Crazy 4U

by Cach, Lisa

  "Not that I recall. One did show me a cheesecake he had made, but he never offered me a piece."

  Sebastian shook his head and went back to his slicing.

  "You can't really be so surprised by this, can you?" she asked him as he unwrapped a triangle of soft cheese with a white rind. "You've been living in the U.S., and I assume you've dated American women. They must have had similar stories."

  He looked up at her from under his brows. "I've never dated anyone quite like you."

  "But we're not dating."

  "Ah, no. Of course not. We are two single people sharing an impromptu lunch. No, not a date." He went back to his preparations.

  What did that mean? Was it or wasn’t it? "You didn't answer my question, about the women you've dated."

  "Didn't I?” He spread a new linen napkin over the top of the wall as a tablecloth, and set out two sandwiches of Brie and tomato on the crusty bread. He arranged a cluster of the largest purple grapes Eliza had ever seen in the middle, then twisted the tops off of two bottles of Belgian beer and set them on the napkin as well.

  He took his jacket off and laid it over the back of a nearby bench, then boosted himself onto the wall, swinging one leg over to the canal side so that he straddled the top, facing her. "As you Americans like to say, 'Voilà!' " he said, holding his hands wide to encompass the food.

  Her stomach groaned its appreciation at the sight of the food. "It looks much better than I would have come up with."

  The food's appearance was more than matched by the taste. She even drank the beer, finding it to be a far cry from her one previous experience with the substance at a college party. This tasted like it could be a meal in itself.

  "It will stimulate your appetite and make you overeat," Sister Agnes warned her. “Alcohol is a diuretic, too, you know.”

  I couldn't be any hungrier, and besides, there are lots of B vitamins in beer.

  "Suit yourself, but don't complain to me when you find yourself running to the bathroom every fifteen minutes. How appealing will that look to your young man?"

  Perhaps she shouldn't finish the whole bottle; she almost never drank, and wasn’t used to it.

  The grapes were an inch and a half across, with tough skins that burst when pressed, filling her mouth with juice. She closed her eyes in bliss as the juice curled around her tongue. "I didn't know that grapes could taste this way," she said, opening her eyes and plucking another off the bunch.

  "It's good to see you enjoying your food. I don't think you liked your vegetarian pita last night."

  She took another swallow of the beer, feeling a faint, pleasant muzziness in her head, and enjoying it. "I have a confession," she said, opening up the tail end of her sandwich, picking out the cheese and popping it in her mouth, reveling in the silky texture. "I hate vegetables."

  He laughed.

  She finished off the grapes. "Where'd the cookies go?"

  He retrieved them for her and opened the box of chocolate-covered biscuits, watching her as she savored her first bite. "You love food; I can see it in the way you eat."

  “Too much," she said, brushing crumbs from the corner of her mouth. It seemed to make him happy to see her enjoying his picnic, so she took another cookie. "Which is what drew me to dietetics to begin with. All I ate through high school was junk, and then freshman year in college I gained nearly twenty pounds. Getting obsessed with nutrition seemed a better way to cope with the problem than vomiting in the bathroom, like some of my dorm mates."

  "So now you have learned to control yourself." he said, a trace of humor in his voice.

  She leaned back on her hands, replete with good food. "If I'm not in control, terrible, terrible things happen," she said. She tilted her head back, feeling dappled sunlight on her face. "I could go to sleep right now."

  He chuckled, and she heard him moving about, clearing away the remains of the meal.

  She squinted one eye open at him. "What's so funny?"

  "I think you are a cat at heart. Give you good food and a sunny ledge, and there is nothing more you seek."

  "Being petted is sometimes nice," she said, then clamped her lips shut. Oh, wicked beer, giving her loose lips.

  But he just smiled and finished cleaning up. She sat up straight, and then he came and stood before her, laying his warm hands over her knees. She met his eyes, her lips parting as her breath caught in her chest.

