Where are Emily and Jenee?
She loved her girlfriends, but how dare they make her feel like a girl who’d been stood up by a date? She glanced at her cell phone for the umpteenth time, noting the passage of another five minutes. She reviewed in her mind what they’d agreed upon. Maybe she’d misunderstood.
Basta, do not doubt your own sanity. There is nothing wrong with your hearing.
Being a professional chef meant adhering to a strict schedule, and time was something precious, not to be wasted. Gabriella wasalwaysaware of the fleeting passage of time.
What they’d decided between them was clear in her mind. They’d agreed to do their own thing and meet back at the bench in front of Marco Allegretto’s masterpiece series,The Three Stages of Love, after an hour, and now it was an hour and forty-five minutes later, and they hadn’t shown. It wasn’t like them to be late like this. Gabriella was beginning to worry.Where are they?
A passing man and woman paused to study the paintings. Gabriella glanced at them and received a withering glare. They stared down at her tapping foot, evidently displeased with her disregard for the respectful, contemplative quiet of the museum. She pinned her foot to the floor, smiled apologetically, and bit her tongue to refrain from telling them to mind their own damn business. Gabriella had a short fuse but was quick to forgive. When had the world become such an intolerant place?
Perhaps that was why she’d sought refuge in a kitchen and become a chef. The less interaction with the outside world, the better. She rarely argued with the pots and pans in her family’s Italian restaurant in Chicago. She certainly didn’t throw meat cleavers or knives at her staff like she’d heard some chefs were known to do. Sure, she had an Italian temper, but she rarely lost it. Hers was a contained world where she yielded control. Also, she was proud to say she never received complaints from disgruntled patrons about the dishes she gave life to. Her gastronomic creations were a source of great pride to her. Gaby was confident in her cooking skills, even if she doubted herself in other ways. Many of the restaurant’s dishes were old family recipes that she’d re-created and rebalanced to suit today’s modern cuisine and tastes. Always with a mind to her weight struggles, she’d pared down the unhealthy ingredients and enhanced the more flavorful ones. Italian cooking was best when simplicity ruled the day. Fresh ingredients, tastefully prepared, were the keys to success.
The couple walked away, and Gabriella had to refrain from sticking her tongue out at them. Instead, her foot resumed drumming.Good riddance.Another glance at her cell phone put her in mind to leave. She texted her friends again and said she’d wait another fifteen minutes and then head back to Emily’s place. She’d make dinner for the three of them—at least that would keep her busy while she waited for Jenee and Emily to return. It had promised to be the perfect girlfriend getaway. Em, a magazine editor, had snagged three tickets to the opening of the Allegretto exhibit and had invited Jen, a successful dermatologist based in L.A., and Gaby for a long-overdue visit.
Gaby blew out a breath, trying not to keep glancing at her watch. Her friends had gone MIA, and she had no idea why. The whole thing was perplexing.
Distracting herself, she opened her purse and took out the book she carried with her everywhere. They’d met in a virtual book club and had bonded over their love ofThe Time Traveler’s Lover. The novel had been discovered in a trunk in an attic of a Paris townhouse that was being subdivided, refurbished, and turned into apartments. How often had Gabriella imagined a burly demolition worker sledgehammering a wall and finding the hidden treasure? That the manuscript hadn’t been lost or destroyed was a miracle. Thank goodness the worker was prescient enough to realize it was historically significant and had turned it over to the authorities.
Because of the detailed descriptions of World War II and the German occupation of Paris, the unsigned manuscript was thought to have been written by an eyewitness to what had happened. Perhaps a Jewish woman who’d been deported and murdered in a concentration camp, or a member of the French Resistance who’d fought and was tortured to death and forgotten. Was she dead or alive? Time and the passage of years had buried her identity. No one had come forward to claim the book as her own. The mystery was compelling, and when it was published, it gripped the public’s imagination, becoming an instant international bestseller.
Gabriella opened the book to one of her favorite sections and began to read, losing herself within the beautiful prose…
The hands of time came for me, with a windy gale so fierce it could have uprooted a tree and carried it away as if it were no more than a single strand of straw. The sound was so deafening that a gunshot whizzing toward me was as silent as snow falling from the heavens. My body felt as if it were held tight within the coils of a boa constrictor, and my scream was a mere grace note that pounded from a keyboard yet was barely heard. I was not myself. Who I was, what I was, or what I would be was lost to me. Where I was going was a conundrum that I had no clue how to resolve. All I could do was surrender to whatever time had in mind for me. I was indeed a creature deprived of any control over my fate. I was a captive of time.And so, I have remained against my will for so long that I’ve nearly forgotten what came before, but never the moment when it all began and the loss of those I loved.
