“Where is she, Didier?”
He vaguely waved his hand in the direction of the promontory, his focus still on the horizon.
There, up on the treacherous rocks, several yards out, cocooned in her towel, was Anouk.
Cecilia could feel her anger growing. She knew in her gut something awful had happened. Either he’d lured her out there, or she’d gone there to seek refuge, far away from the others, for good reason.
“Here are your drops,” she said, before taking off toward the rock formation.
As she approached, she called out for Anouk, and the modelturned, slow. Even from a distance Cecilia could tell she’d been crying. Her wet hair plastered to the side of her face, her lips purple, her cheeks puffy. Her body shaking. Cecilia wanted to run to her. Up over the rocks. She wanted to apologize with every inch of her being.
She never should have left.
“Cecilia.” Didier was at her side, gripping her upper arm, firmly. “C’est fait.We’re done,” he said, handing over his camera. “Start loading the van.”
XL.BROKEN.
LOS ANGELES.
OCTOBER. 2016.
The morning after the groping-politician revelation, I awake clammy, with a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. And before I can make it fully to the toilet, I vomit all over the bathroom floor. The pretty ceramic tiles desecrated.
“Oh, Cile,” François laments, on his hands and knees, helping me mop up my sick. “Do you think it’s the flu?”
“I don’t know,” I say, trembling.
“You’re not pregnant, are you?”
I look at him, oddly. I cannot recall the last time we had sex. Apparently, neither can he.
“Maybe it’s stress,” he says, eventually. “About the show. Get back in the bed. I’ll take the kids to school.”
I do as I’m told. But I know. Deep down, I know.
Two days later when I am feeling somewhat stronger, I show up at Anouk’s unannounced.
“What are you doing here? Why didn’t you text?”
“Because I had to see you in person.”
She greets me in the atrium where Ames has left me, looking, Isuspect, like something that the cat dragged in. Sneakers, sweatpants, my hair in a messy bun. And not intentionally so. This time, I am not offered water.
“You don’t look well.”
“I’m not.”
“Is it work? Are we still on track for the opening?”
“It’s not work. We’re still on track, yes.”
Just then, Frederick, the infamous Frederick, emerges from the kitchen, in a gray-and-orange cycling kit, with a stalk of celery in hand. “Who’s here? Oh. Hello, Cecilia.”
We have never officially met. We have never been in the same room. We are fucking the same woman and yet we have never exchanged a word until now, and all of it feels unbearably surreal.
“Hello. Frederick.” I move to shake his hand but am thwarted by the celery stalk, which he awkwardly shifts.
Anouk’s eyes flit between the two of us. Her expression unreadable. Disappointed, perhaps. Confused. I imagine I still look dazed, messy. He looks like a silver fox with a billion dollars and a cycling habit.
