YD6-78(MVDH) Through the Plate-Glass Wings: Aetheria Hovered—The Cinema Queue, La Fontanella’s Lace
%20Through%20the%20Plate-Glass%20Wings:%20Aetheria%20Hovered%E2%80%94The%20Cinema%20Queue,%20La%20Fontanella%E2%80%99s%20Lace.jpg)
A cinema rendezvous, a boy in tow, and an old ghost in the queue—tonight, nothing will stay in the dark. Beneath Brussels' streetlamps and underpasses, unspoken power games stir. At La Fontanella, laughter simmers, wine flows, and the veil thins between tenderness and control. Enter the dinner scene—where the myth plays out in real time, and the true performance begins long before dessert is served.
BOOK SYNOPSIS: Aetheria, in the zodiacal forest—where birds sing and leaves flutter like wings bathing in light. The symphony of the forest comes to mind. This is the cosmos’ whisper through our creatures, and in these pages, she leads me. These chapters unfold as a clarifying companion to my earlier book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness who begins to reveal herself, her presence lives in the rhythm. She seeks form—moving toward the name she will one day claim: Sunshine.
YD6-78(MVDH) Through the Plate-Glass Wings: Aetheria Hovered—The Cinema Queue, La Fontanella’s Lace
The gallery marble gleams the walkway ahead. I walk toward the floor’s opening—a hatchway, at a guess, leading down to where the mall continues. But I'm assimilating my date’s rendezvous into the group of people scrambled by the guardrail, shaping a queued stretch besides the void.
From unruly spring curls, lanky strands, tangled knots, cropped edges—a mane of hair, ebony, golden, chestnut—a mass of heads. From the midst, Victoria’s moon-shine face clears. She’s scanning the gaping gallery’s entrance, her neck craned, a shoulder pulling from the queue. Hesitant, her posture speaks: ‘I’ve reserved our spot. . . I don't want to lose it.' But she can’t help herself. She sidles into the gleaming aisle—exposed. Just beside me - wish… - a whisper of breeze, as the wings of plate-glass that had opened, now seal shut behind me.
Aetheria, nestled in Helios’ light, expands the dome over the big thatched-roof house—destined to bring about the fusion of Mariette with August, her brother, the van der Acheren foster children, above all, Victoria. Her years spent knotting the thread of that destiny now seem promising through Victoria. But shaded—her mirage, a lost glimmer of light—she lingers just outside. Her presence eclipsed, her attempts to enter dissolve at the entrance, into the sterile fluorescence within, without effect.
I land my long gaze, approaching strides slowing, as Victoria, pepish and dithering, marks her place beside the queue. But, she can't hold herself. Abandons her spot, nearing the last quarter of the line.
In the kaleidoscopic mirror—mirroring the zodiacal forest’s Libra, in the shadows of his shining moon—stands one unnamed: Marc Descrijverer, unseen. A college alma friend, who happens to be on the spot.
In a sportive suit, he dithers, swirling halfway in the vacant aisle alongside the queueing crowd. Juvenile-slight—the man my gaze drops on behind Victoria. He can’t hold his grip on his place, just a quarter way from the glass ticketing kiosk ahead. His posture tells. ‘Why are you here?’—scolding himself—‘This is not for me to interfere with.’ But he couldn’t help himself—he’s already leaving.
As Victoria clears the tail of the queue, she greets me. Her admirer—Marc—flips his gaze from my shoulder: ‘Who is he?’ Then locks with hers. He confronts Victoria, startled by the coincidence. His baffled-eyes—possessed—glue his feet to the gleaming aisle. A witness to his own heart-wringing jealousy—turning blue from lack of oxygen.
Victoria steps aside, drawing a mind in turmoil with her aside—pausing in a quiet corner. Marc’s stern, estranged face questions: 'Oughtn’t I supposed to be with you?' Victoria’s plea: ‘Yes. . . But as a friend!’ Marc melts at her few words. Victoria turns, tugging him gently—sidesteps, facing me. “That’s Marc.” She says. “He’s a good friend. . .” Her thoughts linger. 'Linda’s brother. My best friend.’
Marc Descrijverer tears away. A glimpse in the aisle, evanesces—as incidental he had appeared. The trails before us shorten, Victoria says: “André est parti pour le week-end…—Andre is gone for the weekend. . .” But I’m blind to the looming international trains—trundling restaurant coaches and berths over a ray of railway tracks toward far-off international cities. Andre, since early Friday—streamlines operations, driving staff, optimizing traveler’s satisfaction—bound to take Monday off from work.
