What My Flowers Said Ch. 04-06

Part 1 – Roses Are Red

*Note – this is part of a longer erotic series with a slow build. The following two chapters do not contain explicit sex.

4

Once when I first got there. Three times when I pricked my finger. Another two at Marie. Silently, I summed my curses from the previous evening. Is that all? It was hard to remember. It was such a strange and dizzying night, and the smell of incense from the censer always made my head feel a little hazy. Well, for those at least, I'm sorry.

As penance, I promised to give Marie's bathroom a long overdue scrubbing. The shower and sink were on the verge of becoming public health concerns. Dirty job for a dirty mouth, Penelope. I furrowed my brow, remembering my Mother's homegrown Catholic justice.

I was not and had never been 'a good Catholic girl.' My whole life, I think I'd only been to confession twice—once before my first communion, and again when I was about thirteen. It just didn't sit well with me. It's not the theory so much that bothered me. On some level I think I actually liked that. But in practice, somehow the atonements I was assigned just seemed too generic; too asymmetrical to my crime. You lied about stealing your Mother's lipstick? Two 'Hail Marys' and an 'Our Father.' You committed fornication? Twelve 'Our Fathers' and ten 'Hail Marys.' I smoothed a crease in my skirt. Perhaps had the priest's punishments for me been more like a contrapasso out of Dante, I could've felt a bit differently. At least then I'd have known he was listening, that somehow the rules really mattered. Instead, for the past ten years I'd taken to enumerating my sins in silence during the duller stretches of mass—which in itself, I suppose, is probably some sort of blasphemy.

Back home before I left, I was hardly ever going to church anymore. Granted, I liked the icons. I liked the candlelight, and stained glass, and the eerie blue glow of the Catherine wheel. But all the rest I felt was best left to the theologians and zealots. It really wasn't until I moved up north—when I became a stranger in a strange city, where I scarcely spoke the language—that I discovered some comfort in the familiar sequence of the sacraments. Everything else in my life could be aimless, and adrift. And it usually was. But at mass, at least, I knew exactly what I was expected to do. I knew when to stand. When to speak. When to kneel. I knew when to open my mouth, and receive the Host.

I mean, don't get me wrong. I still only dragged myself out of bed on Sundays about once or twice a month. Whenever I did, I'd usually just stagger down the street to the musty little parish near Marie's place. But this morning was different. I got up before dawn to get dressed. I caught the train into the city. I was all the way down at the edge of the Saint Lawrence, perched in a pew at the infamous chapelle Notre-Dame-de-Bon-Secours.

Glancing up and down, I was clearly the most under-dressed in our row, what with my freshly torn jacket, pilling wool skirt, and the same wrinkled blouse I'd worn to work the day before. On one side of me sat a handsome older couple with wispy white hair floating over their heads like a couple of clouds. On the other side sat a woman in a primly pressed dress and red lipstick, with her three little boys in matching vests and black blazers. The youngest kept picking his nose, and wiping his finger on the kneeler. I smirked, watching his mother reach over to sharply slap his hand.

Two Hail Marys?

My toes curled as we finished a hymn, and a skeletal man in pinstripes ambled up to the lectern. His huge Bible thumped open, and he started an epistle. I squinted and bit my cheek, puzzling out the gist of it.

'Do not take lightly the discipline of your Lord, nor lose heart when you suffer for Him. For He always punishes the one he loves...'

I sighed, and rolled my eyes. Saint Paul had a knack for rubbing me the wrong way. In Caravaggio's Conversion, I kind of wish his horse had squished him. But Advent, I remembered, was around the corner, and would have more spirit of the season about it. All stars and angels. Immaculate conceptions, and virgin births. The bony lector droned on.

'...No punishment brings pleasure at the time. It's painful. Yet in time, if you are trained by Him you may know peace.'

I frowned. Really laying it on thick this morning, aren't we? He rambled on a while longer, until at last his book slammed shut.

"Le Seigneur soit avec vous," the priest appeared behind the pulpit.

"Et avec votre esprit," the congregation canted back.

