The Beautiful Ones - Silvia Moreno-Garcia Page 0,122

around, making her rest above him, her hair falling like a curtain over his face.

CHAPTER 24

Valérie had a dream that they were in Frotnac, in the intoxicating summer of their youth, when the nights were almost nonexistent and the days stretched on beyond the limits of the possible.

He wore that neat gray suit of his, cheap but carefully pressed, and they sat at a table in the café they used to visit. He was young, with a sheen about his eyes and a lightness in his limbs, and beautiful in the way only a boy can be beautiful.

In real life, the café had been bursting with customers, but in the dream it was the two of them sitting at a table. He held her hand and looked at her, and Valérie realized that their solitude was due to his gaze: he saw nothing but her. To him, the servers and the patrons and the people walking by the window did not exist. She existed, and she alone.

She was everything.

As though she were a goddess, he built a temple to her every morning and knelt before her, supplicating. She rewarded him, once in a while, with a smile or a touch of her hand, a kiss on the lips. But even when she gave nothing, he was happy because she was everything.

A clock struck in the plaza across the street, and he rose, silently bidding her good-bye.

Too soon, she thought.

She followed him outside, down the crooked streets. He was always ahead of her, and she could not catch up with him, but she managed to follow even when he disappeared around the corners or dashed sharply to the left.

He entered a building.

The stairs stretched up too high. This could not be a normal building. It must be a tower.

Up she went, up the winding staircase, and she stopped periodically to explore a hallway, open a door.

She pushed open many doors, but he was not there, until finally she shoved one last door of iron, stepping into a dark room lit by moonlight.

He slept upon the naked stones in this chamber, Hector, but not the young Hector. The Hector of the now, with stubble upon his cheeks and a face that had grown harder, more exact, as if a jeweler had chipped off bits of precious stone to reveal a faceted diamond.

She whispered his name, as she’d done in Frotnac, the exact same inflection, but he did not stir.

She extended a hand, as if to touch his shoulder, but then she noticed the woman at his side. Valérie couldn’t see her face, because it was nestled in the crook of his neck, but she had hair so black, it was almost blue.

Valérie yelled his name this time, and it bounced around the room, but he did not wake.

She noticed then that there was no furniture around them. No mirrors, no paintings, no chairs, no wardrobe. Just the naked stones on which they slept and the moon watching them shyly from the window.

It was because she was everything, and he needed nothing else.

But she’s no goddess, Valérie thought furiously. A creature made of earth and water cannot hope for divinity.

It occurred to her then that if she were divine, he could not hope to hold her as he did.

The girl turned her head. Valérie might see her face now, but she raised a hand to shield her eyes.

She stepped back, and the door closed behind her.

Valérie woke early and was glad to find Gaétan was not at her side. If he’d been there, she might have cried. The dream clung to her like a poisonous cloud, it threatened to reduce her to hysterics, and her whole body trembled.

Valérie snatched her robe and sat in front of her looking glass, a hand at her throat, like a claw, until she grew still.

Slowly she examined her fingers, as if trying to find an imperfection that was not visible. She took the golden band from the bottom of her jewelry box, and it was cool against the palm of her hand.

This angered her. She thought it should burn, it should scald her, as if to punish her for her wickedness. It was nothing but a thin piece of metal, a trinket given to her by a boy who had loved her and thought of her no longer.

Again she looked at her fingers, but they were as they always had been, pale and perfect.

“This spring is giving me an ulcer,” her husband said as he walked in,