomorrow, tomorrow tips over to yesterday.”
Tomorrow? Yesterday? She exhaled. Perhaps he really had come to talk. Perhaps they were not yet as far from the barn and the Basilisk as he would have liked. Would they ever be? She rolled the glass between her fingertips, finding its narrowest point. “And how about today, Max? Where is ‘now’ in your egg timer?”
He smiled and wrapped his arms around her waist. “You’re holding it, luv.”
Shelley felt the thin, delicate nature of the glass tube. She felt the sand rushing past the tips of her fingers. Three minutes had always been an eternity while waiting for breakfast to cook, but as she lay in Max’s arms, she saw how brief the seconds actually were. This was how fleeting the years with her father must have felt for her mother, she thought. Her fingers trembled. The hourglass slipped from her grasp, scattering sand all over the floor.
A FLIGHT TO THE PHILIPPINES
Now
Have you ever been in love, Paolo?” Shelley twisted the gold wedding band on her finger.
“I’ve had a few girlfriends. Why?”
“Did you ever imagine spending your life with any of them?”
He shifted in his seat. “Um, to be honest, I’m not sure if I’m built for that kind of commitment.”
“That’s another thing you have in common with Max, then.”
Paolo frowned. “Huh? What do you mean? Max married you …”
Shelley pulled off her wedding ring, revealing the pale band of skin where the ring had embraced her every second of the last five years. She handed it to Paolo. “Look at the inscription.”
“ ‘Now,’ ” Paolo read out loud.
“Most people promise each other forever when they get married. Max and I promised each other ‘Now.’ ”
“Why?”
“Because it’s breakable,” she said, “and the only thing you can really hold in your hands. It’s where the gnomon’s shadow falls on the sundial. Back then, I thought that it was romantic.”
“And now?”
“Now I realize that it was the only promise Max could make.”
VIENNA, AUSTRIA
Five Years Ago
The group convened early the next morning outside the monastery’s library. Shelley rubbed her eyes. She had found it difficult to sleep after Max had left her room, and when she did, she dreamed of sand slipping through her fingers. Breakfast had been a supreme struggle to keep from taking a nosedive into her muesli. A black-cloaked monk unlocked the library’s door.
Ginger steeped with cloves. She caught its scent in the spiciness of the weathered leather-bound pages that surrounded her. The smell reminded her of her father’s evening ritual up until the time he needed to use a feeding tube. Her mother continued to brew it for him just the same. And when he had gone, she still set a cup on his bedside table. Shelley remembered watching and breathing in the fragrant and frail wisps of steam rising from it. That was the only time she allowed herself to miss her dad. Her mother mourned him enough for the two of them. She didn’t think their house could hold any more grief. She was glad to get away. She scanned the library, desperate to remind herself of how far she was from home.
Shelley tilted her head upward to take in the bookshelves that reached as high as the rows of white columns along the library’s two-story-high marble hall.
“This, campers,” Max said, “is where we will find the elusive secret of growing old.”
“Not as elusive as I would like,” Jonathan said. “It seems to have found me quite easily.”
Max smiled. “I stand corrected. You are quite right, Jonathan. Growing old is arguably neither a secret nor elusive. What we are here to discover is not the secret for aging but for escaping youth.”
“I’m not sure that’s something I want to find,” Dex said.
He smiled, but the stiffness in his tone told Shelley that he was genuinely less than thrilled about Max’s next story. She could understand why. She wasn’t a big fan of aging herself.
Since she’d left Ohio, she felt she had been playing catch-up with life. She thought that life in London would be different from the one she had left. She would be different. Living with her mom had been like living in a vacuum-sealed time capsule. Every cup, saucer, and vase had stayed in the exact same place ever since her father died. In London, Shelley was determined to do the opposite—to move, to breathe, to rearrange furniture. Living in a shoe box that only contained a futon, a microwave, and an old couch she had found in the street proved to be somewhat of a design challenge. She made do by moving around cushions and plastic plants—anything to make her believe that she wasn’t stuck. She was done with a life that alternated between the pause and rewind buttons.
Max pulled out one of the books from the shelf. He handed it to Jonathan. “This is only a reproduction, of course. The original is kept in the archive because it’s now too fragile to handle.”
Jonathan opened the book, revealing its illuminated pages. “It looks like a prayer book.”
“It is. It’s a book of hours. It contains the monk’s daily prayers,” Max said. “Please turn to the last page.”
“It’s in Latin,” Jonathan said. “Is this another prayer?”
“It’s an exact copy of the original’s explicit, a personal message a scribe would write after he had completed a book,” Max said.
“Was this written by Isabelle’s ancestor?” Dex asked. “What does it say?”
“It was written by one of the novices under him. It is the secret we have come to discover
,” Max said.
“Well, come on,” Shelley demanded, her voice tense. “Tell us what it says.”
“What’s the rush?” Max took the book back from Jonathan and stuffed it into his backpack. “It’s such a lovely day I thought we might do a little shopping first.”
“I don’t think the monks will be too thrilled with that.” Simon eyed the book peeping out of the flap of Max’s bag.
“Shopping?” Max asked. “Why would they object to that?”
“I was referring to the book you are about to steal,” Simon said.
“Don’t be silly, I’m just borrowing it for the day,” Max said. “I just haven’t told the monks yet.”
“But …” Simon said.
“Oh, will you relax, Simon? I’m sure Max will return it when we’re done,” Brad snapped. He turned to Max with a conspiratorial grin. “Now, Max, what were you saying about shopping?”
• • •
The air buzzed with sounds and smells spilling over from the striped canopies of the Naschmarkt, Vienna’s oldest and largest outdoor market. The fresh scent of organic produce was as crisp as the thrill of finding a good deal. Shelley breathed in the bustle.
“Let’s meet back here in half an hour, campers. Here are your lists and shopping money.” Max handed out little sheets of paper and euros. “Rose, you and Jonathan are in charge of the vegetables, herbs, and spices. Simon, you and Brad will get the figs and grilled octopus. Dex, your assignment is the cheese and wine. And, Shelley,” he said, “you’re getting some old cock.”
“But I thought Jonathan was coming with me?” Rose winked.
“I do hope you are referring to another Austrian misnomer, Max,” Shelley said.
“I suppose you’ll just have to wait and see.”
The heady scent of Eastern delicacies mingled with the warm aroma of freshly baked artisan bread. Shelley walked through the market’s endless lanes, finding it impossible to decide which stall carried the freshest, ripest of, well, anything, really.
Before Ever After Page 13