“Sourpuss?” I asked, surprised. This was the second time she’d said something unflattering about her partner. Not that I didn’t agree.
“Oh, Arthur can be such a stick-in-the-mud sometimes. I have stayed with him for centuries, but sometimes he makes me crazy.” She grinned at me conspiratorially. Laughing, I grabbed her arm and walked with her toward the nearest art-house cinema.
“That was very, very strange,” Violette mused as she sipped her coffee.
“I warned you,” I said, stirring some whipped cream into my hot chocolate.
“But I thought it was going to have something to do with . . . you know . . . Brazil. I mean, that is what it is called. If they had called it ‘Bizarre Alternate Universe,’ I would not have chosen it.”
I smiled, thinking of the confusion and disgust I had seen on Violette’s face during the face-lift scene. Special effects weren’t yet in her movie vocabulary. I would make it a point in the future to stick to older, classic films.
“So, how is it going with Vincent? Has he talked to you about things yet?”
“No,” I said, my smile disappearing. “And I’m getting a bit worried. Have you noticed how bad he’s been looking lately? Whatever he’s doing, it’s obviously really hard on him.”
Violette nodded. “It is probably a case of things getting worse before they can get better.”
“That’s exactly what he said!” I exclaimed. I sipped my chocolate and shook my head in frustration. “You know, Violette, I’ve started looking for my own solution.”
Her eyebrows rose. “Really? Like what?”
“Well, the same thing he’s looking for. Something that will prevent his need for death.”
“You are really that upset about seeing him die?”
I nodded. “I didn’t react well to Charles’s death last fall, and he’s not even my boyfriend.”
“Well, I guess that is the normal human reaction. Especially for someone like you who has been affected by death so recently.” She touched my hand lightly in sympathy. “So . . . what are you thinking of?”
“Well, I don’t know. I’m just researching it right now.”
“Oh, so that is why you were in the library this morning!”
I smiled guiltily. “I actually found something somewhere else—at my grandfather’s gallery. A book about a revenant-human couple. It talked about a guérisseur who might have had some sort of remedy.”
“That sounds fascinating. I would love to see it!” she said eagerly.
“Well, I actually just returned it to my Papy’s shop.” I didn’t mention the fact that I had Gaspard’s copy sitting in my desk drawer.
“Oh, what a shame,” she said. “What was it about?”
“Well, it was this gorgeous illuminated manuscript called Immortal Love, and the story was about this couple—the man was revenant and the woman was human. They were going to consult a guérisseur who could help them, but then the wife died and the husband had a numa destroy him.”
“I have heard about that story before,” Violette said thoughtfully. “I have not actually read it, but I have seen it referred to in other texts.” She hesitated. “Not to discourage you, but I have to warn you, Kate: Those old legends are usually just that—old legends. They might have a grain of truth in them, but certainly nothing that you could rely on to be helpful.”
“You’re probably right,” I said, wanting to change the subject now. Once I had returned the book, I could show it to her and ask what she thought. Until then, I preferred that she forget about it. The last thing I wanted was for her to go searching for it in Jean-Baptiste’s library and find an empty box.
NINETEEN
IT WASN’T UNTIL I GOT IN BED THAT NIGHT THAT I felt it. The loneliness. This was my least favorite day of the month. The day when Vincent was nonexistent. A few streets away, his body lay cold on his bed.
It wasn’t like I had to see him every single moment of the day. But when I knew I couldn’t talk to him—that there was no way to contact him—well, that was when it really got to me.
We hadn’t even been together for a year, but it truly felt like Vincent was my soul mate. He completed me. Not that I wasn’t a whole person on my own. But who he was seemed to complement who I was.
I leaned my head back against the pillow and closed my eyes. The image of a painting came to my mind: one of my favorite works by Cézanne. It is a small, simple canvas depicting two perfect peaches. The fruits are painted in loose brushstrokes of oranges, yellows, and reds, their vivid colors combined in a way that makes you want to pluck one from the painting and bite into it to experience its tantalizing juiciness for yourself.