Gabriel's Inferno (Gabriel's Inferno 1)

“I love you, Gabriel. So much it hurts,” she said, her hand coming to rest over his gently beating heart. She whispered Dante’s own words back to him, somewhat changed:

Love hath so long possess’d me for his own And made his lordship so familiar

That he, who at first irk’d me, is now grown Unto my heart as its best secrets are.

And thus, when he in such sore wise doth mar My life that all its strength seems gone from it.

Mine inmost being then feels thoroughly quit Of anguish, and all evil keeps afar.

Love also gathers to such power in me

That my sighs speak, each one a grievous thing.

Always soliciting

My Gabriel’s salutation piteously.

Whenever he beholds me, it is so,

Who is more sweet than any words can show.

When all her tears were dry, Julia placed a few tentative kisses against Gabriel’s stilled, soft lips and fell into a deep and dreamless sleep in the arms of her beloved.

When she awoke, it was shortly past seven in the morning. Gabriel was still sound asleep. In fact, he was snoring, and from the looks of it neither of them had moved all night. It was probably the most peaceful sleep she’d ever had, but one.

She didn’t want to move. She didn’t want to be separated from him, not by one inch. She wanted to lie in his arms forever and pretend as if they had never been apart.

He recognized me. He loves me. Finally.

She had never felt loved before. Not really. Oh he  had mumbled it, and her mother had shouted it but only when drunk, so the words never entered Julia’s consciousness. Or heart. She never believed them because their actions had showed their words to be false. But she believed Gabriel.

So on this morning, the first morning ever, Julia felt loved. She smiled so widely she thought her face would break. She pressed her lips to Gabriel’s neck and nuzzled against his stubbled skin. He moaned softly and his arm tightened against her, but his regular and deep breathing told her that he was still very much asleep.

Julia had enough experience with alcoholics to know that Gabriel would be hungover and probably cranky when he woke up. So she wasn’t in a hurry to wake him. She was silently grateful that last night, at least, Gabriel had been a harmless, flirtatious drunk. That kind of drunk she could handle. It was the other kind that frightened her.

She spent about an hour drinking in his scent and his warmth, reveling in their closeness, skimming her hands tentatively over his upper body.

Apart from the evening she spent with him in the woods, these moments were the happiest of her life. But eventually, she had to get up.

She stealthily crawled out from under his arm and padded to the master bathroom, closing the door behind her. She noticed a bottle of Aramis cologne sitting on his vanity. She picked it up, opened it, and sniffed. It wasn’t the scent that she remembered from the orchard. His scent then had been more natural, wilder even.

This is the new scent of Gabriel. And just like him — it’s breathtaking.

And now he’s mine…

She brushed her teeth, twisted her now curly hair up into a messy knot, and walked into the kitchen to find a rubber band or a pencil with which to hold it. Her hair thus affixed, she floated into the laundry room and transferred the clean but damp clothes to the dryer. She couldn’t go home until her clothes were dry. But she had no intention of leaving now that he remembered her.

What about Paulina? Or  m.a.i.a. ?  Julia pushed those questions aside, simply because they were irrelevant. Gabriel loved her. Of course, he would let Paulina go.

What about the fact that he’s my Professor? And what if he’s an alcoholic?

She had promised herself long ago that she would never get involved with an alcoholic. But rather than face that possibility head on, she actively suppressed all the little, niggling doubts that were bubbling to the surface, for truly, she wanted to believe that their love would conquer all.

“Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments,”  she thought, citing Shakespeare as a talisman against her fears. She believed Gabriel’s vices were borne out of loneliness and despair. But now that they had found each other once again, their love would be enough to rescue both of them from their respective darknesses. Together they would be far stronger and far healthier than they had been separately.

As Julia pondered these things in her heart, she went through the cupboards of Gabriel’s excellently stocked kitchen. She wasn’t sure if he would want breakfast, given his hangover. Sharon had always eschewed food in favor of a breakfast libation such as a Seabreeze, which Julia had (sadly) learned to make with aplomb at age eight. Nevertheless, after she finished her own breakfast of scrambled eggs, bacon, and coffee, she prepared the same for Gabriel.

