Broken Serenade (8 page)

   
Vivien felt icy shivers traveling through her body. The blood drained from her face. A number of questions came to her mind, but she chose silence. 

   
The assistant laughed again, in the same awkward manner, defusing Mr. Logan’s statement at once.

   
“Don’t pay attention to him,” she advised. “His mind is…” She made circular motions with her hand in the region of her temple, to make up for the lack of that peculiar word in her vocabulary. “He believes he is visited by his girlfriend from fifteen or twenty years ago. The woman has committed suicide, she’s long-dead.” 

   
Slightly embarrassed, Vivien promised Mr. Logan that she would ring at his door quite soon. Then she got back into her car and left.

   
The five-minute drive from the grocery store to her house became a quarter of an hour. Groups of Halloween dressed up children gamboled and crossed the street everywhere with no insurance whatsoever.

   
Finally, she arrived in front of her garage without any incident.

   
Damn it! Really! I forgot to leave a light on again
, Vivien chided inwardly.

   
At the sight of her own house wrapped up in darkness, a disturbing feeling of fear raked at her heart. She grabbed a box from the trunk, prepared her key, and walked with hesitant steps toward the main entrance. She opened the door and turned on the light. From the doorway, she shot a quick look over the entire living room.
Nothing changed
, she decided, all muscles tensed. Her initial dread starting to ebb, she advanced into the kitchen.
Everything okay here too
.   

   
Paranoia
, she muttered, realizing the ridicule of the situation.
I will never get
over this
, she bitterly admitted defeat vis-à-vis her own fears. 

   
“You have to put yourself in situations that force you to face your greatest fears, otherwise normal, safe situations that you tend to avoid because of past panic attacks,” the psychologist had advised her at her single cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy session she had been able to bring herself to come.  

   
After months of playing with the idea in her head, Vivien had decided to follow the doctor’s advice. She had moved to the Bay Area all by herself. Without her parents, without a boyfriend, a lover, or a friend. She needed to win this battle once and for all. Nevertheless, she felt terrible. Every minute spent alone seemed like an assault to her sanity. Sometimes, the fear of death paralyzed her, and she felt just as if she were awaiting an imminent heart attack. The only thing that she loved to do in total solitude it was to play the piano. The musical notes flowed one by one, like sweet, gentle touches on her agitated heart.  

   
The children chorus startled her. 

   
“Trick or treat!”

   
They looked funny – a small battalion of skeletons, witches, and black cats. The young woman greeted them amused.

   
“Welcome, guys! Glad you stopped by. Just a moment, please, to open the bags of bonbons. I just got home,” she excused herself for being caught unprepared for their visit.

   
“I would be glad to help you carry the boxes from your trunk,” the tall and plump teenage boy volunteered politely. He appeared to be the leader of the group.

   
Vivien accepted graciously.

   
“Thank you very much, if you really want to…”

   
The kids came to a halt in front of the open door. None of them crossed the threshold. Vivien invited them inside once more.

    “I won’t bite,” she said playfully.

   
“Dirty shoes,” a little girl explained right away, her cute, perky nose red from the cold. “We better stay out here,” she decided, staring at her muddy boots.

   
Vivien did not insist, but rather went quickly into the kitchen. She rummaged inside one of the cabinets and found the small hand-painted orange glass baskets that imitated jack-o’-lanterns. She had bought them a week before in a fancy boutique in San Francisco. She quickly arranged them on a big tray and filled them up with bonbons. Then she hurried toward the open door through which the freezing air was wildly rushing inside.      

   
She called out to the children. She couldn’t see them anywhere now.

   
“Bonbons are served!” 

   
No one answered. The little ones had gathered in a cluster over a ringing cell phone put on speaker. 

   
Vivien wanted to call them again, but the words suddenly froze on her bluish lips. Her gaze remained stuck with obstinacy on the partially naked painting hugged awkwardly by the fattish adolescent.

   
“I’m so sorry,” he stuttered. “I think I damaged the wrapping. I can feel it with my hand. I hope it wasn’t a gift for someone, or something…” 

   
“No! Of course not. Not a problem,” Vivien burst out.

   
She abandoned the tray on the small table by the entrance and immediately took the painting from the boy’s arms. She put it face down on the wooden floor in the hallway, wondering terrified if anyone from the children’s group had sneaked a peek at it by chance. She breathed relieved when she discovered them all behind her car, very engaged in a phone conversation. The instant they laid eyes on the fancy treats Vivien offered, they ended the call and gathered around her like Pavlov’s dogs responding to a ringing bell  that signaled the occurrence of food
.
 

   
“There’s only one small box left in the car. I can bring that one inside too,” the teenager said benevolently, after he had received his bonbons basket.

   
“No, no, thank you! You’ve done a lot! Now I can manage all by myself,” Vivien assured him, very anxious to see all of them leave.

   
She grabbed the purse from the front seat of her car and took a $10 bill out of it. She stuffed it gently into the breast pocket of the boy’s thick jacket. 

   
“For all your effort. Thank you,” she said.

   
Her gesture had an immediate effect on him. The adolescent put on a huge smile.

   
“Anytime you need help with something, I live in the house with lions at the gate, across the street from you, on the left. I’m Brad,” he introduced himself and held out a hand.

   
Vivien returned the handshake reticently.

   
“I’m Vivien. It’s nice to meet you.”

   
Brad gathered his noisy troupe, and together they took their farewell leave.

