“Nothing will keep us young.”
“Well I need to show you a house about a quarter of a mile up. Mediterranean, cliffside. It’s got these large windows that the current owners callfenêtres de verité. Windows of truth. And they tell me that you’ve never seen a sunset like the one you get there. I think we should hang around, see if they’re right.”
“Why’s that? You thinking of buying it?”
“I already bought it. And the house next door.”
“You’re joking.”
Frank shook his head. “No,” he says. “So how about it?”
“How about what?”
“Any desire to take the second house off my hands? Would be a nice place for us to spend our summers.”
“Are you serious, Frank? I thought you were just trying to get me to hike up this mountain trail.”
Frank gave him a smile, and Nicholas almost added that if he moved anywhere in Europe, it wouldn’t be here. He would move to Meredith’s grandmother’s farm in Tuscany. But he didn’t feel like sharing this with Frank. He wasn’t up for sharing that with anyone. That place belonged to his family alone.
“One thing at a time,” Frank said. “We’re going to walk this trail right now and I’m going to take you to La Chèvre d’Or for the best lunch you’ve ever had and we’ll stop by the houses on the way back…”
“I’m never listening to you again when you tell me to put on a pair of sneakers,” Nicholas said.
“Does make it harder to find a good excuse to turn around.”
Frank started to head up the steep path, but Nicholas stood still. He stared at the trees and the train station and the beach below. And then he looked up at the town itself. Cliffside and luminous, up inthose clouds in the late morning light. And then he looked over at his friend in that light. His friend who turned back and was waiting for him.
“What’s that look?” Frank asked.
Nicholas didn’t answer at first, trying to figure out what he wanted to ask him. Or, rather, trying to figure out how to ask him about what he saw in Frank’s eyes—the sadness there. The guilt.
“You think you’ll be able to outrun it here?” Nicholas asked.
“Who says I’m trying to outrun anything?”
“No? So it’s just me then?”
Frank laughed. “This is Nietzsche country and I like to think we get to play by his rule book,” he said. “You know what he always said. No need to outrun your sins. They’re not even sins.”
“Is that what he said?”
“I’m paraphrasing but, sure. More or less…” Frank looked up toward the cliffside, as if trying to recall it, Nietzsche’s actual words. “How did he say it?Whatever is done for love always occurs beyond good and evil.”
“That sounds like an excuse.”
“Maybe…” Frank said. But he turned back around. He turned toward Nicholas. “But it’s our best shot.”
The Sirens Have a Story to Tell Part 2
Ten minutes from closing and the museum is still busy.
Bailey hasn’t left the bench. She ignores the tourists who stream in and out of the back room, tries not to make eye contact with any of them.
She keeps her eyes on the painting, studying it. The blues and the green light, the abstract faces of the sirens themselves. It’s breathtaking. And she knows it’s not a coincidence that her father picked this painting, the bench in front of it, as the place for her to wait.
For her eighth-grade English class, Bailey did a project on theOdyssey. She waited until the night before to start. She’d been distracted with the eighth-grade musical (she was playing Hope inAnything Goes). She’d been distracted by dress rehearsals and a last-minute recasting of Billy. She was rehearsing her song day and night. She was never without her tap shoes.
Plus she really didn’t like her eighth-grade English teacher, Ms. Lofton. She tended to put off the work that Ms. Lofton expected them to do.
