I frowned at the slices of French toast, sizzling despondently in the pan. Even though I’d given them well beyond the three minutes per side that Kaia’s recipe stated, they still looked pale and soggy. “I don’t understand why this recipe isn’t working,” I fretted. “Kaia made it seem so easy.”
“I told you to relax and not to bother.”
“I want to keep busy.”
“Maybe circumstances have you still feeling a little… distracted?” William sounded amused.
“I’m not distracted in the least.”
“Is that right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, maybe in the next batch, though, you’ll want to use those eggs you set out.”
He gestured and I spied a trio of eggs sitting next to the canned milk and opened packet of vanilla sugar.
“Oh,” I said in a less confident voice. “Those.”
“But hey, you might have come up with a new recipe—fried milk baguettes. We’ll give ‘em a try. In the meantime, why don’t you let me take over? Have a seat, sip your coffee. Relax.” He pried the spatula from my hand and nudged me gently toward the table.
He cracked the eggs into my French toast mixture, stirred it up and sliced more bread, while I sat at the table and sipped my coffee. “I need to call Christophe, too, at a more reasonable hour,” he said.
I set my cup down abruptly. “Oh, William, don’t. He’s just going to freak out. Calixte is scared shitless of me now. Honestly, I’ve got this one covered.”
William flipped the slices of French toast before speaking. “I understand what you’re saying, Fi. I know Christophe pretty well, too. But I’m doing this for him, not you. Actually, I’m doing it for me. Because, I have to be honest. I’m freaked out here. The woman he and I both love was attacked.”
It sank in that he’d just told me he loved me. We both seemed to realize this at the same time. But instead of turning red and chuckling ruefully with a “whoops, how’d that slip out?” he turned down the stove heat, sat down next to me and took my hands.
“I love you,” he said, his beautiful blue-green eyes serious and fixed on mine. “And, fine, I’m supposed to play it cool and not say that, literally the same week we became intimate. But, see, that wasn’t just ‘having sex’ for me. It wasn’t ‘a Libreville thing.’ That last night together, it was, literally, making love. And three nights later, someone tried to steal it all from us when you were attacked. Assaulted. Nearly raped. You could have been killed. So, see, I’m pretty freaked out. Frankly, I want to get in my truck, go find the kid and rough him up pretty bad. I don’t know if you can appreciate how a male in this situation might feel. Christophe will. I need him more than you do, right now.”
I stared at him, stunned. “I love you,” I said in a choked voice. “For everything.”
Not nearly as eloquent as his speech. But never had five words meant more. And judging by the way William held me tightly and kissed my forehead, he understood.
He released me with a gentle squeeze. “All right, I’ve said my bit. Now I want something from you.”
The determined glint in his eye made me uneasy. “Yes?”
“Something happened last night that you’re not telling me. What’s more, I want to know if this is in any way related to what’s been troubling you lately. Since the weekend I forgot your sister’s wedding. And don’t tell me ‘nothing.’ I know better.”
He was right. It was time.
I took a deep breath and shared everything I’d been holding back. The dance trance; the prophetic words of the woman at Henry’s village last year. Célèste’s interest in seeing how far I could go. The ease at which I’d ultimately fought off Calixte, making me believe there’d been some paranormal power involved.
William listened to it all without reaction or judgment. He’d returned to the French toast and once I finished, he drew in a deep breath. We both did. “Fi. Damn,” he said as he set the cooked slices of French toast onto the platter.
He joined me at the table, and we ate calmly as though it were any other Saturday. “You know, this milk-and-sugar one is pretty interesting,” William said, which made me laugh.
“So, I heard that Célèste was there last night, through it all,” he added.
“Yes.”
“How did you leave things with her?”
“I’ll go tonight to her neighborhood. There will be another drum circle. Will you go with me?”
“Of course I will. And what do you suppose you’ll tell her?” His voice sounded casual, but I saw the way his hand clutched his fork.
“That I’m done.”
“No more dancing?”
