Adrienne’s flight landed late night
at the Santa Barbara Airport. Max was waiting for her in the cab. She
habitually opened the back door to get in but he stopped her, opened the front
door and teased, “You know you can sit in the front, girl.” She looked weary
from the hours of airports and connections. “Oh, sorry Max, I got used to
sitting in the back. New York cabs have this barrier... you know. You even put
the money in a slot like the banks...” she sighed, “It feels nice in here. You
know, the warmth of your taxi.”
Her body visibly relaxed as he
pulled away from the airport and accelerated onto the Ward Memorial freeway.
“You look good, Adrienne.”
“Sheeṫ, how can you say that? I am a mess,
I haven’t bathed in a day...”
He loved the way her visits to
Biarritz awakened her accent, and had to admit, though he was a reluctant
Francophile, that there was something irresistibly sexy about a French woman’s
accent. Not so much the sweet bedroom sexy, but Adrienne’s had dropped the
proper Oxford English of the écoles, and had adopted a cabaret smoky gutter
English she’d picked up from her stateside lower companions, “I’m not kidding.
You look good... clean.”
“Yes, I’m clean alright, like... oh,
you say, a baby’s bum, ha-hah!” she was, in spite of her aching bones,
sarcastically jubilant.
“You know what I mean.”
“Oui, I am sober as a judge, eh?”
“I’m glad for you...” and he was
very glad for her. He’d become personally invested in her struggles. “I’ve been
looking forward to your home coming...”
He stopped talking when he saw she
had fallen asleep, and, lightly snoring, slept the rest of the way home.
Adrienne awoke midday, stretched her
arms across her bed. "Of course," she thought, "Max isn't there,
and thank God, neither is Nick."
She came down stairs to the kitchen,
and put on a pot of coffee. She looked around the house. It seemed emptier than
she expected, and missed being greeted by Sushi and Tofu. Nick had the dogs
boarded the past week after she phoned him to let him know she wanted to be
alone in the house when she got back. A stack of unread newspapers were on the
floor under the kitchen table. The trash can was overflowing, ashtrays full of
butts, and half full Mexican beer bottles were everywhere downstairs; in the
music room, on the dining room table, in the living room on the fireplace
mantel.
Half full bottles meant to her that
Nick was using something other than beer to get high. “Oh, Nicky, you’ve been
enjoying the house while I was away,” she said to the walls. Two cups of coffee
later she went upstairs and passed through her bedroom and small bathroom to
her studio. That room was the most private one in the house; with a view of the
garden in back where her brushes, and tubes of oil paint, were neatly laid out
on the counter for a clean gessoed canvas that awaited on the easel to be
awakened with color. She had resolved to do something about Nick, and her
marriage, while she rode around the countryside of Biarritz with Alesandro. She
was determined to change everything, inside and out, that fed her addictions
now that she was clean. She was hell-bent for her home to be a refuge, a
creative hermitage, to make something of her life and she was determined that
Nicky was not going to be a part of that life.
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