XL

For long moments after Jon left the following morning, Frédérique remained leaning on the door jamb with her face buried in the coffee cup, which she held with both hands, staring at the empty space in front of her. She took a couple more sips, then picked up Jon’s cup, the wine glasses and bottle and walked to the kitchen to drop them in the sink and in the garbage correspondingly.

Music. Yes, something that could help her focus on the task at hand: reset. Something cheerful…she thought as her fingers ran over the piles of CDs. Buddy Holly. Perfect. Shuffle.

She resumed the task Jon had interrupted the previous night, humming softly to the music.

I wanna tell you how it's gonna be
You're gonna give your love to me
Love that lasts more than one day
Well love is love and not fade away

Then she dried everything and put them back in the cupboard. Heading back to the bedroom she quickly changed the sheets and threw the old ones into the laundry machine together with the clothes that lay on the floor of her bedroom, which were later joined by her tanktop, sleeping shorts and the wool jacket that she had peeled off. Finally, she started the washing program. All this she did in a mechanical fashion, as if on automatic pilot.

Your love for me has got to be real
Before you'd have noticed how I feel
Love real not fade away
Well love real not fade away

Frédérique took a long, hot shower, trying to keep her mind as blank as possible and ignoring the burning sensation the hot water produced when it fell on the skin of her collarbone. When she came out she took a look around her apartment: everything looked exactly like it did the previous morning before she went to work.

She slouched on the sofa for a few moments, paying attention to the music and looking over her shoulder to the view outside the window behind the sofa: it was cloudy and humid. It would possibly rain that afternoon or the next day, for sure. Then some thoughts started crawling into her mind.

Run.

For the first half hour of exercise Frédérique managed to keep her thoughts at bay by going through her plans for the following week: her brother’s wedding was on Saturday, so she’d probably work until Thursday and travel on Friday, then back to New York on Monday. But it seemed so little time – she hadn’t seen her family for more than four months now, since Christmas and New Year. So many things had happened since then…

The events of the previous months flooded her with unstoppable strength and she increased her trot as if trying to leave the memories behind her, but couldn’t, and it hit her – she was once happy and in peace, then Richie came and she had been the happiest she had ever been and later she had fallen as low as she could. Real low. Down to rock bottom. All the pieces of her life were still there: her job, her music, herself…but there was no glue, the pieces weren’t sticking together, they didn’t make sense. Her life was an unrecognizable pile of lose bricks - no matter how hard she had been trying to sustain it by force of will and self-control, it was now officially demolished.

Frédérique had to start all over again, from the foundation up. But where to start? There was only one place where she could always find everything she needed, where she had always turned when one after the other of her previous relationships had ended, where she could pick up all the pieces and try to turn them into something new, a place where she could crash and burn to be born again: home.

No way she could wait until Thursday, so after returning to her apartment, meeting Mrs. Feldman in the corridor, checking the humidity stains and informing her neighbour that they were being produced by a failure in the ceiling’s waterproof materials, she started the computer and logged online to find the next plane ticket home. OK, not exactly the next – she couldn’t just disappear from the studio, she’d have to wait at least until Monday night so she could have time to leave everything in order and everybody organized before she left.

She realized she hadn’t eaten anything since the previous night so after a quick shower she cooked and ate while she watched Luis Buñuel’s movie “Belle du jour” on her laptop. By the time she was finished she started cleaning up and found herself fighting sleep - she hadn’t slept much the previous night and the week had been hectic, so she crawled into bed and fell asleep right away.

…

At the same time Richie stood in front of the window in his bedroom of the Philadelphia apartment, Paul Simon on the background. He had just arrived from California and had a shower. Jetlag was killing him, and he had to recover before they started the last two weeks of shows of the tour, which would cover the southeastern states. He was looking forward to the shows, to be back with the crowds, with his friends, to be swallowed by the circus so he could forget that past week.

What a tremendous mistake it had been. Yes, maybe the first couple days weren’t that bad, he had just laid back and drunk himself senseless, then let Nikki have his way with him. It was OK, he let her do all the work and it kind of got him through. But by Thursday night he realized that the drinking had to stop at one moment: he hadn’t seen his daughter since he had arrived so he had to get himself together and be with her before resuming the tour.

And Nikki became more demanding than he was willing to put up with. He was thankful for her being there for him, and he admired her - she was a talented woman - , but her temper made him cringe.

