The Third Grace (20 page)

Flabbergasted that he'd remembered the poetry first quoted to her on the farm—that he'd written at all—Aglaia gaped at the monitor until the proprietor of the café walked by and tapped his watch in forewarning. Other clients were waiting. Aglaia scribbled the street name of the bar on the back of her hand before her screen blanked out.

Eb combed the crumbs out of his moustache with the fork Iona always thoughtfully packed in with his lunch. Tea at the office was never quite as refreshing as drinking it at his own table at home, but it helped his digestion and put a nice end to his break—taken later today than usual. As he was draining his first cup, his receptionist patched a telephone call through to his office.

“Mr. MacAdam? This is Naomi Enns.” He didn't know the voice or the name. “I'm calling to locate Mary Grace Klassen—I mean, Aglaia. There's been an emergency. I wonder if you know how to get hold of her in Paris?” She relayed to him the details of the family crisis.

“Leave it with me and I'll tell her to phone home if I find her,” Eb said. He scrambled for the name and number of Aglaia's hotel and placed the international call, but a sleepy front desk clerk informed him that both Aglaia and her companion had departed early that morning.

Her companion? Eb was disturbed that Aglaia shared her room with someone unknown to him while on her business trip, though she wasn't breaking any company rules, strictly speaking. He'd never taken her for the sort that would pick up a stranger, but loneliness did odd things to a person. There was much that the lass kept from him, and why shouldn't she? He wasn't her father, after all, despite his paternal mindset towards her.

Eb dialed Naomi back and she answered on the first ring, breathless.

“It seems we'll not talk to her till she's back on American soil,” Eb said, dispatching the hotel clerk's news but not, of course, mentioning his concern over the sleeping arrangements.

“Why would she check out a full day before she was supposed to leave for home?” the friend asked Eb. Then, in an aside apparently to one of her children, she rasped, “Sebastian, don't let that dog in!”

“Aglaia should be boarding the plane in a matter of ten or so hours,” Eb said, hoping to soothe her.

“I suppose you're right.” The woman sounded doubtful, the way Eb felt. “Do you have her arrival information?” Eb gave it to her and ended the conversation by wishing her luck, though he didn't believe luck played any part in life.

Aglaia would be coming home to an emotional storm, unprepared. Concerned as he was, there was no use fashing about the situation—it was out of his hands. But he raised a silent prayer on Aglaia's behalf as he replaced the receiver and settled back into his chair.

He lifted the teacup to his lips again, casting his gaze over the surfeit of books peopling his office, teetering on the shelves, cavorting on the floor—Bunyan and Chaucer, Bacon and Galileo, Hawthorne and Herodotus and Gerard Manley Hopkins.

He loved them all, every one of the “truths wrapped in fables,” as Pascal described human writings. But when it came to needing guidance—when Eb was troubled about something outside of his control—only one book allowed pure contemplation of the mind of God.

He opened his right-hand desk drawer and withdrew a copy now.

A
neon sign pulsated above the bar as Aglaia, across the boulevard, steeled herself to enter. It was ten o'clock and a few customers straggled through the door—a middle-aged couple both sporting grey ponytails, a group of students already noisy with inebriation. She could tell this was no tourist attraction; only French words floated to her on the night air.

Finding the place had been time consuming—not that she was in a rush. After all, she had the whole night to kill before her plane left. But she'd already wasted time on the Métro and another half an hour finding a street-side pay toilet, which was dimly lit and cramped. It sufficed for her purposes—to change into her lace camisole, sheer over-blouse, and strappy heels, and to reapply her eyeliner in the heavy fashion she noticed on some of the younger Parisian women. She'd removed her pins and shaken out her hair, too, so that it fell in long, soft waves.

Now that she stood before the tavern, her intestines twisted in anguish. She grappled with her memory for some vision, some recollection of a story of François's that might boost her bravado. The tale that came to her mind was of Cephalus and Procris, lovers reconciled after unfaithfulness, but that myth ended badly in the death of the woman by the arrow of the man. And the Three Graces didn't even figure into it at all. She found no courage in her imagination. Then, from a different direction in an inaudible voice, she heard the words,
Come to me
, but she ignored them, too. She couldn't turn back now. She was committed; this was her destiny.

Aglaia opened the door, not wide to announce herself with a gust of fresh air but enough to let her slide in, a stealthy shadow. She sat at the booth closest to the exit. Let the server find her in the corner—she wasn't about to stand at the bar to place her order. Meanwhile she took stock of her surroundings. Andy Warhol prints were fixed to the walls, and antique bongos and retro lamps decorated the tables. Half the stools pulled up to the bar's counter were occupied and she was safe in her anonymity for the moment, as the focus of the room rested on the languid poet at the mike executing some tragic verse to the background of canned blues and a smattering of applause.