From an apparent endless queue, I watch a few people fray and disorient ahead near the kiosk—until the line dissolves and we stand before the wicket. Victoria calling to the attendant inside the glass booth. “Deux pour Toto le Héros—Two for Toto the Hero?”
Wealthier than I imagine—Belgian Franc void of decimals—until I hand over a five-hundred bill, fast going nowhere. I turn, walking away from the kiosk with ticket in hand, toward doors beneath a fascia plastered with posters of upcoming features: The Silence of the Lambs, Judgment Day. We duck beneath, into the theater—sensing the breath of the acoustics enshrouding us. We sidle into the rear row of auditorium seats, we shift into the middle, and we settle, facing the silver screen, flickering with publicity.
My Citizen wristwatch’s hands had stalled, ruminating with me over who might replace its battery. We exit the show, trickling out with the crowd onto the boulevard in a thin flurry of evening traffic. A few doorsteps on, the closed ticket wicket behind us, Victoria presses the door to a brasserie. Within the classic wooden layout, she settles at a wall-side table. The waiter lingers: she orders a Porto, I join her. We sip our drinks, then rise, slipping back into the mottled night. At the Peugeot, we ease into our seats. I tweak the ignition—the engine purrs, pulling away through the boulevard into trickling traffic.
The community opens in zigzag stretched hedgerows of fenestrated brick facades, until we cross the Grand Boulevard. I'm beginning to recognize the pattern—targeting the upper-level viaduct’s brick arches to the facades' threesome windows. We pull up, Victoria steps out with a cheek-kiss. Heads toward the six small translucent panes. She disappears into the gaping shadow as the door swings shut. The panes fall dark. With a wheel spin, I stir up the engine, pulling off the mottled shadows of striated, fenestrated facades rotating about my glass bubble, from the flocculent, bushy pocket of a folding street to track back along last Friday’s course. I return to the Grand Boulevard, tracing the city’s middle ring, leading me at crossing over the canal.
Facing the tri-colored lenses against the Royal Palace's brick wall. I steer westward along the interminable backside, shying away behind the median’s woods. Dropping the wall, the road sweeps past the Atomium rising—its bald silver sphere nestled in the flocculent canopies. I cross the city's peripheral ring, where a trickling of traffic glimmers beneath the hazy yellow vault. As the flyover slips into the white lighting of the bus course, the traumatic wakes drifts to the forefront of my mind—my welcome to the country, only a few weeks ago: sent on a wild goose chase in the night, with only the flair of an airport taxi ride through cow-patched countryside and areas of littered homes behind shuttered windows.
The answer would surface in the days that followed: I had dared ask a bus driver about the morning halt—in French. I didn’t notice Mariette’s warning words. The driver’s insinuation, a few days later, was echoed by colleagues in a bar: ‘This is Flanders—here we speak Flemish.’
The headlight beams sweep the fenestrated white facade tucked beneath the saddled thatched roof, shying from the giant fir waking over the half-gazebo. My feet crunch across the grid path. I press through the swing of the door into the vestibule. I follow the spill of light from distant gaping doorways, weaving up to my feet—pet-like, welcoming me back, leading me to Mariette—standing in the flicker of a television’s reflective glow, her gaze quietly disappointed. Her fan, Nagui, had been blanked from diffusion—Que le meilleur gagne—May the best win—pre-empted by the late-night news. She was already readying to head upstairs for the night.
A couple of birds flutter and chirp, playing hide-and-seek among the palm branches. I leave behind Helios' golden aura on the face of the majestic fir, my pace crunching the path, toward the white Peugeot parked against the neighbor’s flocculent, leafy wild hedge. I slip in the hush behind the steering wheel. With a tweak of the ignition key, the engine to purr. I back into the street shift gears, and drive off from the hamlet—setting course toward the South Station.
After following arteries from straying off course, until, the windshield ducks a flicker of the railway viaduct cast shade. Across the plaza, along the hedgerows of townhouses, I pull into a vacant bay. I walk with time to spare. The blotch of the white translucent with a splash of red, illisible, rhymes with Team Construct. Underneath the fascia press my way into the sales office—reconstruing the bright contrast colors, the lounge corner, the desks huddled by backrests poised silent. In the depths of the hall, the receptionist—still carrying a chip on her shoulder for me sitting in the place of the biker confined to a hospital bed—rasps: “Monsieur Duchatel, veux vous voir—Mister Duchatel wants to see you.”
When I come back down the spiral stairs from the upstairs administration offices, I head out into the street. I slip into the Peugeot, with ‘Jette’ in mind, setting course along the shadow of the moat—riding the asphalt waves, pitching into the troughs beneath the punctuated “Gate,” the old city rayonating roads to distant towns bearing names. With Helios at ten-o'clock I uncoil my way into the western community.
