Gabriel's Inferno Trilogy

by Sylvain Reynard

  “Thank you, Professor. That’s very kind.”

  Katherine waved a casual hand. “Not at all.”

  The two women spent the next few minutes finishing their dinner in relative silence. While Katherine cleared the table, after refusing her student’s repeated offers to help, Julia finished her wine.

  Although she felt badly that Gabriel did not get his dream job, she was relieved that he would not be following her to Harvard. His presence in the department would have caused all kinds of problems. She could never work with him now. And it would have been extremely painful to have to try to maintain a professional and detached relationship with him. No, it was much better that Gabriel would stay in Toronto, while she moved to Boston. It was a mercy, albeit a severe one, that Harvard had hired Professor Marinelli.

  After dessert and coffee, Katherine suggested they retire to the parlor. Once again, Julia sat in the comfortable club chair next to the fire and gratefully received the small glass of port that Katherine pressed into her hand. Although Katherine’s decorating style was quite different from Gabriel’s, it seemed as if Dante specialists enjoyed drinking by the fireplace.

  “You will have a fresh start at Harvard, and no one will have an inkling of what transpired here. Until then, it would be wise not to draw any more attention to yourself.” Katherine gave Julia a look that was piercing, if not severe.

  “Graduate students, especially female graduate students, are vulnerable with respect to their reputation. There are still those in the Academy who would choose to mislabel the fruits of talent and hard work as the results of preferment and prostitution. It’s best if you never give anyone the slightest suspicion that you haven’t earned your accomplishments through hard work.”

  “Professor Picton, I swear that I worked very hard in the Dante seminar. He didn’t help me with my essay or give me any special treatment. That’s why he asked you to grade it.”

  “I’m sure that’s true. But you deceived me, and quite frankly, I’m a bit put out.”

  Julia gazed at her advisor with undisguised horror.

  “Nevertheless, I understand why I wasn’t taken into your confidence. I’m sure Gabriel forbade it. I’m annoyed with him as well, but for reasons I won’t divulge, I owe him a debt.”

  Professor Picton sipped her port thoughtfully, staring off into space. “When I was a student at Oxford, it was shamefully common for dons to develop romantic relationships with their students. Sometimes the relationships were what we would now consider harassment cases. Other times true love was involved. I saw both.”

  Katherine fixed Julia with an unblinking eye. “I know the difference between a Willoughby and a Colonel Brandon. I hope that you do too.”

  * * *

  The following evening, Julia walked to Paul’s apartment. They’d agreed to meet for coffee so they could debrief after Julia’s dinner with Professor Picton.

  Paul turned to face Julia on the couch. “Now that the semester is over for you, when are you moving?”

  Julia sipped her coffee. “My lease is up the end of July, but I was hoping to persuade my landlord to let me leave mid-June.”

  “After graduation?”

  “Yes. My dad is going to help me move.”

  Paul placed his mug on the coffee table.

  “I’m heading back to Vermont in June. You could drive with me, and I could help you move.”

  “My dad is coming for graduation.”

  “We can drive together. You two could stay with me at the farm for a day or so, then we could drive down to Boston to get you settled. Are you going to live in residence?”

  “I don’t know. They sent me something saying I couldn’t get into the residence halls until August. But I’d need somewhere to live before that.”

  “My friend’s younger brother goes to Boston College. Let me talk to him and see if he knows of a place you could sublet. Half the population of Boston is under twenty-five. There are a lot of students.”

  “You’d do that? Help me move and find an apartment?”

  “I’d expect to be paid, in beer. I like Krombacher, by the way.”

  “I think I can do that.”

  Julia smiled and they clinked their coffee mugs together.

  “Who are they?” She pointed to a photograph of four people, two men and two women, that Paul had partially hidden behind a penguin on top of his television.

  “The girl on the far left is Heather, my little sister, and her husband, Chris. That’s me on the right.”

