beautiful · blank · pages

In an ironic way, Penelope relishes deprivation. Hunger is no stranger; long hours of practicing her violin when she wanted to be doing anything else have taught her discipline. Day after day of hunger, however, is wearing in a different way, and warmth has become a half-remembered dream. She took nothing with her when she jumped off the bridge, and she's having trouble figuring out what that leaves her with, other than the clothes she's wearing. She wishes, now, that she had brought the violin - and other days, remembers that it was part of what she was running away from. It all blurs together anymore, but more than the food or the warmth or the company of other people, or any of the other luxuries she was accustomed to, Penny misses her music. Without it, she's not quite sure if she's real anymore.

It is autumn, and Bernadette is saying her goodbyes. One is already finished: her mother is gone, safely aboard a plane that left for Minneapolis three hours ago. As she wanders through streets grown familiar, the girl debates whether it's worth seeking out any of her other nominal friends, or if a clean break would be best; in the end, she opts for cowardice. That can't save her from the worst of it, though, and as dusk begins to settle over the city, Bernadette hurries her steps, breath frosted in the chill air, to make sure she gets there before the chocolaterie closes. It is closer than she intended, but Capucine lets her in regardless and locks the door behind her, beckoning Bernadette on through into the kitchen. The room is brightly lit, a haven of warmth snug away from the encroaching winter, and to Bernadette, who has never known anything like it, it smells like acceptance. She explains the situation without really paying attention; she is talking about leaving, about her father and Marseilles and starting over (again), but in her head she is thinking more of how many different spices she can identify lingering in the air, and how six months ago it would all have been one indistinguishable scent. Distracted as she is, she doesn't see the regret in the older woman's eyes before she shakes it off with a laugh. "Look at your long face," she teases, winning a reluctant smile. "Marseilles is not the end of the world; it will only be less often, not never." As she leaves for the last time, Bernadette tries to believe it.

It is autumn, and the wind holds a promise of snow as it howls through the forlorn streets. The leaves that fetch up against Meryl's boots are brown, all the colours sapped from their delicate veins by the vicious weather. She shuffles through the deepest drifts she can find, relishing their crackling conversation; it spares her having to think, too much. The lake seems even lonelier than usual, this autumn: it's grown much too cold for outdoor lunch breaks, and she hasn't seen Dr. Mortimer in weeks. She is surprised by how much she misses it.
She is even more surprised when she arrives at the tree outside his building and finds him sitting there, bundled in a brown woolen peacoat with the collar turned up, staring out across the frigid water. She stops beside his chair with a rueful grin. "You look cold, doctor," she says, aware that it's inane.
Lucas looks up, shrugs. "I get tired of a routine that rarely varies beyond five or six rooms. I needed to get out."
There is a pause, almost long enough to be awkward, and then the words come pouring out in an impulsive rush. "I could make dinner for you sometime. If you wanted to get out more than this, I mean."
A wariness settles like a blanket over his expression. "Meryl, I don't think-"
"Please," she interrupts. "I... I've never liked shrinks, but you've been... the closest thing to a friend, lately."
Lucas sighs, rubs his face with both hands. "I really shouldn't."
She shrugs, shoves gloved hands into her pockets. "Sure. Nevermind. Well, it's cold out. I'm going to... to go. Thanks anyway."
He watches her walk away, and wonders if it was the wrong answer after all.

Hominy’s great-grandmother was a flapper in the 20’s. The really scandalous kind, with short hair and short skirts and a dazzling social scene. Hominy knows this, although she also knows that her great-grandmother burned all the photos when she got married the second time. A few relics, however, survived the purge; the ankle-length black mink coat was one of them. She wore it for most of her life, until age and physical weakness forced her to give it up. She tried to pass it on to Hominy’s mother, but Gracie couldn’t bring herself to touch the thing, and in the end, it became a pair of black mink teddy bears.
Her grandmother was the one person Hominy felt comfortable telling crazy things to; now that she’s gone, Hominy has considered taking her problems to a shrink, but in the end decides that a ludicrously expensive stuffed bear is probably just as effective a listener.

