The Third Grace (18 page)

The thing seemed almost to have a life of its own, at least as far as Aglaia was involved, and it had been working its way between them from the beginning. Lou caught the girl reading it at every turn and she resented the interference while at the same time acknowledging that, if not for the Bible's emergence from Tina's basement, she may not have had the excuse to come along to Paris as an intermediary in locating its owner.

Lou retrieved a cleansing wipe from her cosmetic bag and began to remove the day's residue from her face. Her fabricated excuse to help Aglaia find François had been handy, but not something she ever intended to fulfill. The girl's badgering had gotten to her this evening; she couldn't put Aglaia off any longer. Hopefully her action tonight would keep the peace between them in the interim and they could enjoy their last couple of days together in Paris—as long as her plan didn't backfire on her.

The Bible lay on the floor between their two beds. In light of all the time Aglaia spent reading the literature, one would think she'd have something to say about it. But she withheld her perspective and, even with a couple of drinks in her, she wouldn't open up. Lou didn't care to hear any moralizing or a reiteration of the Jesus myth; she got enough of that on the rare occasions she returned her sister's phone calls. But Lou was running out of ideas on how to stimulate meaningful discussion with Aglaia—that is, discussion that would earn her the girl's intimacy. Lou needed leverage, but it didn't appear as though the Bible would afford that after all. Unless, she thought in the middle of applying paste to her toothbrush, the Bible itself held the secret to her quandary.

Lou stooped to pick the book up. Aglaia was out like a light; now was the time to read for herself what the elusive François had to say that so commandeered Aglaia's concentration. Lou sat on her bed and opened to the first turned-down page and read,
In the beginning, the gods created.
That was innocent enough, if a bastardization of the original writing. The second page was inscribed with the words,
Naked and we felt no shame
, and that, along with a couple of sexually charged remarks and François's attribution of devilishness to Aglaia, looked promising. But overall the words and phrases held no significance for her except to suggest that François hadn't been too interested in the biblical content itself. His comments relating to Greek mythological figures were erratic and disjointed, and leafing through the book left her unenlightened about what fascination the notes held for Aglaia, as scant as they were. But it seemed François and Aglaia shared an interest in the gods of yore.

Lou came to the last creased corner in the book of Acts, where the name of Artemis was circled without any attendant notation. Apparently that was as far as Aglaia had gotten in her reading, and as Lou paged through the following books, she understood why. The remaining margins were clear of any writing—until, that is, she came to Revelation at the end of the Bible. Possibly François had started into the book on a whim and grown discouraged at the confusing language, or perhaps he'd been browsing and this passage caught his eye. But here Lou read an arresting message not yet discovered by Aglaia, if her folding of the corners indicated the extent of her reading.

François had underlined a verse that referred to the writer giving someone a white stone with a new name written on it. The allusion was lost on Lou; she was uninformed about the much-disputed apocalyptic writing and couldn't fathom why this specific verse might attract François, until she read his words scribbled up the left-hand margin and across the top of the page:
Idée de génie! Des biblots, des joyaux, y graver “Kallistei,” en combler mes Grâces, et leur donner la pomme!

For the first and only time throughout Lou's perusal of the Bible, François had dropped his terse note-taking style and written a complete thought, perhaps working out some spontaneous inspiration that had just come to him.

His salacious remark made it clear that he was a bit of a knave when it came to girlfriends, what her students nowadays called a “player.” The whole thing smacked of licentiousness, but Lou was unfamiliar with one word in the message. She knew Latin, of course, and several Romance languages, but
Kallistei
was almost certainly Greek. She postulated that it related to a particular myth with historical implications, something she'd have to think about.

In the meanwhile, Lou might make some mileage out of her discovery. Aglaia would doubtless find the French too advanced to translate on her own when she came to this section in her reading.
When
and not
if
she came to this section, Lou emphasized to herself; she knew the Bible wouldn't be going home with François on Friday despite Aglaia's plans. Positioning the book firmly on her knee, Lou snatched a pen from the night table and wrote in capital letters in bright blue ink below the pale penciled French scrawl:
SEE ME. LOU.

That would grab Aglaia's attention, she thought. Then, satisfied that she'd yet have the final word over François Vivier, Lou went to sleep.

She was awakened an hour later by Aglaia's sobbing. She turned the lamp on. The young woman—hair mussed, eyes running—was contemplating the tears wetting her hands with the glazed gaze of a sleepwalker. Lou moved to her side in a show of comfort.

“Blood everywhere,” Aglaia mumbled.

“There's no blood,” Lou said. Was she visualizing some tormented nightmare—perhaps her first sexual encounter?