  “And the other girl?” Julia gazed at the face of the pretty young woman who was clutching Paul’s waist and laughing.

  “Uh, that’s Allison.”

  Julia waited politely for Paul to elaborate.

  “My ex-girlfriend.”

  “Oh,” said Julia.

  “We’re still friends. But she’s working in Vermont and couldn’t handle the long-distance thing. We broke up a while ago,” Paul explained quickly.

  “You’re a good person.” Julia shifted uncomfortably. “Maybe I shouldn’t have said that.”

  Paul pulled her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles chastely. “I think you should say whatever is on your mind. For the record, I’ve always thought you were a good person too.”

  She smiled but withdrew her hand delicately, so as not to give offense.

  Shortly before midnight, she was asleep on his shoulder, their bodies close together on the futon. Paul’s mind was drifting, imagining the feel of her lips against his, her skin beneath his hands. He turned his face into her hair, tightening his arms around her. She stirred, mumbling Emerson’s name before burrowing her head in his chest.

  He realized that he had a decision to make. If he was going to be Julia’s friend, then he would have to suppress his romantic feelings for her. He couldn’t kiss her or try to move things forward. It was far too soon. And it was quite possible she’d never want him, even when her broken heart was mended. But Julia needed a friend; she needed him. He wasn’t going to abandon her in her time of need, even if it was going to be painful to set aside his true feelings.

  So instead of falling asleep with her in his arms, he carried her to his room and placed her on the bed. He covered her with the sheet and blankets, making sure that she was comfortable, then he picked up an extra pillow and a quilt and retreated to the living room.

  He spent much of the evening frustrated and staring at the ceiling, while Julia slept soundly in his bed.

  * * *

  While Julia was spending the night at Paul’s apartment, Gabriel sat in his hotel room, glaring at his laptop. He’d received another terse email from his Chair, Jeremy Martin, reminding him of how much personal and political capital Jeremy had expended to “save his ass.” As if Gabriel needed a reminder.

  His gaze drifted to the ring on his finger, resisting the urge to reexamine the words he’d had engraved on the inside. He spun the platinum band around and around as he cursed his most recent failure.

  Harvard had kindly informed him that his candidacy was unsuccessful and that they’d hired Professor Marinelli, instead. Gabriel’s lack of success was one more way in which he’d failed Julianne. But it mattered little, now. What use would it be to be at Harvard, if she wouldn’t forgive him?

  He cursed bitterly. What use was it to be anywhere, if she wouldn’t forgive him? Even in the hotel, she was with him. On his computer, on his cell phone, in his iPod, in his head.

  Oh, yes, in his head. He was correct when he said that he would never forget what it felt like to gaze upon her naked body for the first time, the way her eyes were fixed on the floor shyly, the way her face flushed under his heated touch.

  He remembered looking down into her deep, dark eyes as she trembled beneath him, ruby lips parted, breathing heavily, and the way her eyes widened as he entered her.

  She’d flinched. Somehow he could remember every time he’d made her flinch. And there had been many—when he shamed her for being poor, when he first carried her to bed
, when he wove his fingers through her hair and she begged him not to hold her head down, when he admitted that he’d agreed to separate himself from her…

  How many times could he hurt her in one short life?

  He’d tortured himself by listening to the voicemail messages she’d left for him—messages he hadn’t returned. They’d grown progressively more despondent until they’d ceased altogether. He couldn’t blame her. It was clear that his messages had not gotten through, with the exception of a single email. He opened it again, imagining her reaction.

  Stop contacting me.

  It’s over.

  Regards,

  Prof. Gabriel O. Emerson,

  Associate Professor

  Department of Italian Studies/

  Centre for Medieval Studies

  University of Toronto

  A bitter laugh that he recognized as coming from his own throat echoed in the room. Of course, that would be the message she believed—not the others. He’d lost her now. What hope was there without her?

