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Carol walked into Trapèze on Monday. Trapèze meant both trapezoid and trapeze in French. She thought it was a pretty clever name for an off-beat moving pictures company that tried to take viewers on a wild trapeze ride. In better times, the name had given her inspiration to write freewheeling scenes. Today didn’t feel like that kind of day. The loss of Jeffrey was rather pressing on her, indeed driving her into the ground.
After plopping her huge pocketbook in its own file drawer, she turned her fan on because the air conditioning was so pathetic, like everywhere else in France. She aimed the fan carefully at her chair. This was likely to be the only thing she had control over today.
As she stood, her eyes glanced over but failed to see the colorful framed posters of Trapèze films on her walls. Gregoire had provided them when he first hired her three years ago. Two recent additions had her name in the credits as screenwriter. Some days, when she noticed them, she felt proud. Not today. The only energy she could muster was to drag herself off to get coffee.
She had told the new babysitter to call her every half hour on her first day with Louise. The woman was a trained English nanny, in her fifties, came with references, but Carol prayed her child wouldn’t be kidnapped or worse.
She stepped out of her office, built against an inner wall, its only window overlooking the corridor. It might be years before she earned an outer office with natural light. The film world, like the corporate world, was a society without grace. Everything, down to the size of one’s stapler, had to be earned. She pasted her brightest smile on and walked to the kitchenette.
Gregoire, her boss, was there, lifting a croissant out of the patisserie box. The golden crescent shed buttery flakes.
“Bonjour! Good weekend?” he said, looking at her face carefully. His wiry brown hair had been carefully combed into place but still looked stupid, Carol thought.
Her weekend had been just a bit brutal. Carol had cried buckets over yet another failed relationship. She felt miserable without a man around. She had cried when Louise cried over Jeffrey. And then Louise was sick. Carol knew she didn’t look her best.
“Yes, fine!” she chirped.
“Well, we need a rewrite of the scene I told you about in the animated film, and I want you to start a new script on that idea I gave you.” It seemed to Carol that he stressed “I gave you.” It was supposed to be the other way around. Panic made her sweat in her fresh silk blouse.
“I’ll get my best man on it,” she said with a smile she couldn’t put any warmth into. She had heard an American use that expression and thought it rather clever. Gregoire didn’t understand it, obviously—he was staring at her, puzzled. She grabbed a croissant and a cup of coffee and headed back to her office.
She sighed as she sat and let the fan blow air over her. Could she work in spite of her emotional misery? Maybe—if not today, then soon—she could use it to deepen her characters.
After the coffee and a good hour writing, she felt better, because she saw that she could still call herself a professional, someone who did the job no matter what. To reward herself for a great effort while in such great distress that her body was emitting SOS signals from every pore, she took a break.
Venturing out of her office, she passed other people in their cubicles, or inner offices, or outer offices with windows onto the parking lot. People didn’t look up, they were all concentrating. She began to feel her aloneness. She felt the need for human company, adult company, somebody to talk to. These people were too busy.
She stepped down the hall to Amandine’s office, peered around the doorjamb, and saw her looking relaxed with sunlight streaming in the window. Carol rapped her knuckles on the door.
“Cherie!” Amandine said when she saw her. “Come, sit down.” When Carol was seated, she said, “You don’t look well.”
Carol wished she hadn’t sat down.
“Well, I had a more difficult weekend than usual.” True enough, considering the spot of bother with Jeffrey.
Amandine was interested.
“Je suis désolée. What ‘appen’?”
Carol had needed to confide in someone, but the gleam in Amandine’s eye reminded her suddenly that she had been a prat to come here, this was not the right set of ears. She’d forgotten the Amandine escargot factor.
“Oh, Louise was sick. We were tied up with that all weekend.” She carefully dropped that “we.” Amandine had a boyfriend and felt infinitely superior to women who didn’t. Carol had felt her attitude in the year she’d worked at Trapèze before she met Jeffrey. An unattached woman was to Amandine what a floundering swimmer was to a great white shark.
Amandine smelled blood and started to circle.
“Jeffrey ‘elps out, you ‘ave told me.” She left it at that, the unspoken question demanding an answer.
Carol had been a reporter and knew that human beings were wired to answer questions. When she had been on the beat, people had divulged the most amazing things to her as a result of her questions. Right now, she had a nearly irresistible urge to answer Amandine, to say that she had managed all weekend alone because Jeffrey was gone. She needed to not say it. If she did, Amandine might use it against her somehow.
“He helped, it was fine.” Jeffrey had come to the apartment to pick up his stuff on Saturday, at the worst possible time, of course, with Louise vomiting in the bathroom, dishes piled in the sink, and dirty laundry heaped on the living room floor. Nothing was fine, and it felt like nothing would ever be fine again. She had to get out of this office.
“Well, Amandine, I just remembered a phone call I’m expecting.” Amandine’s eyes were narrow as she watched Carol stand and grab her mug.
“Stop back any time,” she said, sounding so nice, so comforting, but deep down Carol knew she was an unrepentant jerk. Carol had just forgotten, that’s all. She slouched disconsolately down the hall.
