At home, she got in the habit of mulling around her apartment, checking the street from the living room window by the bookshelf, pacing between the couch and the TV, going to the door and squinting at the corridor through the peephole.
It was a couple of weeks after the plane ride. She had taken time off work. The doorbell rang. The man at the door stood with his Interflora vest, holding a bouquet in dusty lavender paper. He handed her the flowers and she said thank you and he went back down the stairs. There, among the thick wax-green leaves were four stalks of ink-blue hyacinths. Inside the bouquet, the card was a wall-white with an indigo trim, and the writing, a rehearsed cursive. Our thoughts are with you. Signed, Olivier & Angelo. Friends of Dominique’s.
She went to the window and when she looked down, there on the street, the blue cloud was hovering by the lamp post, looking up.
Meu Deus.
Time passed, and her father made frequent visits. He told her she could take a longer leave from her job, she could even move in with him if she needed to. But she went back to work, and even began looking forward to those administrative tasks that filled eight hours of her day with purpose.
The evenings and weekends remained difficult. She felt both too exhausted to take up any activities, and too anxious to have nothing to do. She kept the TV on, the volume low, crime shows and talk shows and American re-runs dubbed in French, culinary tips, politics, history revisited.
There were months when she was getting the knack of it, work-time: filing, typing, scheduling, welcoming patients during the day. Having dinner with her father twice a week. Ruminating around the rooms to the sound of her washing machine spinning, looking out the window at the lamp post, glazing over at the TV images, glimpsing at their smiles and shrieks, hugs, chases, couples having coffee face to face, old people patting each other on the knee, a silhouette walking out the door…
Night-time, the TV is laughing. Aimée’s brushing her teeth, she spits and looks up at the mirror. Her eyes trace a bulging blue vein down her neck.
Why did you bring lemons, Miss?
She got up from the couch and walked unintentionally to the peephole peering through into the empty corridor to the neighbour’s front door, then towards the right to the edge of the wooden stairway.
At the railing, the thick blue cloud was rolling upwards. She watched it crawl to the top and there it turned and began feeling its mass towards her door.
“Hello?” her father responded.
“I’m sorry, Dad,” Aimée said. “I know it’s late…”
“Aimée? Aimée. It’s going to be alright,” he said drowsily. “You’re just having a tough day.”
She was nodding her head to the phone. Two tears streamed down at the same time.
“Why don’t you go to sleep and tomorrow it’ll be better.”
She continued nodding. The tears rolled over her chin and down her neck with a cold consistency. She whisked her hand at her throat and looked at her fingertips, expecting to see a blue liquid. But it was just the smear of a transparent tear.
“…Aimée…?”
“I’m here.”
“You can take one and a half of the white ones tonight if you want.”
“I’m fine, Dad. I have to go… I work early tomorrow.”
“Everything’s going to be alright.”
There was a pause on both ends, then her father spoke.
“Goodnight, Aimée,” he said. “I love you.”
The phrase tilted itself against the moon and fell over the edge.
Aimée made a decision. She stopped paying attention to the blue cloud, she stopped seeing her friends, and she stopped remembering. That’s how the year passed.
Where shall I pin it?
The Monday after the medical trade show at Porte de Versailles, Aimée was walking to work down the wide street, dark suit in hand. Her father had told her he could do it himself, but she insisted, saying the dry cleaners near her work was better. Above Monceau Park, men with pinned ties and Italian socks, pre-teens precociously groomed and styled, signature backpacks, rosy cheeks and runway sneakers, pedalling themselves with one foot on their slick metal scooters to school. Aimée passed the Portuguese Embassy and fished out her ring of keys with the white plastic badge. At the sliding doors of the clinic, she scanned her badge on the black box and walked inside. Youssouf the guard was already poised at his post. She said, “Good morning, Youssouf,” and went to the welcome desk, putting down her purse by the ergonomic footstool below. She reached over and turned on her computer, then went to the sliding closet in the carpeted hallway. She hung up her coat and her father’s suit, took the lab coat off its hanger and fit it over her blouse and buttoned it up. She bent down and took out a pair of heels, took off her loafers and put the heels on, then walked back to the welcome desk.
“How was your weekend?” she asked Youssouf.
“Oh, it was fine. Took the kids to the zoo on Saturday. Weather was nice and warm, wasn’t it?”
“Yes. It was.”
“How was your weekend, Madame?”
Saturday had started off promisingly for Aimée, but just as she began motivating herself to go out, it was noon and the day had already begun to sag. She changed back into her house trousers and a worn T-shirt and watched the day pass from the window, telling herself she’d go out tomorrow. When Sunday came, however, she closed the curtains and convinced herself it would rain.
All day, the sun shone broadly in the cloudless sky.
Aimée pushed her swivel chair closer to her desk and continued going through the phone messages from the weekend.
The doctor came in late. His first patient, Mme Mercier, was the type of woman who expressed her annoyance flirtatiously, which Dr Christian Coste cultivated, so no one was too dismayed by the forty-five-minute setback. Aimée organised the incoming lab results and updated two patient files, and made another appointment for poor Mme Blanchard who had another yeast infection.
At lunch, she logged out of her computer, went to the closet to hang up her lab coat and put on her jacket, and took her father’s suit in her hand.
The dry cleaners was a small shop between a café and a supermarket. The woman recognised her and they exchanged hellos as she prepared her ticket. Just as Aimée moved to hand the suit to the woman, she checked the pockets to make sure they were empty. The left one was flimsy, but the right had a stiff rectangular piece inside. She reached her fingers in and felt the edges. The business card was thick, dark as her father’s jacket, the letters embossed into the paper.
She angled the card towards the light and read the letters.
THE BLUE ANGEL
Bar à vin.
Rue de Prague
She flipped the card around and shone it towards the light as well. There, in the empty space was a scribble in blue ink. She tilted the card right and left to read it.
9pm, it said.
She put the card in her pocket, handed the suit over to the woman and took the ticket.
Four evenings in a row she thought about it, as she sat on her couch and watched the TV screen flash. Friday, she had dinner with her father. Her eyes lingered on his knife and fork as he diligently cut his steak and matched the piece with a couple of green bean halves before putting the combination into his mouth.