   
The young woman retired into her house with the heavy feeling that she was stepping inside a torture chamber. She locked the door, armed the alarm, and closed the drapes to all windows. Then, she set down on her knees besides the painting with the damaged wrapping.  

    She slowly tore
down the brown paper until the strident colors of the painting genially filled the space inside that black frame and presented with self-assurance a lesbian kiss. The women featured were both blonde-haired. Their young bodies, covered summarily by yellow silk scarves only, exposed well-defined muscles, tensed from the erotic passion ignited by the kiss. The hand of one of the women concealed with tenderness the place where the other one missed a breast. The woman without a breast had her face profile almost entirely hidden by her short, curly hair. The same wild gust of wind, that ruffled her hair and pushed it over her face concealing it, had blown the other woman's long curls back, uncovering her angelic visage. The kiss appeared vividly reproduced, in colors and nuances that created a permanent mobility. The features of the exposed face seemed to change under the influence of the sexual impulse.   

   
Vivien realized instantly that the woman made more visible in the painting resembled someone known. It took her milliseconds to attach a name to that fascinating image:
Nadine,
contoured in brilliant brush strokes that revealed even more than talent on the painter’s side. The artist seemed to have been in love with her while he had reproduced her face and her delicate forms with such passion and candor. Nadine’s sensual lover in the painting could not have been anyone else but Mademoiselle Lili, judging from the rebel hairdo, the small part of the face perceived by the viewer’s eye, and the heavy piece of jewelry that embellished her fine ankle.   

   
Complicated questions that had been begging for answers in her childhood mind, forgotten questions buried deeply in time until that very moment… they all capitulated finally. All of a sudden, those irritating questions, that had deprived her of sleep so many nights, were helpless, defeated by the reality that insisted to be accepted. Bits of the past whirled into Vivien’s mind: Nadine - Mademoiselle Lili’s favorite student, Nadine’s sexy picture in a fancy frame on Mademoiselle Lili’s vanity table, Nadine at Lili’s house just before her scheduled wedding with Tee…                      

   
Vivien got up and walked with unsure steps into the kitchen. The earlier spark of an appetite had vanished. She inferred that she would have a long night. She made herself a chamomile tea, had a hot bath, and then, she sat at the piano with the vast collection of Beethoven’s music before her. 

*                              *                              *

    Timothy Leigh could not forgive himself for giving in to such a rich dinner. For a few minutes, he navigated absently from one channel to another, only to turn off the TV set in the end. Even though he was bored to death at the moment, he savored his privacy. It was a nice change after the noisy company of his brother anyway! Clark would not stop talking, and he generously advised in all matters.
He has an answer for everything,
Timothy smiled inwardly, wondering what in the world had brought Clark to California this time.
Most certainly, not the desire to see me or visit the grave of our mother.
It was something else, but so far, Timothy had not been able to identify the actual reason of his visit. Out of the blue that evening, his brother had decided to stay at a hotel for the rest of his vacation.                

   
“Bloody hell, mate, you need some privacy. I don’t want to impose,” he had pretended.

    Timothy had not
insisted. He knew damn well that he could not influence Clark in any way. Nobody ever had! When his brother made a decision, it was a waste of time to try to make him change his mind.
I would’ve talked in vain. He’s as stubborn as a mule
, Timothy reflected. Sometimes, he couldn’t wait to see Clark leave. Very often, he missed him, but his presence annoyed him. Clark was disorganized, he didn’t show respect to anyone and anything, and he acted as if he were permanently chasing phantoms. Not to mention his odd attitude toward women, an issue that created a real abyss between the two of them.    

     Tim
othy grabbed his coat and scarf. He put on his cashmere hat and pulled it onto his ears. Dead set to burn some calories and ease his digestion, he stepped out of the house into the night’s frigid air. He reckoned that a stroll on the city’s deserted streets would also drive his sadness away. He felt lonely. He could have found a woman to warm up his bed and soothe his body’s needs anytime, but that was not what he was longing for. He wanted
love
; he wanted something he had never had. He desired to be the dearest person in the whole universe for someone. And if tomorrow he would lose his house, his business, even his mind, he wanted to have the certainty that that particular person would stand by him, with unaltered love and faith. He wanted his half; he had been searching for her like a mad man for years. So far, he had been unsuccessful, but he would not give up. He refused to lose hope. 
SHE exists – I just know it in my heart
. She had to be out there, somewhere in the labyrinth of life, waiting for him to find her and bring her home. He just needed to look more carefully…

   
Whom are you trying to delude? You know damn well where you’re heading right now,
he told himself.

   
In less than half an hour, he stood before her house. He noticed the same car he had seen her drive earlier that day. She always parked it in front of the garage.

   
Only one car! So she’s single
, he quickly concluded.

   
The windows were covered, but he could distinguish lights on inside the house. For sure, the woman was playing the piano again. In the cold silence of that late night, harmonious classical accords reverberated faintly.

   
Curiosity pushed him to inch closer. He took a few steps toward the first window that faced the street. The sound of the music increased immediately with a few decibels. He sat comfortably on one of the huge decorating stones that rested peacefully in the beautifully manicured garden. In the pale light of the street lamps, the red camellias boldly exposed their blood-red petals among a generous variety of evergreens. For a while, he just stayed there, fascinated by the harmony of musical notes and by the vague aroma of cinnamon and vanilla that escaped in stronger and stronger waves from behind those walls.