20
The Flower Clock, or L’Horloge Fleurie, is on the west side of the Jardin Anglais. The clock is five meters wide and is made entirely of blooming flowers and plants. It was first created in 1955 to celebrate the one-hundred-year anniversary of the park. The celebration mixed horticulture with horology, and the clock keeps time precisely.
“But how does it keep time precisely?” Mila asks, squeezing my fingers as she jumps up and down to see the sloping clock and the giant ticking second hand.
The metal hand is two-and-a-half meters long—the longest second hand in the world.
“It’s controlled by satellite,” I answer, smiling at her enthusiasm.
“I thought it was controlled by flower power,” Max says, winking at Mila.
She laughs and then lets go of my hand and runs down the wide paved path, unable to resist the lure of six thousand flowers bunched together, blooming in a giant ticking clock.
I understand the appeal. My dad used to bring Daniel and me here on Saturday mornings after he’d checked in at the office. On blue-sky summer days, rainy and leaf-soaked autumn days, even days when the smell of snow tinted the air, my dad would sit on one of the green wooden benches lining the path, read the newspaper, and smoke a cigar. The sweet cigar scent would float over the grass and tickle my nose. Daniel and I would run exuberant circles around the small hill and time our races to the ticking of the flowers.
Four times a year the gardeners would change the clock flowers with the season, and my dad would be sure to bring us to see each new clock face. I can count the years, see the seasons through the changing of the flowers on this clock—ice-green succulents, sunny yellow chrysanthemums, plum-purple geraniums, snow-white phlox.
Max smiles over at me and then steps closer, falling in step beside me as we follow Mila.
I woke him when I called at seven, but being Max, he didn’t mind. He arrived forty-five minutes later, unshaven, bleary-eyed, and wearing jeans and a leather jacket. It’s Max, incognito.
“I’d hate you if I didn’t love you,” he’d said, mumbling into his phone.
I’d laughed and told him to come pick us up for a morning at the flower clock with coffee and pastries. And then Mila said, loud enough for him to hear, “You promised!”
Max’s hand brushes against mine, but instead of pulling back, he leaves the back of his hand resting on mine.
“How was the party?” he asks, his voice careful.
I glance at him quickly, stunned and confused. How does he know about the anniversary party? How does he know about the island and McCormick?—
“After I left. How was it? Is your mom still here?”
“My mum?”
He nods. “Yes. Your mom. The not-birthday party.”
Oh. Ohhh.
That party.
I take a moment for my heart to settle back to its normal steady beat. Around us the Jardin Anglais brims with summer-morning life. The sun is a soft yellow ball rising above the leafy trees. The air is soft summer-warm, and the old plane trees spread wide branches over the curving paths. The shade cools the grass and draws brindled light before us. The grass bends from the morning dew and smells sweet. It’s a morning smell—the kind that rises with the sun.
Already there are tourists taking photographs in front of the clock. There are families roller-skating, following the long, straight promenade along the lake. Joggers run past, their brightly colored clothes flashing as they speed by. A family with three kids hurries past, the children’s shrieks and laughter blending with the birdsong.
It’s busy here in the Jardin Anglais. Behind us is the bustling road, the whoosh of cars quiet. Ahead is the lake, deep golden and blue in the morning. The Jet d’Eau sprays its fountain of water hundreds of feet into the air and little white boats bob along the wooden dock.
Mila has already begun her circuit of the clock, running in a joyous loop around the thousands of blooming orange and yellow marigolds and the cherry-red geraniums.
“Do you know,” I say, turning to Max, “I think it went rather well.”
He raises his eyebrows.
I bump his shoulder. “I know. Surprising. But it was good. My mum’s left.”
“Ahh,” he says, searching my face, trying to decipher whether I’m happy about this or not. Max knows about my mum leaving me when I was young. He knows about Joel. He knows me better than anyone except Daniel.
He’s my closest friend, and I’m his.
It’s been six months since Christmas Eve, when he pressed his hand against my bleeding abdomen and fought to keep my life inside me. That was the night he asked if I could see us being more. I wasn’t ready then. I didn’t think I’d ever be ready.
But I wonder.
“There’s something different about you today,” he finally says, carefully studying my expression.
I let out a surprised huff of air. “Do you know, you’re not the first person to tell me that lately.”
At that he stops walking, pulling me to the side of the path, under the shade of a leafy tree. Mila sprints past, checking the second hand and then waving as she takes off again for another dash around the path.
I wave back and Max lifts his hand. We watch until she rounds the flowering bend.
“I’ve been thinking?—”
“Not too hard, I hope.” I smile but take a nervous swallow. My throat is suddenly tight and dry.
Max lifts one shoulder in a small shrug. “I try to leave thinking to minds better equipped for such pursuits. You know me. I prefer a life of stupor and stupefaction.”
I snort. Max has one of the sharpest minds of anyone I’ve ever met. The only reason he’d roll into a stupor is because he’s seconds from death.
Or, I suppose, after making love. He might relax then.
