Eliza felt the fake smile freeze on her face, not believing she had just mentioned bowels to him. She turned her head and looked out the window again, appalled with herself, wanting to change seats but knowing the train was full. And it would be even more embarrassing, somehow, to get up and drag her pack down the aisle, away from him. Maybe she could sit still like an animal, and disappear.
But this was all his fault, really, when she thought about it hard enough. He had left the box unattended, and what man in his right mind left a box of chocolates unattended when there were females nearby? Then he taunted her with the water, and she was thirsty (thanks to his chocolates), so she could hardly help being rude.
Not that that was any excuse.
This man, this obnoxious, handsome man with a French accent like something out of the movies, was reducing her to an ill-mannered, petulant child. Where was the air of grace she tried to cultivate, the calm, collected persona? What had happened to the ladylike composure she had assembled from the pages of her mother's old etiquette book? It was as if his presence had brought about a regression to childhood, and the tit-for-tat mentality that went with it.
Actually, regression made a sort of sense, as she had only to look at this man to feel insecure. He was so… so annoyingly sophisticated, sitting there in his crisp, yet elegantly rumpled clothing. She was painfully aware of the little crumbs of chocolate that had melted onto her own dress.
Perhaps she should take the other half of his sandwich. That would show him.
"Mayonnaise and cheese, both?" Sister Agnes chided in her head. "Eat the apple, if you're going to eat anything more of his."
Eat the apple? Too many associations there. Sin, temptation— I've had enough of that for one day.
"Do you really think they had apple trees in Eden ? I suspect it was a fig."
Which made her think of fig leaves as the clothing of choice, and what Mr. Sartorial Statement there would look like with just a bit of green over his groin, and she couldn't look him in the eye, much less speak to him, for the rest of the trip.
Chapter Two
Eliza plopped her backpack onto the cobbles with a sense of desperation. She was not lost. Not exactly. She knew she was in the market square: the only problem was, each time she tried to leave it, she ended up back in it.
The tourist info rmation office at the Bruges train station had been closed, and unfortunately that was where her guidebook had suggested she pick up a map to the town. The map in the book was hand-drawn, useful for major attractions, but useless for finding the address of her bed-and-breakfast.
She sighed and looked around her, trying to appreciate the medieval facades of the buildings, the bell tower at one end of the square, the restaurants with their tables out front. It was a lovely town, truly it was, as charming and well preserved as her guidebook said it would be, all canals and cobbled streets, but at the moment she wanted to sit down and cry. She had been wandering the side streets for over an hour, and she was tired.
And getting hungry again.
She stared out over the square, mind going blank on what to do next, and then she saw him, strolling along perfectly at his ease.
She hefted the straps of her pack up over her shoulders and marched down the nearest side street off the square. She'd be damned if she'd give up and ask him for directions. The B-and-B was supposed to be only a few blocks from the square, anyway. She'd find the right street by the process of elimination, or die a starved bag of bones in the process.
Fortune smiled on her this time, and fifty feet from the square she saw a sign attached to the side of a whitewashed building, naming the street where her B-and-B was located. Five minutes later she was being ushered into the living area of the house by Marjet Vermeulen, her English-speaking Belgian landlady.
"Did you have trouble finding us?" Marjet asked. She was a middle-aged woman, tall and healthy looking, with sandy blond chin-length hair.
"Not really," Eliza said, unwilling to admit she had been lost for an hour. Marjet would wonder why she hadn't simply called, or asked someone for directions. Most Bruggians could speak English in addition to their native French or Flemish, or so her guidebook said. Eliza herself couldn't explain her own timidity on the matter.
Marjet gave her a set of keys, and outlined the time for breakfast and the rules of the house. She took Eliza's bag in one strong hand and led her out into the entryway, and then up the steep stairs.
"The cellars of the house date from the fourteenth century," Marjet explained as they climbed. "The house gets more modern the farther up you go."
They rounded the top of the stairs and started up a second, yet steeper flight of stairs. Marjet pointed out the bathroom on the next floor. "No showers after ten-thirty at night, please."