There is a moment of silence after Hominy opens the door as she stares, dumbfounded, at the girl on the doorstep. “Bonjour,” she manages at last, standing aside to let her in. “Can I…?”
The girl shrugs out of her coat, glances around with a strange mingling of avid curiosity and acute discomfort. “I… came to see my father? René?”
Hominy nods, slowly, still trying to digest the fact that her cousin has a child who must be a teenager by her looks, and has never said anything about it. “He’s… not in,” she falters at last. “I don’t know where he’s gone.”
The girl’s face falls, something going dull and lifeless in her sweet brown eyes. “Oh. Well. I guess…”
“Do you want to wait? I could put on the kettle.” It’s an impulse, nothing more; Hominy can’t say why this girl intrigues her so much, but she is strangely glad when, after a moment’s uncertainty, Bernadette agrees.


All Bernadette knows is that there is something undefinable about this woman that promises answers, at last, and her hunger for something true is much stronger than any trepidation she may have about what those answers may be.

Meryl is in the grip of an unhealthy craving. She blames it on hormones; on Klaus being a bastard, on her own state of emotional vulnerability. She blames it on loneliness, or the fact that Dr. Mortimer is one of the only people who doesn’t seem to think of her as a freak – although she realises that he’s a professional, that it’s his job to keep his own opinions to himself. But it seems unlikely to her that he sees many of his other patients after they’ve stopped making appointments; and after all, she really didn’t talk to him much at all until after her required therapy was over.
She blames it on the fact that he’s attractive, and gentle, and single. Perhaps more than anything, she blames it on the fact that he’s safe, as safe as anyone can be – entirely out-of-bounds for someone like her, completely unavailable.
Whether any of these reasons are true is irrelevant; the fact of the matter is, none of them do anything to abate the craving that eats at her like a persistent parasite, sapping her thoughts and emotions.

In the end, Drake takes all the notes with him – hundreds and hundreds of pages of notes, research on people and places and time periods, thoughts, ideas, one-sided arguments written in a vicious hand as though the author was fighting an internal battle on paper, blood-flecked scraps from all-night sessions when the drive to write was stronger than the sickness consuming his body. There are entire reams of paper on each character – their backgrounds, their families, their personalities and vulnerabilities and particular skills, and more still on how they all fit together, how this character met that one, how so-and-so’s action at this point in time affected someone else profoundly years later, crossroads and choices, plots within plots within subplots, all charted out with painstaking detail. It boggles Drake’s mind; for weeks, it all just sits in boxes in his front room, a flood of words that’s all he has left of Geoffrey.

Being the sort of woman who’s never been denied much of anything she really wanted has given Annabel a distinctly aristocratic outlook on life, although most of the time she’s socially competent enough to keep it to herself. Still, she finds the tiny, cramped apartment Cameron brings her to, with its distinct combination of art studio and bachelor pad, charming – in much the same way Marie-Antoinette was said to have viewed the French peasants. He is flustered, she amused; he apologises repeatedly for the mess, the clutter, the lack of space, and she wonders how much worse he would feel if he had any idea what sort of outrageous decadence she is accustomed to. The thought makes her smile; unable to read her thoughts, all Cameron knows is that something so uncommonly beautiful seems entirely out-of-place in this squalid room.
In the end, it’s one of his best pieces: just her, sitting under the window in a soft wash of golden light, perfection embodied against a backdrop of peeling wallpaper and the dying houseplant Blithe gave him that he never remembers to water.

“I thought you’d stopped coming.” Lucas’s voice is mild, as ever; he merely glances at her before scattering another handful of crumbs in the shallows.
Meryl sits gingerly on the edge of the park bench, gripping it tightly; it’s been more than two months, and she still feels fragile, somehow. Something of this must show in her expression; looking concerned, the doctor turns his chair toward her. “Meryl?”
For a moment, she just stares at him, wide-eyed – and then, suddenly, it all comes spilling out, all the things she’s never said to anyone, about Klaus, and love, and the cutting, and his rejection. There on the park bench she pours out her heart, admits to this man that she’s been afraid, afraid to come back and face him after the look on Klaus’s face, and for the first time, Lucas touches her, reaching out to take her hand, holding on tightly.
The rush of gratitude she feels for this simple connection is frightening; she clings to his hand like a lifeline, and when the words are all gone, they sit quietly together, hands clasped, for a long time before at last he draws away to go back in to the office.

