It has been a week already since he slammed the door. I consoled myself by finishing the chocolate ice cream with a bag of small sponge cakes and a bottle of champagne. The next day I had a hangover, I hid behind a mask of indifference. Everybody was hoodwinked. Except Chantal.
She is the one who made the first step, as if she had always known about Etienne. During the break this morning, her eyes seemed to read my soul, she touched my arm discreetly, “Are you feeling any better now?”
It’s 2 PM, I’m waiting for her under the shade of a poplar tree on the parking lot. How could she have known?
I was observing her while she has been observing me with a lot more perspicacity. Apart from the daily banalities and some conniving smiles here and there, what did I know about her that I haven’t mentioned yet? What did she know about me that I never told anybody?
For a month now, I’ve been helping her study for her final nursing exam. Apparently still embarrassed about where she lives, she hasn't invited me there, so we’ve been working at my apartment. From time to time, we’ve gone to the movies, restaurants or hiking, and we always returned to our respective places afterwards. We haven't talked again about that first day together, we're gauging each other with appraising looks, avoiding personal questions as if they were unimportant or not even necessary, sometimes struggling with long silences over the phone. And even so, an unspoken complicity instilled itself between us.
She's always in jeans and, at work, she fancies scrub tops and pants instead of the nurse dresses. How many times have I invited her to go shopping? Not once has she asked my advice to find a good hairdresser, to choose some make up, to pick up a skirt or even to go and see some shoes. And never a word about whom she might be seeing, even occasionally. What does she do with her free time?
I’m curious. I want to know. I want to know it all.
Since the very first day, I saw in her the emancipation and the freedom of action I lack, I imagined she was a poetic image of the two aspects of a woman – day and night. One all instinct, impulse and desire, without control. The other who has searched for control through consciousness or strength of being.
― You’re dreaming. Here she is. Look at her and tell me you didn’t put her on a pedestal.
Same faded jeans and full shirt, carefree as usual, she heads out to the busy street with her long supple gait, pony tail fluttering in the wind. She looks offbeat in the crowd of shopping housewives, like a bohemian, a sexy bohemian who turns around and waits with her fists on her hips. “Are you following me?”
I mumble an excuse.
She kisses me on both cheeks and smiles at my dismay, “I wouldn't mind.”
“I just wanted to thank you for your thoughtfulness.”
“I know what it feels to be lonely,” she looks away.
Is it a hint about her secret? I could swear there was a gleam of sadness in her eyes.
“Ah, here is my bus...”
Maybe she's been deceived by her Boris.
“Why don’t you come with me?”
Maybe she wants to talk.
“You'll see where I live.”
I must wait if I want to know.
“I'll make coffee.”
During the bus ride, she tells me she often goes to the country side of Ardèche to visit her mother in a clinic. “Something is wrong in her head. It’s been years. According to the doctors, she’s stable. I’ll care for her when I’m a nurse. Ah, here we are!”
In front of her building, she stops to apologize, “It’s not new and there is no elevator.”
“It doesn’t matter, that doesn’t bother me.”
“I live on the fourth floor. Sixty-nine steps, like the département.1”
“Or like the position.”
“You’re quick!”
“Yes, Etienne always thought so too. I had a good teacher in him.”
She waits on the first landing, “Why did he reject you, then?”
I switch my purse to the other shoulder to give an impression of casual composure, to conceal my pursing lips and a pang of sorrow.
“I don’t want to talk about it. Not like this in the hallway.”
“Eh, it’s not your fault: men are womanizers all right, but there are many more women than men on earth. And so, mathematically…”
“What do you know about it? Besides your mother, you see only me. You never go out.”
She turns around on the stairs, “I haven’t always been like that. By mathematically, I was referring to the numbers in my country and in America. Here? I don’t know. In fact, I don’t care.”
She lowers her eyes at the second floor, “Women should stick together before men instead of waging war among themselves to find a man. Don’t you think so?”
She gives me a break on the third floor, “Just look: in politics, in offices, everywhere… they control everything. Moreover, they have the nerve to pretend that we’re always on their backs. These bastards! They always want to be on our bellies, go figure...”
She sighs at the last landing, “You haven’t yet bitten the bullet about Etienne, eh?”
She pulls her keys from her jeans pocket, “All right, let’s talk about something else, no big deal. Oh, by the way: are you wearing panties today?” She fumbles nervously with her the lock, “C’mon, it’s a joke, smile!”
Yeah, right. Maybe she’s joking, but am I her first guest?
She leaves me at the entrance, “Wait, I'll open the window.”
It’s pitch dark inside, incense floats in the air, it exudes calm. Now I understand, it's her oasis of quiet and peace. No wonder she hasn't invited me before, she wasn't embarrassed, she waited to know me better.
“Come in and make yourself at home. Don't look at the mess... I mean, your place is so clean and tidy!”
If I have opted for the comfort of a big one-bedroom apartment, she has set her sights on a simple bachelor large square room with only a miniature bathroom by the entrance and a contiguous closet kitchen opposite to the only source of daylight, a set of French doors from floor to ceiling opening on a tiny balcony.
“It's plenty enough for me and I know where my things are.” She inserts herself in the kitchen, “But sometimes the coffee pot disappears...” Noise of dishes put away, “I won't be long.”
It looks like Ali Baba's cavern. In the dining area, a big brown table cluttered with papers and school binders, two disparate chairs and a huge separating bookcase full of trinkets, dishes, bottles, books. On the bedroom side – it’s clearer, the window space, no doubt – a single bed surrounded with piles of books and magazines, an armoire topped with a miniature Eiffel Tower, some Mexican pottery, a panama hat, and in the corner behind the wide-open French doors, a pair of old-fashion cross-country wood skis and poles. No flowers or hanging plants, no posters or pictures on the walls, almost spartan, nothing except for this world map in front of the bed, streaked with soft-color threads tightened between pins. “Looks like you travel a lot.” Maybe her parents are diplomats, military personnel. No, too boring. Maybe her father is a pilot, or a drug trafficker... “How can you afford it?”
( to be continued )
1 Territorial and administrative division of France. They live in the département du Rhône, which is numbered 69.
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