The final flight of stairs could barely even claim the name. Ladder would have been more appropriate. The steps were planks of glossy blond wood, strung together by steel bolts. Marjet climbed them easily despite her skirt, but Eliza found herself grasping both the wobbly rope rail and her dress hem and crawling her way to the top.
"Do many people have accidents on stairs like these?" Eliza asked as she crawled onto the landing at the top and got to her feet. She peered back over the stairs, and guessed they had accomplished a ten-foot rise in about three feet of run.
"Not so many. You get used to them. These are not so steep as some. The house I lived in when I was a little girl, now that house had steep stairs." She opened a door and led Eliza into a bright, cheery room with a pair of windows in the low dormer. The bed was covered with an East Indian print, and like every other bed Eliza had seen in Europe , visibly sagged in the middle. There was a small table with a wooden chair, and a wrought-iron bookcase that held travel books and brochures.
"There is another bed in here," Marjet pointed out, opening a cupboard door halfway up the wall, revealing a dark space, "but if you sleep in there be careful you don't hit your head."
Eliza figured Marjet had had her share of encounters with Americans who couldn't resist the novelty of that bed. She poked her head into the space, and was brought back for a moment to the forts she and her friends had built as children, all blankets and furniture and cozy dark spaces. She had to admit it had a certain womblike allure.
Marjet made a few more comments on the amenities and then left, and Eliza immediately went to the window and pushed it open. She stuck her head out and looked down at the street, and the cars parked half on the sidewalks. The houses opposite were just as tall as this one, presenting a solid wall of whitewash dotted with windows. She could see an elderly couple in one window, drinking tea or coffee at a small kitchen table. A motorist drove by below, the sound of the engine rumbling up between the buildings, and then dying away to quiet once again.
Her stomach gave an echoing rumble. A glance at her watch told her it was only four P.M.
"Well, Eliza," she said to herself, turning to look at the room. "Are you going to stay in here with your energy bar, or are you going to go get yourself a proper meal?"
A high-pitched yowl from her stomach gave her her answer.
This time as she wandered the streets around the square she felt considerably more affection for the shop-lined lanes, and dawdled in front of the windows. Supermarkets, clothing shops, and drugstores were interspersed with shops selling lace, tapestries, jewelry, antiques, and chocolate. A large portion of the town, her guidebook told her, was blocked to cars, and the cobbled streets were the domain of pedestrians only.
By the time she passed her fourth chocolate shop, with its display of chocolate computers and golf balls, hedgehogs and seashells, she began to wonder why that man had had such a fit about his box of chocolates. It wasn't as if there were any shortage of the stuff. Really, any one of these shops could have packed him up just as nice a box, couldn't they?
A pair of chocolate dentures grinned at her from the window.
She remembered the white chocolate piece with the candied violet on top.
All right, so perhaps his chocolates had been special. Still, he could have let her pay for them.
Her stomach prodded her to start paying attention to the menus posted by restaurant doors. Everything looked good to her starving insides, up until she peeked in the windows and saw the other customers. There were not so many at this early hour, but those who were there were in pairs or groups.
She hated to eat alone at a restaurant. It wasn't like going to a movie alone, where no one could see you. What was there to do while waiting for her food? What should she look at while eating? She knew no one would actually care about her presence, yet it felt like such a conspicuous thing to do.
She wandered on, telling herself that she would check out a few more restaurants before deciding. In the back of her mind lurked the reassuring presence of her energy bar.
"One balanced meal, Eliza," Sister Agnes said in her head. "You can manage that, can't you? Vegetables, grains, protein…"
Yes, yes, I know, Eliza silently answered. Just give me a few more minutes. You don't want me eating fish and chips, do you? I have to find just the right place.
She came to the window of yet another chocolate shop, the display in this one finer than many of the others she had seen, the emphasis on the truffles— filled chocolates— rather than on chocolate motorcycles and bell towers. She was admiring the pale blue ballotins with their silver ribbons when she saw the breasts.
