The Beautiful Ones

by Silvia Moreno-Garcia

  “Besides, he is trouble, he got himself in all those scuffles,” Gaetan said. “There was also that unpleasant business with a young woman.”

  When it came to the Véries, they should be a paragon of virtue and decorum. Valérie gave him a hard look, but she ceased in her protests. After walking around his office nervously, Gaetan finally agreed he would deposit the money in her cousin’s account.

  How she hated these performances! When they were over, she had to act the grateful wife and kiss her husband’s cheek when she wished nothing more than to spit on him. Antonina was not forced to beg like this. A snap of the fingers, and she had whatever she wished, and Valérie seethed that afternoon as they waited for the brat to finish dressing and join them for a walk in the park.

  Hector sat in the drawing room and Valérie stood, resting a hand upon the mantelshelf. She was more restless than usual, which he noticed, leaning forward.

  “Is everything all right?” he asked.

  She gave him a sarcastic laugh and a wave of her hand. What a silly question. There was no way to answer it. She let herself fall upon a chair in front of him, propping her head on her right hand, and glanced at him with her usual dismissal. She had a thought to say a cruel phrase, for the amusement of it. But as he sat there, looking rather earnest, Valérie let out a sigh.

  “Do you remember what it was to be young?” she asked. “Every trouble would be solved by sundown, and every dawn you’d have a new chance to remake the world.”

  He paused for the longest interval, nodding. “Yes,” he said.

  “I’m tired,” she said.

  He stood up and she thought he might try to approach her. Quickly she shook her head and returned to her place by the mantelshelf.

  “We might have a picnic, if you’d like it. It always lifted your spirits,” he proposed.

  “‘Always,’” Valérie said with a chuckle. “We only went on two picnics.”

  “And it worked like a charm each one of those times.”

  Distant Frotnac. Thinking of it was like viewing a scene through frosted glass. She might have done anything back then, reckless with youth. Now she did nothing, encased in iron.

  “Let us have a picnic, Valérie. I’ll arrange for the food and drinks, and afterward we can go to the theater, watch a silly, light performance.”

  He had moved to her side and was smiling. Valérie, bewitched by his dark eyes, smiled back. “If you insist,” she said in the tone of her girlhood, more a purr than proper words.

  There came Nina’s breathless voice as she walked into the room, her weightless laughter. “Mr. Auvray!” the girl said as she always did, while Valérie bit her lips.

  Chapter 11

  HECTOR PLANNED FOR EVERYTHING. HE rose early, shaved, and dressed in a double-breasted waistcoat that was molded to his lean frame. He went to the market, fetching bread, cheese, and wine. He’d already bought a picnic basket the previous day. He stopped by the florist for a bouquet of pink roses rather than the white lilies he bought for Nina.

  He planned for everything except the rain, which fell, sudden and aggressive, as soon as he stepped into the carriage. No spring shower, a full-blown downpour. By the time he reached the Beaulieu household, it was obvious there could be no picnic. He walked into the drawing room and set the picnic basket down on a table, along with the flowers. A few droplets of water had caught on the shoulders and sleeves of his coat.

  Nina and Valérie were sitting in the drawing room. The younger woman had a book in her hands, while the older one lay on a divan, a hand resting on the back of it, the other upon her knee, submerged in deep thought. Valérie did not notice his entrance. Nina rose at once, as she tended to do. She either forgot or did not care that a gentleman was to approach her where she sat and then, after he kissed her hand, she might stand up.

  “Mr. Auvray,” she said with a chuckle. “Can you believe the rain? I think a thousand toadstools will sprout tomorrow morning.”

  “It is a bit of a downpour,” Hector replied.

  “I imagined you’d send word you were not coming,” Valérie said casually, sitting sleek and still.

  “My word is like iron. I keep my promises,” he told her.

  There was no secret meaning in the comment; the thought merely sprang to his head. But Valérie must have interpreted this as a veiled barb at her faithlessness because her face blanched and grew hard.

  “You needn’t have bothered. Clearly, we are not going anywhere,” Valérie said.

  “The theater is dry. We can sup at a restaurant instead,” he replied, attempting to pacify her.

  “The intention was to have a picnic, I thought. Not a restaurant.”

  “We could have a picnic inside,” Nina suggested. “We did that when we were children back home. Lay down a blanket and eat here. We can make a game of it.”

  “I am not a child who plays games, unlike others,” Valérie said, snappish. “If you will forgive me, I have more important things to do than to pretend I’m making mud pies.”

  Valérie made a motion to rise, to leave the room, and Hector, monumentally furious—at her dismissiveness, at himself for having spent the morning in a state of idiotic merriment at the thought of this outing, at the stupid rain—could not allow her to leave first. She always abandoned him, and now he meant to make his exit before she could.

  “Good-bye,” he said, and rudely stepped out without bothering to give her a second more of his time. He heard Nina gasp and hurried out of the house without a look over his shoulder, back to his apartment, where upon walking in, he threw all the windows open at the same time with a snap of his fingers, shutters banging in unison. He was boiling and he was lonely and outside it rained.