Aetheria nestles her mirage—a kaleidoscopic mirror—emerging from the hush of the zodiac forest. She etches a clairvoyant, possessive dualism for the tangible. While I’m dispatched to investigate an insurance claim, my mind sharpens—measured, skeptical—as I slip into the suit of arrival, pulling up along the western hedgerow aglow in golden light, washing the fenestrated facades—’hailing remember!’
I feel out of place, caught in a kaleidoscopic mirror—standing in for my brother, Igor. He has the qualifications. He is the one at Nasionale Pers to photograph the neighboring townhouse for insertion into one of those glossy magazines: You, Huisgenoot, Fair Lady, Saries.
But me, I’m at the rendezvous address. I press the calling buzzer. “Entrez !—Come in!” I sigh with relief, the man in the gaping doorway isn’t Flemish. Nevertheless, stern, he waves me in.
The owner heads off, ignoring doors, and I trail behind, ascending stairs—into the hush of a spatial orientation bearing on the street. He leads through a narrow corridor. Past the sleeping quarters, beyond—he presses at the end of the doors. It opens: an exhibit. He guides me across an unlived master bedroom. Then pauses before the western party wall.
My mind is still in the street, facing the sandwiched construction project—the owner’s stern, blaming regard: ’It's next door—that's what caused it!’
But no Team Construct signboard, no artisans shouting ‘Hurry up!’ over helping hands. No clangs of metal bracing party walls before gutting. Just the ghost of an old house—too fragile on its brick bones to have been saved. The crumbling walls, brick by brick under demolition, had raised a street dynamic: earthmoving equipment roaring, trucks shaking fear to the foundations, rubble tipped filling bins for the ride to a dumpsite. Until—exposing flying shores: horizontal beams and struts spanning between the two party walls. Burlesque men in the foundations, rise with the walls and on staggering slabs. Rakers and props vanish—for the self-sustaining sandwich structure.
The owner points at a hairline fissure streaming down the azure wall—as I reckon—either party had brought down the shy gable wall. The wall had breaths for a century—half-baked terracotta bricks and embedded in lime mortar beds and perps—resilience. The owner behaves though his bedroom crumbles. Some Tarzan in me surges: ’fine-tuning with a coat of paint—elasticity.’ Voiceless, the owner leads me out, releases me at the entrance door. Carrying my education out of Africa. I step into the Peugeot. Tweak the ignition key. I track back, shaking my head—waning off from a solution, dissolving after reporting the damage to Guy Duchatel.
I’m eavesdropping on the secretary’s thoughts—her slithery tongue poisoning Guy Duchatel. Her silent voice—out of sight yet creeping. I breeze out. I lash out, tempering my feelings: “Passez un bon week-end—have a good weekend.” As she lags behind the front desk, gathering her purse and coat, her grim attitude still circles the motorcyclist—lying in hospital, fusing bones.
In the hush, I lose traction inside the enterprise—drawn into a hollow “welcome” that never held. I step out to the Peugeot, tweak the key, unlock the door, slip behind the wheel. With the heel of my hand, I spin—Clemenceau Avenue torques around my glass bubble. I find again the tram tracks, their evanescing silver threads trailing into haze toward the distant South Station plaza. There, overhead, the viaduct’s gantry wires swell into view, stretched taut across rooftops against the evening sky—Aetheria in its glow.
Until, the elevated structure’s shadow wipes across my windshield. I veer into the trickle of traffic alongside the hedgerow of desolated townhouses, and foot traffic stirs. Yet, a shy arch window wakes—the railway shared offices, faded in memory since my arrival by train from Paris—unseen Scorpio, Andre Daniel, left his desk for a weekend’s duty.
I drift through the shadows of the moat, streaming with the boulevard traffic, duck through the portal into artificial lighting, reach the tunnel bend—emerging, juggling lost time and circling doubts over Victoria’s invitation. The sky opens, onto riding the second asphalt wave—cresting before Namur Gate’s overpass. I scan the boulevard’s hedgerow of classic mansions, kaleidoscopic—skirting a strip of bright fluorescent brand name boutiques. I find the signs—the concrete portal, a hatchway into hollow, the ramp descending beneath the thoroughfare, a configured engineering over the city metro line.
I'm staking out Victoria's work in the area. The newcomer in me begins to dissolve ahead of the rendezvous. In the undergrowth—a low slab over a jungle of concrete columns, before nightlife traffic, still among scattered gleaming cars. At the first bay, the heel of my hand spins the steering wheel to stall the car.
