Reprise: A Story of Reincarnated Love

*** 10 June 2007 6:10 a.m. Dominique and Labette’s flat, Place de Clichy***

*****
The tinkling strains of the string quartet over the swish of skirts and laughter chased her out into the wisteria-scented garden. It was so blessedly cool outside, and she knew she would need a wrap eventually, but just now her hot cheeks needed the soothing chilly air to dry the tale-tell rivulets on her cheeks. She could not do this! She simply could not; and yet she was so very trapped. She felt like a prisoner standing before a crowd with a noose around her neck. There was no escape save this short reprieve.

The small, walled English garden behind the town home was decorated with torches along the path closest to the flagstone veranda. Holding her wide, heavy skirts in her hands, she broke into a trot once she thought the party-goers could no longer see her, giving into the heartbreak that had threatened to tear sobs from her throat all night. Her life was over, and there was no escape and she wanted to just die… Yet everything depended on her doing her bloody duty.

Like the child she so recently had been, she collapsed onto the concrete bench, letting the tears come as wave after wave of self-pity rolled through her. It was not fair that she should have to pay for her sire’s crimes with her own life. And yet she could do nothing else. Her father needed her. Just the thought of him in danger made her afraid and sent sheets of guilt and anger shooting through her for begrudging him anything.

She knew she was not alone even before she heard the crunching of the pea gravel beneath his shiny Hessians. Unwilling to let him see her shameful tears – and honestly wishing she did not have to do this at all – she sniffed and rubbed at her cheeks with the heals of her gloved hands, wishing she had carried a reticule now so that she would have a proper handkerchief.

Had he heard her crying? Oh god, she could not have this conversation. How could she possibly be strong enough to turn him away when he was everything to her, as if he were the other side of her very soul?!? He was everything she had ever wanted for herself, and yet for filial duty she would have to break his heart and her own and somehow live without him.

The tears began to fall again and she bolted along the path, the embroidered taffeta of her skirts getting caught on the shrubberies as she swept past. Running really was useless for there was nowhere to go, and if it were a real footrace he would catch her up in his long, strong arms with languid ease. And he did, though there was no restraint to his touch as he stood behind her, his smoothly shaven face stroking her coifed hair, his gloved hands holding hers, pressing one into her waist as he kissed her gloved fingers over her shoulder – the sound of his gentle, persistent passion blotting out her tears until she relaxed against him until she was leaning back against him as if he were a wall.

She needed him. How could she give him up? How could she possibly marry anyone else, love anyone else? And how dare she now take comfort in his embrace when she must hurt him so much? And yet she tuned herself so that she could tuck her forehead against his neck, and he bowed his head over hers so that she thought he kissed her hair near her temple, his arms over hers and wrapped tight around her.

He knew. She knew he knew. And he knew that she knew that he knew that right now, right here, was all they would ever have. His anger and his pain tightened his hold until she felt it too and hated herself for his anguish. He deserved so much better than her hollow love that was eclipsed not by a greater passion, but by cold obligation.

And yet, as the moments wore on, it was the comfort of his embrace that drew a sigh from her throat – restricted by the boned corset that pushed her teenage breasts up on display above the gold embroidered neckline of her dress – a trophy on display, no different than a prized mare or the fertile land bequeathed to her by her mother. After tonight she would never be warm or whole again.

Maybe he decided to fight fate. Maybe he decided that he would not let her go into this loveless marriage without the memory of what could be. Either as a gift or as a punishment for her choice the arm around her shifted with infinite slowness so that he was pinning her arms against her with one of his, freeing the other to stroke up over the silk of her glove to her nearly bare shoulder, along the slender column of her throat until he was cupping her face, tipping her chin up as he delicately placed kisses along her hairline and then down, his lips pressing into the hollow of the bridge of her nose and then closing over the pointed tip before drawing on the center of her upper lip as her head finally fell back into the cradle of his arm. Forbidden though they were, his kisses were better than heaven.

They were like coming home.

******

Long nails of light stabbed at Dominique’s eyes, drawing a groan from her throat as her arm moved to cover her face. Rolling away from the window, her body curled into itself. It was always the same. The dream haunted her - making her long for bed by day and miserable in the morning when she was torn out of her nocturnal lover’s arms once again. And like every morning, she tried desperately to fall back into the dream - which seemed so real when she was in it that she could smell the wisteria and warm, spiced scent of his clothes. The dream left her flushed and overheated - longing to be held and yet unable to tolerate even the touch of her bedclothes for feeling smothered and abraded. Though she never saw his face, she had no doubt who her dream lover looked like - she just did not understand why her subconscious would latch so very strongly on Sean LeBeque.

