We both laugh. I hear the door opening at Roxanne’s place.
“Cole just got home,” she announces, and then raises her voice to speak to him. “It’s Monroe! She’s alive! She didn’t get killed by French dick overload like we thought!”
“You know I can hear you, right?”
“Glad you’re alive, Monroe!” Cole calls out, making it clear they’re both aware I’m still listening. “Hope it was some good sex.”
“Do you guys really have nothing else to talk about?” I ask.
“We’re getting married, Monroe,” Roxanne answers. “We have to start getting ready to live vicariously through other people’s sex lives, since our own is now inevitably doomed.”
“Okay, we both know that’s blatantly untrue,” I protest.
As much as it grosses me out to think about Cole in a sexual way after being purely platonic friends for so long, the dude has got swagger, and from what Roxanne has told me before I shush her into silence every time, that swagger very much carries through to his performance in the sack.
“I’m going to get back to work,” I announce, “and let you soon-to-be-newlyweds carry out your evening domestic duties.”
“Mon dieu, don’t call sex ‘domestic duties.’”
“I meant cooking dinner!” I inform her. “You’re the one with your head in the gutter.”
“So be it.” She heaves a dramatic sigh before we both say our goodbyes with promises to meet up soon.
I put my phone back in my pocket and get up off the milk crate, taking one last breath of garbage-tinged air before heading back inside. I’ve only just gotten settled at my desk when there’s a knock at the door. I pull it open and find Fucking Félix Fournier behind it. For once in his life, he’s early.
“Salut, Monroe,” he greets me. “This is my lawyer,MonsieurGauthier.”
I look past the doorframe to find a guy in slacks and button down waiting beside him in the narrow hall.
“He doesn’t have long,” Fournier continues in French, “so let’s get this over with.”
There’s hardly room in my office for two people, so I lead them into the kitchen. I was going to suggest Fournier and I go to a restaurant tonight, somewhere we could have a formal and professional business discussion without being crammed into a broom closet, but the two of them look too hurried to even consider it.
There are no chits on the order board, so I ask the two cooks on duty to step out for a moment and tell them I’ll help out later if the orders get backed up. They comply with wary glances at Fournier and his accomplice.
This is far from an ideal setting, but I still have a point to prove, and it’s a point I’m committed to making.
“Let me just grab my reports,” I begin, still speaking in French. “I have a few things to—”
“It doesn’t matter,” Fournier interrupts. “I’m just here to tell you I’m selling. We’ve already got in touch with a few different buyers who seem interested.MonsieurGauthier needs to go over some of the legalities of letting all the staff go.”
The lawyer starts pulling out a few papers while Fournier glances around the kitchen, but I just stand there as the floor lurches underneath me. My vision almost seems to blur.
“You’re...selling?” I echo like an idiot. My voice sounds raw, hoarse from the sudden dryness in my throat. “But it’s not the end of June yet.”
So much for my collected and rational arguments.
“June will be over next week. I made up my mind. I should have sold this place a long time ago.”
“But you can’t—”
“I’m selling, Monroe. It’s over. It’s time to let this place go.” He sighs like he almost regrets it, and that’s when my indignation finally flares and catches fire.
“There are some things I’d like to discuss with you, in private, and as your employee of seven years, I think you owe it to me to at least hear them out.”
I’m not prepared for the pity that floods his face as he looks at me and sighs again. It’s an expression I’ve never seen on him before, and as I watch the wrinkles of his forehead deepen and contract, those eyes I’ve only ever seen squinting in shrewd criticism now softened with something like sympathy, it’s then I know I’m wasting my breath.
I’m not changing his mind.
