Page 60 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
There were so many things I wanted to tell her.I’ve missed you! I thought of you only this morning when I had mycornetto! I am sorry about Lisbon, Mainz, Sicily, everything. Do you remember who I am this time, what we are?
But I said nothing while she led me to a table, because I was capable only of awe in that moment, not speech. Instead, she chattered away, the consummate hostess. Her family owned the Nuessle Inn. Her name was Clara. The special today was schnitzel.
Clara.I tried the name on my tongue.
She smiled at me, and I realized it was the first word I’d uttered aloud in her presence.Clara.
I think I shall dine at Café Hier every noon from now on.
—
That’s the end of Felix’sfirst entry, and it’s almost identical to a vignette I wrote. But what I didn’t have was a specific date for when Felix and Clara’s story began. This journal, though, begins on the tenth of July, the same date as the Capulets’ ball when Romeo first met Juliet. Just like the other journal I read earlier tonight, the one about Kitri and Reynier.
Do we always meet on the same day? Is that why that date is the security code to Sebastien’s gallery?
The other thing I didn’t have in my own vignette about Felix and Clara was any story past their first encounter. I’m starting to see how I had a Disney fairy tale approach to my stories, setting up love at first sight and then presuming the happily ever after.
Both intrigued and scared by how this story I thought I invented might develop, I delve into more entries. They’re detailed accounts of every single encounter between Felix and Clara, the minutiae carefully preserved: What he ordered for lunch. How she wore her hair. Whether he said hello first that day, or if she was the first to speak.
To anyone else, the details might seem boring, even tedious. But I’m beginning to understand that these are the habits of a man who is used to losing what he loves. It reminds me of when my dad got the diagnosis for his brain tumor and the pronouncement that it was aggressive and incurable. Like magpies, Mom, Katy, and I began to obsessively collect every second with Dad. I’d write downeverything he said, especially the end-of-life advice he wanted to impart. Katy shot videos of him every day. Mom saved a clipping of his hair when it began to fall out, dried a flower from every get-well-soon bouquet, and even kept every hospital wristband as if it were a ticket stub from their first date, or, rather, their last one.
Because we never really knew when the last of anything would come.
I wipe away a tear as I think about Dad in the audience ofRomeo and Juliet,watching me in a role that, it turns out, was astoundingly prescient.
“What would you say about all this, Daddy?” I ask.
I can almost hear him chuckling.Life is like a mechanical bull,he’d say.You never know what’s going to happen, but you can hold on tight and enjoy the ride.
Or something like that. Dad was never one to shy away from adventure.
Me, though?
Well, New Helene is trying.
I turn my attention back to Felix’s journal. I’m about a year in, and it’s another entry similar to the others before it, a lovingly documented snapshot of their growing relationship.
Bern, Switzerland—April 22, 1560
“I’m sorry I’m late,” I said as I hurried into Café Hier. “The monstrance clock I was working on is caked with dirt on the inside.”
“You’re not late,” Clara said as she approached me. She wore her hair in a crown of braids, and I thought her more beautiful than the baroness in nearby Bâtie-Champion.
“How do you know I’m not late?” I said, teasing. “You don’t even have a clock in the restaurant.”
She shrugged mirthfully. “Papa doesn’t like our customers to feel rushed. As for me, I don’t much like counting minutes. I enjoy simply existing, in this very moment. Does that make sense?”
I smiled but shook my head. “I’m a clockmaker. I live by the ticks of the minute hand. So no, it does not make sense to me, but I love that you think that way.”
The apples of her cheeks grew a touch rosy. Then Clara remembered we were still standing and she was supposed to take me to a table.
Once seated, she tried to tell me what the cook was making this afternoon so that I could choose.
“I would prefer whatever you recommend,” I said, as I do each day.
She pretended to study me. This is the little game we play every lunch hour.
“Hmm,” Clara said. “I think today you would benefit fromzürcher geschnetzeltes.”
