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“Thierry,” Simon informed me, as the bartender left to fire up the gleaming monster of a coffee machine sitting behind the bar, “is the nephew of the proprietors, Madame and Monsieur Chamond. Have you met them yet? No? Well, don’t worry, you will. They’re terrific people, very easy to talk to. I’m surprised they’re not in here now, they usually are. Anyhow, Thierry’s their nephew. He’s a bit of a drain on them, I think, but he’s lots of fun. Just don’t let him know you speak French,” was Simon’s advice, “or he’ll talk your ear off. He kept Paul going for three hours our first afternoon here.”
“You don’t speak French?” I guessed, and Simon shrugged.
“Just the basics. Hello… where’s the bathroom… I have a blue hat—that sort of thing. Paul’s the expert. He spent a year in Switzerland, on a Rotary exchange.”
I assured Paul that he’d done his sponsors proud. “You sounded terribly French, just now.”
He smiled. “So did you.”
Thierry had returned with my café crème. He set it with a flourish on the table in front of me, sent me a thoroughly disarming smile, and swept off again to take the order from a clustered group of older tourists—Germans, from the snatches of their conversation I could overhear. It wasn’t easy to hear things at a distance. The radio crooned steadily above our heads, not loudly but persistently, and Edith Piaf had just begun to sing “La Vie En Rose” when my wandering gaze came to rest upon the solitary figure in the far corner.
Had I been drinking anything but coffee I’d have blamed it on the drink—that blinding
moment of illumination that made time, for one long heartbeat, cease to be. It was as if my mind said, see now, this must be remembered… this single moment, with Piaf’s voice rasping out the haunting lyrics and the clink of glasses fading to a far-off sound no louder than the trickle of a fountain.
Time blinked. The moment held. There was no reason for it, really—none at all. None, at least, that I was willing to admit. The world, I thought, was full of handsome men.
This one sat close against the tall French windows that opened to the street and fountain square. He looked German too, I thought, or maybe Swedish. His hair was so amazingly fair, the same whitish-gold color that one sees sometimes on very young children, and where it brushed against the collar of his crisp white cotton shirt it seemed to blend into the fabric. His eyes looked oddly dark in contrast, though of course I couldn’t tell their color. He looked too handsome to be human, really, sitting there—like some youthful middle-aged pop star, narrow-hipped and long-limbed, his classic face unlined.
Simon Lazarus caught me staring. “That’s Neil,” he told me helpfully. “He’s English too, like you. He’s a musician.”
I’m sure my face must have shown my reaction because Paul laughed, a short soft laugh of understanding. “No, not that kind of musician,” he said. “He’s a violinist. Plays with a symphony orchestra, I think. You’ll hear him practicing if you’re around the hotel in the afternoon.”
So this, I thought, was my mysterious angel with the violin. He certainly looked the part, with that face and his loose white shirt and the sun turning his hair to a halo of light.
“I think I heard him playing earlier,” I said, to Paul. “I was half asleep at the time. I thought I’d dreamed the music.”
“He sounds like a recording when he practices,” Simon put in. “He’s that good. His room’s right underneath ours, on the first floor, so we can hear him pretty clearly. Hang on, I’ll introduce you.”
There wasn’t time to voice a protest, he was already taking charge, turning his head to call across the bar, and a moment later I was being introduced. “Neil Grantham,” Simon said, “meet Emily…”
“Braden,” Paul supplied, for a second time.
“Braden,” Simon echoed. “Emily, this is Neil.”
I had to look a long way up. He was older than I was, though I couldn’t have placed his age with any certainty.
Thirty-five, perhaps? Forty? I watched his smile cut a cleft in one clean-shaven cheek, and crinkle the corners of his eyes. Black eyes. How odd, I thought. Like his hair, they seemed to glow with some strange inner radiance. I mumbled something banal and shook his outstretched hand.
“She heard you practicing this afternoon,” Simon went on, conversationally.
“Did you really? I hope I didn’t disturb you.”
I shook my head. “It was lovely, actually. I like Beethoven.”
The crinkles round his eyes deepened, and he took the seat beside me. “I’m flattered you could recognize it,” he said. “You’ve just arrived?”
“This afternoon.”
“From England, I gather?”
“Yes.”
It was difficult to carry on small talk with a man who looked at you like that, I thought. This was not the sort of man that one could flirt with. Those eyes were far too level, far too serious, and because of that they made me feel uneasy. I smiled at him even as my own defenses slammed down stoutly into place, and to my relief Neil Grantham didn’t try to bridge the distance. He rubbed an absent hand along his outstretched thigh and shifted his gaze to a thick paperback novel sitting on the table next to Simon. I’d noticed it earlier myself, and smiled at the title: Ulysses. The sort of book, I thought, that young men like Simon Lazarus went in for—the sort of book that thumbed its nose at polite convention. Which is why I was surprised when Neil addressed his question, not to Simon, but to Paul. “Haven’t you finished that, yet?”
Paul smiled lazily, but it was once again big brother Simon who answered for him. “Give him a chance.” Simon’s grin was broad. “He’s only been reading it for two years.”
“Experiencing it,” said Paul. “I’m experiencing it. You don’t just read James Joyce, you know.”