Capucine has been letting her help in the shop. Oh, not actually working, of course; she’s too young for that. But little things, like helping to change the window-display, or stirring the pot of chocolat chaud behind the counter. It’s not much, of course, and all things the older woman could manage perfectly easily on her own, but it makes Bernadette feel useful, and not just in-the-way.
Today, though, is special. Today Bernadette, who hates running, ran all the way from her school to get to the chocolaterie, because today, Capucine has promised to let her help in the kitchen! The young man behind the counter isn’t anyone she knows, but he seems to be expecting her; without waiting for her breathless explanation, he opens the inner door with a smile and shows her into the back of the shop. Capucine is there already, hard at work, and for the next few hours Bernadette ceases to feel clumsy or awkward or unattractive. A chocolaterie, her mother says, is a terrible place for her: it will only make her fatter than she already is, and besides, it’s hardly practical. But things are different, here, without anyone wanting her to be more or other than she already is.
With painstaking care, the girl sprinkles shavings of white chocolate on top of the cooling slab of dark chocolate. She glances up when she finishes to find Capucine watching her with a smile both fond and approving, and for the first time in a long while, Bernadette dares to wonder if, against all odds, she’s actually managed to find something she could be good at.

Wainani is the most beautiful man she has ever seen, golden-skinned, with black tribal tattoos swirling across his body and face, long beautiful dreadlocks knotted back from his face, ears gauged with hand-carved bone jewellery. His voice is deep and cultured, his laugh beautiful and often. He speaks to her of human rights, of environmentalism, of changing the world; Isabel is tempted to let cynicism get the best of her, but she listens, watching him fold flyers for the next protest. An hour later she stands in the door of the studio and watches him pull away in his painted bus, wonders what it’s like to believe in something that much, wishes she knew how.

After a week of being his honoured house-guest, Lilavati has made up her mind: the man is mad. She supposes she should mind more, but to be quite honest, she was so unsure of everything for the first several days that she grew used to him before she’d even realised there was anything strange about him – that is, stranger than the entire situation. Truth be told, she actually enjoys the company, and in all fairness, any discomfort he causes really isn’t his fault. At first, she simply thought she was speaking aloud without meaning to; eventually, she came to the realisation that he was reading her surface thoughts, followed swiftly by the firm conclusion that he usually couldn’t tell the difference between that and what she did verbalise.
It’s unsettling, to be sure, but all things considered, Lilavati decides she will take this eccentric British hermit, crazy or otherwise, over her other options. At least he doesn’t insist on answers to awkward questions; Silas is patient, willing to give her the time she needs to come to terms with the change in her fate. It is a gift she accepts without question, for fear that looking too hard will shatter the illusion of good fortune.


(As for Silas, he’s simply glad of the reprieve from solitude.)

“I can give you what you want.”
Muiréann surveys the wreckage of the house, scattered across the beach like bits of driftwood and flotsam, and thinks with irony close to hysteria that it sounded so simple, at the time. Of course, she should have known, making a bargain with the Lorelei, and she tries to harden her peaceful soul against the necessity of the fisherman’s death; it was never love that bound her to him. Even so.
Either way, it is done, and she has no time or use for regrets. There is nothing left here that she cannot leave behind, not the wreckage of the house left after the tidal wave slammed into it, not the people who watched her captivity year after year with prideful eyes to know one of their own had bound her, not this town without pity or soul. She walks to the water’s edge, wraps her skin around her and feels at last that longed-for familiar change, hands to flippers, skin to blubber, hair to slick brown fur. The sea embraces her like a lover, and she spends an hour or more simply revelling in the beautiful freedom of the clear water before she remembers that she must now uphold her side of the bargain. The journey will be long: she takes nothing from her former life but a tiny seed, growing in her womb.

Shizuka’s father once told her, “Never write anything down unless you intend someone else to know it.” It’s advice she’s never forgotten, in the changing circumstances of her life. During her training years, she spent hours teaching herself auditory retention, perfect recall, attention to detail. Sometimes, in the long daylight hours between one hunt and the next, curled up lonely in whatever excuse for a hiding place she’s found, she tries to comfort herself with the thought that he’d be proud of her, how hard she’s worked, how much of his wisdom she’s retained. Unfortunately, she forgot to teach herself how to forget those details which are inconvenient: the truthful part of her knows that Cécil would never have approved of a life dedicated to revenge.

