Broken Serenade (2 page)

   
“No, of course not,” the doctor continued. “That’s the place where you can find the most beautiful women in the world, blonde, tall, superb.  The ever-so-coveted Russian women. Men from everywhere are crazy about them.”

  
Including that mediocre Sean
, Doctor Evans thought, sickened again by his brother’s actions. As if it were not enough that he had become a dentist and was picking cheese from between his clients’ teeth - a disgusting profession in Andrew’s opinion – now Sean had opened a matrimonial agency. Moreover, he was using his newly established business to infest England with young Russian women.
Nothing else but gold diggers looking to climb the social ladder fast and easy in exchange for their sexual favors
.   

   
The black thorn of guilt scratched at his conscience again. Andrew Evans did not love his brother, even though he was aware that Sean idolized him. It was obvious that the man made every effort to imitate him. Yet, the outcome was disastrous.
He’s trying, poor fellow, but he’s bound to fail.
Time after time, after time. He doesn’t possess the intellectual capacity to copy me.
In his opinion, Sean was a weak, corrupted, frivolous man and an ignoramus when it came to art.
For God’s sake, we share the same blood,
the doctor thought with remorse, appalled by his own lack of affection for his brother. He wanted to love Sean; he wanted that from the bottom of his heart. Nevertheless, it was impossible. Andrew was capable though to play the loving sibling exceptionally well, and that had proved to be enough so far. 

   
He urgently resumed his conversation with Miss Lauren. He even talked more enthusiastically, as if he intended to make up for those few seconds of personal distraction.  

   
“Aware of their physical inferiority in a hand-to-hand combat, the Amazons were said to have chosen the bow and arrow as their main weapons. The legend claims that these warrior-women used to cut off or burn out their left breast to make up for their physical limitation and reach the best results in archery.”   

   
His words had an immediate effect on the girl before him. As if by magic, Miss Lauren’s face brightened up. Happy to have finally gotten her attention, the psychologist continued his ancient-history lesson zealously.

   
“In this matriarchal society, men were accepted only as slaves and as necessary instruments used to perpetuate the specie. They had no voice in the tribe; their opinion didn’t matter at all.”    

   
The young girl interrupted him unexpectedly, wearing a mysterious smile on her soft lips.

   
“Doctor Evans, I am not interested in men. Not anymore.” 

   
Miss Lauren’s voluntary confession almost startled him. For an instant, a flash of confusion washed over his face. Then he remained looking at her fixedly, dumbfounded.

   
“I’m even less interested in their opinion,” she continued nonchalantly. “Actually,” she said, getting up and stretching out her hand with rehearsed grace, “the meeting is over. One hour. Not a second more,” she added, looking up at the big, round clock on the left wall.  

   
Under the old clock, that now showed 3 PM sharp, an oil painting captured the image of two little girls between the ages of ten and eleven as they played with a ball. An indiscreet gust of wind blew their short, pleated dresses, uncovering their fancy, lace-stitched underwear.

   
“We’ll see each other again, doc, I promise you,” Miss Lauren assured him. “The Amazon women’s story is very interesting.”

   
As he enjoyed a strange feeling of masochistic nature inside his ego, the doctor dared to hope that the girl would keep her word. He was almost sure that she would return. His professionalism would have to assert itself, like in all other cases up until now. He was well known for his success.

   
Miss Lauren walked toward the exit with the elegance of a model. She stopped before the closed door and kept her back on him. Balancing her entire weight on one foot with the grace of a ballerina, she leaned to her left and examined another painting that was hanging above a tall lamp. The girl touched it gingerly with the tips of her fingers. It had the same subject with the one seen before - little girls playing - this time on a lake’s shore. Both paintings must have been the work of the same painter, variations on the same theme.    

  
“Do you like children, Doctor Evans?”  

   
She had asked the question meaningfully, turning around gracefully, with not a bit of urgency, like in a movie scene filmed in slow motion.  

  
The psychologist did not lift his eyes to look at her. Apparently, he continued to take notes into her file, but she observed that he had stopped writing, and his hand was slightly shaking. There was a long silence. That moment she knew she had him. Surprisingly, he knew that too.  

   
Finally, the doctor sighed.

   
“Good bye, Miss Lauren,” he said coldly, as she opened the door and left.

   
After only a few seconds, he called his assistant. He struggled to control his fury.

   
“Miss Johns,” he yelled. “Who put these paintings on my walls?”  

   
“Surprise, Mr. Evans!” the woman chirped happily. “This is the gift from your brother. He insisted that I should expose them on your birthday. Actually, I put them on the walls yesterday after my lunch break, but you didn’t return to the office in the afternoon.”

   
“Take them down immediately and send them back to him with this note.”

   
The secretary sent a quick glance over the small note just written in a hurry in her presence, and she blushed violently up to her flapping ears. She backed up silently.

   
A week later, when Miss Lauren did not show up to honor her appointment, Mr. Evans experienced hastily a feeling of relief, a moment of indisputable happiness. The disappointment in his assistant’s voice, when downcast, she announced that the young girl had left the sanatorium and was nowhere to be found, did not impress him in the least. Actually, he felt liberated. It was as if he had had a short encounter with the devil, and to his utter surprise, the creature had unexpectedly changed its mind and had abandoned, had spared him.   

   
Apparently, his happiness had not been long lived. The following day, the old woman who cleaned his house found him dead, lying on his kitchen floor. Subsequently, the autopsy attributed his death to a fatal combination of alcohol and sleeping pills. His family was shocked. His old parents vehemently denied the fact that Mr. Evans had ever had sleeping problems.

