Triangle, p.11
Triangle, page 11
Stephanie was the strongest rider of the four. She was a tall, thin dark-haired woman, not a beauty, but she had grown into her looks as she got older. At forty-seven, she could be called handsome. For the shows, she wore her dark brown hair in a tight bun, at other times she wore it down, to her shoulders. She was a no-frills person, dressed simply, and wore very little makeup, just a touch of lipstick in a neutral tone. Her closest friend in the group was Elizabeth Bonnard, a petite redhead with a personality to match her hair. She was lively and fun. Veronique and Valerie were slightly portly blondes. They had gone to school together and almost looked like twins. The three women had known each other since their early twenties, and Lizzie was ten years younger. They were the senior pros of the show circuit, and entered dressage shows and jumping competitions all over Europe. Veronique and Valerie had both been married briefly and divorced, and neither one had children. Lizzie had never been married or had kids. She and Stephanie were inseparable and Lizzie worshipped Stephanie. Stephanie had taught her how to perfect her jumping skills and show techniques. Lizzie was thirty-eight. Veronique and Valerie were approaching fifty, and Stephanie was forty-seven.
“Will Olivier be home?” Lizzie asked her, and Stephanie said she assumed he would. The boys were due in on Tuesday, and her birthday was the following weekend.
“It’ll be nice to see the boys,” Stephanie said, and smiled at Lizzie. “What are you going to do this week?” They were taking the week off while they were home. The horses would be exercised every day.
“Sleep,” Lizzie said with a mischievous grin. Preparing for the shows was grueling. Veronique and Valerie had families who helped to pay their expenses and could afford to, and Olivier paid for Stephanie’s. Lizzie’s family didn’t assist her, but Stephanie had helped her protégée for years. It was an expensive sport, but for all four of them, it was their first love and their passion.
They had been on the road for a month from show to show and had done particularly well in Italy and England. And they’d done well in Dordogne and Périgord that weekend too.
Stephanie dropped them all off at their homes in the city, where they all lived. Valerie and Veronique shared an apartment, and Lizzie had a studio not far from Stephanie’s house. It was convenient when they got together to discuss which shows they wanted to enter, and they had plans to go to the States that summer, to enter shows in North Carolina and Virginia. Lizzie had done well there the year before.
When Stephanie got home, she drove her car into the garage and saw that Olivier wasn’t home yet. She had spoken to him last week, to make plans for the boys’ visit. She hadn’t seen him in weeks, and her sons in four months. It was hard to find time for a personal life with all the training and traveling they did. All four of the women rode every day.
Stephanie was in the kitchen eating a sandwich when Olivier walked in. He looked at her in surprise and didn’t approach her. He knew how much she hated being embraced. She had a cool, distant nature, like a wild horse.
“You’re home. How did the show go yesterday?” he asked pleasantly.
“We did well. I got first, Lizzie second, the other girls didn’t do as well, third and fourth in another category.” Olivier knew it was the only language she spoke and the only thing she cared about, other than their sons. He wasn’t on her radar most of the time.
“Congratulations. You must be tired,” he said, and poured himself a glass of wine. Stephanie already had one. With Amanda to compare it to now, he was startled to realize how bloodless their relationship was. There were no hugs or embraces, no visible pleasure to be seeing each other again. They used to talk about their children, now they talked more about her shows and horses. They shared no personal information, and behaved like strangers even after she’d been gone for a month. They hadn’t shared a bedroom in years. Stephanie used to say Olivier’s snoring kept her up at night, and they were both relieved when they gave up the pretense of sharing a room a few years after Edouard’s birth.
Stephanie had a lithe, athletic build, and worked out every morning. She was most at ease in her riding habits. She had admitted to her friends that she felt like a freak now in a dress. She claimed to have knobby knees and bony legs, and she was tall enough that she never had to wear high heels. She said she couldn’t walk in them anyway.