  "What will it be, Madame Pussycat? A nap on the ledge or the dark medieval paintings of the museum?" He kept his gaze locked with hers, his thumbs massaging slow circles on the insides of her knees.

  Thought flitted and fled. She could smell the faint, warm scent of his cologne, hear her own breathing, feel her heart thudding in her chest. His deep blue eyes held hers and she swayed slightly, drawn irresistibly toward him.

  One of his hands left her knee to reach up and cup her face, his thumb smoothing gently over her cheek. She tilted her head against his hand, eyes closing in lazy pleasure, barely aware of the sounds of the people nearby, and the gentle floating notes of the guitar being played across the footbridge.

  She felt him move his face close to hers, almost touching, his mouth near her ear. "I think you have no head for alcohol," he said softly, the touch of his breath sending shivers up her neck.

  "I don't think I want one," she said. "This buzzing feeling is awfully nice. I feel like I’m in a dream."

  He laughed, pulling away, then set his hands on her ribs and lifted her down from the wall. “To the museum. If I let you sleep, it would be hours before you awoke."

  A vague sense of having come very close to embarrassing herself kept her from protesting, although part of her thought that a nap would he just the thing, preferably with her head in his lap, his fingers stroking through her hair.

  Good Lord. She must be drunk.

  She made a concerted effort to gather what remained of her wits, feeling faintly dizzy but otherwise unimpaired.

  She took his arm when he offered it, clothed once again in his summer-weight jacket, and let him lead her across the courtyard to a glass door. It led, to her great surprise, into the gift shop of the Groeninge Museum. She had had no idea they had been picnicking just outside its wails.

  She excused herself to use the ladies' room, Sister Agnes's comment on the diuretic effects of beer having proven itself true. She washed her hands, the cold water

  and bright whiteness of the restroom waking her, bringing her further back to herself and making her realize what an odd–for her–situation she was in. Was she really spending a day in Bruges with a handsome stranger? It was inconceivable. It made no sense. It was a fantasy, not reality; conservative Eliza Mandish did not have such adventures.

  She fussed with her hair in the mirror and checked her teeth for sandwich remnants. She stood back a few paces, looking her rumpled self over with a critical eye, and then shrugged at her image. There was nothing more she could do. Men such as Sebastian never pursued the Elizas of the world, and she would do well to remember it.

  After seeing her own baggily-dressed self in the mirror, Sebastian looked all the more elegant to her eyes when she emerged from the ladies' room; both elegant and casual at once. She felt anew the incongruity of their spending the day together, and felt awkward in her own skin.

  "You don't have to come in with me," she told him when she rejoined him in front of a display of postcards. "I know you must have seen this place a hundred times."

  "But never with you; I am curious as to what your eyes will see. I grew up with this type of thing around every corner, and am long past seeing it fresh."

  He had already purchased tickets for them both, she saw.

  As he led her through the entrance to the museum proper she said, "Europe seems another world from where I grew up. So much is so old. Do you know, there are buildings in Seattle that were built in the twenties that have been declared historical, with a little brass plaque beside the door and everything? And here, you walk down the street and every
building is four, five, six hundred years old. It looks like some fairyland constructed by Disney."

  "Please," Sebastian said, sounding pained.

  "Bruges: the Disneyland of Belgium,” she teased.

  "You have a twisted mind. The first time I saw you, I thought you were such an innocent-looking little thing."

  "What, with your chocolates smeared all over my mouth?"

  "No, in the Brussels station. You were looking up at the departures board, trying to figure out which train you were supposed to take."

  "You saw me?" she asked, surprised, and embarrassed. She hoped she hadn't done anything awful, one of those unconscious things like rearrange her underwear.

  "I thought you looked so innocent, but I am finding there is something of the devil in you."

  "It comes from growing up with brothers; they encourage bad behavior."

  "In your case, I think it may be innate."

  "Mmm." She was not certain what to make of that. They entered the first of the connected rooms of the museum, the walls dark, the lighting set to show the paintings to advantage. This part of the museum was devoted to medieval paintings, the subject matter mainly religious, with the occasional portrait of a secular patron.