“Oh, I’ll still dance. I’ll always dance. But that’s all I’m looking for. A little African dancing and nothing more. No trances, no connection with a world beyond this one.”
He hesitated before speaking again. “You remember what Chuck said at the COS conference? Not to go home wishing you’d done that last thing at your post?”
“Yes, I remember.”
“… and?”
“I don’t need to. I don’t want to. Not after what happened last night. And Célèste knows that. I won’t even have to say a thing to her—she just always somehow knows.”
“You sound pretty sure of your decision.”
“I am.”
“Okay,” he said, and the relief on his face was evident.
I set my fork down. “Guillaume?”
“Yeah?”
“I’m ready to go home.”
He reached over and took my hand. “Me too.”
“Guillaume?”
“Hmm?”
“How do you leave Africa? How do you get on a plane and just fly out of here, knowing you’ll never come back?” I had trouble completing the sentence. I loved the mission like a second home. I would never see it again, after this.
“Maybe, deep inside, you don’t ever completely leave. Or maybe it’s that Africa never completely leaves you.”
“I think you’re right.”
William speared the last piece of French toast. “There’s an active African dance community in Berkeley. Every week, just a few blocks from where I used to live, they’d hold a class at the local community center. Wednesday evenings, for ninety minutes, rain or shine. They’ve been doing it for over a decade. You could hear the drums from a block away. It’s what made me put on my Peace Corps application that I wanted to be posted in Africa.”
“Will you go back to that area?” I asked him.
“I think I want to.” He spread jam on the French toast slice. “It had a very intercultural vibe. I can’t imagine going back to a place where I’m only around mainstream America. I don’t think that will ever be my thing again.”
“I get it. I don’t see myself ever settling down and staying in Omaha, or anywhere in Nebraska. As much as I can’t wait to see my family and spend some time at home. Which is a weird feeling.”
“Agreed. That’s why my plan is to spend a few weeks back home first.” He paused, set down his knife, and took a big breath. “All right, I’m going to come out and propose it. What the hell, I fast-tracked telling you I loved you.” He turned to face me. “Come out with me to California when I move out there. Check the area out. If you like it as much as I think you will, stay. Stay with me.”
“Are you serious?” I stammered.
“Dead serious.”
I drew in a shaky breath and realized that, not only could it work, but it would be wonderful. Perfect. Meant to happen. That my friend April had just sent me her own news, made William’s suggestion seem nothing short of prophetic.
“You’re not going to believe the letter I got two days ago,” I told William. “Wait. You have to see it to believe it.” I scrambled up, strode over to the desk, grabbed the letter and brought it to William. I leaned over his shoulder, rereading as he read aloud.
Hi Fiona,
It’s all still hush-hush, but I just had to tell someone! I’m taking a leap of
faith and making a huge change. Leaving New York and the ABT to move to San Francisco. One of the former principals here, Anders, a friend and a mentor to me, is taking over directorship of the West Coast Ballet Theatre, and he asked me to join him there. As a principal! My lifelong dream come true! Promise me you’ll come visit, once you’re back home? It’s so beautiful, you’ll love it.
Love and hugs,
April
William began laughing so hard he couldn’t stop. “Did you time this on purpose?” he demanded.
“I just got it Thursday!” I was laughing too. I felt giddy beyond words.
He reached up and around for me and pulled me onto his lap. “Fiona Garvey,” he murmured against my neck, “you are the most unprecedented, fascinating, amazing woman I’ve ever met. I can’t wait to see what happens to you next.”
“You’ll be the first to know,” I assured him.
He kissed me. Not the gentle, reassuring kisses of last night, but the lush, inviting kisses of our nights at the hotel, complete with hungry, roving hands that made all my thoughts fall away. The kitchen chair we were sharing wasn’t quite as comfortable as William’s hotel bed, but this was here, we were together, we’d made plans to stay together, and it all felt like a dream come true.
The things life handed you when you took that scary leap into the unknown.