Not knowing if he would need the hair of the dog that bit him, but wanting to give him that option, she made him a Walters cocktail. She found the recipe in his bartender’s guide, having chosen (she hoped correctly) the decanter on top of the sideboard that held his least favorite Scotch, not wanting to sully his finest single malt with juice.

In sum, Julia was ecstatic at having the opportunity to spoil Gabriel a little, and so she took extra care as she prepared his breakfast tray. She clipped a few small sprigs of parsley from his countertop herb garden for a garnish, which she placed alongside the orange sections that she’d cut up and fanned next to the bacon. She even wrapped his silverware in a linen napkin, which she folded somewhat clumsily into the shape of a pocket.

She wished she was clever enough to make something more substantial than a pocket, a peacock perhaps, or a fan, and she decided to investigate those options the next time she was on her computer. Martha Stewart would know. Martha Stewart always knew.

Then Julia bravely walked into Gabriel’s study and found a pad of paper and a fountain pen on top of his large, wooden desk. She wrote a note: October 2009 Dear Gabriel, I’d given up hope, until you looked into my eyes last night and finally saw me.

Apparuit iam beatitudo vestra.

Now your blessedness appears.

Your Beatrice

Julia propped the note up against the wine glass she used for his orange juice. Not willing to wake him just yet, she placed the entire tray, cocktail and all, in his large and half-empty refrigerator. Then she leaned up against its door and sighed with satisfaction.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

Julia’s domestic goddess routine was suddenly interrupted by someone banging on the front door.

Holy shit, she thought. Could that be — ?

At first she didn’t know what to do. Should she wait and see if Paulina let herself in with a key? Or should she run back to Gabriel’s arms and hide?

After waiting a minute or so her curiosity got the best of her, and she found herself tiptoeing quietly to the front door.

O gods of al just-been-reunited-with-my-soul-mate-after-a-real y-painful-six-friggin’-years-graduate-students, please don’t let my soul mate’s (soon to be) ex-mistress mess things up. Please.

Julia took a deep breath and gazed through the peephole. The hallway was empty. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw something on the ground.

Hesitantly, she opened the door just a crack and darted a nervous hand out toward the something, exhaling deeply in relief when her hand closed on the Saturday morning Globe and Mail.

Smiling again, and relieved that her blissful reunion with Gabriel had not been ruined by his erstwhile mistress, Julia picked up the paper and hastily locked the door. Still smiling, she poured herself a glass of orange juice and curled up in the red velvet wing-backed chair that was angled next to the fireplace, with her bare feet resting on the matching ottoman.

She sighed in contentment.

If you had asked her over two weeks ago when she was visiting Gabriel’s apartment with Rachel if she ever thought she’d be sitting in his precious chair on a Sunday morning, she would have said no. She hadn’t thought it possible, even with Grace’s saintly intercession. But now that she was here, she was very, very happy.

She settled in for a leisurely morning of orange juice and the Saturday paper and decided that her felicity deserved Cuban music, more specifically, a little bit of Buena Vista Social Club. As she listened to Pueblo Nuevo on her iPod, she perused the Arts section of Gabriel’s newspaper. An exhibition of Florentine art was coming to the Royal Ontario Museum on loan from the Uffizi Gallery. Maybe Gabriel wouldn’t mind taking her to see it. On a date.

Yes, they’d missed out on her high school prom and all the fancy parties at Saint Joseph’s University. But Julia was sure that all the wasted time and lost opportunity would now be returned to her tenfold to fill as she wished with Gabriel. Happily, she leaped to her feet as the trumpet player in her ears began playing a few bars of Stormy Weather  as a counterpoint to the Cuban melody. Julia sang loudly, too loudly, dancing with her orange juice in Gabriel’s pretentious underwear, blissfully unaware of the half-naked man who was striding up behind her.

“What the hell are you doing?”

“Aaaaggggghhhhhh!”

Julia yelped and jumped about a foot in reaction to the harsh, angry voice. She quickly took her ear buds out of her ears and turned around.

And what she saw crushed her.

“I asked you a question!” Gabriel snapped, his eyes transformed to blackish-blue pools. “What the f**k are you doing in my underwear, jumping around my living room?”