  Eliza had seen reproductions of medieval paintings in books of art, but somehow they had failed to represent the real things. The colors in person were so rich, so clear—reds, blues, greens, gold, even the browns had life. And the details! Every yarn in the rug beneath a Madonna's feet could be discerned, the artist capturing even the worn area at the edge, where the pile had worn off and the warp and weft had begun to fray.

  Not all the paintings were so finely done, and many had figures who looked stiff and unreal. A painting of the last judgment featured a multitude of naked men and women, all with thin, sinewy bodies this side of anorexic. It wasn't until she came to a painting entitled The Flaying of Sisamnes that Eliza broke her silence.

  "Oh, disgusting!" She winced, turning her head slightly away, yet unable to completely break her gaze from the painting.

  "It is rather graphic. Do you think they got all his skin off in one piece?" Sebastian asked mildly.

  "Why would anyone paint such a thing?" Eliza asked, facing Sisamnes once again as he lay in agony on a tabletop, a group of uninterested men surrounding him, some of whom were peeling the skin off his left leg. A dog on the ground beside the table scratched at his ear, unconcerned.

  "If I remember correctly, Sisamnes was a judge who accepted a bribe. This was painted for the aldermen in the Bruges town hall, to remind them to be impartial in dispensing justice."

  "Did they flay people, too?"

  "I doubt it. I always rather liked the painting, if only for the dog. I always thought it was an effective touch."

  Eliza grimaced and moved on with relief to more depictions of round-headed Marys and oddly-shaped Christ Childs.

  She eventually stopped before a painting by Jan van Eyck, The Madonna with Canon Jorvis van der Paele. The Madonna sat in the center in a red robe, a blond and rather froggish-looking baby on her lap. The canon knelt to the right in a white robe that hinted at the beer belly beneath. His face was saggy and wrinkled, his head bald but for some white hair above his ears. He looked like any older man from the streets outside the museum, whom you might see eating sausages and potatoes for his dinner.

  "I don't understand," Eliza said, standing before the painting and placing her hands on her hips. "Canon Jorvis there, he looks real as life, but look at the Madonna and the child. What baby ever sat like that? And the Madonna's face, she doesn't look like anyone I've ever met; she's all smooth-faced and unreal. Did this van Eyck only know what men looked like? Did he never really look at women or children?"

  "I don't think it's so simple," Sebastian said.

  "He gets every fold of clothing right, every detail of the floor, every hair on the canon's head, but he can't do a woman's face. He must not have thought much of women, or of babies, either," she declared, vague thoughts of medieval inequality and chastity belts swimming in her mind, pumping up a sense of feminist outrage.

  "Neither she nor the child looks real because they are meant to look divine, beyond the baseness of man. They were idealized to set them apart," Sebastian explained.

  "Oh," she said, deflating. "Well." She considered a moment. "But she was supposed to be real, wasn't she? I mean, the guy who painted this, van Eyck, he believed that Mary had once lived. So he could have given her a real face. There are no paintings here of real women."

  Sebastian took her arm and led her over to another painting, this one a portrait of a woman with a ruffled white cloth atop her head. "This is van Eyck's wife, Margareta," he said cheerfully. "Is she real enough for you?"

  Eliza blinked into Margareta's annoyed gaze. The woman had a narrow mouth with no upper lip, a long, prominent nose, and an expression that made it clear she was not to be trifled with. "Good gracious," Eliza said beneath her breath. The woman's hairstyle made it look as if she had brown horns emerging from the sides of her head. "He couldn't have loved her."

  Sebastian's eyebrows went up. "Why ever not?"

  Eliza gestured at the stern face, expecting it to speak for itself. "He has put each and every fault, of both personality and feature, into this portrait."

  "She could not help the thinness of her lips," Sebastian said. "He was being accurate."

  "If he had loved her, he would have seen her a bit more beautifully."