THE END
Acknowledgements
Ghosts helped me write this story. I don’t know how to thank them. Literally. More on them later. For now, heartfelt thanks to the living beings who helped me craft and refine this story. To Anne Hawkins and John Dalton, thank you for your early faith in my ability to tell a good story. In the novel’s 2002 incarnation, thank you readers Sarah Marion, Grace Harstad, Kathleen Hermes, Sarah Liesching (my very first reader, hungrily devouring the pages, sometimes within minutes of completion), Donna Zimmerman, Evelyn Liesching, MarySue Hermes, Amanda Mahon, Sue Novikoff and fellow returned Peace Corps Volunteers Adrienne Pierce and Elizabeth Letts. Speaking of RPCVs, thank you for your friendship and shared memories from Gabon, 1985 to 1987, Demitris Voudouris, Sheri Soderberg Cioroslan, Chris Van Dyke, Nancy Hartmann Marosi and Jill Bouma, among others. Later Gabon RPCV friends include fellow writer Bonnie Lee Black and writer-editor Darci Meijer. I so appreciated your support and interest as I kept inching forward with my writing. Gabon RPCV Tom LeBlanc, your article and musings about bwiti and its initiations were mesmerizing—thank you. For reaching out to share information about Kader Rassoul, I am deeply indebted to RPCVs Jenny Hamilton and Suzi Bouveron. The same debt of gratitude goes out to Joel Holzman and Stacy Jupiter, for information about bwiti and Karen Phillips.
Some stories, like cheeses, are best left to age in the cellar for a good long spell. This was one such story. In the manuscript’s second incarnation, fifteen years later, my thanks go out to fellow writers Kelly Mustian, Anne Clermont, Karen Dionne, Kristina Riggle, editors Sandra Kring and Lauren Baratz-Logsted. Thank you, James T. Egan and Bookfly Design, for another brilliant job on cover art. Armfuls of thanks to my husband Peter and son Jonathan. It’s not easy to live with a creative writer, particularly one writing about complex, mystical Africa, and my gratitude to you both is as enormous as my love, which is to say, seriously enormous.
And now, about those ghosts.
In late 1992 I learned Kader Rassoul, a much-loved Peace Corps Gabon administrator, had died from injuries sustained in a vehicle accident on Gabon’s notoriously poor roads. He was wonderful, a superior who managed to be a friend, to so many. Although saddened by the news, it wouldn’t hit me with full force until 2002 when, inexplicably, the inner mandate to write a novel set in Africa consumed me, resulting in a surreal ten-week marathon as I wrote and wrote and wept (never knowing why) and completed the first draft. Kader and his too-early death were on my mind constantly. Through my attempts to connect with those who knew Peace Corps Gabon and what might have happened to Kader, I also learned about the 1998 murder of Karen Phillips, a 37-year-old Peace Corps Volunteer, who was found dead the morning of December 17th, in Oyem, in the weeds, a hundred yards from her home. The horrifying details, the murky, unknowable nature of what had transpired, stunned me. Curiously, it was only in my 2017 revision that the shattering, irreversible implications sank into me and altered my story. No, this isn’t Karen’s story, not in the least. Likewise, Kader shows up nowhere in the story. But I felt their presence behind me, within me, as I wrote, and I see their presence in the finished product. And now I better understand, in ways I couldn’t possibly fathom as a befuddled 22-year-old Midwesterner, the Africans’ firm belief that the dead do not fully leave this world.
Creative writing itself is a mystical process. Not everything that arises makes sense, or is meant to be understood. (Pretty much like living in Africa.) With this in mind, I allowed my 2017 draft’s culminating point to veer in an unexpected direction from its 2005 “completed” state. I was, in truth, reluctant to go where it was nudging me. It was a dark place, troubling, intensely uncomfortable to write. But a presence, the whisper of a female voice inside my head, said, It needs to be this. Please. Do this for me.
