FIC : III
[Title:] III
[Setting:] AU. Modern day.
[Character(s):] Mireille
[Summary:] The silence between one movement and the next.
[Author's Notes:] Inspired by the prompt, "salmon".
The house is always quiet when she’s home by herself. When he is out of the country on official business; attending diplomatic congresses, EU and FN negotiations, official embassy visits - or less official… On weekdays, he works late more often than not, letting himself in hours after she’s gone to bed, if he doesn’t simply spend the night in his office. All accommodations met. Made for this very purpose, once the State Ministry had been handed over to him. It is not that they speak excessively, when they spend time together, but solitude holds a sound of its own, doesn’t it? In its complete lack of it. Sound. Noise. Besides her own breathing, the clinking of cutlery against porcelain and the muted crispness of the salmon en croute which their chef has prepared for supper. Beethoven’s ‘Tempest’ rising upwards, towards the ceiling like smoke. There is room for little else.
Mother frequented restaurants on the evenings when Father was unable to come home, Mireille knows. Remembers. The late nights when he had and chose to prioritise his profession over his wife and the family she represented, a daughter born to the matriarch rather than her male counterpart. Mireille, perhaps to be expected, prefers the opposite approach and stays at home. Apart, seeing how the public is a reality they usually face together. She and Jean Louis. Father having been omitted from the picture. From the beginning.
Last year, while she indulged herself in a freedom stripped of academia entirely, she sought Jean Louis’ company regularly. Independently. Ate lunch with him in one of the restaurants nearby parliament. Dinner reservations at Chiggeri later, where she would wait for him at the table that has become theirs by default. Until he could find time and opportunity to leave work. Ever so often, he hadn’t joined her before 10 or 11 PM, all other guests long since banished. Seclusion once again descending, if only for a couple of hours.
By now, she has learned how to wear it; doesn’t mind how it wraps itself around her, because she is more familiar with its structure than with -- Has grown up with it. Grown into it. The act of being alone.
Contrasts, continuously. The spices of rice and mushrooms clashing with the suppleness of the salmon. Its smoother texture, coherent taste. Softness. Held together by bread and butter. The notion of loneliness, within four walls in her possession and the amendable awareness of his absence. Opposite the knowledge that it isn't a fixed state of being. Not anymore and never again, if the decision is hers. As it is, of course. Even less, a constant amongst changes. It’s temporary. Today is Wednesday and on Friday night, they’ll be attending the May Festival hosted in the Jardin. Saturday he’ll join her in the shower and they’ll have sex, slow and lazy in a manner they don’t employ or endorse in any other context.
Pushing the plate aside, she pulls out Le Monde, stacked away in the pile he left behind earlier, before she woke up. Before leaving. Her educated guess, and she has studied him for years - intimately, would be that he read them in the same haste with which he drank his appurtenant cup of coffee, thus certainly not after breakfast. He may take his time in general, but his time comes at a greater price than toasted bread and scrambled eggs. It’s the third movement, out of three; privacy in this fashion, a detailed dinner and reading that she won’t finish tonight. Beethoven begins his as well, in allegretto.
She will go to bed in half an hour, after having put away the plates and thrown away what should remain. His newspapers are of yesterday as soon as he’s read them, after all. She’ll fall asleep alone and wake up to an empty house, in a wholly similar state, but it is no second spot. In which she has been caught.
Repeatedly, she moves beyond second, isn't that so? In order, whether it is to the number one or three.