But then the lights came up a bit and there was François taking his perch on the chrome stool with his guitar on his knee. Aglaia gasped so that the girl who appeared beside her with pad and pencil, wearing dead-white lipstick, said, “You okay, Miss?” with British enunciation.

Aglaia muttered, “
Café crème
, please,” ignoring the question. She didn't want alcohol fogging her mind tonight and wished the girl would get out of her way so she could inspect François again.

It was impossible that fifteen years had passed. His silhouette was a bit fuller, perhaps, and his hair slightly shorter, though as thick and wavy as she remembered. He wore his jeans the same way—low on his hips and tight, faded at the knees. His long fingers curled over the strings with the same dexterity as when he'd strummed in the church basement or out on the hay-bale stacks. He closed his eyes to sing his French melody, the unfamiliar words breaking her heart with familiarity, and then he made a few comments, maybe in introduction to his next number.

That's when he saw her. His scrutiny was inquisitive at first, as though he were uncertain about this lone female tourist ducking into the gloom at the back of the room with a suitcase by her feet. She averted her face but their glances crossed again and then recognition lit up his countenance.

His eyes danced as he cajoled his audience, calling them
mes amis
—my friends—but tipping his head towards her. He finished his routine—another three songs that she couldn't understand but knew were meant for her because of his smoldering inflection every time he sang the word
amour
. And then he left his guitar propped against his stool and headed across the floor, stopping by the bar to pick up a bottle and two wine glasses. Aglaia's legs were shaky even though she was sitting.

“Mary Grace Klassen! You got my e-mail, then?”

“François, is it really you?”

They spoke over one another and laughed; he stooped to smack her right cheek, left cheek.

“I thought you'd gone from Paris days ago,” he said, pulling a corkscrew from his back pocket. “You look fantastic!”

“And your English is perfect,” she said. “You've been practicing.”

“I did my time in university, spent a couple of years pubbing around London,” he said as he slid into place across the table from her and lifted his goblet in a silent toast. “You know how it goes.”

She didn't, but she nodded and the small talk went on for several moments, giving Aglaia's heartbeat time to stabilize. His charming accent was discernible despite his fluent, even colloquial, English as he asked about her job, her travels, whether she still sang in a choir. He refilled his glass but she'd hardly touched hers. According to the bottle's label, it was some complicated blend from the Rhône Valley and likely expensive, but if so, Aglaia thought, it was wasted on her. She couldn't tell the difference and, besides, tonight she wanted to keep her head about her.

She answered François's questions but there was only one she wanted to ask him—about why he'd never called, never sent her even a card of condolence. He brought it up himself, in a roundabout way.

“So, is Joel still pissed off with me?”

Aglaia became very still. He didn't know, then, about the death—and how could he?

“Joel was killed the morning after you left,” she said.

“Killed? How?”

“Agricultural accident. He was standing in the wrong place at the wrong time.” She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, the stinging starting again at the corner of her eyes.

He took her hand in his and she was going to explain more, but he cut through her mood. “What a fight we had! I thought he was going to tear me apart that night.”

“That night,” she stuttered involuntarily, heat rushing to her face.

His features softened and he held his tongue for a moment, letting his eyes flit over her hair, her lacy top. He ran his tongue over his lips.

“It was a pity Joel interrupted us that night, don't you agree?” François asked, but any words she might have thought got stuck in her throat. He reminisced. “After the fight, we were both beat up, bleeding. You might not remember because you were pretty hysterical.”

She remembered that part, all right. The three of them had snuck back into the house, jumpy as cats, and she immediately went to her room and covered her ears with a pillow, willing herself to sleep—only to wake up in the morning to the new nightmare of him missing.

“I think your mom was already sleeping, but your dad saw our condition and came into the bedroom. Joel told him, well,
his
version of what happened.” François turned his face away but not in embarrassment over their tussle, she thought; his mouth curved up a bit. “Henry agreed that Joel should take me to the airport right then.”

That surprised her. “What? In Denver?”

“Yeah. It was a long, silent ride, I'll tell you. He dropped me off at two in the morning with my duffle bag and told me he'd break my neck if I ever contacted you again. Then he turned right around for home. Lucky I had an open-ended ticket.”

How dare Joel threaten François—scare him off like some gangster might in protecting his turf! Before she could express her dismay, François carried on with a different topic.

“And what about the others in Tiege, in that youth group?” he asked. “What about your best friend?”

“You mean Naomi?” She didn't want to waste their time talking about Naomi.

“Yeah, the motherly one.”

“She's got six kids now,” Aglaia confirmed, thinking it odd that François would describe a teen girl in that way, though it was true that Naomi had always been rather nurturing.

François whistled. “Fertile.”

“I guess,” Aglaia said. Why would that matter to him? His interest in Naomi rubbed her the wrong way, but she put it out of her mind when he arose from the table and spoke again.

