* * *
Back in Paris, Paul was late, as usual. Celeste, feeling less restless than usual, thanks to a glass of wine and a few puffs on a cigarette, leafed through a copy of French Vogue.
Her phone rang.
‘Darling, I can’t get away,’ Paul complained.
Celeste took a gulp of wine.
‘But I came back from Nice for you,’ she said, hating that she sounded so whiny.
‘I know, but there is a meeting I must attend,’ he said. She could hear laughing in the background. ‘I will come to the funeral. Has your father told you the details yet?’
‘No,’ snapped Celeste. She had tried to call her father numerous times to learn of the funeral plans, but Robert wasn’t answering his phone.
‘You will let me know?’ Paul asked, sounding very formal, and Celeste hated him for a moment.
‘Perhaps,’ she said and ended the call.
She then scrolled through her phone until she found a number that made her smile.
After dialling, she waited. He would always answer her calls.
‘Hello.’ His voice sounded wary.
‘It’s Celeste,’ she said in her most seductive tone.
‘I know, your number came up on my phone.’
This wasn’t quite the greeting she had hoped for. She had left Charles for Paul and had ignored his calls and heartache for a year. Surely he wasn’t over her yet? She needed to let Paul know she also had a life outside of her bed.
‘Did you want to get a drink?’ she asked, running her finger over the rim of the wine glass.
‘No thank you, I have plans,’ Charles said.
Celeste believed him. She knew he wasn’t playing games; that was her job.
‘Are you seeing someone?’ she asked softly.
‘I’m engaged,’ came the reply.
Celeste sighed. Charles was a good man, which was why she had left him for Paul. She had terrible taste in men, Matilde had once said, not that she was the greatest connoisseur either.
‘Felicitations,’ she said and then ended the call with no further promises.
She leaned back in the chair and lifted up her long blonde hair so it spilled over the black leather.
She had dressed for Paul just the way he liked, in a black chiffon cocktail dress and no lingerie. The dress was short enough to show off her endless legs and plunged to take advantage of her décolletage.
God, men were so easy to amuse, she thought, as she kicked off her heels and then stood up, and peeled off her dress and walked naked to her room.
Pulling on sweatpants and an old T-shirt that was fraying at the edges but softer than what she imagined clouds would feel like, she went back to her chair, collecting the bottle of wine on her way through. Celeste could have been a model if she had been prepared to work hard enough, attending the castings and doing prestigious jobs for little money to build up her portfolio, but she didn’t want to work that hard, and her first two years after leaving Allemagne were spent in Amsterdam, where she got stoned every day and worked in a café, trying to recover from her schooling experience.
Her head began to hurt, so she took two of her extra strong painkillers and put her music player into speakers. Soon the soft sounds of Marvin Gaye singing accompanied her as she poured herself more wine.
She needed to do something about Paul, but she didn’t have the energy for it now.
Marvin was asking her to dance and Celeste needed to move. She felt her feet tapping and then her head bob and soon her hips moved with the rhythm. Closing her eyes, she turned up the music, put down her wine and gave her evening to Marvin, the only man who had never let her down.
Tomorrow could wait, she decided and she wondered what, if anything, was going to change now that Grand-Mère was gone.
Billie, Melbourne
The laboratory was empty when Billie March arrived at work. She turned on the lights and breathed in the cleanliness, and then put her bag away. After donning her white coat, she shoved her phone into her pocket and placed ear buds into her ears and turned on the music.
This was her favourite time of day—when her co-workers were exhausted at the end of the week and they struggled into work one by one, talking about their plans for the weekend.
Billie wouldn’t have a weekend if she could help it, but this weekend she had promised to help her mother and stepfather move into their new house.
Marvin Gaye sang about his Inner City Blues, which had seemed appropriate on the tram ride to the university, but now she needed something other than her father’s favourite singer and she settled on Florence and the Machine.
She moved through the scheduled work, testing new deodorants, and then onto a brand of soap powder that claimed to reduce all stains.
The sound of the door clicked and Nick Miller walked into the laboratory.
‘Morning, Billie,’ he said cheerfully. He was still wearing his bicycle helmet and had one leg of his jeans tucked into an unevenly pink-coloured sock, but neither of these facts took away from his happy face.
Billie smiled at him. ‘You look cheerful,’ she said. Nick was her work crush. He was what made it lovely to come in every day. With his good looks and his pleasant banter, she couldn’t wait to see him each day.
‘I got every green light on the ride to work today, do you know the odds of that happening?’
‘I have no idea but I’m sure you can work it out,’ she said, as she went back to her soap powder paste, which she was smearing on lipstick-stained cloth.
Nick had put away his knapsack and taken off his helmet and was walking back to Billie when she pointed down at his sock.
‘Untuck,’ she said.
‘Gee, thanks, Bill,’ he said gratefully.
When Nick had first starting working at the lab, his forgetfulness became an office joke and once, when Billie had taken a rare sick day, Nick had worn his helmet all morning, including in a meeting, and no one had told him because they thought it was so hilarious.
Nick had said it was funny also, but Billie saw the flash of shame on his face when he was teased and she took it upon herself to socialise him, or at least remind him to take off his helmet and untuck his jeans from his socks. Then they began to know each other more and Billie’s friendliness turned into friendship, and then a crush.
Not that she would do anything