White breasts, perhaps a C-cup, with swirled brown nipples. They sat innocently on a bed of silver paper in an open pale blue box, looking as if they had belonged to a princess in another life, they were so haughty, so unconcerned with their surroundings. Eliza blinked at them, surprised beyond thought.
When thought returned, it brought an impish sense of mischief with it. Those white chocolate breasts would be the perfect gift for Melanie. Melanie, who worked in the maternity ward and spent a great deal of her time teaching new mothers how to nurse their babies. Melanie, who was obsessed with nipple shapes and regularly peppered her conversation with analyses of the breasts of women who walked by. Melanie, who had abandoned her to complete this trip alone so she could take care of that worthless boyfriend.
Eliza squinted at the shop beyond the display and saw an elderly woman behind the counter. Even better— no one but the shopkeeper to see her make such a purchase. The sign on the door said the shop was still open, so she mustered her courage and went in.
"Bonjour," the elderly woman said, smiling warmly at her.
"Bonjour," Eliza replied, thankful for the bit of high school French she still remembered. "Comment ça va?"
"Ça va bien, merci. You are American?" the woman asked, her English heavily accented.
Eliza smiled self-consciously. "Yes." Apparently her French pronunciation left something to be desired.
"My grandson, he lives in America."
"Oh? Where?"
"He travels from coast to coast, California to Georgia. Perhaps you have met him? His name is Sebastian, Sebastian St. Germain."
Eliza gave a little laugh. "No, sorry. America is a big place, and I don't live in either California or Georgia."
"My Sebastian, he 'gets around.' That is the phrase, yes?" the woman said, smiling. "So maybe one day you will see him in America. Or maybe you will meet him here— he is home to visit. He is a handsome boy."
"Oh, ah, that's nice." Eliza smiled, but felt a twinge of worry. The woman was not trying to set them up, was she?
"Now, what can I do for you, chérie? You are looking for something for yourself or a friend?"
"A friend, actually…" She went on to explain about Melanie and the breasts.
The old woman seemed amused by the idea, and began taking out boxes of breasts to display on the counter for her. In addition to the white chocolate, there were milk and dark, as well as a variety of sizes. One box held a dozen miniature bosoms, while another had a set of breasts whose size made Eliza's chest ache in sympathy.
"They all have soft centers," the woman explained. "It would not be good to have hard breasts, eh?"
Eliza grinned, feeling like a naughty coconspirator in some teenage prank.
"Camille, qu'est-ce que tu faites là-bas?" an elderly man asked, appearing in the doorway that led to the back of the shop.
Eliza slowly translated in her head, What are you doing? The man was shorter and stockier than the woman, bald with tufts of white hair over his enormous, slightly pointed ears, and he had a huge nose. He would have looked like the troll under the bridge, except for twinkling blue eyes that made him look more mischievous than frightening.
"Ah! Tu vends mes poitrines! Bon, bon."
You're selling my… Eliza silently translated. Selling his what?
"Philippe, go back to the kitchens," the woman said. "This nice young lady and I are almost finished." And then, in a stage whisper to Eliza, "That is Philippe, my husband. He gets very excited when someone buys his breasts."
"Good day, mademoiselle," Philippe said, ignoring his wife and coming up to the counter, his eyes skipping happily over Eliza and his chocolate bosoms. "You like my art, yes?"
"Er, yes. You have made them look… quite realistic."
"Eh?"
"Real. They look very real."
He beamed at her, ignoring Camille's urgent whisperings for him to go back to the kitchens. "I make more than just les poitrines," he said. "You want to see?"
Camille looked concerned at her husband's offer, her eyebrows drawing together. Eliza guessed the woman worried that she would be bored, or impatient with the delay. She was embarrassed by Philippe's attention, but he seemed so genuinely eager to show off his treasures, she did not know how to beg off. "I would love to see your other, er… artworks," she said.
