by Harper Bliss
“If you’re sure.” Nadia couldn’t help play devil’s advocate. But mostly she was glad that Claire had someone like Margot to lean on. Nadia had leaned on Margot more than once herself and she knew how strong Margot’s well-toned shoulders were.
“Stop fishing for something that’s not there, Nadz.” Margot pushed the bag with the remaining sandwich in Nadia’s direction. “Time to stop this line of questioning and eat your lunch. Doctor’s orders.”
STEPH
“So you’re going to see your mistress?” Dominique asked. They had a rare half hour alone together before Dominique’s children arrived and Steph had to leave for her rendezvous at Père Lachaise.
“Aren’t you worried about photographers?” Steph had asked Marion the previous week when they’d agreed to meet at the entrance of the cemetery. They’d both lived in the neighborhood long enough to not find it a grim meeting point.
“You can’t always be looking over your shoulder,” Marion had said. “It sucks the joy right out of everything. Besides, why could we not be friends going for a walk? If Le Matin wants to make a spectacle of that, let them. We have an alibi.” She grinned that disarming grin of hers, and Steph had agreed.
“Oh, for crying out loud.” Steph sat in the sofa, scrolling through all the latest news about Dominique on her phone. “You made me go and see her.”
“True, chérie, but little did I know you were going to take such a shine to my old friend.” Dominique tapped against Steph knee, indicating that she should make some room for her in the sofa.
“Ah, Madame Députée is jealous. How lovely.” Steph put her phone away.
“I’m just curious. What did you talk about?” She really was jealous. It made Steph feel strangely warm and fuzzy inside.
“You, of course. It was all about you, babe,” Steph teased.
“Ha ha.” Dominique arranged Steph’s legs so they stretched out over hers. “Can’t you give me something? I worry about you.”
“Don’t worry about me, you have enough to worry about already.”
“As long as you don’t leave me for your therapist who is, by the way, one of my oldest friends. That’s more a trick one of your overly dramatic friends would pull,” Dominique joked.
“Christ, please don’t remind me of them. It’s the weekend. I only have room in my head for you and the million places we have to be.”
“I take it now is not a good time to ask your bosses to temporarily scale back your hours?” Dominique asked.
“Not if I ever want to go back to a company that still exists.” Steph let her head fall onto the backrest of the sofa. “In all the years I’ve worked there, it has never been like this. And I’m caught in between. It’s bloody awful.”
“Poor, poor baby.” Dominique caressed her knee.
“Sometimes I think national politics are easier than being Claire and Juliette’s employee and friend.” Steph wondered if all the drama was beginning to rub off on her and she’d grown a dramatic streak herself as a result.
“All jokes aside.” Dominique’s voice suddenly sounded very serious. “You’ve been different since you went to see Marion. Is it helping?”
It was so typical of their relationship these days that Dominique hadn’t had the time to ask her that question until now. It had been a week. She’d inquired, of course, in between phone calls and meetings and before drifting off into much-needed sleep, but never at a time when Steph was able to give her a satisfactory answer. She’d had all week to think about her answer by now, and was able to sum it up easily. “She gets it. She just really gets it. And that’s what’s perking me up the most.” Steph didn’t feel so alone anymore, because she now had access to someone who understood what she was going through.
“Marion is great. I miss her.” Dominique gazed through the window across from her. “When this is all over, we should get together.”
“That would be a conflict of interest,” Steph said a little louder than necessary.
“What? You want her all to yourself now?” Dominique’s tone grew jokey again for a second. “I know this is unorthodox, babe, and it’s not strictly ethical that she’s my friend, but we have to work with what we’ve got.”
Steph didn’t care. She didn’t expect Marion to be completely unbiased. In fact, it was a great help that she knew Dominique. It wasn’t as though Steph was paying her for her services. She’d insisted at first. But a money trail was always a bad idea, according to Dominique—another statement that made Steph clutch her head between her hands with utter disbelief—and friends don’t pay friends to help each other. It was better if the whole arrangement remained informal.
“It’s fine. I’m glad you put me on to her.” Steph glared at Dominique’s profile. She always looked so effortlessly powerful and glamorous. It was a gift, she concluded. If the world were ending, and they were all scrambling to stay alive, Dominique Laroche would still be looking picture-perfect. Looks weren’t everything—Goffin was a prime example—but Steph knew that Dominique’s fine exterior was going to help her win this election.
“Don’t forget she’s been happily married for twenty years.” Dominique turned to look her in the eyes, a small smile playing on her lips. “Trust me, that’s quite a feat for most MLR members.”
Steph had wondered about Marion’s husband, but had quickly concluded it wasn’t her place to even think about him. He was of no importance for what they were doing.
Then, the bell rang and their moment of peace was, again, disturbed.
“The little monsters are here,” Dominique said. She didn’t get to see enough of her children either these days. “Remember, we’re having lunch at Pino’s at one.”
“I’ll be there, my love, freshly shrunk and everything.” Dominique opened the door to the sort of noise only two children under the age of ten could produce.
✶ ✶ ✶
“How was your week?” Marion asked.
