XIV

As soon as he got out of the elevator, Richie walked towards Frédérique’s door and as he stood in front of it typing the code he perceived the sweet but spicy smell of incense coming from inside. He opened the door. A warm feeling invaded him: it was light and simple but interesting and cozy. Just like her. He felt as if Frédérique herself was welcoming him in.

In feeling her presence he felt more at ease, but didn’t want to invade her space, so he just sat down on the fluffy yellow sofa. Hands on his thighs, Richie looked out of the window on his back and then to the wall in front of him: CDs were piled up in rows of different heights from floor to ceiling, covering most of the wall. In between the piles, in the free spaces on the wall he could see some pictures hung. He took another look before standing up and walking towards the wall. No TV.

Richie bent forward to look at the CDs and started tracing down the piles with his finger, stopping over some of them to read more carefully. He squatted in order to be able to reach the ones closer to the floor. Most of them were traditional American music, but she had an almost complete Beatles’ discography and a couple of the Rolling Stones’s CDs. The second column let him know she apparently also appreciated Brit-pop: he found Travis, Kula Shaker and…The Seahorses?. He pulled it out and motioned to the CD player. THAT I have never heard of. He put it inside the CD player and pushed the “Shuffle” button.

The sun was just on his way down over the horizon and the light from outside started to dim, so he turned on the foot lamp. As soon as he heard the first notes of a song he looked up at the pictures on the wall.

Richie identified one of the pictures as being of Frédérique’s family on the beach, and judging by her appearance, it seemed pretty recent. Besides her mother, father and three brothers he could also see three more girls and a little boy. There were some individual photos of her brothers and some of herself holding a couple of different dogs. He noticed that the outdoors’ pictures’ background was repeated in most of them: a vineyard. She had pictures with her friends, too, but they were different in each photo, and in the background he could also identify some landmarks of cities he had also been to in Europe.

His hands in his back pockets, Richie then turned to the shelf on the back wall of the room and took a look at the books. He couldn’t obtain any further information from that other than she read just about anything. He couldn’t sort any preference out at all.

He looked at his watch. He had been in there for no more than 30 minutes and Frédérique had said it was going to be at least a couple hours before she could come home, so he sat down back on the couch and concentrated in the music, then he slowly dozed off.

…

It was past six o’clock when Frédérique was finally in her car and on her way back home. She was so exhausted and still thinking about the meeting she had just had that her brain had almost discarded the conversation she had had earlier with Richie as a mere daydream.

She had grown used to coming home to an empty apartment, so it wasn’t until she stepped out of the elevator and heard the melody coming from the other side of the door that it finally sank in her and a smile curled up on her lips.

Frédérique opened the door to find Richie sitting on her couch, his arms around her guitar and playing the Beatles’ “Blackbird”.

“I could never get that one right, you know, so don’t make me feel envious”, she said as she hung her coat on the rack and placed her portfolio under it next to the wall.

Richie stopped playing and extremely carefully put the guitar right were it was before.

“You should try now, your baby was way out of tune”

She froze. Your baby.

When Richie spoke again, she snapped out of her thoughts. “I took care of that”. Then he grinned, a satisfied look on his face.

While she walked towards him, Richie noticed her reddish and tired eyes – if at all possible, the more messed up she was, the more beautiful she looked to him. She, instead, relished in the sight of him: black boots, black jeans, and a tight cotton T shirt under a waist-length black leather jacket. And that damn dangly thing hanging from his nech again.

Frédérique sat on Richie's lap and he cuddled her before they started kissing. She melted in his arms and forgot about everything else. When they parted Richie caressed Frédérique's face with the tip of his fingers and spoke in a low, soft voice:

“I think you need a bath”.