    “
Not so difficult to resort to medication anyway,” they had insisted, even though they had not seen their sons in years.  

   
Nevertheless, in the absence of other concrete evidence that would have proved the contrary, the coroner quickly listed his death as
accidental suicide
.      

   
The police received only one anonymous phone call regarding this mysterious case. The person had allegedly seen Miss Lauren leaving the doctor’s residence that particular night. However, at the time of her supposed departure from his house, Doctor Evans was believed to have been still alive and not yet deadly intoxicated. According to the forensics, his death had occurred a few hours later. Moreover, the detective in charge of the case concluded that the girl, in spite of her tumultuous past, did not have any reason to kill her psychologist whom she had met only once in her life.

CHAPTER 1

          Wood
side, San Francisco Bay Area, summer of 1996   

        
 
S
erene and carefree, morning filtered in
through the wide-open window. Vivien yawned, blinked a few times, and then let go of her pink stuffed bear that she always hugged while she slept. Her eyelids still heavy, she jumped off the bed and fell on her knees. She positioned her elbows on the edge of her bed and put her palms together in a pious gesture of prayer. Her grandmother’s words reverberated inside her mind with convincing power that filled her little heart with hope and chased away her morning somnolence.  

   
“If you pray hard enough, God will hear your voice, and He will make your wish come true. You only have to have trust in His unlimited power, and He will undoubtedly help you,” granny had said.  

   
Granny knows so many things. She bakes the best cookies and tells the most exciting fairy tales. She is so smart and wise!
Vivien remembered.

    She concentrated on her prayer.

   
“Dear God,” she started with ardor. “I beg you, I implore you, don’t let Tee marry Nadine today. Please, please,” she asked insistently. “She doesn’t deserve him. I do. And You know that, because You know everything. So please, please, please, don’t let him marry her.”  

   
The bedroom door opened unexpectedly, and Mrs. Alison Hopkins appeared in the doorframe.

   
“Good morning, bluebell! Why are you sitting on the floor, sweetheart?”

   
Joyfully singing a funny tune, she dashed into the room and placed Vivien’s dress, shoes, socks, and hair-flowers on the armchair by the bed with remarkable scrupulosity. After that, Alison kneeled and took her daughter in her arms. She gingerly touched the child’s brown curls - so darkly brown they almost seemed black.

    Vivien rested her head on her mother’s chest.
 

   
“Did you sleep well last night? My sweet, my beautiful little baby!” Her mom hugged her lovingly, leaving quick little kisses on her head and cheeks.

   
Vivien hurriedly sent her passionate prayer to
Dear God
one more time. Then, she answered her mother’s question.   

   
“Yes, mommy. I slept like an angel.” 

   
“That is exactly how you’re going to look today at Tim and Nadine’s wedding. Wasn’t Nadine so gracious to choose you to be her flower-girl?”  

   
“Mademoiselle Lili asked her.”

   
“Mademoiselle Lili only suggested it, sweetie,” her mother corrected her. “In the end, it was Nadine’s choice, and you should thank her.” 

   
A few hours later, Vivien was descending the white marble stairs holding on to the slippery railings with exaggerated care. She stopped in the foyer and happily admired herself in the gigantic mirror that covered the wall by the entrance door. All dressed in white, she looked like out of a fairy tale. Only the hair flowers were a light blue, and they went perfectly with her big blue eyes. 

   
She slunk out of the house with the ability of a tiny mouse, without anyone noticing her escape. She tiptoed quietly on the wild cherries alley up to the gazebo. Then, without hesitation, she made a quick left turn and broke into a sprint toward the house with dwarfs where Mademoiselle Lili - her piano and French teacher - lived.      

   
Vivien liked Mademoiselle Lili enormously, because she was beautiful and elegant and because she let her try on her high-heel shoes and sandals whenever that thought tickled her fancy. Moreover, a month ago, her sophisticated piano teacher had allowed her to test all her perfumes, while she had been on the phone with a
lover
she repeatedly called “sweet love”. The woman had misled him to believe that she had put his pictures on her piano and on her vanity.
Clever, Mademoiselle Lili!
Vivien thought with admiration, thinking that she would never be able to lie to someone with so much courage and confidence. On her piano and on her vanity, the woman had displayed sexy pictures of her favorite student - Nadine! She still had them there. She wasn’t afraid her nose would grow, and she would look like Pinocchio, or that her lover would drop by and would catch her in the lie.
All because of Nadine!
Vivien was jealous on Nadine. Now Nadine was taking her
Tee
too. Tee was Vivien’s knight in bright-white armors.
God knows. Tee is mine.     

     Four years back, when Vivien had just turned
four, Tee had saved her life.
Killer
, their neighbor’s Pit-bull monster, had cornered her in the lavender bushes and would have torn her apart if not for Tee’s rapid intervention. He had lifted her on his broad shoulders, careless that he was destroying his Prom night impeccable attire. He had so bravely fought for her with the unleashed dog, that he had become her hero forever.

    Vivien sneaked into the neighboring yard
through the broken, ivy-invaded fence that Mademoiselle Lili’s friend, Mr. Logan, would not care to fix. He was well too preoccupied with his sculptures. “Art is such an insatiable beast. It sucks the energy out of the artist, so there is nothing left for petty, unimportant tasks,” Mademoiselle Lili would often say to Mr. Logan’s defense.
Mademoiselle Lili is ever so nice!