She had been a tomboy as a child, with three brothers. She could run faster than they could, climbed trees better, and was a better rider now. All of her family were avid horsemen. It was all they talked about. Olivier had thought she’d outgrow it, or be less interested in horses once she married and they had children, but she hadn’t. And her riding world bored him to tears. He had thought her athletic prowess was sexy when they were young, but it was less so now. He had no illusions, she was stronger than he was and could do a hundred pushups on one hand. He could barely make it through ten, or five, with both hands. Gymnastics had never been his strong suit, and he hated going to the gym. But fortunately he didn’t need to, and was naturally in good shape with a minimum of exercise. He played tennis once a week. Tennis bored Stephanie as much as horses did him.
Olivier sometimes wondered how they had fallen in love, or if they really had. He’d been shy as a boy and was friends with her brothers, and she was always hanging around competing with them, so when he first got interested in girls, she was close at hand and easy to talk to. He knew her well and he didn’t have to make much effort with her, having known her since they were children.
Their families were enthusiastic about the match, and the next thing he knew they were married, and he realized it was like marrying one of the guys. They were both inept at sex, had both been virgins, and had no idea what to do with each other. He thought having a baby might bring them closer, but it didn’t. She hated being pregnant and not being able to ride for several months, and once the baby was born, Olivier took care of Guillaume more than Stephanie did. But she was relieved it was a boy. She talked about teaching him to ride one day. Until then, he was Olivier’s baby.
The first time he cheated on her was after Edouard was born. A beautiful young woman moved in next door to them, and he suddenly realized that women were a great deal more alluring if they didn’t act like one of the guys. He was twenty-four years old, had been married for three years and had two children, and the neighbor was twenty-two and had a body like a Playboy model. There had been many girls like her after that, until he finally settled down in his thirties and became more discriminating. He and Stephanie had never had sex after Edouard was conceived. He was disappointed and embarrassed about it at first, until he realized that Stephanie was relieved. She didn’t want to get pregnant again and had developed an aversion to sex. Any time he approached her, she had an excuse. The sexy girl next door was much more willing. She was the first of many partners he had in his twenties. He was surprised to find that other women found him attractive, even though his wife didn’t.
“Where were you today?” she asked him when he got home. It was Sunday. He had come straight from Amanda’s, and had made love to her before he left her.
“I stopped by to see a friend. I meant to get back earlier. We were watching a football match,” which meant soccer in France. She nodded and didn’t ask him anything else. She didn’t know his friends anyway, or like the few she knew.
They had dinner together in the kitchen on Monday night. They each cooked their own meal and conversation was sparse. He was distracted. Amanda texted him a few times and he didn’t stop her, and before they left the kitchen, Stephanie gave him a knowing look.
“You’ve got someone new again, don’t you? You always get that starry-eyed look. It makes you look like a kid again.” It was a statement more than a criticism. She was never jealous, acting more like a sister or a friend than a wife.
“Is that a compliment or an accusation?” he asked her, and didn’t answer her question. He never did. They shared no details about their lives.
“Neither one. More of an observation. Someone decent, I hope.”
“What does that mean?” He bristled at her comment.
“Just someone who won’t make trouble, or blackmail you, or put you in an embarrassing position and try to extort money from you.”
“When did I ever get blackmailed?” he asked her, annoyed.
“It can happen. Men are drawn to women like that like flies to honey. We don’t need a scandal,” she said. She and her family were very conservative and proper.
“You won’t have one,” he said simply, and walked out of the kitchen, leaving his plate in the sink, and went upstairs to his room. Just seeing Stephanie made him miss Amanda, and he realized now how right she was, about how pointless it was to stay married to someone you didn’t love, just to avoid a divorce. What they had wasn’t a marriage and never had been. It had been a travesty, but they had stayed married anyway. It was the only victory they could claim. It depressed him to think about it, and he lay down on his bed and called Amanda again. He had closed his bedroom door before he did.
“How’s it going?” she asked him. He didn’t mention Stephanie’s comment. He wondered how she always knew that he had met a woman he liked. Most of them didn’t last long, but this one would. For twenty-three years, until now, it had always been purely physical. Amanda was different. He was in love with her.