I step out toward the concrete wall, where a sluice spills light. There, I find a winged stairway rising. I emerge into the midst of the wide sidewalk, near the chicken’s fast-food restaurant—the day’s terraces folded away, a few figures strolling past the brasserie. My gaze catches on child-size posters perched on the facia—actors without much of a grip on me, nor the films they promote.
Once away from the dashboard—a dial without the hands—I'm lost in time, strolling. My gaze swiping past the crystal shelved watches glittering and wrapping around the storefront corner to the gallery. Before the plate-glass doors, I step back on the boulevard's entry slab, gambling my dilemma. Then, I step forward, along the glittery crystal counter, into the depth—to the seated jeweler. He rises and approaches. Offers a kind of hope in exchange for the elegant, thin Citizen watch I’ve stripped from my wrist and handed over.
Once I’d converted the cost for a once-off—twenty dollars to have time with me again. Right beneath my eyes, a surgical tool in nimble fingers—under a lit monocle loupe—uncapped the case back with a glance, replacing the minuscule battery. I walk along the display counters in unison with the man toward the cash register. I hand over a one thousand Belgian franc note. With the change, I turn away, a trailing “thanks,” and step outdoors.
The plate-glass wing doors - wish - clear the Gallery, with Victoria poised at the crux of a walkway’s split, just turning the curtain wall. Wish - again, they close behind me. Against last Friday's backdrop of distant cinema posters, the ticket booth, and an early show queue, Victoria in the forefront ghosts her pirouette—her gaze searching, asking, ‘where is everyone?’
Baffled eyes meet my striding upcoming. On the verge of greeting me, she diverts—glittering eyes dart past, and she calls out: “Pipo, Pipo!”
In her pepish gait, she flutters—wings, hands, and voice alive—as she nears her six-year-old boy. He pulls free of a hand, calling out. “Ma’ma, Ma’ma.” Detaching himself from the grandfather figure—Tonton.
Victoria ducks down, wraps her arms around her boy—crouching up into an embrace. He glances offside, eyes lingering in space, quietly fending off Victoria’s overwhelming welcome.
In a corkscrew rise, Victoria greets, “Tonton, Tonton. . .” She spins off toward nowhere, her eyes stirring—breaking away in her pepish gait. She pauses flatfooted. Her eyes sweep, then shift across the bow of glazed Florence-white lace drapes, splashed with the crescent lettering: ‘La Fontanella’ underscored simply: ’restaurant.’ She slows. Glances back to her followers.
Jean-Francois Smeets—the man without a name—groomed in a business suit, smirking. masking his authority play. Tonton nods. “Go ahead. If that’s what you want.”
Victoria turns the blind corner, presses her way through a backdoor. She pauses, holding it open for Alexandre. In Victoria’s shadow, Tonton reaches forward, catching the door grip. Trailing behind, I feel the outcast, as the little family blends—strolling up the wheelchair ramp through the back draped curtain wall, along the raised floor’s guardrail. When I reach the top newel, Victoria, flat-footed, crosses the dining hall—the populated, bright. A fresh red-and-green table arrangement sits in a vase on the white tablecloth, vivid as Little Italy, and oneiric as the Sicilian ice creams I once licked in the streets of New York, chilling my headaches away—not even a month ago.
An impressive décor—into which the little family seems to find a habitual comfort. I can't find a connoisseur's ease among the seeming Egyptian sculptures, scattered antiques, ceramic collectibles, oil paintings—impressive in their style to dine, I’m gladly brought to discover. Then, from an offside bar counter, a woman withdraws from the shadows. She rounds the half-moon projection trailing into the dining hall’s apron. While the little Indian file reaches the middle of the hall, the distant curtain wall, where lace drapes before the boulevard, slipping off the last of daylight’s brightness.
Dressed in a chef’s outfit, she approaches—meeting Victoria veering, passing behind high-backed chairs. She pauses, pulls out the far chair just as Alexander catches across. He scuffles the chair beneath him, climbing into place, while his mother across lowers herself to sit. Tonton isn’t hurrying. Neither am I, to settle into the remaining chairs.
Tonton, exudes that life membership at the Fontanella—chafing at the edges, the fiftyish chef’s wife, who takes it in her stride. From her earlier shadows, her husband approaches in the background, his sternness—'Where is the order?' veiled beneath a courteous softness—though the beam between them betrays not real urgency. Together, husband and wife radiate a quiet delight—presiding over the circle gathered around the table.
She settles in her storytelling, unhurried: “I’ve trained my staff—most have been with me from the beginning. I learned Italian cooking at my mother’s side. And with my husband, we’ve researched old recipes, from both Tuscan and Sicilian family traditions.”
