Hestia

October brought cool weather, and a new routine. The doctor had come by the day after Selene left, and comforted me with her quiet presence. She too was caught off guard by the curator's departure, but showed it not in her speech. Come the start of the new month, I was expecting her daily presence. By then, I called her by the name I had learned back in July, when I overheard her introduction to her new bleach blonde friend. Charlotte was what I called the former Mademoiselle. Through this change our conversation grew more casual and familiar.

On the subject of talking: without Alain or Selene around, I gave up practicing with the doctor. When I spoke, it was in English. When she replied, it was in French. The rest of our time together was in silence, or rather lost in the recordings she brought over. Classical and jazz, mostly, but also rock and pop. Charlotte laid out her files on my bed, and read them over. The same ones or different, I had no idea. Every day she came over and went through those motions like a robot, taking her work to my un et demi and using my quarters as her second office, or maybe her first; one weekend she fell asleep, and got up in the morning, and went straight to work without apologizing for me spending the night at my desk in an office chair, debating whether I should wake her up. It took me a week or so before I caved and laid down next to her to catch some sleep, and from then on it was how it always went.

One morning, I woke from my shallow slumber to her sitting on my chair observing me. You snore, she said, matter-of-factly but to my ear an accusation.