By the end of the week, he and his wife had run out of even minor conversation with each other. The boys were leaving on Sunday, after their mother’s birthday, and all Olivier wanted was to go back to Amanda’s arms and bed. He had stuck around more than usual all week because of the boys, but even they seemed eager to leave. Their home was a hollow shell with no love in it, or too little. Olivier felt love-starved by the end of the week. And he wondered if Stephanie felt that way too. Her friends were in and out of the house every day. He would hear them talking and laughing in the kitchen, but they felt awkward around him and fell silent the minute he walked in. He felt like an intruder in their midst. It had been a hard week for all of them. The whole horse group was leaving for England soon, and all he wanted was to spend the night with Amanda. He knew he could spend the night out while his wife was there, but he didn’t want his sons to notice it, or have it cause comment. He had always tried to set an example for them, of being a responsible and respectable family man. They admired Olivier, and he didn’t want to disappoint them and show his needs and flaws to them. It made their relationship less real, but he felt he had a role to play in front of them, without letting his failings show. Stephanie did the same, although Guillaume and Edouard knew their parents’ relationship wasn’t warm. He could wait a few more days, and then Stephanie would be gone. Then he could go home to Amanda and bask in the warmth of the love she lavished on him. It had become familiar to him, and he needed Amanda like air to breathe, and nourishment. He had been starved before he met her.
* * *
—
Amanda was almost falling asleep on the way back to her apartment after the first night of hanging the show. She couldn’t wait to get to bed, and to finish installing it the next day. Pascal dropped her off in front of her building, and watched her go in. Once the outer door closed behind her, she ran up the stairs to her apartment, unlocked the front door, and walked in. She hadn’t bothered to put the alarm on. The building was safe. There hadn’t been a robbery in the building in all the years she’d lived there.
She walked into her bedroom to find Lulu and saw that the bedroom door and window were wide open, her closet door was open, and the light was on, and it suddenly clicked that someone had been in her apartment, and possibly still was. She grabbed Lulu and her keys, with her phone still in her pocket, and ran out the front door of the apartment and down the stairs, out of the building and onto the street. And from there she called the police and told them that her apartment had been burglarized, and she thought the burglar might still be inside. She didn’t want to ask Pascal to come back, they were both so tired, so she called Olivier. He was awake in his room, reading, and grabbed his cellphone immediately, as soon as he saw it was her.
“Are you okay?” he asked her. It was unlike her to call him so late.
“No, yes. I’m fine, but my apartment has been burglarized.”
“Is Lulu okay?”
“She’s fine. I grabbed her and ran and called the police from the street. They said they’d be here in ten minutes.” As she said it, she could hear the police siren approaching, and saw the flashing blue lights a minute later.
“I’ll be right there,” Olivier said hastily. He got up, put on jeans and a sweater, slipped his feet into loafers, grabbed a jacket and his phone, wallet, and car keys, and ran down the stairs and out of the house. Everyone was sound asleep, and no one heard him drive away.
He was at her front door in fifteen minutes. The police had just checked the apartment, and said that there was no intruder in it, and they asked her to come upstairs and see if she could tell what was missing. She followed them upstairs and Olivier went with her. He kissed her, thrilled to see her. He had dropped by the gallery briefly several times that week, but hadn’t spent the night with her, because of his sons.
The police had already determined that one or several intruders had scaled the façade of the building, using the architectural details as handholds, and entered through the now open window. Amanda could see that the glass had been broken and knocked out to facilitate their entry. Her silver cupboard was open, and she thought there were two trays missing that were family heirlooms. Things were knocked over in her bathroom, like perfume bottles and cosmetics. The drawers of the chest were open, and she looked and saw that about half the contents of one of the drawers was missing, and when she looked in the laundry hamper, where some people hid jewelry, the police explained, it was empty, and her dirty laundry was gone. She made a careful tour of the apartment, and forty-five minutes later, all she could tell the police was that a sizable quantity of her underwear and all her dirty laundry was missing, and nothing else. The two silver trays had been left in the kitchen.
