Chapter 8 A Gift

7:00 AM

Adrianne Dubois was enjoying her life in the city of Paris for some time now. Fortunately for her, after years of hard work, she graduated from her studies, obtained a grade B+ diploma in Pharmacy and found a job quickly enough not to be forced to come back to her small town of Domfort (which even though pretty and picturesque wasn’t something that Adrianne pictured for herself for the rest of her life). A small pharmacy (located among bistros, cafes, newsagents and little convenient stores) made her occupied during the day and allowed her to rent a small flat in the suburbs. It also enabled her to lead a comfortable life of a young Parisian woman awaiting for everything to unfold before her. Now, she thought, once she finished her education and loosened the ties with overprotective parents, was the best time to fall in love. But not just any kind of love. Her favorite film of all time was a French classic Amélie, which she watched more than a dozen times and knew dialogues by heart. What is more, she identified with the main protagonist to the extent that she actually dyed her hair black and cut a fringe. Adrianne truly believed in love at first sight, fate, fortunate coincidences, and helping strangers, all of which led to happy endings and long-lasting relationships of a true love value. She was just waiting for her own lucky day and her personal dream to be fulfilled.

She was having her late breakfast (the manager of the pharmacy was away for a day and there weren’t many clients to bother her), and biting on a croissant accompanied with a cup of black unsweetened coffee was just what she wanted for herself at that time.

Suddenly, the door opened and inside came the most handsome man Adrianne Dubois has ever laid her eyes on. He was tall and slim. He had a beautiful, sculpted face, a just appearing beard of black hair, the same black hair which was thickly covering his head. Adrianne’s heart stopped for a second. He smiled at her, took his phone from his back jeans pocket, wrote something and waited for a moment as if he waited for receiving a text message. Then, he laid the phone on the cash desk and with his head invited her to read.

MY ASS HURTS. BRUISE. NEED OINTMENT.

Adrianne opened her eyes widely. She asked whether he was deaf, but he didn’t seem to make out what she was saying. He took the phone and translated another sentence via the translator.

I DON’T SPEAK FRENCH.

‘Do you speak English?’

‘No,’ he answered; at least Adrianne was convinced that he could talk.

ASS OINTMENT?

He smiled, showing her the phone again.

Adrianne Dubois nodded and found a tube of over the counter ointment for bruises. She took from him an accurate amount of money and gave him the bag with the medicine. He squeezed the bag into the pocket of his coat and wrote on his phone:

THANK YOU SO MUCH

Adrianne Dubois smiled. The man smiled back and left the pharmacy. That was to be a pleasant day for her, a day of budding feelings and romantic dreams. She even didn’t bother to finish that unsweetened coffee. That was genuinely the most beautiful male smile Adrianne Dubois had ever seen in her life of a young Parisian woman.

Robert Rej applied a significant amount of ointment on his swollen and bruised bottom and with a cup of tea in his hand started reading through pictures and documents left by Adam Fabjan. The bathroom door was wide open, there was a hole in the door’s window and the last thing Robert intended to do was to close the door at any time, whether taking the shower or using the toilet. He wasn’t going to close it even in the presence of guests.

Alicia was the kind of a woman every man would fall for without any effort. But it required a lot from the said man to win her heart. She was fluent in French, from an early age she took dancing lessons: as a child - ballet, as a teen - modern jazz. Her figure changed and she started to be womanly, possibly too curvy to make success as a ballerina. She also suffered from a mild knee problem, which prevented her from developing her career of a modern jazz story of success. Maybe, for this reason, she turned to journalism, which could enable her to make a living. She was a lovely child, a pretty teenager, and a beautiful woman interested in fashion, arts, and photography. Robert was looking at her pictures ranging from the kindergarten, when she was standing on a sling next to her little brother, from her high school and studies where she was surrounded by girls from her class, all not as beautiful as her, but seeming to treat her with kindness, not jealousy. Then, there was a different Alicia. A grown woman, wearing beautiful dresses, shining in the streets of Paris like a model of some fashion journal. The innocent charm of her school years disappeared somewhere and she was smiling less and less in the pictures. She was still beautiful. She never lost her figure, maybe thanks to her ballet years discipline, and never lost her grace.

Robert remembered only one beautiful girl from his school years. They passed each other on the corridor, Robert pondering on the nature of her beauty, she possibly keen on Robert, not entirely aware that he was into boys. At school, it was great to be the most beautiful girl, as beauty was still of some value: you could be the most popular girl, the teacher’s pet, the desire of many boys willing to help you with maths, physics, chemistry and IT. Then life became slightly more complicated, beauty faded or just wasn’t enough to survive.

Robert looked at pictures and tried to write down a list of contacts with people Alicia knew so well. He knew that he should avoid her second ex-husband, but this ex-husband intrigued him the most. His and Alicia’s wedding picture was a portrayal of happiness and bliss. There was no divorce picture, as people rarely take pictures during their separation day. But if Alicia’s wedding smile was as fake as Robert’s wedding picture (hiding his fear, hopelessness, and a sense of being trapped), there was much more to this marriage for Robert to investigate.

During his first day, he visited all places which were somehow connected to Alicia, he popped into every cafe that she might have visited, he thoroughly looked through her work portfolio and read every copy of her diploma and certificate Adam Fabjan was able to provide. He made a list of addresses of people he should talk to and peeked into this little booklet that his employer gave him to acquaint himself with basic French expressions, but soon he gave it up as he saw no sense in learning the language which pronunciation he knew nothing of. Translating via Google translator was more than effective.

Next morning, in the corridor, nearby the entrance to his apartment, Robert saw a box filled with something which gave off an appalling stench. He looked inside and saw a dead rat cut open and spread like a specimen used in the laboratory. There was a sign written on a piece of paper attached to its bloody intestines, which Robert translated quickly via Google translator. According to the app, the sign said ‘Leave me alone’, which Robert interpreted as a very strange manifesto of Parisian city culture and placed the rat somewhere between Banksy’s street paintings and modern art. If he had been accurate enough and learned some French vocabulary, he might not have made a spelling mistake while typing the message onto his phone, and he would have realized that it actually meant ‘Leave her alone’, and was aimed directly at him.