And she wasn’t Frédérique.

They had a long conversation on Friday morning back at the headquarters and Richie told her that it just wasn’t working for him, that he didn’t want it to interfere with their business partnership. Nikki had cried and ranted, but he wasn’t changing his mind, he had made a decision and was sticking to it: he had to get his shit together and deal with his pain all by himself like a grown man.

…And I was in crazy motion
Til you calmed me down
It took a little time
But you calmed me down…

He was still hurting, though. He couldn’t believe his good luck on one hand, for having met a wonderful woman like Frédérique, and his bad luck on the other, for having lost her to a sequence of inauspicious events and his own screw-up’s.  It was as if because of some kind of malefic spell he’d been able to catch a glimpse of the sweetest of dreams and just when he was starting to believe it was real, he had woken up, only to find that it was just an illusion, only to let him know what it was that he could never have.

When something goes wrong
I'm the first to admit it
But the last one to know
When something goes right
Well it's likely to lose me

…I can't get used to something so right
Something so right…

Yes, everything in Frédérique worked for him. Everything in her was right. It felt right. It was too good to be true, he should have known that from the start, but had become so infatuated by her…it came so naturally to love her. But things had just gone wrong, and she didn’t love him.

He missed her. Frédérique might not love him, but Richie still loved her.

He dropped himself on the bed, hugged his pillow and fell asleep right away.

…

Frédérique came awake with a jerk to the sound of thunder and heavy drops of rain hitting on the panes of the window in her bedroom. She remained still for a few minutes waiting for the numbness to disappear before she sat back on the bed. It was still daytime, but the dark clouds in the sky didn’t give her any clue of the time that had passed since she fell asleep, it should be nighttime by then. Had she just taken a quick nap? How come her stomach was growling and her mouth was dry? She frowned and took the cell phone from the nightstand. 3.05 p.m. It wasn’t possible. She looked at the date. Sunday. She had slept for almost 18 hours. Wow. But she didn’t quite feel rested, something was dragging her down.

To clear her mind and tame her stomach at least until she could prepare something to eat, she made some coffee and sipped from the cup as she watched the rain falling outside her window. She called home and told her mother about her plans and they arranged for one of her brothers to go pick her up at the airport. After hanging up she set the alarm clock to 8.00 a.m. – she’d have to start the following day earlier than usual. Then she ate some scrambled eggs with blue cheese and olives.

It was going to be a long Monday: she had to hand over Richie’s project to Gaby (which was still in the Building Permit stage, but construction should be starting to be organized), then talk to her bosses of course, she hadn’t taken many days off since she had arrived so she figured there wouldn’t be any problem, but it was in a way too short a notice so she didn’t know how they’d take it, and then finally she needed to have a meeting with the rest of the museum team. She could work online from home, no problem, but she wanted to go through the pending stages to make sure everything was in order.

It was better if she packed things now: she’d probably wouldn’t have much time after the office the next day, so she opened the cupboard to look for the suitcase. And there it was: the box that contained Richie’s clothes.

Frédérique stared at it for a few moments as if it were a bomb about to explode in her face. She fell back on the bed and felt the sting again. It hurt. Real bad. She wanted to be close to Richie, smell him, feel his soft and warm skin against hers. The clothes in that box were as close as she could get to him right then, and possibly ever. She carefully pulled it out and opened it to take a white silk shirt and a pair of leather trousers Richie had worn one night when they went out for dinner. Frédérique had sent them to the dry cleaner’s the following day so they were still fresh despite having been there for some weeks. And there was the fuzzy leopard print hat, too, and she couldn't help a secretive little smile from curving the corners of her lips upwards.

She took off her clothes leaving only her underwear and put Richie’s clothes on. She sighed: the pants were at least 10 inches longer than her legs, and she remembered perfectly Richie’s trim, long legs once filled them. She left the top buttons of the shirt undone, just the way he used to, remembering his soft and molded pecs. God how she loved to nip at them.

She also found the band’s and Richie’s CDs inside the box - maybe she’d give them to Gaby on Monday - , but she wanted to hear Richie’s voice one last time. She popped “Stranger in this town” into the CD player and lay on the center of the bed, on her side in fetal position. It was still raining outside and it was already dark. And she cried. Her eyes out.

She missed him. Richie might have lied to her, and love another woman now, but Frédérique still loved him.