“He begged me,” Aglaia whimpered, staring straight at her with wide, blind eyes. “He begged me, ‘Don't go, Mary Grace.' ”

“Who begged you?” Her guess was accurate, then—François in an ardent moment wouldn't be dissuaded. Lou hoped to get Aglaia talking. “What did he want?”

But Aglaia just jabbered incoherent phrases about fallen stones and stones raised to life, about Orion and the Graces and shining like stars in the universe. Her agitation increased and she kicked away the covers and shrank to the far side of the bed, her expression horrified by some imagined scene. “Get up! Oh, Joel!”

Lou reached for her and pulled her into the restraint of her arms, the terror making Aglaia rigid. Wasn't her dead brother named Joel? Maybe this had nothing to do with the French boyfriend after all.

“Hush, Aglaia.”

“All alone, all alone.” She was doubled over with the labor of crying, her fingers clawing with the desolation of a supplicant begging for absolution.

“You're not alone now,” Lou said, patting Aglaia and nuzzling her sweet-smelling hair. The girl's distress was pitiable but Lou's tranquil words didn't issue from the motivation of compassion; rather, the heat of Aglaia's bed linens on her own naked thighs aroused her. But she denied the urge to kiss Aglaia on the lips and instead hummed a line from a lullaby.

“Hush, little baby, don't say a word,” she sang out of tune, not remembering when or where she'd learned the ditty. The girl's body relaxed and her breathing evened out, and Lou tucked her back under the duvet with some regret, not even stroking the luscious curve of Aglaia's waist. Though the girl was unlikely to remember the whole incident in the morning, it was better to move slowly. She needed to gain more of Aglaia's trust for the benefit of her own career, even at the expense of her personal gratification.

So Lou began to have second thoughts about her newly devised agenda for Aglaia at the Louvre. The phone episode earlier this evening had been a knee-jerk reaction on her part, maybe a strategic error, born from Aglaia's insistence that she contact François. But she couldn't undo her action now and she might as well make the best of it. At any rate, Aglaia needed to wake up to reality. The imminent lesson would serve her right for her high-and-mighty show of morals, turning her nose up last night at the bar over the arrangements Lou had made with Philippe and Emmanuelle.

Tonight Lou had glimpsed beneath Aglaia's daytime costume of propriety. At last she might be getting to the heart of the matter. The girl was unbalanced. Aglaia had been madly in love and she hadn't recovered from her brother's death, both traumatic enough events for a teen. But how did they relate to one another? It had to do with Aglaia's current insistence on delivering that Bible back to François, Lou deduced, but she couldn't see desire to connect with an old flame as motivation enough to pack a Bible around Paris. Maybe there was a religious element, Aglaia wanting expiation for past sins by tying up the loose ends of this romance. How would she react when she discovered she couldn't offload the Bible on François after all? Watching the struggle made up for some of Lou's impatience in waiting for Aglaia to respond to her own supplications.

Lou glanced sideways from her bed at the girl, who wore a faint smile now under the influence of some new reverie. “Hush, little baby,” Lou whispered again as she clicked off the lamp. “Enjoy your sweet dreams while you still have them.”

A
glaia awoke Thursday morning with bones aching and mouth fuzzy, recalling vague nightmares and a fleeting, bizarre impression of Lou singing to her. The disquietude clung to her as they rushed to catch the Métro to Île de la Cité for a hurried tour of Marie Antoinette's cell and the torture chamber in the Conciergerie.

Having given Aglaia explicit instructions on when and where to meet up again, Lou took her leave for the Sorbonne library. “You'll be fine on your own while I get my research done,” she said, as though Aglaia were reliant on her, incapable of enjoying an afternoon unchaperoned in Paris. And she did enjoy the rest of her day, resisting her impulse to head over to the Louvre on her own in sheer rebellion against Lou's directive. She stuck close to the river so as not to lose her way and followed narrow streets of gabled buildings, passing shops and galleries, throwing herself into the frenzied colors and aromas of a flower market. Peckish, she bought a
croque-monsieur
at an outdoor stand, the
gruyère
melting into the ham, and she ate it as she sat in a leafy alcove of a park watching children at play.

Thus nourished, she spent several hours strolling along the quay bordering the Seine, counting the bridges that laced together the Right and Left Banks like the ribbon on a corset—Pont Neuf, Pont Saint-Michel, Pont Saint-Louis. The foundations of Paris itself rose up from the river, its ancient limestone footings exposed at the waterline beneath an arch or at the base of a pier. She had a sense of wandering back in time, of the insignificance of one young woman whose forebears had not even broken sod on the North American plains when most of these blocks were set in place.