He launched into his homily, and by the first few words, I could tell it was bound to be about as bright and buoyant as the scripture. I let myself zone out for a while, gazing dazedly around the chapel. Though I'd painted it a full seven times from across the street, I'd never actually been inside before. They charged an entrance fee if you weren't sticking around for service. It was a strange sort of mishmash inside; a kind of beautiful chaos, with more than couple of centuries of style bleeding into each other at once. Like the overflowing aisles of Madame's little shop, look too long or too hard and you risked the vertigo of seeing things in four dimensions.

The vault was all trompe-l'œil, colored pale turquoise, gray, and gold, and punctuated with depictions of the Virgin in a copper-tone grisaille. From the ceiling hung about a half dozen votive ships—tributes, as the woman behind me had whispered, from sailors seeking Mary's favor for an ocean crossing. The entire apse was filled with a monstrous replica of Murillo's Conception of Soult, while in a niche near the altar stood what was undoubtedly the oldest work of art in the room. It was a wooden Pietà, carved in the gaunt and somber style of Medieval France. Lord knows how it wound up here. I swallowed. Like me. Both inside and out though, symbols of La Vierge Marie were everywhere. I craned my neck, getting a better glimpse of the Dormition up on the ceiling, and wondered about my own Marie, probably still in bed, sound asleep with her new catch.

She never did make it to the gallery. After Peter walked me to the station, I took the train back up to Saint-Michel alone, just me and my paintings. Out in the corridor, I passed our neighbor from across the hall. She was a gangly, waifish girl I'd grown jealous of the past few days, just watching her get ready for a move to warmer weather. 'Rio, peut-être,' she'd tossed her curls, 'Ou mêmeHavana. Allez savoir!' She was carrying a fire iron, an ash broom, and dustpan out to the dumpster. When she saw the stack of canvases under my arm, asked if I'd like her to throw those out, too. It was an honest mistake, but it got my blood boiling again. I think I very nearly said 'yes.'

But in the end, I didn't. I just shook my head, and slammed the door. I tossed the paintings in the back of the closet, and set a kettle on the stove. Madame's heels had blistered my feet. My fingers were numb. My head was reeling. But I wasn't about to turn in yet. I sat in silence at the counter, stewing, warming my hands on the steam of my tea. I wanted to be ready to start yelling at Marie the moment she walked through the door. But as usual, her absence outlasted the real brunt of my ire. By the time she sauntered in, both the indignation of getting stood up again and my fury with her for putting my oils up without asking had dwindled. Her apologies were honest and effusive. My tea had cooled. And once more I was just glad to see her back safe.

I was somewhat less glad, however, to meet the culprit who'd kept her away all evening. 'Serge', she told me gleefully, was a noted choreographer, an aspiring impresario, and had just cast her as Katharina in some pretentious-sounding ballet about The Taming of the Shrew. I held my tongue as she went to the door, and pulled him in like a surprise witness to corroborate her story. He was attractive enough. Tall and stand-offish. She stroked an amorous finger along his chest as she introduced us. He said something awkward and anachronistic in English—something like, 'how do you do?' or 'pleased to make your acquaintance,' then vanished beneath the veil of Marie's bedsheets, like so many attractive, stand-offish boys before him.

She made him wait a while. She always did with the ones she really liked. I poured some more tea for each of us while she told me about how he'd hunted her down after an audition, just to return a ballet slipper she'd left in the dressing room. I didn't bother asking if it was made of glass. Pantoufle de verre. Pantoufle de vair. She didn't say a word about Claude the Curator—now clearly a relic—but with a devious smile she did ask how I'd liked my 'surprise.'

Her face sank when I stumbled over my answer. I told her what I could—that I wished she'd talked to me first, that I didn't think my oils were good enough for exhibition. And though she apologized again, I could tell she didn't understand. I didn't push the issue. Wherever her head may have been, I knew her heart, at least, was in the right place. In the end I thanked her, just as Peter had instructed.

And of course she asked about Peter. When I said I was tired, that we could talk about it in the morning, she got out her phone and started dialing his number. For better or worse, Marie didn't make a lot of compromises. I caved, telling her the harrowing, humiliating tale of how he'd rescued me from his spiky obelisk, how he'd been dear, and fun, and had shown me a really nice time—and how he'd even invited me out to his studio.