He clapped his hands together, then hunched down behind the counter and began pulling pale blue boxes out of the bottoms of some of the refrigerated display cases, reaching up to set them on the counter, crying out half-intelligible names as he did so. "Les Amoureux, Le Grand Homme, Le Rêve des Jeunes Hommes…"
"Philippe, the young lady does not have time to see everything," Camille said in a strained voice, casting apologetic little smiles to Eliza. "Philippe?"
"L'Ange, La Couche…"
"Philippe!"
Philippe's gnomish head appeared above the counter. "Oui?" He gave his wife a bright smile, then straightened, beckoning Eliza to come closer.
"This one is 'The Angel,' " he said, taking a box from the top of a stack. He lifted off the lid and tilted the box so that Eliza could see. "Beautiful, yes?"
Inside, resting on a bed of silver paper, lay the full figure of a white chocolate woman, naked except for a sheet that draped over her shoulders and down her sides like the folded wings of an angel. She was, in every detail, anatomically correct. Eliza's lips parted, her eyes widening as she took in the carefully molded cleft in the angel's crotch.
"She is a work of art," Philippe declared proudly, setting the box back down and taking another from the stack. "And here, 'The Bed.' "
This work of "art" was of both milk and dark chocolate, and depicted two lovers under the covers, the raised knees of the woman making tents of the chocolate bedspread, her face turned to the side as her lover pressed his face into her neck.
Eliza felt her face grow hot at the explicitness of the scene, so cheerfully displayed by this sprightly old man. Her embarrassment grew even deeper as she realized that the sculpture was having an arousing effect on her. The positioning, the flex of the accurately sculpted muscles, it made her body respond despite herself.
"Ah, you like it, I can see in your face," Philippe said.
"What does she like, Grandpère?" a distressingly familiar male voice asked.
Eliza lifted her eyes and looked into the face of her nemesis. "You!" she whispered. There he stood, big as life, although she knew that fate could not be so cruel as to have dropped him in the same shop where she had come to buy chocolate breasts. Fate would not have sprung him on her at such
a vulnerable moment, not the second time in one day. No, this was not happening.
"Yes, me." He peered over Philippe's shoulder at the chocolate bed scene and began to laugh.
"Eh, why do you laugh?" Philippe asked, indignant. "It is true art. The mademoiselle, she can appreciate it."
"Can she, now? Don't turn your back on her, or else you might find your lovers missing their heads and arms."
"Sebastian," Camille said, her expression censorious. "You are not helping." She nudged him in the side, then whispered, "Elle est embarrassé."
Eliza listened to the exchange while trying not to look at anyone, standing stiff and silent in front of the counter covered in breasts, the pornographic angel, and those little chocolate figures making good use of the missionary position, wondering when this all would end, or if somebody could possibly do her a favor and shoot her.
"I must show her my 'Big Man,' " Philippe said, reaching for another box.
"Grandpére, no," Sebastian said, his laughter dying down. "I think she has seen enough, eh? Let her leave with La Couche in her mind. It is your finest work."
"You think so?"
"Of course I do, and you saw how she liked it."
"Bien. I will save my 'Big Man' for next time."
Heaven forbid there should be one, Eliza said to herself.
"Sebastian," Camille said, "would you help the mademoiselle to make her choice? She was choosing breasts." And then to Eliza, "What good luck that my grandson came back in time for you to meet him, yes?"
Brilliant luck, Eliza thought.
"The young lady and I have already met," Sebastian said, "On the train from Brussels."
"No! Vraiment?" Camille exclaimed.
Eliza met Camille's startled gaze. "We sat across from each other, but never exchanged names," she explained flatly, "so I had no way to recognize your grandson's name when you told me."
Camille smiled naughtily, and with a touch of pride. "My Sebastian, he gets around, like I said."
Eliza caught the surprised look Sebastian gave his grandmother, but Camille carried on as if oblivious, the twinkle in her eyes matching that of her husband. "So, this is my grandson, Sebastian St. Germain. He is handsome, like I said, yes? He owns two restaurants in America , and has no wife."
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