Sometime during her pensive expedition into the heart of Paris, she thought about phoning Naomi again. Their last call had ended oddly with Naomi about to make a statement that Aglaia suspected involved François in some way. She looked for a
tabac
to buy another phone card but was instead waylaid by a newsstand. The article on her costume delivery was to be printed today, she recalled. She found the short piece buried in a back section, accompanied by a grainy photo of her standing beside the acquisitions committee. The journalist had quoted her in French but she bought another six papers anyway for the clippings, forgetting all about the call to Naomi.

Late in the afternoon, Aglaia stood in front of a must-see she'd starred in her guidebook back when she plotted her trip—it seemed years rather than weeks ago. She paid her fee and entered the main floor of Saint-Chapelle, following behind a couple of nuns in dark habits who crossed themselves repeatedly. It was a low-ceilinged, Gothic space, devoid of notable ornamentation, that cast no prediction of the celestial splendor she'd find upon climbing the dank stairwell. But upstairs, multi-colored sunlight fractured the air above her head, the stained-glass kaleidoscope surrounding her like a halo of rubies and sapphires and emeralds. She rotated in a slow circle, head tipped upwards. Fifty-foot windows soared around her within a framework of marble arches extending into the vaulted ceiling like the ribs of an overturned ship, a thousand glass pictures she couldn't at first interpret for their sheer profusion.

A uniformed man with thinning hair was delivering by rote a monologue in wooden English, likely intoned with the same accent a hundred times before, to a group clustered near Aglaia within the larger crowd. She lowered her lids and listened to give her eyes and neck a rest.

“Sainte-Chapelle was constructed by Louis IX and consecrated in 1248 to showcase the relics purchased from the emperor of Constantinople. The devout in the Middle Ages called it the ‘gateway to heaven' since the windows tell the story of the Bible in pictures.” He jabbed his thumb towards the entrance. “Begin with the Creation in Genesis portrayed on the left-hand lower panel and follow clockwise through to the Crucifixion and then, behind you, to the apocalypse crafted in the eighty-six panels of the Rose Window.”

The lesson faded out. It couldn't compete with the exquisite blaze of color singing to her—azure and gold and crimson—the whole radiant work a visual orchestra with each pane trilling in its own voice within the grand cantata. She swore she could hear it:
Oh, tell of His might; oh, sing of His grace; whose robe is the light, whose canopy space.
Aglaia shook her head to jar free the lyrics and music that had invaded unasked.

As she focused on the individual scenes, the diorama became clearer piece by piece. The sun—that flaming rock—was throwing itself through the windows, separating the blur of bright pigment into meaning, forming order out of the chaos. The colored glass, itself just processed sand, became a mediator illuminating the story, a conduit between heaven and earth. Light was shining through the darkness, the translucent delivering the transcendent in a depiction of Incarnation.

She first made out the Garden of Eden where God, having scooped man from the red soil, brought forth life. From years past, she again heard the swelling harmony of her church choir, Joel's tenor behind her blending with her alto:
Breathe on me, breath of God, fill me with life anew.

In the next scene Isaac was on the altar, about to be slaughtered by Father Abraham, whose blind faith was counted as righteousness:
Be thou my vision, O Lord of my heart.
Her memory surged in song, pictures bringing forth hymns unbidden. Moses stood before the burning bush, here leading his people through forty years in the desert—
He hideth my soul in the cleft of the rock, that shadows a dry, thirsty land
—and then, grizzled, descending from the mountaintop with his face glowing from the presence of the Lord as he carried the Commandments written by the very finger of Jehovah:
Thy Word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto my path.

The noise was so bright! Aglaia longed to extinguish it by diving back down the stairs to the cool dimness below, as Jonah, running from God, was hurled through the deep to the roots of the mountains and swallowed up by the fish that regurgitated him at the gates of the great, walled Nineveh. The crescendo swelled as image upon image burned into her consciousness: Mary borne by a donkey, her belly swollen with her own cargo, bearing God Himself. The babe in the manger. The boy in the temple. The man in the crowded streets healing the paralytic and the leper and the blind, calling into the grave, “Lazarus, come out!” while the grieving sisters wept. His own empty tomb, His resurrection, His ascension, and the River of Life flowing through the Eternal City, clear as crystal from the throne of God:
Like a river glorious is God's perfect peace.