“Hey, want to take a walk? It's not private enough in here.” He touched Aglaia's elbow to help her up, and he kept his hand there as he motioned the waitress over. She'd been watching the two of them from the counter, retaining distance from her boss out of respect, Aglaia had assumed. But now the waitress glowered at François's request: “Abbey, love, take my friend's suitcase out to the back. We'll return for it later.” Then to Aglaia he said, smirking, “It's great to have staff to order around. I picked Abbey up on one of my most recent trips across the Channel.” Aglaia wondered what he meant by “picked up,” but for the moment she gave him the benefit of the doubt.

“Tell me about this,” she said, patting the wall of the bar. “How long have you been in the business?” They stepped into the cool night air and moved down the street, Aglaia still dazed that she was actually with him.

“A good eight years,” he replied. “I think the name's a bit weird but it was the co-owner's idea.”

“What would you have called it?” Aglaia asked.

“Sisyphus,” he answered promptly. So, then, he was still into mythology. “At least my partner went along with my concept for the sign design,” François said, pointing back towards the building they'd just left. Aglaia studied the multicolored neon animation incorporating the name of the Tedious Beatnik Taverne. Through an illusion created by lighting sequence, a muscular figure rolled a large and shapeless object forward and upwards; it then rolled back down and the figure pushed it up again, the action repeating itself perpetually. “Sisyphus symbolizes tedium,” François said.

“I don't know his story,” she fibbed. She'd read most of them by now in bits and pieces, but she wanted his adaptation, smooth and sensuous. How she'd missed that! He seemed pleased, and paused to light a cigarette. They watched the movement of the sign as François launched into the tale with his characteristic narrative style heightened by his increased facility in the language and, if it were possible, with even more self-assurance then he'd had as a teen, as though he'd practiced the telling many times.

“Sisyphus was a clever mortal, a prince charged with promoting travel and commerce in his father's kingdom. But he was greedy and abused the gift of hospitality received at his birth from the Three Graces.” François took a drag, then winked down at Aglaia as if they shared private knowledge of the goddesses. She melted inside, just as she had when she was seventeen. “The prince killed and robbed wayfarers. This violated the laws of generosity demanded by the gods, and angered them. But it was only his first trespass as he aspired for domination.”

François talked around the cigarette in his mouth so that the glowing end bobbed in the dark. “You're chilled?” he asked, when she rubbed her arms through the flimsy silk of her blouse. “Here, take my jacket.” He drew it around her, the smell of him encapsulating her, and kept his arm over her shoulders as they turned and walked.

“Now, Sisyphus stole not only goods from earthly travelers but also secrets from Olympus. He was crafty and fancied himself to be more cunning than Zeus, god of gods, who was always defiling young virgins.

“One day while prowling in the woods, Sisyphus came upon the Graces preparing a chaste island nymph for her assignation with Zeus. From his hiding place, Sisyphus watched them bathe her in fragrant spices and adorn her with wildflowers—violets and blood-red poppies and delicate almond blossoms. They wove a robe of mist to shield the maiden's modesty. Suddenly and with great commotion Zeus rode in on the back of a thundercloud, and the Three Graces scattered. But Prince Sisyphus stayed just long enough to watch Zeus blow his tempestuous breath under the drapery of the nymph's gown to expose her lovely form.”

François dropped his voice and Aglaia pressed closer, carried on the cloud of his fantasizing as she closed her eyes and breathed in his earthy, heavenly breath. François's arm tightened around her and he went on, “In a spirit of treachery, Sisyphus peddled his knowledge to the nymph's protective father—the god of the river—telling him that his daughter was at that moment being ravished by Zeus.

“This infuriated her father, but not as much as it enraged Zeus when he learned of the betrayal. For Sisyphus's treason, he was damned to Tartarus with an everlasting punishment, charged with the repetitive task of pushing uphill a huge boulder that, upon reaching the apex, rolled back to the valley so that Sisyphus must begin again, over and over for eternity.”

When Aglaia blinked open her lids, François's grey-black eyes were intense and his head was inclining towards her, but in reflex she pulled back. So many years had passed since the last time they'd kissed, so many rhapsodies had been dreamed, that the real thing incurred some trepidation for her.

“Don't you like my stories any more, Mary Grace?” he asked, slipping his arm around her waist now as they walked on. “Or should I say,
Aglaia
?”

“They're as riveting as always,” she answered, although in fact the story disturbed her, with its violence and its dismal end. François's delivery—slick as a sales pitch—disturbed her as well. She said, “But you have to admit that the fate of Sisyphus is depressing, maybe even best forgotten.”

“Not so!” He stopped on the sidewalk and dropped the butt of his smoke onto the cobblestones, swiping at it with his boot. “Our own French philosopher Albert Camus used the story of Sisyphus to make some very good points. He referred to him as the proletarian of the gods, powerless and rebellious, a perfect illustration of the plight of the workingman and the boring absurdity of life. Camus said, ‘A face that toils so close to stones is already stone itself.' What we do, over and over again, we become. Life beats us up, and we're at the mercy of our circumstances.”