I glance over at him and he gives me a half-smile. It’s the one he uses to disarm people when he’s about to pounce. He’ll lull them into a sense of ease and then, boom, he’ll take over their business or eviscerate them politically. He once used this exact same smile when an underhanded diamond dealer tried to sell him illegally obtained stones. The aftermath was something to behold. And it was all preceded by this smile.
It’s his lulling, “don’t mind me, I’m just a sweet, lazy lion lying in the shade” smile.
I laugh, the tightness in my throat loosening and my nervousness evaporating.
This is Max. My best friend. There’s no reason for me to be nervous around him.
But then, at my laugh, his eyes catch on my mouth and I know exactly what he’s thinking.
It reminds me of the moment when McCormick kissed me in the sea. How his eyes darkened and he caught my mouth as if it was the only chance he’d ever have to kiss me.
“Max,” I say, my voice raw from the remembered kiss.
He blinks.
“Mummy! Watch me!” Mila shouts, skipping past. I yank my eyes from Max and turn to her, waving. She cartwheels in front of the clock, three, four times, then five. I clap and cheer as Mila dizzily bows. Then she’s off again, running another flower-clock circuit.
I can feel Max’s attention on me. It’s like the breeze running over my bare skin, soft yet insistent. He put aside this conversation last Christmas and never brought it up again.
But it’s time.
“You still feel the same?” I ask Max, watching for Mila as the breeze drags over me and tugs at my hair. “As you did at Christmas?”
Max lets out a long breath, his exhale unsteady. “Are you asking if I still love you?”
I turn to him then. My heart echoes around my chest like the beating of a hollow drum. His expression is grave, his gaze steady.
It’s funny. Max looks nothing like McCormick. But in this moment, Max reminds me of him.
McCormick is tall and solid, a large, muscled, athletic man. Max is thinner, more like a rapier than a claymore.
McCormick has tattoos roping around his arms and abdomen. Max wears rings and diamonds but leaves his skin ink-free.
McCormick wears work-worn clothing and has an air of physicality and self-sufficiency suffused with an innate sense of decency.
Max wears tuxedos, suits, and on weekends jeans and his leather jacket, all brushed together with his wry sense of humor and steadfastness.
Yet while McCormick and Max look vastly different, they have something in common. It’s the feeling I get when I’m around them. That with them I’m safe. With them I’ll never be let down.
With Max I know it’s true. With McCormick? I sense it is.
Still, McCormick isn’t real.
Max is.
He’s real and he’s right here.
Max watches me now with the expectation of his ancestors looking upon Rome after a long, arduous campaign. He nervously twists the ring on his finger. His family crest spins, catching the rising sunlight.
He’s waiting for my answer.
“Yes,” I say softly. “That’s what I’m asking.”
He exhales then, as if he was holding his breath. He drops his hands to his sides and looks out over the Jardin Anglais, toward the second hand ticking over the sea of red geraniums.
Mila flashes past, her pace slowing. Soon she’ll make her way back to us, ready for pastries and a cold drink.
Finally, Max looks back to me and my chest tightens painfully. I see something in his eyes that he usually keeps hidden behind friendliness and laughter. It’s a deeper feeling, a yearning. It’s the difference between seeing a picture of the ocean and standing in front of it, feeling the cold surf on your feet, your insides vibrating from the roar of the waves.
“If you’re asking whether what I feel has faded? No. If you’re asking if it’s grown stronger? Yes. If you’re not asking any of that, we can walk with Mila to La Potinière, sit at a café table, have a coffee and a pastry, and pretend this conversation never happened. It’s up to you.”
I stand arrested between the shadows and the light of the leaves overhead, half-in, half-out, frightened of what taking this path would mean.
Walking to the café behind the flower clock, sitting at the outdoor tables beneath the umbrellas, laughing and joking and pretending this never happened—it’s tempting. So tempting.
I have to ask, “How do you know it isn’t only deep, abiding friendship? How do you know it’s love?”
Max tilts his chin and scans the sky. Above us cirrus clouds, feather and paintbrush-light, trail across the blue. His black hair is tugged by the breeze and he pushes it off his forehead.
“How do you know there’s wind?” he asks, looking back at me. “No one has ever seen the wind. You only feel it. You know it exists because you feel it. You see the effect of it on the world. You feel it. It’s real.”
At the flower clock Mila perches on the metal railing, leaning over the side to peer at the blossoms. I watch her for a moment, making sure she’s safe.
Then I say quietly, voicing my fear, “I’m terrified to lose your friendship. I don’t feel what you do. I don’t know that I can. I don’t want to start this if it will only hurt you.”
Max smiles, a closed-lip, self-aware look. “Let me worry about my hurts.”
“Max.”
“What’s life without risk? It isn’t life. It isn’t living.”
“But if I lose you?—”
“Fi.” He presses a hand to my arm, solid and sure. “No matter what, I will always be your friend.”
I give him a dry look. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
He laughs then, grinning at me. “You can’t get rid of me. I’m sorry. That boat has sailed.”
We smile at each other, living in the memory of a Saturday night eight years ago. His family had been gone for six months. His dad, his mom, his older brother, dead in an avalanche while on a ski holiday. Max was raging his way through Geneva, wrecking his life, his reputation, and his family’s business.