  He let the water drip inside, form puddles by the windows.

  During the night, he considered his idiocy, the way he milled around the Beaulieu household, searching for the crumbs of Valérie’s affection. She must have a good laugh at him.

  He should stop visiting. It had been a blasted idea since the beginning. There was nothing saying he had to go back, no need to knock on that door again. He thought Nina might find his disappearance confounding, but what of it? Yet he resolved to apologize to her for his uncouth getaway and to inform her, politely, that he might be scarce from now on.

  Therefore, the next day he returned to the Beaulieu house, meaning to make a short trip of it. The maid told him Valérie was out and Nina was napping, but she’d go fetch the girl if it was important. Hector said it was, and he was pressed for time. The maid frowned, but went off to find her.

  He waited by the foot of the stairs. Nina came down, not in an afternoon dress, but instead wearing a green lounging robe, her black hair falling freely to her shoulders. Worn slippers peeped beneath the robe, painting a bafflingly intimate picture. She noticed how he stared at her, and stared back at him in turn, standing three steps above Hector.

  “Pardon me, but you said you had to speak to me quick,” she told him as she clutched the collar of the robe with one hand.

  He realized she’d headed downstairs in haste, for him, and the sweetness of the gesture struck him dumb.

  “You said you need me?” she asked.

  Hector nodded. He had not rid himself of his coat, nor his hat, which he held tight, running his hands around the rim of it.

  “I was rude yesterday and wanted to apologize. I left like there were hounds chasing me. I am sorry.”

  Her grip on her collar relaxed. “I understand, Mr. Auvray. Don’t feel guilty.”

  “You don’t understand,” he said. “I’m the worst of friends to you. You ought to spend more time with people who are more animated than me, younger and lively. I am like a rickety, haunted house, Miss Beaulieu. Best find a new abode. I won’t be troubling you any longer.”

  Nina descended the remaining three steps, standing in front of Hector, and looked up at him. She was small, where Valérie was tall; he never failed to notice this difference. And, well, Valérie wouldn’t have
come down for him.

  “Is it that you are annoyed at me?” she asked. “Or bored?”

  “No. The opposite,” he said, and rubbed a hand against his forehead. He sat down on the bottom step with a sigh, resting the hat on his lap. Cautiously, she sat down next to him. They were quiet.

  “Hector, you can tell me,” she said.

  “Nothing, nothing, dear girl,” he said, chuckling. “Nothing worth hearing.”

  He thought of his days in Loisail spent staring across the room at Valérie and the years before that spent conjuring the woman in his mind, and the misery that stamped his footsteps. He was unhappy; he could never be happy. And he liked Nina, she was good to him, but she was not Valérie.

  Nina was smiling. “If you were not around, I’d be lonely,” she said softly.

  He thought to tell her something gallant, which might please her. Like “surely not for long” or another compliment that could be easily tossed and easily forgotten.

  “I’d be lonely, too,” he admitted instead. A deeper truth instead of shallow words.

  Nina was silent. Her hair, falling down her back, curled a little, rebelliously, a detail that had been impossible to divine because each day she wore it up like all the other ladies in the city, pulled into dainty chignons.

  “Everyone seems to think I’m an idiot or a child, but you don’t treat me as either,” she said. “I appreciate it and I appreciate the tricks you teach me, all the advice you give me. If you were to cease visiting, I would be sad—but I would not resent you, because you’d still be my friend. A good friend, Mr. Auvray.”

  She reached out to him, as if to grab his hand, which rested upon the hat, and instead he gripped her hand and pulled it up to his lips, kissing the back of it.

  “You are too kind,” he said.

  They sat looking at each other and for a minute he was absolutely absorbed with her, a graceful quietness bracketing and protecting them. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could remain like this? If the world grew smaller and everything else melted as easy as wax, his worries, his past, the whole lot of it. Then came sure footsteps and Hector turned to look at Valérie, who regarded them with a wintry glance.

  “I see you are back,” she told him. “And I see Nina forgot herself again. Go get into a proper dress, at once.”

  Nina hurried up the stairs with a hushed apology. Hector stood up, inclining his head at Valérie, while she rested a hand on the banister and turned her face to show him her profile. Her cheeks had some color to them, the slightest blush.

  “You must not be angry at her,” Hector said, thrusting his left hand into his pocket. He felt odd, like a thief who has been caught stealing a precious stone and is dragged before the magistrate. “I said I was in a rush, and rush she did, to speak to me.”

  “You did not seem in a rush,” Valérie replied. “What were you discussing? The names you’ll give all your children?”

  “I was rude yesterday and came to apologize to her.”

  “And not to me. I see.”

  “I apologize to you, too, Valérie. I should not have snapped at you as I did,” he said, pressing his hat against his chest and inclining his head again, signaling his departure.

  He had not taken more than four steps when she spoke. Her voice did not crack, but it was strained, which was always odd when it came to Valérie. She modulated herself carefully.

  “Do you ever pause to think about what you are doing, Hector?” she asked.

