After what seemed hours on my feet, all I wanted in the world was to sit down. My new feelings of friendship and respect for Erik prevented my giving in, however, and I offered to help with breakfast. I preferred the feel of an equal relationship, rather than that of host and guest. He was already my superior in the music room, totally untouchable. Elsewhere, I would do my best to equal him.
Fresh and hot coffee seemed sent from heaven; it had been ages since I’d had some and the warmth soothed my throat. After breaking a few eggs into a pan, I turned to tell Erik so, and thank him again for his hospitality, but after a few words I noticed him staring off into nothing. As his mask faced me, I couldn’t tell his expression, but I imagined he couldn’t be contemplating anything pleasant.
I took a risk, and reached out with my whisk, tapping him gently on the mask. “Hallo, Erik? Anyone awake behind that thing?”
With a shake of his head, he turned his eyes back to me, unoffended. “I apologize, I was thinking…”
I took the mug of coffee I was about to consume and handed it carefully to him instead, repressing a laugh. “Here. You need this more than I do. Obviously.” I turned my eyes heavenward, exaggeratedly, then took a closer look at his expression. Whatever he had been thinking, he obviously wasn’t entirely comfortable with.
A friend is someone to talk to when you need it, most of all. “What was it you were thinking so hard on?” I whisked the eggs idly, but watched him as he answered.
“You, me, this!” he exploded, gesturing widely. It was rather what I had expected. “I don't know what to make of what's going on here. Nothing like this has ever happened to me before.”
That at least, was a line I seemed to hear more and more in my life. Somehow I'm one of those people that just attract adventures and interesting people. When the interesting people I attract aren't used accustomed to said adventures, they can take a while to learn to roll with the punches. But all I said was, “Why does everyone always say that around me?”
I began to turn back to the stove, and almost missed what he said next. “I've never had a friend before. It’s…strange.”
My heart wept at the words, and I wanted to reach across the counter and take his hands in mine, ease his pain away with friendly contact, but I didn't think he was ready for such an act. But, he considered me friend, and that friendship was already a gift I cherished highly.
“Yes, I know.” Whether I was saying I knew he'd never had a friend or I knew it was strange, I didn't myself know. “Isn't it wonderful, though?” I flashed another smile at him, hoping to jolly him out of his ill humor.
It seemed to work. “Yes, that it is.”
I turned and discovered our eggs burned, but it didn't really seem to matter. With the two of us working, things were quickly set to rights, and we had our breakfast in companionable silence.
After cleaning up, I found a whole day stretched ahead of me, with nothing planned to do. I wasn’t traveling anywhere, music lessons were over for the day, and my new surroundings were fairly bare of entertainments. Erik had excused himself to his bedroom for a time, and I found myself in his ‘living room’ perusing the bookshelf.
Finally I settled on the largest volume, Shakespeare's complete works and got started on “The Two Gentlemen of Verona,” the first play in the book. It had been some time since I’d read Shakespeare, and the rhythm, the language came back to me haltingly.
“But say, Lucetta, now we are alone, Woulds’t thou then counsel me to fall in love?”
I wouldn't if I were you, Julia, I thought. Love hurts something awful. Love is a cage and a trap. Stay free and love your friends; bind them to you faithfully. You'll miss them, one day, when love leaves you stranded but you've abandoned your other companions already. Five years and I was still bitter. I snorted at my own cynicism, and settled into the Bard, silencing my own interior monologue for a time.
Slowly, the old familiar tone of the words caused me to relax, and I curled up tight in the corner of the sofa, enjoying the softness, balancing my book on the arm. I forgot where I was, I forgot time, and immersed myself in the world of Shakespeare, painting vast settings for the scripts in my mind, casting roles among my few friends and several admired actors, directing whole plays in my head.
Eventually, the thunder from Ariel’s storm in “The Tempest” wasn’t the only rumble in the room, and I realized I was hungry. Again. I was almost annoyed with myself, but then realized that I’d read a good six or seven plays and it must be nearing supper time. I still hadn't seen Erik since just after breakfast, but didn't want to go prying about his home.
He lives alone. This must be an awful inconvenience for him. He doesn't know what to do with me. I sighed and returned to Prospero’s island and Miranda’s plea for the lives of the sailors she didn't even know. Eventually, he'll either show back up, or I'll give it up and find something in the kitchen myself.
Prospero was just achieving the fruition of all his plans when the door to the dining room opened suddenly and Erik snapped, “Aren't you hungry, yet?” But he was smiling and gestured me inside.
I put my book up and followed him, willing to play that little game. “Starved. But, although I did invite myself into your home, I'm hardly so rude as to go raiding my host's kitchen without permission!”
He turned abruptly and seemed about to take my hand, but didn't. “Consider this your home while you are here. ‘Raid’ away. But now, I have dinner ready.”
He pulled out my chair at one end of the long dining room table, and I was pleasantly surprised to find a fresh rose laid across my dish. I smiled at him over the petals as I sniffed it, and then laid it gently aside.
While we ate, I made good on my promise to be entertaining. I told Erik tales of my most recent adventures on my little walkabout. Camping in the French countryside, all I’d seen in Paris, trading a week's work as a baby-sitter to the owner of a small ferry company for my passage across the Channel. Erik was a wonderful audience, asking pertinent questions and laughing in all the right places, but wherever I tried to ask questions about him, he deftly steered the topic of conversation back to myself.