So I did. Which is why this book is dedicated in particular to Karen, whose murder in a foreign country dealt her and her family the rawest deal imaginable, something that breaks my heart into tiny pieces every time I ponder it. Karen would have liked my story’s revised conclusion. She would have nodded, smiled, and said, “Yes. There. Now I feel more at peace.”
More Books by Terez Mertes Rose
Off Balance, Book 1 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles http://amzn.com/B00WB224IQ
Alice thinks she’s accepted the loss of her ballet career, injury having forced her to trade in pointe shoes onstage for spreadsheets upstairs. That is, until the day Alice’s boss asks her to befriend Lana, a pretty new company member he’s got his eye on. Lana represents all Alice has lost, not just as a ballet dancer, but as a motherless daughter. It’s pain she’s kept hidden, even from herself, as every good ballet dancer knows to do.
Lana, lonely and unmoored, desperately needs some help, and her mother, back home, vows eternal support. But when Lana begins to profit from Alice’s advice and help, her mother’s constant attention curdles into something more sinister.
Together, both women must embark on a journey of painful rediscoveries, not just about career opportunities won and lost, but the mothers they thought they knew.
OFF BALANCE takes the reader beyond the glitter of the stage to expose the sweat and struggle, amid the mandate to sustain the illusion at all cost.
Outside the Limelight, Book 2 of the Ballet Theatre Chronicles https://amzn.com/B01M0NIIX0/
A Kirkus Indie Books of the Month Selection and a Kirkus Indie Top 100 Books of 2017
Ballet star Dena Lindgren’s dream career is knocked off its axis when a puzzling onstage fall results in a crushing diagnosis: a brain tumor. Looming surgery and its long recovery period prompt the company’s artistic director, Anders Gunst, to shift his attention to an overshadowed company dancer: Dena’s older sister, Rebecca, with whom Anders once shared a special relationship.
Under the heady glow of Anders’ attention, Rebecca thrives, even as her recuperating sister, hobbled and unnoticed, languishes on the sidelines of a world that demands beauty and perfection. Rebecca ultimately faces a painful choice: play by the artistic director’s rules and profit, or take shocking action to help her sister.
Exposing the glamorous onstage world of professional ballet, as well as its shadowed wings and dark underbelly, OUTSIDE THE LIMELIGHT examines loyalty, beauty, artistic passion, and asks what might be worth losing in order to help the ones you love.
Praise for Outside the Limelight
“A lovely and engaging tale of sibling rivalry in the high-stakes dance world.”
— Kirkus Reviews (Starred review)
“Balanchine said dance is music made visible; Terez Mertes Rose’s Outside the Limelight is dance made readable. She reveals both the
beauty of ballet and its pain in a compelling, deftly written novel that unfolds like a series of perfectly executed chaîné turns. Not to be missed!”
— Tasha Alexander, NYT bestselling author of A Terrible Beauty
“Outside the Limelight sweeps us backstage, through the wings, past the dressing rooms, and into the lives of its dancers, where we see them up close, flawed and beautiful.”
— Adrienne Sharp, bestselling author of The True Memoirs of Little K and White Swan, Black Swan
“From the theater’s spotlights and shadows comes a nuanced drama of pain and beauty without one false note. I didn’t want it to end!”
— Kathryn Craft, award-winning author of The Art of Falling and The Far End of Happy
“Readers will relish this fresh, enlightened insider’s look at two talented dancer sisters beset by professional rivalry & bound by love. This glowing novel is full of heart. Enchanting.”
— Sari Wilson, author of Girl Through Glass
Praise for Off Balance
“A refreshing and gritty story about friendships, dreams, and life. The reason why this story works on so many levels is the author’s ability to create characters that ring true. Terez Mertes Rose delves deep into her characters’ back story to show how they really are: human and flawed. While her characters are off balance, Rose has balanced her novel perfectly.”
— Self-Publishing Review, 5 Stars
“Terez Mertes Rose writes with an urgency that keeps us reading long past our bedtimes.”
— Dance Advantage
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