The House of Impossible Loves by Cristina Lopez Barrio

Author:Cristina Lopez Barrio
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub, mobi
Tags: General Fiction
ISBN: 9780547661216
Publisher: Harcourt
Published: 2013-06-01T07:00:00+00:00

At dawn, Olvido tasted wood beside her, the taste of a man. For a split second she thought that frozen night with the voice of a wolf and a celestial suicide never happened. She thought the gunpowder and her mother’s smile never happened. He was alive. He would open his leaden eyes, always darker on waking, and stroke her back. When she realized that more than twenty years had passed and the lips on her shoulder were not Esteban’s, she startled. She could not remember who this man was. Her head ached and champagne bubbles still fizzed in her stomach.

Olvido slipped out of bed, trying not to wake him. She gathered her clothes from among wood shavings on the bedroom floor and got dressed in the bathroom. She did not take a taxi, choosing to walk along the Seine to her hotel instead. As she skirted the frost sleeping on cobblestones, one word came to her lips like a prayer, the word Jean.

Jean woke to the ringing alarm. It was eight o’clock and he had to teach. He reached out for the woman who had spent the night. He wanted to hold her, kiss her, but the bed was empty. Disappointed, he headed for the shower to scrub away his hangover. He went back into the bedroom to dress, and in the closet, the image of a slave’s scarred back assaulted him from between shirts on hangers.

In the metro, he tried to remember her name but could not. As he walked up the stairs to the fine arts building, the fleeting belly of a woman appeared on every step. He walked into a room full of sleepy students. He said good morning and opened his briefcase; between the leather dividers, rosy crests bordering that perfect fissure lay in wait. He rubbed his eyes and began to explain certain techniques for mastering perspective. Champagne bubbles slipped out through his lips. Two breasts hovered over the room, aureoles spread like sails. He had to stop his lecture and swallow. He began again, this time writing on the board as his students looked on inquisitively, but the visions continued. On that scratched green surface was the outline of two thighs. Jean went to his seat behind a solid professor’s desk. He could not remember where he was in his explanation, could not remember a single thing about techniques for mastering perspective. A pair of hips sashayed toward him.

He canceled class and went down to the cafeteria. The body of that woman assumed various poses as he drank a cup of tea. He had to see her again. He hurried to find Margarita as she was leaving class, asking her mother’s name and where he might find her. Margarita hesitated. On the one hand, she was happy Olvido had left Scarlet Manor and was enjoying herself, but on the other, she was annoyed that her mother had been with the most sought-after professor in the entire university after just one night.

“Olvido Laguna. Hôtel la Madeleine,” she said at last with a frown.

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