I barged into his house to find him surrounded by half-empty bottles of liquor—brandy and cognac—a mountain of cheap, half-smoked cigars, two weeks’ worth of beard growth, dirty-clothed, and hollow eyed. It lit an ember of rage in me to see him that way.
I grabbed the closest bottle of cognac and the stainless steel lighter lying near the cigars. And then I marched to his back garden. He followed. I dumped the wine into an ostentatious marble birdbath. Then I flicked the lighter and set the whole thing on fire.
It burned like a torch, raging and twisting.
“That was my dad’s favorite cognac,” he said, hollow-voiced.
“I don’t give a shit,” I said viciously.
He blinked. “The brandy was my mom’s favorite.”
I nodded, stormed back into the house, grabbed all the cognac and brandy I could find, and then brought them clanking in my arms to the garden.
“Do it.”
Max studied me for a moment, life slowly edging its way back into his eyes. Then he grabbed two bottles. The flame in the birdbath had already died, the alcohol burned away. He poured the contents of the bottles into the marble bath, the ruby and amber liquid catching in the dull gray half-light of dusk.
Then he set it on fire.
And I brought him bottle after bottle, and he fed the flames and let the spirits burn.
When he was done, a pile of bottles lay like bones picked clean in the grass. The air smelled sweet like smoke and incense. The veins of the white marble birdbath were blackened. A low blue flame still burned. The sky was dark.
Max turned to me, his cheeks red, eyes alight. A spark of life was back inside him.
He stared at me for a moment, then, “They’re gone.”
“I know.”
“I hate them.” His voice cracked and the night closed in while the flame in the birdbath burned low.
“Do you hate them a little less now?”
“They were a terrible family. I never would’ve chosen them. Sometimes, when I was young, I’d lie awake wishing?—”
He cut himself off, unable to say it.
“I know.”
His dad was a vicious man, known for his rages. Max’s brother was just the same. His mom was hard and unhappy. Max’s childhood had a terrible beginning and a terrible ending. Because he stayed and he never escaped them.
“They’re gone,” he repeated, “and I’m full of guilt. I hate them for leaving. I hate them for leaving me this.” He gestured to the expansive back garden, to the mansion outside Geneva full of ghosts, and even to the rest of the world.
“You could burn it all. Wreck it. You’ve been doing a good job. I’d say in a year, eighteen months, you’ll lose it all.”
He nodded.
“Or you can burn what you need to burn. I’ll help you. And the rest of it, you can rebuild it. Make it your own.”
“What would you do?”
“I’d rebuild it. I’d make it something great.”
“Do you know, I think you would. If I try, will you watch me?”
“I won’t just watch. I’ll cheer you on. I’ll be your friend.”
“Aren’t we already friends?”
“Not like this.” I nodded at the pile of bottles. In the dark they were the bones of a whale’s carcass washed ashore and picked dry. A great behemoth, dead and gone. The flamelight danced over the bottles, macabre in its dying. Finally, the flame guttered and Max nodded, decided.
“All right,” he said.
“All right?”
Then he smiled and stood tall. For the first time that night he looked at me as if he really saw me. His eyes burned bright. “In the morning I’ll take you and the baby for coffee. I could use coffee. I could use your help strategizing how to raze and rebuild.”
“Mila.”
“What?”
“Her name’s Mila. Babies have names, you know.”
He nodded. “I know. But I like calling her the baby. It’s cute.”
I laughed and punched his arm.
And that was the moment when Max decided we’d be friends for life. He told me the very next morning. I’d decided we’d be lifelong friends when he knew I was expecting and offered his friendship and support. The both of us reached the same conclusion at different times. Friends.
But now Max has reached another conclusion. One I haven’t arrived at. Not yet. Maybe not ever.
He smiles at me as we stand under the leafy green of summer with the morning breeze blowing past. Nine years of friendship between us. Nine years of trust.
“If you don’t want?—”
“Yes,” I say, putting my hand over his. “I’ll go to dinner with you and let you bring me flowers, share a kiss, see where it might lead.”
He smiles at that, surprise flickering in his brown eyes.
Perhaps, just like my dream let me dive into the lake with Mila and Daniel, perhaps it’s letting me open up in this too. Perhaps allowing myself to love McCormick in my dreams will let me open up to loving Max as more than a friend.
Perhaps that’s what my dream is telling me.
I don’t know. Right now I’m not sure of anything.
“You’re truly certain?” I ask him. “Even if this doesn’t lead to more. You’ll stay my friend?”
“Don’t worry,” Max says, brushing his finger across my cheek. “I’m not going anywhere.”
I nod and rest my cheek in the palm of his hand.
And then Mila runs to us, skipping between us and grabbing our hands. She pulls us into the light, her red hair flashing in the sun, and then we’re walking hand in hand down the path, off to have pastries and coffee.
We’ll spend the morning together, me, Max, and Mila. It’s the same as a hundred mornings before. Yet looking over Mila’s bouncing head to Max, I acknowledge it’s also very, very different.