  "How do you know he didn't? The real Margareta may have been far less attractive."

  "But she looks like a burnt-out grade-school teacher!" Eliza protested.

  He laughed; then his expression became almost tender as he continued to gaze at the portrait, his voice softening. "He gave her intelligence, and he gave her a soul behind those eyes. He knew this woman, inside and out, and he made her immortal in this portrait. It was an act of love."

  She saw the way he gazed at Margareta, and found she did not want to contradict him or try to change his mind, finding instead that her heart was melting around the edges, like chocolate held in the warmth of a hand. "Do you think that you could have loved her?" she asked quietly.

  He looked down at her and smiled. "She would not have caught my eye in a train station, but I believe if she had been my wife, I would have grown to love her. When you get to know someone as well as van Eyck knew his wife, over years, it becomes impossible not to love. Not a fevered love like Romeo and Juliet, but something deeper, from the soul."

  "The divorce rates would seem to say otherwise."

  Sebastian led her away from the keen eyes of Margareta. "There are always exceptions. When I marry I will spend my life getting to know my wife the way van Eyck knew his, and I will love her unto death.”

  "And will you find a way to make her immortal?"

  He pondered, then smiled with the teasing mischief she was beginning to adore. "Perhaps. Perhaps I will name a gateau after her."

  Chapter Six

  Eliza stood and stared at the little black dress displayed in the window. Short sleeves, a square neckline, and a hem that would reach to somewhere above her knees. Wasn't that what every woman was supposed to own, a little black dress?

  Sebastian and she had parted after the museum visit, but not before he had, seemingly to his own surprise, invited her to dinner. He would come by her B&B at seven o'clock, which left her nearly four hours on her own.

  And here was a little black dress crying out to be bought. The paper placard at the foot of the dress dummy declared it to be on sale—for the equivalent of two days' salary at work. But every woman should have one, she told herself.

  It couldn't hurt to try it on, surely. She went in.

  The routine of trying and buying clothes was the same as in the States, and in a few minutes a young saleswoman with chunky black glasses, messy, rust-colored hair, and a thick layer of brown lipstick was pulling shut the curtain across the dressing stall. Eliza pulled off her own baggy garment and slid into
the acetate-lined coolness of the black dress.

  She looked at herself in the mirror and sucked in her stomach. It didn't help.

  The dress was too loose around the shoulders and chest, but fit more than well enough across her hips. Her breasts were lost under the black material, but her pale legs glowed as if with an inner luminescence, drawing attention to their slight chunkiness. Terrible.

  The sales clerk pulled back the edge of the curtain. Eliza turned to face her, displaying the poorly fining dress. At least I don't have to make excuses for why I don’t want to buy it, she thought.

  "Ah, no," the clerk said. "That dress, it looks bad on everyone. It is why it is on sale. Do you have someplace you need to go, a special occasion?"

  "Sort of. I have a date tonight." At least, she kind of hoped it was a date.

  "He is taking you to a nice place?"

  "I don't know. He might." She had hopes of violins and stars overhead, despite the low probability of that occurring. She hadn't managed to figure out why Sebastian wanted to spend any more time with her, but was not about to question him on the subject. He was doing too good a job of living up to her fantasy of a vacation encounter with a foreign man.

  "We will make him want to spend thousands of euros on you. You wait here. I will be right back."

  Eliza sat on the chair in the corner of the stall, the dress unzipped and hanging open down her back. Moments later the clerk reappeared, shoving a long, pale sage green dress through the opening in the curtain.

  "This will suit you," she said. 'What size shoe do you wear?"

  Eliza took the dress, hanging it on the hook on the wall. "Seven, U.S. I don't know in European sizes."

  “Try the dress. I will be right back."

  Eliza took a closer look at the gown. It had spaghetti straps holding up a neckline that went straight across the chest. The bodice was gathered just under the breasts, making an Empire waistline. Below that, layers of filmy sage material fell smoothly to the hem.