Oh he was beautiful - there was no denying that. He had a voice that could melt any ice princess - as her friends had teasingly nick named her. Of course, many of them thought she was genitally mutilated. But if the dreams had taught her anything, it was that she could no longer deny her sexuality. Not that she intended to do anything about it. But the noises from Labette’s room at night were increasingly hard to bear. And she found herself seeking male attention, and then getting haughty and judgmental when she received it. Even Labette had noticed that she was presenting herself in a more alluring manner: had even bought a bottle of perfume - though in truth, she wore it to bed more than out. She had actually gone to the perfumery to test the men’s fragrances, thinking that maybe she had smelled her lover’s scent in real life, and could find it; but to no avail. Trussardi Uomo by Trussardi came close, but it was not quiet the same mixture - or maybe it just lacked the singular ingredient of His body chemistry to make it work. Still, she would have been sorely tempted to buy it if it had not cost €70 for just over an ounce. It was more than she would gross in two nights at Gabby’s - all to satisfy some odd urge to feel closer to a man who existed only in her sleep! And yet she still had found herself walking out with a gift basket of Calvin Kline’s Sheer Obsession for Women, which had been on sale, but still an uncharacteristic indulgence, especially since only her bedsheets would get to smell it on her.

Dominique did honestly consider walking over Sean LeBeque’s gallery - thought about it everyday in fact. She fantasized about walking in in a gorgeous dress, her hair perfected by the wind. She envisioned him gliding over as he spoke to her in that warm, low voice, taking her hands in his before sweeping an arm around her to show her around. But of course, it was all fantasy. She convinced herself that he would not even remember her. It was preferable to making a fool of herself over a man who by all rights should not ever notice her - and would be horrified if he knew what her life was really like.

Things at the bank had been going… okay. Far from using her hard learned skills she was spending most of her time as a glorified secretary, typing and filing and fetching. Still, she paid attention and she met people - who were for the most part either nice or at least polite, so it was not so bad. She had made a few friends that she often ate lunch with. As they were likely what had stopped her from madly dashing over to see the gallery, she clung to them like she had never done to her ‘friends’ at school. Besides, they were interesting.

It was hard not to be able to share any of this with Labette - who felt the distance between them and seemed to alternate between smothering clinginess and hostility. Domi sniffed at her and consoled herself with the fact that Labette had her own friends. Still, the week before had been a bad one. Maybe that had been what had prompted Dominique to agree to attend the party next Friday night. Labette was on about it being THE party of the spring and was even buying a new outfit for it. Dominique had spent her disposable income on perfume and lunches with the girls, but agreed to go along on the shopping trip anyway. Maybe the distraction would do her good.

** Across Town at Sean’s Town home **


Sundays usually were for Sean the pleasant, relaxed, one-day sojourn away from career and the mad bustle of cosmopolitan life that was a cliché with people and families everywhere.

But, not this Sunday – a full month since the afternoon with Dominique.

When she had not dropped around the gallery during the first two weeks, he was mildly, disappointed, but rationalized that she was no doubt occupied phasing from one stage of her education to the next – the internship, graduate studies. Surely she’d swing by during the weekend, or the following week, the last week of May. To be sure, Sean was quite un-depressed despite her lack of show at the galerie. He was, in fact, generally elated, clicking his heels up with the kind of **zing** reserved solely for first time or new young love.

And, it was about love, total, all-encompassing love: much more than lust, and no less than total adoration. He had found her, again, at last. It would now be as it should, Sean and Felicia, Sean and Dominique Vasser, together! The past would engulf them, and they would cry and laugh and amend and renew. Sean’s every waking day had been filled with such joy! While the longing and the empty corners of his spirit were gone, though, there still was no she, in the flesh, here, with him. Ah, but, this would rectify, very soon.

That was a few days ago. As May 31, the end of the third week since the café, came, he grew dark, again morose and brooding. Why had she not come? Was she in Paris yet? What did it mean? His despair grew each day into the fourth week. An already crowded business schedule became crushed by his daily dashes on foot to the Quai to seek her among the crowds, or to hover near the bank entrance hoping she might come, or go. He entered the bank several times, but she was not to be found.

On Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday of that fourth week, he collected Angelo and motored to the École, hoping against hope that she might perhaps be there. She was not. Angelo took on, it appeared, Sean’s swings of mood. “Ah, mon ami, you are so fun to watch, a dribbling drooler over a sweet young skirt,” he would say one time. “You know she drools for you too, and, she WILL come, soon!” Other times, though, to throw some light on Sean’s gloom, he would advise, “Forget her now, mon ami! So, she was your fuck-buddy last century! This is 2007, man! Look at all the fine tight ass out here! How can she be your destiny, and not be here, when all that is?” he would ask, sweeping his hand over the vista of women in the Quai or on the street or at the lushly-lawned campus of the École.

None of it mattered to Sean. He grew darker. Many after-hours at the galerie again found him entranced before her sketch. The visions were back, transporting him like a mad kaleidoscope of images that meshed scores of different times and places populated by her. At home, he had again begun near-obsessive sketching, and augmented that artistic angst with written verse, sometimes erotic, sometimes romantic, but always to or about her.

At the same time, he held together and never wavered in his work or social obligations. His intrinsic survival sense dictated this. It would do no good, he reasoned, to sully his reputation in the arts community by slackening off his work and his clients. This was, after all, his bread and butter, and he had to maintain it all to be the provider he wanted to be for Dominique. He would do her no good without income and standing. She was to be his Queen; he must, then, be her King and Protector.