It was strange to walk along the tombstones with her. They were still more strangers than friends, and they’d never quite be friends, either. Still, Steph felt at ease in Marion’s company.
“Better and also so much worse.” Steph didn’t particularly want to waste her time with Marion talking about work and the rift she found herself in the middle of, but she couldn’t not touch upon it and expect Marion to understand her life. Even though, she firmly believed, what she was about to say out loud was, in fact, too ridiculous to be spoken among the solemn atmosphere of a historical graveyard. So Steph explained about the whole mess between Juliette and Claire and what had caused it.
“You are making this up to entertain me, aren’t you?” Marion asked when Steph was done. Not a very professional reaction, Steph thought, but the lines of their relationship were blurred already, and it didn’t matter. She also couldn’t blame Marion for her reaction, as it was the only logical one to what Steph had just said.
“I’m afraid not,” Steph said. “It’s all very and horribly true.”
“No wonder you’re close to a burn-out, Steph.” Marion stopped in her tracks. “Seriously, my honest advice would be to get away from that toxic place. Not that I’m not here to give you my honest advice, of course, but I understand life is much more complicated than that.”
“Dominique actually asked me to take a leave of absence, or at least work part-time for a while. Not for very altruistic reasons, of course, but because it would free up my schedule to be with her more.” Steph shuffled her weight around a bit. Talking while walking seemed so much easier all of a sudden.
“I stopped our walk for symbolic reasons, Steph. Because I think it’s time you stopped to think about what you want, instead of trying to answer all those relentless demands of others. This is your life. You can’t spend it merely being an accessory in other people’s existence. As my father said to me on his death bed, ‘You only have one life, and it’s definitely too short for politics.’”
“He said that?”
“A man speaks the bigges
t truths when he’s about to die,” Marion said. “Come on, let’s continue our walk. It helps the thought process.”
It was an equally big truth that Steph hadn’t been putting herself first at all. She’d even moved her cat into Dominique’s apartment, and barely had any time to give him the cuddles and reassurance he needed now that he had to grow accustomed to a new home. It was a silly thought, perhaps, but neglecting Pierrot seemed to illustrate how she had neglected herself.
“They’re my friends. They’ve had my back and now I have theirs.” But Steph knew that she had already paid for her biggest mistake in full and then some. Falling in love with a client, with Dominique, wasn’t even considered a mistake anymore, but had changed the course of all their lives. She didn’t have to bend over backwards to please Claire and Juliette. And she’d more than proven her worth to the company.
“Something tells me you’re going to need them in the future,” Marion said. “But I do hope it can be under more pleasant circumstances than people stabbing each other in the back over nothing much.”
“We all have a right to fall apart once in a while,” Steph mused.
“Very wise words.” The gravel crunched underneath their feet. “Do know they also apply to you.”
“That’s why I’m here.” Steph ended with a little chuckle. No matter how messy things were at work, and how intense being Dominique’s partner was, she experienced a brief moment of happiness. Spring was definitely in the air. She was even getting a bit sweaty underneath her blazer. This was the time of year when everything came back to life, and Steph felt some of that new-life force stir in her blood.
“Have you ever, by any chance, heard of a place called Le Noir?” she asked Marion. If she was going to lay it all out there to be dissected and discussed, she had to let all her secrets out. It felt so good to not have to carry the burden of all that she lived with inside her head alone. Steph hadn’t even told Dominique about Le Noir—she’d concluded that a presidential candidate was far better off not knowing about a place like that.
“Can’t say that I have,” Marion replied, a soupçon of curiosity in her voice. “What is it? A secret lesbian sex club?”
“So you do know about it?” It was Steph’s turn to stop.
“No,” Marion chuckled. “I was only having a very wild guess.”
“You must have excellent guessing skills then.” Steph started walking again. She needed it to digest the shock. “It’s, er, I place I used to frequent,” she said. Steph had never been ashamed about her visits to Le Noir, but it wasn’t a place you admitted being a regular at without at least a tiny frisson of discomfort making its way up your spine. It was inherent to the nature of the club.
“Okay. Can you tell me why?”
“It was never really about the why…” Steph’s thoughts trailed off. “It was just an escape. Something that was exclusively mine. None of my friends knew. Nobody knew.” Steph wondered if she was silently being judged. She also hoped that promise of confidentiality would hold up firmly. Joining Le Noir required signing a non-disclosure agreement, and she could get in trouble for this. “I enjoy having sex just for the sake of having sex. Before I’d heard of Le Noir, I believed I was the only woman in Paris who did, but I was so wrong. It was liberating to go there. Freeing. No chit-chat. No awkward walks of shame in the morning. It was just what it was.” It was beginning to dawn on Steph why she’d brought up Le Noir in the first place—not only to fully unburden herself then. It was a segue into that more difficult topic to address.
“Then you fell in love with Dominique?” Steph didn’t think she detected any judgement in Marion’s tone.
Steph pushed her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans. “Yep. A gross miscalculation on my part. The falling in love part was not supposed to happen. But here I am. Talking to a therapist because of it.” Steph chuckled, because how could she not? “My life used to be so very simple. And I’m a really big fan of simple. Now, it’s so fucking complicated.” Oops, she hadn’t meant to swear. “Pardon my French.”