  Gabriel thought back to a conversation he’d had with her about Grace’s favorite book, A Severe Mercy. It was clear in the story that the main characters thought that they’d made an idol of their love—worshipping it and each other to their own detriment. He’d done the same with Julianne, he knew. He’d worshipped her very being, convinced that she was the light that would shine in his darkness.

  He’d loved her enough to leave her in order to protect her future. And having left her, he was in peril of never possessing her love again. It was the bitterest twist of fate, that his love for his Beatrice would be precisely what separated him from her.

  And what of Paul? Surely he’d use this as an opportunity to comfort Julia. And where would that comfort lead…Gabriel couldn’t entertain the idea that she would be unfaithful. But he knew through her messages that she thought it was over. Paul would simply have to provide a shoulder for her to lean on and he’d be back in her life, in her apartment, in her thoughts.

  Angelfucker.

  The only relief he could find, if relief it was, would be to torture himself with music and poetry. He clicked a button, and Sting’s retelling of the story of David and Bathsheba filled the room. As the song swirled in the air, he gazed at Dante’s poetic reflection on the death of Beatrice and found his heart echoing the words from La Vita Nuova.

  “An abject wretch like this

  May not imagine anything of her,—

  He needs no bitter tears for his relief.

  But sighing comes, and grief,

  And the desire to find no comforter,

  (Save only Death, who makes all sorrow brief,)

  To him who for a while turns in his thought

  How she hath been among us, and is not.

  With sighs my bosom always laboureth

  On thinking, as I do continually.

  Of her for whom my heart now breaks apace;

  And very often when I think of death,

  Such a great inward longing comes to me

  That it will change the colour of my face;

  And, if the idea settles in its place.

  All my limbs shake as with an ague-fit;

  Till, starting up in wild bewilderment,

  I do become so shent

  That I go forth, lest folk misdoubt of it.

  Afterward, calling with a sore lament

  On Beatrice, I ask, ‘Canst thou be dead?’

  And calling on her, I am comforted.”

  Gabriel closed the document on his computer and traced a light finger over the photograph of the lovely woman who graced his computer screen. He would discharge his duty over the next few days, but he would do so without his Beatrice to comfort him. In her absence, perhaps he would succumb to his old temptations to deaden the pain.

  Chapter 33

  On a Friday afternoon in mid-April, Julia arrived at Rachel and Aaron’s apartment in Philadelphia. Rachel had planned on visiting her in Toronto and bringing the bridesmaid dress with her, but she had trouble getting the time off work. Since she was trying to save her vacation days for the honeymoon, Julia agreed to leave the comfortable confines of her hobbit hole, instead.

  Rachel welcomed her friend with a hug, escorting her to the living room. Julia eyed the binders of samples and swatches that covered the coffee table.

  “So the wedding planning is finished?”

  Rachel shook her head. “Not quite. But I don’t want to talk about the wedding; I want to talk about you.” She eyed her friend with a concerned look. “This thing with you and Gabriel was a complete shock.”

  Julia winced. “To me too.”

  “He won’t return our calls or answer our emails, and believe me, we’ve tried. Scott copied me on the email he sent, and it was scathing.

  “Did you know that Gabriel was in Selinsgrove a couple of weeks ago?”

  “Selinsgrove?” Julia was dumbfounded. “I thought he was in Italy.”

  “Why would he go there?”

  “To finish his book. To get away from me.”

  “The jackass,” Rachel cursed. “Have you heard from him?”

  “Yes. He emailed to notify me that it was over.” Julia retrieved her purse. She pulled out two keys and a security pass and handed them to her friend. “These are his.”

  Rachel gazed at the objects with confusion. “What am I supposed to do with them?”

  “Keep them. Or give them to your father. I would have mailed them to Gabriel, but since he doesn’t want contact…”

  Rachel placed the offending items on one of her wedding binders. Then, thinking better of it, she dumped his things into a drawer in one of the end tables, closing it with an oath.