She eyed me up and down, suspicious. She could see I was still holding back, and after some more prodding, I confessed the rest of it—or at least, just enough to appease her. I told her some crazy rich collector had commissioned a piece from me. She squealed, tossing her arms around me in a death-grip. I grabbed the counter to keep from toppling to the floor. She demanded more, and I pried her off, promising to meet up at the café in the morning to spill the rest of the beans. Of course, I knew I'd have to be careful to leave out the part about how dark and demonically handsome he was; how he'd kissed my hand, and sent a swarm of black butterflies alight in my stomach. If not, there was a decent chance she'd keep grilling me until my skin was half-charred. She let me go and we said our 'goodnights.' Just before the door slid shut though, I had to ask.

"...why 'Carnal Sin'?" I bit my lip.

"C'était une église rouge," she shrugged her slender shoulder at me, eyes twinkling in the lamplight, "You would prefer Seven Seas Incarnadine?"

I smirked as the woman next to me slapped her son's hand again, breaking me free from my trance. The sermon seemed to be winding down. I squirmed in the pew, feeling stiff. I suppose sleeping on a sofa the past two months was finally taking its toll. Much as I loved living with Marie, and all her benevolent lunacy, I really couldn't last there much longer—and it was more than the dull ache in my shoulders telling me it was time to move on.

I knelt for the Eucharistic prayer, remembering Mr. Caine's offer. Twenty-five hundred dollars. Still, I could hardly believe it. It's enough to get started, Penny. There were so many details still to work out. It scared me a little, not quite knowing what was next. But at the same time, even the cloudiest, most amorphous idea of a fresh start was exhilarating; enough to make me feel dizzy, and light in the head. Or is that the incense again? I swallowed. Either way, not being completely broke for once, even if only for a couple of weeks, meant a moment or two to catch my breath, and maybe finally get my shit together.

The marble eyes of Saint Anne reproached me from the nave, and I dropped my gaze back to the floor. That's seven. Such a filthy mouth, Miss Foster.

With the rest of the pew, I stood and started shuffling toward the altar. First things first, Penny. You need to focus on the painting. I bit my lip harder. I had no clue how I could hope to finish it in a single week. Two by three-and-a-half meters, it turned out, was a full seven by eleven-and-a-half feet. So big. I shook my head. Where the hell would he even put it?

Where I was going to put it was the real question. There was just no way I could tackle such a monstrous canvas in Marie's little living room, let alone wrestle it out our front door. The more I thought about it, the more impossible the project seemed.

I shivered as we passed the front pew. And what if he doesn't even like it? I stumbled, catching my toe on the crimson runner. What if he never wanted it in the first place? What if this whole thing is just some cruel, sadistic joke? My brow furrowed. On paper, it really didn't make any sense. Why would Mr. Caine want me, a nobody, to paint him a huge, red rendition of this littlechapel? Especially, I frowned, when he has friends like Evelyn X. I recalled uncomfortably the sight of them walking away together, arm-in-arm. I don't know why exactly—probably I was just jealous—but even then, I think I had a clear and ineluctable sense that I hated her.

Each little piece of the puzzle was perplexing, but none more so than Mr. Caine himself. How he'd spoken to me last night, the way he'd behaved—it was all so foreign, so imperious. With just a few more words, I think he could've forced me to agree to anything. And though it seemed an eternity at the time, our entire tète-à-tète probably took place in the span of ten minutes. It was something about him—the gravitations of his voice, the icy glint in his eyes. When he spoke, the clock's hands quit ticking.

I crossed my arms. It's true, Peter warned me to keep my distance. And that's precisely what I planned to do. But I'd be lying to say I wasn't tempted. Like Alice peeping into the garden, I couldn't help but wonder about the bitter tonic inside that long glass vial—I couldn't help but wonder how it might taste. Sweet? Salty? A bit metallic? I shuddered, remembering the rules. 'A red-hot poker will burn you... If you cut your finger, it usually bleeds.' The candles on the altar flickered, and I felt my eyes lose focus. Seven sins. Seas incarnadine. Out, brief candle. Out altogether.

I knelt down at the edge of the chancel, just as I'd been kneeling the moment we met. I laced my fingers in front of me, glancing down to the small scarlet dot where the wire pierced my skin.

He did help me, I knitted my brow. No one else did. No one else even noticed.

The priest approached. I parted my lips, and closed my eyes as he placed his pale wafer on my tongue. Next came the wine, trickling warmly down the back of my throat. I tried to be sacred; to meditate on the blood and the body, the mysteries of transubstantiation. But as I swallowed, all I could think about was Mr. Caine. His lips against my hand. His hand on my shivering shoulder. His voice. His eyes. Like frost.