No one knew if the novel was based on a true story or if the author had written what she knew to have happened. She wrote of Nazi atrocities and what she’d experienced during the horrors of the 1940s in Paris so vividly that Gabriella wondered if that part of the story were true. In the book, she gave vivid testimony of the cruel execution of her parents. What the author described was all too real to have been a fabrication. But that was where reality took flight. In the book, the heroine miraculously survived the bullet of a Nazi officer at point-blank range after watching him murder her parents in cold blood. When he pointed the gun at her with the intent of killing her too, the bullet passed through her and she vanished into the ether of time, appearing and disappearing, from one era to another, until she landed in Renaissance Florence and met one of the most revered artists of all time. In a crowded marketplace their eyes met, and it was love at first sight.
Even though the story didn’t have a happily-ever-after ending like most historical romance novels, it still mesmerized, holding readers glued to the pages as they wept with joy and sorrow over every heart-wrenching, beautifully written word.
The three friends had formed their own book club that they referred to as theI’d Rather Be Alone Book Club.They met once a month on Zoom to chat about the books they were reading and the absurdity of their dating encounters. And to drink wine, of course. But of all the books they’d read, none meant more to them thanThe Time Traveler’s Lover.Maybe because it represented their most fervent wish to find their own soul mates.
Iris Bellerose, the time traveler, and Marco Allegretto, the painter, had found what eluded most people: true love. In the story, Iris and Marco found each other, even though they’d been born hundreds of years apart. Love had triumphed over time. Even when time ripped them apart again, it could never destroy what was meant to be. They were bound to each other and vowed to find each other again, no matter the cost.
Sitting on the bench, Gabriella clutched the book to her chest and stared up at the painting, and a sense of calm came over her.
According to the book, the woman in the paintings was none other than Iris, the time-traveling heroine of the story, and the man who cast adoring eyes on her was Marco Allegretto, the famous Renaissance painter. It didn’t hurt that the Renaissance master was positively swoon-worthy, with shoulder-length black hair, intense, dark eyes, and the body of an Adonis. Not to mention he was considered a genius, who stood on equal footing with Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Raphael.
It would take a considerable effort not to give her friends a piece of her mind when they finally did show up. Their abandonment conjured up old feelings of insecurity. It was as if she’d been plunked back to her childhood, and was once again the plump, unpopular, pimply-skinned girl of her teens, yearning to be friends with the popular girls in school. That sad creature was never far below the surface. Her skin had eventually cleared up and, through careful eating habits and regular workouts, the excess pounds had melted away. Em and Jen had often compared her to Sophia Loren, which was truly flattering, even though Gaby had trouble believing it. Maybe it was because of the childhood trauma of being teased and being an outcast. Some days were harder than others.
Was it irrational to feel sorry for herself? Was it way off the mark to get so worked up over their tardiness? All would be forgiven if they would just show up!
Five more minutes, and I’m taking a cab back to the apartment.Gaby glanced at the painting in front of her,Il Letto,translation:The Bed. She tilted her head, imagining what the woman must have looked like. The woman was nude except for a red scarf draped over her waist that hid her private parts. Allegretto stood nude from the waist up, his muscled back appearing to flex and ripple with excitement in the flickering candlelight where light and shadow danced over his skin.
Emily had explained this was what art historians called chiaroscuro, a dramatic effect of light and shadow used by many Renaissance artists like Leonardo and Caravaggio. Unlike Emily and Jenee, Gaby was not an art aficionado; however, the painting spoke to her with its timeless beauty. And as for the artist himself, what woman could resist him? Gaby could not help but be mesmerized by the emotions he expressed with paint.
For some reason, art historians and conservators could not explain the reason for the mysterious fading of color that had turned the woman in the paintings into a ghostly image. Everything else in the work was as vivid as the day Marco Allegretto had given life to the painting.
Nevertheless, Allegretto had captured the most profound love Gaby had ever seen. The connection between the woman and the man pulsed with erotic tension that leaped off the canvas. She could only imagine the smoldering union that was about to ensue. Her own sexual unions were laughable in comparison. It was one of the reasons that she, Emily, and Jenee had taken a “timeout” on relationships.
It seemed that all three of them had experienced disappointments and heartache when it came to matters of love. Her response to her well-meaning parents was always the same: was it unrealistic to want to be head-over-heels crazy for someone?
I want to feel passion, and I want someone who makes me feel like I’m the most important thing in the world.
Her parents never failed to remind her that she read too many romance books and that real life wasn’t like that.
Why isn’t it?
Gaby would rather be alone than settle for less than absolute passion. She wanted more, and if she couldn’t have it, she would live alone. Besides, she had a great career, doing something she loved—creating magnificent meals for the restaurant’s loyal clientele, who constantly sent messages of praise to the kitchen and showed their appreciation through word-of-mouth both in real life and by flooding social media with snapshots and videos of their meals.