Aglaia's interior choir wouldn't be hushed:
Crown Him with many crowns, the lamb upon His throne… Praise Him! Praise Him! Jesus, our blessed redeemer.
She knew no one around her could hear it. She covered her ears with her hands and wasn't noticed in the crowd, but still the words came at her—now holy words from the Bible itself calling out beyond even the hymns that were tormenting her and the mythology that had been twisting her:
Come! Whoever is thirsty, let him come; and whoever wishes, let him take the free gift of the water of life… Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest… Come to me and drink.
Aglaia was penetrated and permeated with sight and song and spirit.

She couldn't take anymore! She scuttled out of the cathedral to arrive at the
brasserie
around the corner an hour ahead of time, and ordered water—in French, after all her criticism of Lou. What had come over her in Sainte-Chapelle? The Sunday school lessons of her childhood had replayed in fast forward and hijacked her senses, the visual stimulation of the biblical overview portrayed by the windows sending her into some kind of auditory hallucination. She'd never before undergone such an unwitting cantata, and she was still quivering when she saw Lou arrive in the doorway.

Lou's mouth watered as she entered the restaurant. Re-energized by her research at the library and an invigorating conversation with an established French professor whose work she admired, she thought again about how good she was at her job and how badly she needed tenure. Aglaia was slumped over a menu, disheveled, and Lou took charge. She ordered an epicurean platter of
charcuterie
to share: tongue rolled with truffles, Leberwurst, veal and
foie gras.
Aglaia only sampled the regional specialties and took just a few sips of her wine before pushing the glass away. She was ready to call it a day but Lou wasn't so inclined.

“This is the life,” Lou said, and sat back with her coffee. “The dining, the shopping—it's what I work so hard to afford. Isn't it what we all want—the perks that come with career advancement?”

“I guess so,” Aglaia said. “I mean, I suppose I never thought of that as my main motivation to do a good job.”

“And what would your motivation be, if not money?” Lou presented her credit card to the waiter and waved away Aglaia's attempt to pay for her half. “Recognition, I suppose.”

Aglaia frowned in thought. “It's true,” she admitted. “It's not that I want to be famous or anything, I'd just like my abilities to be acknowledged.”

“And rid yourself of the hayseed persona, is that it?”

Aglaia felt another blush creeping up and tried to change the topic, saying, “My main motivation right now is to meet François and hand off the Bible.” But Lou ignored the dodge.

“Employment at PRU would give you status and job security, Aglaia. I've ensured you'll receive a tidy benefits package as soon as you sign on.” She was stretching the truth, but it was time to apply pressure. She couldn't wait much longer to wrest a commitment from Aglaia.

“I haven't thought that far ahead yet, Lou.”

“Then you'd better begin. The theater department is getting anxious to fill the position.” The girl's hesitation spurred Lou to push harder. “I've heard that several contenders are lining up for the job,” she lied outright. “It's a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Aglaia. It could signal the zenith of your career and is nothing to sniff at.”

“Don't get me wrong. I know it's an amazing break for me and I'm really grateful to you. But,” Aglaia bit her lip, “I don't want to leave my boss in the lurch.”

“You've got to start thinking about your own career goals. At the university you'd be recognized as a real artist.” Aglaia nodded at that, so Lou carried on in the same vein. “I'm told you'll have great artistic liberty and a research budget of your own. Who knows, you might even expect more artsy trips like this one—maybe for London's theater season.” The dishonesty took less effort with every sentence and the girl was swallowing it whole. “And imagine your name coming up on the screen as the assistant costume designer at the end of the movie.”

“What movie?” Aglaia straightened her back.

Lou cursed herself for the slip. She didn't want Aglaia twigging yet to the connection between the wardrobe consultant job offer by the theater department and PRU's involvement in submitting a bid for
Buffalo Bill
. Any inkling that Lou was actively recruiting her away from Incognito as bait for RoundUp Studios might spook Aglaia, with her well-developed sense of morality.

“I'm talking about the next PRU theatrical project, of course, whatever it is they're putting together—stage play, film study. Come on,” she said, changing the subject, “we should be getting back to the hotel.”

The next morning Aglaia lived through centuries in a matter of hours as she and Lou toured the Louvre museum. Upon their arrival, Lou plunged her beneath the modern glass pyramid entrance and swept her through the halls of time, past an Egyptian mummy and busts of Roman orators and seventeenth-century Dutch paintings—ignoring Aglaia's appeal to follow the plan she'd mapped out online at home. Instead, they climbed a staircase to this pavilion and doubled back to that wing, and all the while Lou carried on a didactic commentary that Aglaia, chasing along behind, strained to hear within the throng of tourists. She labored beneath the weight of history and the burden of art.