Thus, that first week of June was one of his busiest ever. He immersed in his work. But, she overshadowed his every breath and thought. “I will regain her” was his constant mantra.

And so, Sunday the 10th of June in early afternoon found a brooding, unhappy Sean burrowed into the deep leather half-sofa in his library-media room, paper pad and pen on hand. Sunlight poured onto his paper through the long narrow pair of windows wedged between the tall thin bookshelves. He had been putting touches on the starting verse of a poem – a lusty ode to Dominique, a device that temporarily lifted his depression:

breathe you in
your essence sears my lungs
chokes my heart
arousing the beast within
to take you
capture your boiling passion
silent words are spoken
and you melt into my embrace
the moment, once frozen
thaws with quiet grace
then simmers and steams
watering our eyes ……………..

The quiet suddenly was rent by the insistent chiming of the doorbell: insistent, persistent, annoying. Angelo. Had to be. It was his signature ring.

Sean dragged to the front door through the elegant rooms and hallways of his high-end townhouse in the central Paris Quai and Isle district. He drew open the door, and Angelo bustled in without ceremony. He was, as always, a bundled up jangle of energy and exclamation. In his Sunday finest – clean, pressed-looking French jeans, horizontal-striped navy and white sailor’s tee, well-fitted denim blazer, and a ubiquitous navy beret – he took over the entryway like an invading thief.

“Angelo! What? What is it today, man? The phones do not work?”

“Oh, who knows, mon ami? If they do not, blame it on sun spots!”

Sean ignored the total non sequitur.

“Vino, amigo, vino! Give us some wine then, Sean,” Angelo invited himself.

“Sure. I could stand a little anesthesia about now,” Sean replied glumly.

They wound their way up two levels of the multi-layered townhouse to the opulent, gleaming kitchen, dominated by satin-finished stainless steel and high-sheen aluminum appliances and appointments. They sat at the long glass table that claimed the middle of the huge kitchen. “The wine,” Angelo reminded.

Sean pulled a chilled open bottle of light German May wine from the fridge, slid two wine glasses from the overhead glass rack, and returned to the table. As he poured, he asked, “Alright M. LaRussa. What brings you to cross my threshold on this day of worship?” Sean would not quite admit to himself that his friend’s appearance had markedly lifted his spirits. But, he knew it, nonetheless.

“The party! Dominique Vasser! Yes. At a party!”

“What!!!??” Sean exclaimed, the hairs wherever they were all over his body now bristling and standing suddenly tall. “What party? Where? What the bloody hell are you talking about?”

“OK,” he replied, taking a big noisy gulp of the fruity sweet German grape. “No, it is not that I saw her. But, ah Sean, I believe we shall!”

Sean furrowed his brow and nearly toppled his glass with a menacing sweep of his hand. “Angelo,” he said with measured irritation, “tell me slowly what this is all about!”

“Yes, yes,” he began. “You know my friends, Alfred and Ridoux? Al is a 40-ish drummer with that young punkish band, the “Seine Insane.” Haaaa! Can you imagine a 40-yer-old playing gigs with kids in their 20s? Well, I mean, I have many good friends that age. I mean, you know, the sweet tight tails wag best at that age! Why, just fact at that party, I hooked…” Sean cut him off with a glare. If let loose, Angelo would meander an Amazon-length of side stories before punching to the crux of things. It could take days. “Angelo! Cut the fuck to the point! Now!”

Angelo drew aback. It was unlike Sean to snap at anyone, or even punctuate his words with “fuck.”

“Yes yes. So, I went to catch their gig at a dive in the Clichy. Ridoux knew of a private party afterwards, and he said we all, band and all, ought to check it out. Of course, Ridoux would be fine humping Al anywhere, even in front of the fans onstage, I’ll bet….”

“Angelo! Basta! Enough! The point,” Sean again cut him off.

“OK! I’m at this party, and some fine young bird is telling some people that they all should come to a party in the Clichy this Friday. A big deal. All-nighter. And, then she stsarts rattling off names that’ll be there! I heard her say, ‘Dominique from the bank.’ That grabbed my ears!”

Sean’s eyes widened, and his mouth parted slightly. “Go on, Angelo, s’il vous-plait.”

“Well, later, I cornered that sweet young thing and quite honestly told her I had heard her. I said that I wondered if she was speaking of a friend of mine, Dominique Pieroux, whom I had lost track of. I said she worked at some bank!

“Haa! She was drunk as hell and fell for it. She says to me, ‘Oh, no, no. It’s Dominique Vasser, my friend who interns at the same place I do.’”

Sean exhaled sharply and shook his head. She could be found now! Angelo had again saved the day!

“Well, Sean, mon cher ami, I sweet-toothed that lass, and I have the address of that party. We can go to it, Sean! Get you out of this ridiculous slump of yours! You’re no fun anymore! We should go to it!”

Sean was already there in his head.