Dinner finished, I hopped up and gathered the plates. “You cooked, I clean!” I cried as I walked them into the kitchen, the swinging door effectively cutting off any protests. When I returned for the glasses, I found Erik watching me looking both amused and worried. I couldn’t help stopping by his chair.
“Erik, I know you don't have the faintest clue what to do with me.” He blinked a few times in surprise. “I don't know if you'd think it's a good idea, but…” I felt suddenly shy.
“What?”
“Well, you have a wonderful library out there. We could read to each other a bit this evening… I’d say lets play chess, but I'm awful; wouldn't give you any sport.” I felt myself blushing furiously. Reading, what a stupid idea.
“You can't be that bad.”
“You'd probably beat me in ten moves.”
“Well, in that case, I’d better set up the chess board and pick a book for us.” He rose into a sweeping bow. “Mademoiselle, I await your pleasure in the lounge.”
I couldn’t help laughing quietly and shaking my head at his back as he went out the opposite door, and continued chuckling over the sink full of dishes.
I retrieved my rose from dinner before joining Erik in the living room. True to his word, he had set up the chessboard, laid a book out next to it, and somehow procured two glasses of wine, even though I had been in the kitchen the whole time.
I sat across the board from him, twirling the flower idly in my fingers. “So, am I black or white,” I asked, examining the board, which was sideways to us.
Erik's eyebrow, or the one I could see at any rate, rose. He looked down at himself, over at me and then pointedly at the board.
I
couldn’t help laughing. “Okay, I get
it. I can play any color I want, but
you'll be playing black.” I turned the board right way.
“As smart as she is beautiful,” he said in a warm voice.
I couldn’t help making a joke. “Yup, I did real good in school. Teacher gave me all D’s for ‘Delightful!’ Pa was so proud. He'd only gotten F’s for ‘Fine.’”
Erik sniffed and pointed at the board. “Your move, Mademoiselle Delightful.”
I moved a pawn without consideration. I knew I would lose this game, and fast.
“I just can not believe you're as bad as you claim at chess,” Erik said, as we alternated moves. “You know how all the pieces move, and it is just a matter of observation and forethought to figure the rest.”
“Erik, my mind just doesn't work like this game!” He captured one of my Rooks and pointed it at me.
“I imagine someone told you that girls are not good at chess and you have never really tried because of that.”
I felt the urge to chuck the bishop I had just taken through some miracle of fate and luck (or more likely Erik's maneuvering) at Erik's head. “I do a great many things women aren't supposed to be able to do, including science, reading maps, riding motorcycles and traveling Europe unaccompanied and with no money. I would like to be good at chess. I just can't make my brain wrap around the game,” I explained patiently.
“Nonsense, all you need is some more practice…”
I watched Erik staring at the board and doing a quick mental inventory. I already noticed I was in checkmate.
“You lose,” he chuckled.
“Yes, I know,” I said pleasantly as I tipped the white king over in surrender.
“No you lose your bet. You said I’d beat you in ten moves. That was eleven.” He leaned back in his chair, arms crossed, daring me to say anything.
“Well, as all of my possessions are currently in your care, I have nothing to forfeit for losing the bet.” I thought a moment. “Except this. I know you gave it to me, but perhaps a kiss will increase its return value?” I kissed the soft, cool petals of the rose and laid it on the board amongst the scattered pieces, smiling at him.
Erik had the most peculiar expression on his face, one I couldn’t decipher for once, and he stared at me for several long moments. Crap. I've insulted him again. But then he took up the rose.
“Yes, that should do,” he replied, so soft I could hardly hear him.
He seemed to shake himself as he picked up the book: Grimm’s Fairytales. “You can also read first!”
I chose a tale at random and started in, reliving my elementary school days where I did different voices for all the characters, playing with the story. When I finished my story, I handed the book back to Erik and he read one. I closed my eyes and let his voice roll through me, hardly paying attention to anything but the sound of it.
We seemed to be picking the stranger tales. After a few, we had each other laughing madly at the sheer bizarreness of some of the stories, and the stupidity of the characters therein. My idea of reading to each other was not so horrible, after all.
However, after I yawned the third time in the middle of my own reading, Erik took the book from my hands and said, “Your music teacher says to go to bed. He won't be as easy on you tomorrow morning as he was today.”
“Tell him I already think he's a heartless dictator and can't get any worse,” I retorted, but obediently rose and headed for my room. At the entrance of the hallway, I stopped and turned around.
“Erik, I had a good day. I'm very glad I met you. Goodnight.”
He was watching me with that same peculiar expression on his face as I turned and walked down the hall.
Despite what I tell him, my music teacher is far from a heartless dictator that night's journal entry started.
The next morning I managed to get to my voice lesson before Erik started playing again, and I wasn’t sure whether I was relieved or disappointed. Despite his promise, about a third of the morning was spent on the single note exercise. I tried not to mind too much. It was worth it when I started on scales, though.
Again we cooked together, and again I had the afternoon for my own amusements. That night, Erik beat me at chess again (“Twelve moves. You're improving already!”) and we read some more Brother’s Grimm.
It was an easy existence to get used to each other, and conversation flowed a little more freely each day. There were still moments of awkwardness and miscommunication, but our new friendship was blossoming.