  He turned around. She was looking at him with eyes that seemed transparent, the blue of them bled out and her golden hair like a halo. The hard look of a Madonna of unkindness, a blind stone idol who did not see him yet demanded sacrifice, worship, blood upon its altar. For a second those eyes parted, becoming the blue of her youth, filling with the desperate longing he had glimpsed a decade before, and which had drawn him in and drowned him.

  “You are going to break one of us, and it will not be me,” she said, and he almost caught her wrist, but she pulled away—she always pulled away—and left him alone.

  Chapter 12

  NINA STOOD BY THE DOOR of the house, looking up at Hector Auvray, and he looked down at her in return.

  It was the end of the Grand Season; one could feel the electric fervor of the city dying down into its summer slumber as the moneyed families made their yearly exodus to the countryside, a pilgrimage that had been in style since the days when Loisail was nothing but narrow cobblestone streets and mud splatters.

  It was also her last chance to attend a lecture by the Entomological Society at the Natural History Museum, and she intended to do it.

  “Are you certain Mrs. Beaulieu said that?”

  “Yes. She has a dreadful headache and she told me if I was intent on going to the museum, then you should escort me.”

  “You and I out and about, and no chaperone,” he mused.

  At a public gathering of this sort in the daytime, and with him sanctioned as a proper suitor, this was not a concern, although they would not be able to sup together.

  “Don’t seem surprised. She knows you are a gentleman. Besides, I can show you that coin trick you taught me the other day. I’ve spent hours working on it.”

  “I warn you, I know nothing of entomology.”

  “It is no matter. Your one duty can be to look absolutely dashing by my side and nod your head charmingly,” she told him.

  Hector chuckled and gave her his arm, both moving toward his carriage, which was waiting for them.

  He came by each week to see her with his lovely bouquets of lilies under his arm and that vague melancholic air of his. His eyes looked dented and wearied, but when he smiled, she thought it magnificent, and his laughter—though scarce certain days—was marvelous.

  She sat in front of him as the carriage rolled down the avenue and took out from her purse a coin, holding it up for him to see.

  Hector gave her a nod of encouragement and she tossed the coin in the air. It rose but never fell, Nina holding it in place with a movement of her hand, making it float between them.

  “See?” she said, triumphant. “I’ve done it.”

  “Not quite. Make it be still.”

  “It is still.”

  “No.”

  The coin was not absolutely still—it trembled ever so slightly, it dipped and rose a tad—but it was the lightest movement.

  “That does not count,” she said.

  “It does.”

  “It can’t remain absolutely still, Hector.”

  “It can,” he said. “Allow me.”

  She released the coin and he extended his hand. It floated between them, but this time it was absolutely still. Then he moved but two fingers, and the coin flew to his waiting palm.

  “If you are going to perform a task, perform it properly, Nina. Do not cut corners or give it a halfhearted try,” he said.

  “I did try to do it properly. I spent hours practicing last night. I told you.”

  “It does not show.”

  Nina crossed her arms. She did not like him when he was like this, and truth be told, he was a rather exacting teacher. She thought he did it to scare her off and dissuade her from telekinetic tricks, but sometimes she thought he did it for another reason altogether, one she did not comprehend.

  She tilted her chin up and looked out the window. It was a sunny spring day, and when they reached a wide avenue decorated with the bronze statues of notable citizens of Loisail, she looked at the beautiful flowers bordering the pavement, jasmines and tulips in darling colors.

  They went by the fountain with its nymphs, all three holding their hands in the air, and stopped at the main entrance of the Natural History Museum, which she’d visited but once with Valérie, who had not liked it at all because it was an older building, rather cluttered. Nina thought it a fabulous place, a treasure trove. Most people marveled at the large animals: the impressive tiger about to attack or the bear frozen in its tracks, both wonders of taxidermy set against a painted backdrop. Nin
a preferred the smaller specimens. The insects like jewels upon black velvet.

  They did not have time to pause and look at the pretty beetles or the delicate butterflies on this occasion, because the lecture was about to begin. They made their way to a room filled with many chairs and sat in the back.

  The lecturer was Lise van Reenen, a naturalist who was noted as a butterfly collector. The talk that day was on the caddisfly, which lived near bodies of water and spun a cocoon of silk. Nina was impressed by Lise’s delivery and the way she commanded the room.

  When the lecture was over and they walked outside the museum, she remarked on this point.

  “Some people, I think, are born to speak in public and know how to manage every word and gesture. As she did, as you do when you perform,” she told Hector.

  “It’s not innate talent. It is practice, like dealing cards without touching them or making coins hover in midair.”

  “You make it seem easy.”

  “It’s part of the trick. Do not reveal your inner thoughts, nor fears.”

  Men in black coats walked along the boulevard, and women held white parasols over their heads. It was suppertime and the restaurants were bursting with customers. He must take her home soon.

  “We will leave for the summer in a couple of weeks,” she said, because this thought had been darting inside her head since early in the day. “We are to go to Oldhouse, Valérie and I. Gaetan will join us at one point, as he likes to spend at least ten days in the countryside during the warm months.”

  “When will you return?”

  “In three months’ time and no sooner. My family misses me, and besides, Valérie says the city is not fit for living in the summer.”