Silas has always wanted to be a singer – maybe even a rockstar. Since his vocal range consists, however, of at best five notes, this has always been an unlikely dream. He doesn’t mind; the truth of the matter is that after his mother died and his grandfather took him in, he realised that he wouldn’t need to make a living anyway. It’s just as well; Silas wasn’t cut out for supporting himself. He’s too simple, most people would say; it’s the easiest explanation.
Since he’s never much cared what people think of him – it’s rarely flattering anyway – he sings to the unconscious woman he found on the side of the road and brought inside, because it passes the time, and it makes him happy.
She wakes slowly, some time later; to ears that expect harsh words at best, his toneless crooning is oddly soothing.

This man really shouldn’t be so charming, Kali tells herself, tracing the fading mehndi that adorns her hands and wrists as she looks through the photos he took of her. His studio pleases her: it is very neat, organised, but somehow welcoming at the same time, the entire space designed to put one into the right mood to create something. The man pleases her, too, although she realises she shouldn’t allow herself to be charmed. Still, there is something about him – the way he speaks in that deep, mellow voice, and the blue sheen of his black, black skin, and how he always manages to courteously give her enough space, never crowding her, even when he brushes up against her in the process of showing her this or that photograph, or how he put this one in sienna tones, or that one in black and white.

Looking at the pictures, Kali smiles to herself; she likes what he sees in her.

Isaac has been taking ballet since he was ten years old – although his father didn’t know until five years later. By then, it was too late; the boy had learned to think for himself. “I’m sorry!” he yells, each word hurled like a challenge. “I’m sorry I’ve never been what you wanted, never good enough; I’m sorry I’m not manly enough for you! But at least when I dance I’m happy, which is more than I can say for you – ever!”
Hurtling into his room, he slams the door, pushes play on his CD player and turns the volume up to drown out his father’s rage. My Chemical Romance blasts through the speakers; the line catches in his head, echoing with painful irony: “You should have raised a baby girl, I should have been a better son.” He smiles with a desperate sadness, turns the music off again and listens to his mother’s voice, cajoling, reasoning, persuading his father back to a better mood.

(Looming over all their heads, the unspoken shadow of the divorce they all wish could just get itself over with.)

Artemas has been a member of the paid sex industry since he was fourteen. After a few years, it’s become something he hardly thinks about at all, most of the time. But sometimes, every now and again, he remembers how full of dreams he was when he left home, how big and full of opportunities the world seemed then. Somehow, he never imagined so many dingy hotel rooms along the way.
He stands by the badly-cleaned window watching the rain streak the glass, a ubiquitous white hotel-robe shrugged on over his slender frame, and carefully doesn’t think about the occupant of the bed behind him. Instead, he lets his mind wander; thinks of Paris, warm autumn days, Bernadette.

He comes to see her once, after the scandal. They walk, because she doesn’t want to let him inside. After twenty minutes of silence, he starts the fight she knows he will: hands shoved in his pockets, shoulders hunched against an imaginary chill in the balmy spring air. “So that’s it. You’re a…” freak, he thinks, and she knows it, but he forces himself to modify it, saying “boy” instead, although it lacks conviction.
Meryl darts him a withering glance. “No. You don’t get it, which is why I didn’t bother explaining.” This is the conversation she left to avoid – for all the good it did, in the end.
“So what, then?” he demands, turning to face her, voice raised, face flushed. “So you just used me, led me on? Was it funny, Meryl? Did you have a good time, watching me make a fucking idiot of myself,” and now the word comes, “for some freak?”
She stares at him, the accusation hanging between them. “No,” she answers at last, quietly. “No, it wasn’t funny at all. Go home, Klaus; there’s nothing for you here. There never was.”
“Obviously not.” He rakes her with one last scornful glance, turns and stalks away.
Watching him, she holds very still, feeling as though she has become so brittle that even the shiver that traces its way up her spine might shatter her into a thousand mismatched pieces.

The gate is still broken. Kali stands just out of view of the house, listening to the familiar traffic sounds on the road behind her – lowing cattle, wallahs calling their wares, pedestrians chattering, cars and scooters and bicycles and carts – and feels such a strong longing that her breath catches and her eyes burn. The heavy, humid air clings to her with a promise of rain; the muddy road and deep puddles in the ruts going through the gate bear testament to the monsoons that have already come through. Beyond the garden wall, she can hear Dharmendra arguing with the laundry-woman about something; the words wash over her, her own tongue, her own people, her own place, and for a moment the desperation of her longing overcomes her terror of the consequences of being found.
But even if home is the same as she left it, she herself has changed, and so at last she turns and hails a new rickshaw, leaves the way she came without anyone the wiser.