“That’s crazy!” She stared at them and Olivier. She was still holding Lulu. “Who would take my laundry and my underwear?”
“That’s a sexual crime, ma’am,” the senior officer informed her. “It’s a different department from burglary. That’s an erotomaniac, probably a stalker, who may have been watching you. It’s not too common, but it happens. It’s usually a stranger, someone you don’t know or have never noticed.” He started to tell her what the culprit would do with the stolen clothing, and she said she didn’t want to know. The idea was disgusting, and even more so if someone was stalking her and broke into her home and stole such personal items.
“We’ll fill out the report and give it to the right department,” the police officer told her. “Get that window fixed quickly, and you need to turn your alarm on next time. The building is vulnerable because of the architectural details. It could happen again, if he likes what he got.” She shuddered at the thought, and they left a few minutes later. It was three a.m., and she was exhausted.
“I’m spending the night,” Olivier said calmly.
“Can you do that? With her home?” Amanda asked him.
“Of course. I can do whatever I want. She’s not going to ask me any questions.”
They undressed, went to bed, and talked in the dark about what had happened. It was unnerving, and frightening.
“What if he comes back?” Amanda asked Olivier.
“If I’m here, I’ll grab him. But the police were right. You need to use the alarm now.” As Olivier said it, the phone rang, and they thought it might be the police. Amanda answered without checking the caller ID, and there was heavy panting at the other end of the line, and it sounded like someone was masturbating or having sex. He was clearly the thief who took her underwear. She disconnected the call immediately, didn’t answer when it rang again, and Olivier put his arms around her. He was glad she had called him. There was some very sick guy following her, stalking her. Olivier held her tight, and she was shaking. It took them a long time to fall asleep, and Olivier didn’t leave her until she left for work in the morning. He dropped her off at the gallery and made sure that Pascal was there. He had just arrived, and Amanda was late. She told him what had happened, and Olivier kissed her and left them.
“I’ll come by tonight,” he promised as he left.
“Are you sure? What about your boys? Aren’t they leaving tomorrow?” she asked him.
“They’re leaving early. I’ll say goodbye to them tonight.” Stephanie’s birthday dinner was that night. “We’re having dinner together for the birthday, and I’ve gotten some good time with both boys this week. They’re leaving the house at six a.m. I’ll come to you later, after dinner, so keep the alarm on until I get there,” he said, and sped away as she explained the details of the situation to Pascal, about the erotomaniac who had broken into her apartment.
“That doesn’t sound like Johnny Vegas,” Pascal said, worried about her. “It sounds like you picked up a real nutcase.” Amanda had brought Lulu to the gallery with her, so she didn’t get injured by another intruder. But there was no question that something very nasty was happening to Amanda, and they had no idea who the perpetrator was. It could have been anyone. And if not Johnny Vegas, then who? And most likely, just as the police said, it was someone she didn’t know, a total stranger, who was fixated on her. She shuddered, remembering the man panting on the phone. It took her several hours to calm down, until she got engrossed in hanging the show, and tried to forget the pervert who was stalking her while she did.
Chapter 9
Pascal and Amanda went back to work, measuring the space, lighting each painting, and switching them around to achieve a better result when something didn’t work. But the memory of her ransacked apartment was disturbing and kept distracting her. It was hard to concentrate. She and Pascal talked about it when they took a break, and the police showed up at lunchtime to interview her. They asked if she had had any romantic liaisons recently which had ended badly, any men she had met recently and rejected sexually, or any strange phone calls. She mentioned the breathing calls she had had for a while now late at night. She hadn’t been aware of anyone following her and had had no dates for some time before Olivier. She didn’t volunteer his name, since he was married. The stolen underwear and missing laundry were a clear sign to the police that the crime was sexual in nature and that the stalker had fantasies about her.