Against the distant boulevard drapes, the chef’s wife turns away. She steps toward the shadowed corner, runs her hand over an offside server cabinet, and returns—distributing menus with grace of a stage cue. The wine list lifts—Victoria peers above its fold, across the table. Her little boy receives a downsized menu, set apart. Without a glimpse down the wine list, but free exchanges—we order, before she vanishes.
Menus fan out around the table—it's masks—yet sparkle with hidden exchange. Tonton and Victoria spiral into their echo chamber, a looping, layered debate over whether to begin with starters or dive straight into the main course. While dissecting dishes, they tangle in a continuity of circular reasoning, their words overlapping the rustle of napkins and menus. My mind drifts to exhaustion.
In the midst of their prolonged debate, I’m entangled in confusion—the menu dishes offer no rhythm, nothing that inspires an appetite to dance. Disoriented, I drift to the far-right margin, chasing a thought. ‘Selection by prices.’ At first, the numbers—exorbitant in Belgian francs—require too heavy a mental translation into dollars. So I narrow the field: poultry-based, only.
“Poultry, served with Sicilian semolina, bread and our herbal XV olive oil, Ravioli Florentine, large round ricotta filled ravioli topped with spinach, cream sauce and parmigiano.” With a sigh, I drift further—recollecting land surveying missions across France, wishing instead for a French truckers' stop: to break a crust of French bread, with a mother’s onion soup, ratatouille, a few humble cheeses, and a coffee—strong, bitter, and clear.
The chef reappears. He places a beer in front of Tonton, an apéritif with a Japanese parasol before Victoria, fruit juice for Alexandre, a glass of red wine before me.
Victoria agrees to the chef’s suggestion. Without notepad or pen, he repeats: “Pour le garcon. . .—For the boy, a child’s dish. A Suppi all around.”
Victoria nods, then adds for starters: “Baked artichokes Alla Greca.”
A 1944 pity-me grimace. Tonton’s hand circles his bloated belly, and blurts: “… Ho! C’est la guerre—that’s war.” A breath. A pivot. “What’s on the menu! Red meat—what have you got?”
The chef straightens, trying to appease, dithering swirls gathered in his expression—a pressure needing release in the sanctuary of his kitchen. His gaze lingers—hot, steaming, sticking on his patrons. Then beneath a darting glance, he waits—piercing my invisible comfort. My mind drifts, doodling over the pages of dishes. Victoria, unfazed, reveals her grasp of the menu: “pourquoi ne prendrais tu pas du poulet—Why don’t you have chicken?”
“OK… I’ll go for the suggested poultry,” I reply, to my relief.
While the table settles into familial chatter, a couple of shadows emerge from the draped glass wall. My mind drifts to lantern lights, and the entrance from the boulevard's broad sidewalk—so unlike our quiet backdoor entry. The chefs rerun from the shadowed corner, carrying steaming dishes. The wife announces Victoria’s plate: “Shrimps. Scampi Style, garlic butter and broiled, served with Fettuccine.” The husband sets down the odd single plate before Alexandre, with similar grace.
Utensils clink. Silence reigns as we consume our meal. Then, gradually, Victoria and Tonton’s discussion gains amplitude—dissecting the menu, the restaurant decor, Italy itself—echoing the chef's earlier words, until the tone softens again with the arrival of coffee.
Tonton rises from his chair, weasels up to the wife-chef at the bar counter, whispers with a hand digging into his back pocket.
Although I’m blinded by his hefty figure, his gestures are fluid—a wad of bills flashing beneath the chef’s wife’s counting eyes. Lending, blind to his open palm, rifled with folded banknotes, a seducing smirk, he peels one, two, laying them flat on the counter. The husband peeks over her shoulder—just a flicker—before returning to the couple, who had just settled at a table.
Tonton wipes the counter clean with the back of his hand, turns, waddles away, and pockets the remaining wad of banknotes into his back pocket. He waits at the edge of the aisle as Victoria and Alexandre writhing up from either side of tables, untangling past the backrests to the aisle. She slips past Tonton, into the leading aisle, lays a hand onto Alexandre’s shoulder, and leads him toward the boulevard's way out. We split—to fetch our cars.
‘Didn’t you miss something?’ But in Nyx’s trail, the grey-mottled evening boulevard flickers stepping stones. I descend into fluorescent-lit underground to fetch the Peugeot—still naive, even as Victoria exposes herself: ‘This is the baggage I’m coming with!’ I settle behind the wheel, setting course on the thatched-roof house with its solitary, majestic fir—deaf to Mariette’s words, which still haven’t echoed: “Guido is visiting me from France,” her thought not resonating: “There is no room here for both of you.’
Comments
Post a Comment