  “I know he went to my parents’ old house because one of the neighbors called my dad. Apparently, Gabriel was up at all hours playing loud music and prowling around outside.”

  Julia’s mind instantly went to the orchard. It seemed reasonable, she thought, for him to take solace in the one place he’d always been at peace—his Paradise. But since she was tangled up in his memories of that space, she wondered at him going there. Shaking her head, she put the thought from her mind.

  Rachel faced her friend. “I don’t understand why he would do this. Gabriel loves you. He isn’t the kind of person to love easily, or to say those words without meaning them. That kind of love doesn’t disappear overnight.”

  “Maybe he loved his job more. Or maybe he decided to go back to her.”

  “Paulina? Is that what this is about? You didn’t tell me that.” Rachel’s eyes flashed.

  “Up until a year and a half ago, they were still—involved.”

  “What?”

  “At Christmas, we were fighting about her and, uh, other things. He told me their history was more recent than I thought.”

  “I never so much as heard her name until the day she showed up at my parents’ house.”

  “I knew about her. But when he and I first started dating, he made it sound as if he ended things with her back at Harvard. In reality, he’d been carrying on with her for years.”

  “You can’t believe that he’d leave you for her, after Florence, after everything.”

  “I can believe anything now,” Julia said coolly.

  Rachel groaned, placing her hands over her eyes. “What a mess. My dad is really upset and so is Scott. When he found out that Gabriel was in Selinsgrove, he decided to drive out there so he could knock some sense into him.”

  “And did he?”

  “Tammy needed him to babysit her little boy. So Scott decided that he could kick Gabriel’s ass another time.”

  Julia smiled wryly. “I can imagine that conversation.”

  “Scott is head over heels for Tammy. It’s pretty sickening.”

  “I’m glad they’re coming for dinner.”

  Rachel looked at her watch. “I should probably start cooking. They’ll arrive early so they can feed Quinn first. Scott’s life has completely changed. Everything revolves around t
he baby’s schedule.”

  Julia followed her host into the kitchen. “What does your dad think of her?”

  Rachel began rummaging in the fridge. “He likes her. He adores the baby. You’d think Quinn was his grandson.”

  She placed the ingredients for a salad on the counter. “Do you really think Gabriel would go back to Paulina?”

  Julia couldn’t bring herself to say the word aloud, but yes, she thought it was possible. He’d changed a great deal of his life and his coping mechanisms for her. Now that their relationship was over, it was possible he’d return to his old life.

  “She’s familiar territory,” Julia said.

  “You make it sound as if she’s western Europe.” Rachel leaned against the counter. “Do you think the university demanded that he break things off with you?”

  “Yes, but how is something like that enforceable? Can they make him leave the city? Can they tell him what to do in his personal life, when he’s on a leave of absence? If Gabriel wanted to talk to me, he could have called. He didn’t. The university handed him a convenient way to break up with me. He was probably planning it for a while.” Julia crossed her arms around her chest. It was easier to give voice to her deepest fears with Rachel than to dwell on them when she was alone.

  “What a mess,” Rachel repeated, turning to wash her hands.

  Chapter 34

  In the wee hours of the morning, Rachel and Julia were sprawled across the sofa in their bathrobes, drinking wine and giggling. Scott, Tammy, and Quinn had long since left, and Aaron had been asleep for hours. They could hear reverberations of his snoring echo down the hall.

  Bolstered by a very good Pinot noir, Julia described what had happened at the hearing, and Rachel, to her credit, resisted interrupting her.

  “I don’t think Gabriel would give you up just to keep his job. He doesn’t need the money, and he can always work somewhere else. What I don’t understand is why he wasn’t more explicit about what he was doing. Why didn’t he grab you afterward and say I love you but we need to wait.” Rachel giggled drunkenly. “Knowing Gabriel, he would have recited something in iambic pentameter just because he could.”