Chloe spent her days and nights in her bathrobe, unwashed, crying. Sarah sat next to her in silence and listened to long drunken tirades against the professor. Many times Chloe switched to French to more easily utter a particular obscenity in regards to her husband, and Sarah, grateful for her lack of fluency, was able to muse over what a melodic and romantic-sounding language it was. She would buy tapes, she thought, and teach herself a second language.
The whole week, the family took shifts, making sure someone was always there to watch over Chloe and potentially douse the house, although Sarah never left Richard alone with the woman, sensing that some potentially disastrous relationship between the two had been narrowly avoided. Claude distanced himself from the whole fiasco and spent his time at school or at other friends’ houses. At the end of the week, realizing her welcome was coming to an end, Chloe took a shower, put on her raisin-dark lipstick, and gave them sloppy hugs on her way out. A week later, a moving van pulled up.
Richard and Chloe kept in touch through letters, exchanging recipes and finds of rare ingredients, such as Calabrian chili-infused oil, tangy raw-milk French cheese, or Japanese umeboshi, salt-pickled plums. They never referred to that day, just as they avoided mention of the visit to the butcher.
A year later, Richard received a photo of Chloe in a white skirt suit, a small, insouciant pillbox hat perched on her head, standing in front of a Gothic church on the arm of the man who was her new husband. His mother shook her head and tsk-tsked, but he guessed she was impressed at Chloe’s resilience. After that, Richard received postcards from exotic places: France (of course), but also Spain, Morocco, India, Thailand, and Japan. The notes always centered on food. At Christmas he would receive packages: herb bundles from Provence, a tea set from Japan, Turkish delight from Istanbul. Chloe was his proof that second acts were possible.
* * *
Getting into CIA had been a culmination of everything Richard had worked for starting from those Chloe days, but for Javi it was a reprieve, an escape, a place to chill out. The housing department had put them together simply because Javi’s last five roommates had moved out of the apartment within a month’s time. Javi cultivated a constant party atmosphere. Strangers could be found wandering the rooms at all times of the day and night. Because he was a lady’s man, there was always a couple of mournful women in tow — women who cleaned the place and brought flowers, trying to win his heart. As often as not, Javi would go straight from CIA to some other party and would never show up at home at all, and these women fell into Richard’s sympathetic orbit.
Was Richard taking advantage? Was he a cordial predator? He had a certain desperate, grateful charm. They were all beautiful in his opinion — women he wouldn’t have been brave enough to talk to in any other circumstance — but there they were in his apartment, alone, jilted, and he was willing to pour them wine and listen to their heartache. Usually he was rewarded. He realized years later they were probably in all likelihood simple mercy beddings, but you had to start somewhere.
Afterward, he would take these lovelies, wrapped in his old bathrobe, to the kitchen and begin his true seduction. Perhaps a simple apple-and-sage croque monsieur toasted in the oven? Maybe a salade frisée aux lardons with poached egg and bacon fat? Or maybe a basic roasted-cherry-tomato-and-feta omelette, accompanied by an appropriate wine? He would try to make another date as they finished the last forkfuls, almost never offering to share. They adored his food but warily stood at the front door like loyal dogs waiting for the return of their prodigal master, deflecting his efforts at getting their number. Future meetings would be left vague. Already he knew they would not return to clean the apartment or to warm his bed. As they kissed him on the cheek good-bye, it was always with the same words: “You should really open a restaurant. Please tell Javi to call me.”
That all changed when he met Ann. When she came to the apartment, it was only for him; she was not even aware of Javi’s existence. On their first date, while his famous coq au vin was simmering on the stove, he snuck downstairs and left a bread bag tie on the mailbox, his and Javi’s signal that the apartment was romantically occupied. The tie stayed in place the whole weekend.
* * *
When Richard took off to go snorkeling with the other couple, Ann sat under a palm tree and pouted. She admitted it — she was angry that he was taking it all so well. As if in fact they were on a vacation instead of hiding out. Why did she want him beside her — to beg her forgiveness, plead for her to be a little happy? Richard was being Richard. He tried to be sympathetic, to act like their mutual problems were mutual, but he easily reverted to his perpetual Zen state where all he thought about was food. Even after all this, his mistress was still the kitchen, and he longed to be back with her. It was like infidelity, but in a more subtle, unfightable form.
Despite her best efforts, Ann could not hold on to her pique. The island took care of that. She looked across the beach at the gently spooling waves and thought, this is what paradise means. Her dream. What struck her was that there was so very little to it. It was characterized by lack, like a minimalist painting. How could you paint it and not have it turn out like a souvenir-shack paint-by-numbers? How to convey the fullness of the experience rather than emptiness? She thought she was on the verge of an original composition — a band of land and sea, with the majority of the canvas filled with sky — but her first impulse, rather than to try to find supplies to paint it, was to call Lorna or Javi to talk about it. Until she realized she couldn’t.
Another technology withdrawal pang. Nomophobia. The fear of being out of mobile phone contact. Maybe she would write down what she was thinking on a piece of paper and text it as soon as she got to the airport or to a decent connection, but that seemed like cheating. Social networking was about spontaneity, and having what amounted to a prepared statement seemed disingenuous.
She loved paradise. But how in the hell would she last two weeks unplugged?
* * *
For the next three days the pattern repeated: Cooked took Dex, Wende, and Richard out for snorkeling and diving. Ann stayed on shore, reading, napping, and eating lunch alone.
The searing silence of the place poured into her. Her thoughts slowed, then slowed some more, until there were gaps where she was only aware of sun and wind, the sound of the surf that was like her own breath. Although her annoyance at Richard might have daily increased, the reverse happened — time away made her want to see him more. She looked forward to hearing about his underwater adventures precisely because she had no intention of joining in.
“It’s just so mind-boggling down there,” Richard said, his Wende-sparked lust fueling detailed descriptions of fish and coral he had seen.
“You seem to really be into it,” Ann said.
“It’s … otherworldly.”
“Wow. Fish.”
“I wish you were down there with me.”
“Why?”
Why? Because he loved his wife and was desperate to transfer Wende’s hotness to his longing for Ann. He reached out and touched the strap of her dress.
They made love without the aid of whipping cream.
Afterward, Ann lay on her back and stared up at the dark cloud of their money bag suspended overhead.
“I can’t believe the restaurant is gone,” she said.
And like that, all the euphoric diving and sex chemicals pumping through Richard’s body washed away, and he was miserable again.