5

I left just as soon as the final blessing was finished, throwing a scarf around my neck as I darted across the street to the café. I was ravenous. That piece of Christ awakened pangs in my empty stomach, and I spent the last ten minutes of mass wondering why, rather than bread and wine, the apostles at the Cenacle hadn't split scones and coffee instead.

Blasphème, Penny, I shuddered. The bell above the door jingled brightly as I pushed inside, stomping fresh snow from my boots.

"Bonjour Penn-ee," Marie's brother waved, peering out from his cramped and chaotic kitchen.

"Bonjour, Sébastien," I stepped closer, sniffing, "What's cooking?"

"A labor of love," he rattled the pan, his head half-hidden in a cloud of steam, "Pommes pochées au vin rouge, et pâte à crêpes au chocolat."

My mouth watered, "Smells amazing."

"Tastes even better, no?" He grinned, "Shall I fix you a plate?"

"I shouldn't," I shook my head, still feeling guilty.

"Ah, but you should," he pointed with his wooden spoon, "It's getting colder out there. And Marie tells me you're eating like a shadow."

She's one to talk. I frowned, ignoring the plaintive rumblings in my stomach, and heaved my satchel from one arm to the other.

"Later, maybe. I have some work to do."

"Painting today?" He patted his palms on his apron, leaving a pair of floury handprints.

"Just sketching, I think."

"A shame. The walls are naked since Marie made off with your oils," he poured more wine into the pan and whirled around, whisking up a roux in a scorched copper pot just as it began to bubble, "But your exposition. It was a success, yes?"

"Um, yeah," I shrugged tensely, "Something like that."

He whisked faster, "Marie says you found yourself a Medici. He wants to buy your work."

I flushed. Good Lord. Her and her mouth.

"Well, you know how she tends to exaggerate."

"Ma soeurette?" He flashed a grin, "Jamais!"

I smirked as he raised a spoon, sniffed, scowled, and seasoned with a half-pinch of thyme. It really did smell incredible. Honestly, how he could stand to spend his time immersed in all these tantalizing aromas and not weigh a metric ton was beyond me. Tantalus in Tartarus, I bit my lip. But then Sébastien's build was much the same as Marie's. He was more swarthy maybe, with his bushy black beard, and hair all bound up in a vaguely swashbuckling bun, but beyond that the two were easily mistaken for twins. Even their taste in men was all but identical.

The flair for performance, too, ran in the family. I didn't believe her the first time she told me, but before opening up the café, Marie's brother had toured as an acrobat in a French Canadian circus. She told me his old stage name was Volta do Mundo, that he'd specialized in a peculiar sort of handstand, and could shoot a bow and arrow with his toes. Just why he quit and started cooking I couldn't say. I'm not even sure Marie knew all the details. But rumor had it, there was something to do with a game of William Tell gone awry.

The apples hissed and sizzled in the pan. My stomach groaned again. I crossed my arms tight, and sighed.

"Is she waiting?"

"Around the corner," he leapt to clap a pot lid over a little grease fire on the grill, "Go on. I'll be over in a moment."

The way he moved in that tiny kitchen—it was a lot like watching his sister dance.

I shook my head, "Il n'y a pas le feu, Monsieur."

He chuckled, fanning the smoke, and kept cooking. I sauntered away around the corner. Marie was there by the window, looking saintly with her head backlit by a slant of sunlight. It was our usual spot—a perfect place to sit and sketch, with a clear view of the steeple, and the chapel's west door. I waved, though she didn't see me at first. She was absorbed in a Sunday paper, spread out across half the tabletop, and idly gnawing the cap of her pen. I grinned, ducking over shoulder. The crossword had her stumped.

"...How about 'erato'?" I tapped.

"Ah, eureka!" she scribbled it in, beaming, and spun to peck me on the cheek, "Are your sins forgiven, ma cochonne?"

"Hardly," I blushed, plopping down. Marie always teased me for going to mass, "Have you been waiting long?"

"Eons," she clasped her hands, "But now you're mine. And you're going to confess everything to me."

Everything? I tugged open my satchel.

"Well, if you really want to hear about it," I nodded, "the first thing you'll want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like..."