Monday Mourning

Pushing back from the table, he moved off down the hall.

As I cleared dishes I could hear the rhythm of the conversation. The words were muffled, but the cadence suggested agitation.

In moments, he was back.

“Sorry, babe. I’ve got to go.”

“You’re leaving?” I was stunned.

“It’s a thankless business.”

“We haven’t eaten your pastry.”

The Irish blues would not meet mine.

“I’m sorry.”

A peck on the cheek.

The chef was alone with her uneaten surprise.

4

I AWOKE FEELING DOWN AND NOT KNOWING WHY.

Because I was alone? Because my only bed partner was a big white cat? I hadn’t planned my life that way.

Then my forever-hubby shared Mr. Happy with a real estate agent.

And I enjoyed my own little fling with the bottle.

Whatever, as Katy would say. Life marches.

Outside, the weather was gray, blustery, and uninviting. The clock said seven-ten. Birdie was nowhere to be seen.

Pulling off my nightshirt, I took a hot shower, then blow-dried my hair.

Then I remembered.

Ryan’s hasty retreat. The look in his eyes.

Jamming my toothbrush back into its charger, I wandered to the bedroom and stared at the frosted window. Crystalline spirals and snowflake geometrics. So delicate. So fragile.

Like the fantasy I’d constructed of a life with Ryan?

I wondered again what was going on.

And why I was acting the featured ditz in a Doris Day comedy.

“Screw this, Doris,” I said aloud.

Birdie looked up, but kept his thoughts to himself.

“And screw you, Andrew Ryan.”

Returning to the bathroom, I layered on the Revlon.

The Laboratoire de Sciences Judiciaires et de Médecine Légale occupies the top two floors of the Édifice Wilfrid-Derome, a T-shaped building in the Hochelaga-Maissoneuve district, just east of Centre-ville. The Bureau du Coroner is on the eleventh floor, the morgue is in the basement.

At eight-fifteen the twelfth floor was filling with white-coated men and women. Several greeted me as I swiped my security pass, first at the lobby entrance, then at the glass doors separating the medicolegal wing from the rest of the T. I returned their “bonjour”s and continued to my office, not in the mood to chat. I was still upset from last night’s encounter with Ryan. Make that nonencounter.