“Do you still visit Le Noir?” Marion asked, undeterred by Steph’s f-bomb.
“God no.” Steph had nightmares about being stalked by Le Matin photographers and followed to the nondescript location of the club. “I’m in a monogamous relationship with an MLR politician.”
Marion stopped again. They’d reached the far side of the cemetery and she turned towards a tombstone. “Do you believe in monogamy?”
Steph had certainly not expected that question. She hadn’t even asked herself that question since she’d gotten back together with Dominique. It was just a given and Steph didn’t have any desire to sleep with other people. “I do now,” she said.
“It’s not for everyone.” Marion seemed to be studying the engravings on the headstone in front of her. “Léon and I had an open marriage when we were younger. Not that the agreement ever explicitly ended, but these days we’re less interested in pursuing other, er, interests.”
Bloody hell. Was Marion this forward with all her clients? But Steph wasn’t technically a client. Or was she trying to make a point? For some reason, Steph found this confession very hard to deal with. “Since the campaign got totally crazy about three months ago, I just, er, I seem to have lost interest in having sex.” Steph thought it better to cut to the chase. “And trust me, I have never lost interest in it before. On the contrary.” Somehow, it felt important to stress that point.
“That doesn’t surprise me in the least.” Marion turned to her again. “You’re physically and emotionally exhausted.”
“But so is Dominique, and she doesn’t seem to have a libido issue. At all.” Steph thought back to all the advances she’d had to fend off, and the guilt that had accumulated because of it.
“You can’t compare yourself to Dominique, Steph. It’s so different for her. She might be tired, but she thrives in this kind of environment, she feeds off the energy it gives her. Whereas you were brutally dropped into this world you don’t really know and that keeps making demands of you.”
“I just feel kind of robbed of an essential part of me. Like I don’t have what it takes anymore to give myself up to her. And, it’s true what you say, I’m just so damn tired all the time.”
“Has this caused problems between the two of you?” A group of tourists was approaching and Marion started walking again.
“Some things have been said, but nothing too much.” Steph fell back into step with Marion. “In fact, it was after Dominique tried to initiate sex and I refused for the umpteenth time that she suggested I see you. Because she and I, we don’t have time to talk this through. Not now. Actually, I don’t know when.”
“Ask her,” Marion said. “She’ll make time. I’m sure of that. Because the longer you don’t talk about it, the longer those negative thoughts will fester in your head, until they blow up into something you might not even be able to manage. In fact, I might have an idea.” Marion looked at her. “Why don’t you and Dominique come see me together. Any time. I’ll make sure I’m available whenever she’s free.”
MARGOT
Margot wondered where all this pent-up aggression was coming from. Every time she executed a roundhouse kick, she imagined it was Dievart’s shin she was bruising. She surely had a bone to pick with the neurosurgeon, but she’d never felt this sort of hostility burn inside of her. She suspected she was directing more than an appropriate amount of anger towards Dievart.
She was still angry with herself, of course. She suspected that would never really go away. She imagined herself as a frail old lady, slowly walking along the streets of Paris, and still lamenting that almost fatal mistake she’d made. She’d analyzed that night over and over again. She’d had plenty of time when she was recovering at her parents’ house, dying of boredom. She only ever came to one conclusion: temporary insanity. And too much alcohol, of course.
Now, it felt as though finding a way of punishing Dievart was her attempt at atonement. It was the only way.
She kicked the punching bag over and over again. Claire had gone for a haircut and a pampering session of pedicure and manicure, and Margot had taken the opportunity to get out of the flat and expel her excess energy. She’d be the one with the bruises later if she kept kicking like that.
She’d called three of the hospitals Dievart had worked at, but Margot was not the kind to smooth-talk her way into obtaining confidential information. It had been different with Nadia, because she knew her, and Nadia wasn’t the biggest fan of Dievart either. She’d contemplated going on a trip to Belgium—oh, how glorious it would be to do that on a motorcycle—but, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t envision a different outcome. The other option was trying to get Nadia more involved. In her capacity as the hospital administrator who had hired Dievart, she could make a few follow-up calls to double check on some information pertaining Saint-Vincent’s newest neurosurgeon. But she didn’t want Nadia to get into trouble. And Margot had wasted a lot of time in recovery. Dievart had been at Saint-Vincent for longer than six months now, and it wasn’t as though she was still—or had ever been—on probation. In no time, she had become Saint-Vincent’s indisputable superstar. If only she wasn’t such a damn good surgeon.
Margot had seen it often during her training. Some of her fellow students were borderline sociopaths, able to disengage their emotions just like that, and perform all the better for it. She could easily guess what had happened at Saint-Vincent in her absence. Why would it have been any different for Dievart at any other hospital she had worked at previously? Endless admiration from people who didn’t really know her and ever-growing loathing from the people who did. A clash was bound to happen at some point. Maybe what Margot needed was patience. She had patience. She had time. Although every time she saw Dievart, who the past week seemed to have made a point of being extra noticeable to Margot, her stomach twisted.