Page 52 of The Hundred Loves of Juliet
Then there are also other artifacts that don’t match anything I’ve written. Bricks of sunbaked clay. An antique sword and a bow with a quiver of arrows, a fox fur cap and rifle, and a string of worn rosary beads.
Of course, Helene.I shake my head at my own ego. If Sebastien really has lived for centuries, his life would have been about a lot of things other than Juliet. Just because the only vignettes I’ve written are love stories doesn’t meant that’s all that’s ever happened to him.
Still, it’s disturbing to think that maybe there’s been a version of me—versions, plural—whom Sebastien knows, but I don’t. Am I always the same me? Or am I different each time? And if so, which past Helene has Sebastien loved best?
Ifhe’s actually immortal. I still don’t believe it, although it’s getting harder to defend that stance. Logic’s hold on my brain is blurring at the edges, and the inexplicable is moving in.
The smell of something delicious cooking also wafts in. I glance at the time on my phone.
How is it already four in the afternoon? But then I remember that I spent a few hours after my call with Mom and Katy thinking over the wholeRomeo and Julietthing. And I lost track of time here in the Hall of History, examining every artifact as if it might give me the answers I need.
“You know what?” I say aloud. “That’s enough.”
Enough being in my own head. Enough hemming and hawing. I didn’t set off on this “New Helene” project to play it safe. If I want answers, I’m going to demand them from the source.
And that source, it seems, is in the kitchen.
SEBASTIEN
When I’m tense, I cook.
It was originally a skill I picked up out of necessity, because after fleeing Mantua, there was no one to take care of me. The Montagues had a full staff that’d done everything I needed, from polishing my swords to acquiring books I requested, from attending to any hair out of place on my head to making my meals. But on my own in Sicily—after my period of grieving homelessness—I had to learn not only how to do my own shopping but how to cook the ingredients. A man can’t survive on salami and raw zucchini alone.
These days, however, I use cooking to release pressure. I spent too many hours today wallowing in my gallery, reliving all the Juliets who came and died before Helene. If I could have cried, I would have. But the tears have long dried up; I’ve lived through too much tragedy and exhausted that physical reservoir. The sadness and grief, unfortunately, are as eternal as my life.
Still, I knew I couldn’t stay with the paintings—with the past—forever. What if Helene needed me? So I eventually scraped myself off the bench in the gallery and drifted downstairs to cook.
First, I made more dough for Nutella cornetti, because Helene will need them to replace the ones I’d brought to her guest suite earlier. If she’s anything like my past Juliets, she’ll lean on sugar as fuel as she works through the gargantuan mess of history I’ve dumped on her today, and that means the supply of pastries in her freezer is going to run low. Besides, the complicated process of making proper cornetti dough takes time and care, and I was glad to have the distraction. I couldn’t stop replaying what happened in the gallery and worrying what Helene must be thinking—about me and about herself—but having something to do helped.
After the dough was in the refrigerator to rest, I made a batch of cannoli, also for Helene. If she decides to never speak to me again and to leave after the blizzard clears, then at least her last impression of me will be sweet.
At the thought, I have to brace myself against the counter. I don’t want her to go. And yet I know she has to. The curse can try its best to throw us into each other’s lives—giving Helene memories of our pasts, catching me off guard by bringing her to me in January, not July—but I won’t give in without a fight. I lived without Avery, and so Avery lived. I can do the same for Helene.
Can’t I?
I fling myself into making risotto, another complex, single-minded undertaking like cornetti dough that crowds out the warring passions in my head. Every step of cooking risotto is detailed, like coating each grain of rice in butter and heating it until it’s slightly translucent. Attentively stirring gives me a task on which to focus and keeps me from being paralyzed by my own desires and fears.
When the rice begins to smell toasty, I pour in a splash of white wine to deglaze the pot. Then I stir some more, carefully scraping up the caramelized bits from the pot.
Stir…Stir…Stir…
Next comes strands of bright red saffron. Then meticulous, small ladles of warm broth. With each addition, I fold the rice until it’s absorbed all the liquid before I add more.
When the risotto is finished cooking, I add butter and Parmesan cheese.
And Helene marches into the kitchen as if she’s on a mission.
HELENE
I meant to confront Sebastienabout the Gallery of Me and the Hall of History. I meant to demand logical explanations for why I’ve written vignettes about him, about why being around him feels like never-ending static shock where each spark is another flicker of déjà vu. I meant to be angry at him for heaping all thison me, for being horrible to me at The Frosty Otter and the bookstore, and even for the ridiculous tall tales the townsfolk tell about him rescuing baby polar bears.
I meant to get to the bottom of it all, I really did.
But when I step into the kitchen and he looks up from the stove, I see how ragged he looks and I know instantaneously that he’s spent the morning blaming himself after I left the gallery. I see how stiffly he carries his shoulders, as if it takes all his willpower to stay standing, and how his hand trembles slightly as he clenches the wooden spoon just to hold on tosomething.Never could I have imagined that a burly crab fisherman who wages war against the vicious winter sea could look so…vulnerable.
His rawness breaks my resolve. And then suddenly, I don’t want to think about the vignettes and the paintings and how Shakespeare got Romeo and Juliet’s story wrong. I don’t want to think anymore that the world might not work the way I’d always believed it did.
I don’t want to think about what it would mean for me if what Sebastien said about all the Juliets is true.
