Chapter 11
Xavier decided to fly to Paris to get the papers he needed, in the interest of time.
He didn’t want to drive fourteen hours. It took too long and was too tiring.
He drove to the airport, bought a round-trip ticket to Orly, and flew instead.
He’d be back in Biarritz at five o’clock, in time to drop off a copy of the papers to his partner.
It was a list of the permits they needed, and when they had to submit the applications for them.
He had forgotten the list in his suit jacket the last time he’d been to Paris, and he didn’t want to ask Brigitte for it.
His new hotel project was none of her business.
He had informed her of its existence out of courtesy to her, and she had been nasty about it.
All he wanted her to know was that he wasn’t investing their communal money in it.
He’d done his duty to her. He’d rather fly to Paris to get the list himself.
He could no longer even consider her a friend, she was so hostile to him. And she was his wife.
—
The plane landed on time at Orly, and he took a cab into the city. He had three hours until his return flight to Biarritz, which gave him enough time to stop for lunch if he wanted to.
He used the code to get into the building, and ran up the stairs to the apartment.
He knew Brigitte would be at work then, in the middle of the day, he didn’t have to see her, so he didn’t warn her he was coming.
She would just be unpleasant or ignore his call.
He unlocked the door and walked into the apartment.
He was wearing jeans and running shoes, and an old battered leather jacket, since he didn’t expect to see anyone.
He stopped for a minute to glance at the mail and see if there was anything for him, and saw that Brigitte hadn’t bothered to send several envelopes that had come for him, and while he was going through them, he heard a moan from the bedroom, a scream, and then a lion’s roar.
The sounds were frightening and sounded like a wounded animal, and without thinking, he rushed into the bedroom to see what it was, and found himself staring at two bodies intertwined, clearly in full orgasm as the man gave a shout, and a woman’s head popped up from the bed and stared at him.
It was Brigitte in bed with a man. All Xavier could see of him were his arched back and his buttocks, as Brigitte let out a bloodcurdling scream, not of ecstasy but of terror.
Xavier stared at her in disbelief. The man turned, sensing danger of some kind, and Xavier recognized the medical director of the hospital, Philippe Prudeau.
There was a mad scramble of legs and arms and sheets for a minute, as the medical director stood in all his glory trying to cover himself and Brigitte pulled a sheet around her and leapt out of bed.
“What are you doing here?” she shouted at him.
“It’s my apartment,” he reminded her. “This is quite a scene.” Xavier was shaking, but he didn’t show it.
He was as shocked as they were, and he looked straight at Brigitte.
“So is this what it’s all about?” he asked her.
“Him?” He pointed vaguely at Philippe without looking at him.
“Why didn’t you just say so, instead of tearing me to shreds?
” Philippe Prudeau was exactly the kind of man Xavier had always said Brigitte needed, another doctor like her.
And as the head of the hospital, he had the prestige she wanted.
Even if he made less money than Xavier had at the height of his career, he certainly made more than Xavier did now.
Philippe was married too, but had had affairs all over the hospital for years.
Xavier wondered how long the affair with Brigitte had gone on.
Maybe since the early days of the pandemic when she was at the hospital night and day, and slept there for weeks at a time.
The same time that the start-up had failed and she’d lost all respect for Xavier, and had been tearing him limb from limb ever since.
This certainly explained some of the viciousness, if she felt confident in the affair with Philippe.
Xavier doubted he would get divorced for her, but he didn’t care.
Philippe was hastily trying to get dressed in the corner, since Xavier was blocking the door to both the living room and the exit, and the bathroom.
Brigitte was cowering in the corner, trying to justify what she’d been doing.
The tiny bedroom gave none of them room to move freely, and the scene was potentially mortifying, except that when Xavier looked at his wife, he found that he had no pity for her and didn’t care what she said.
It might as well have been another language.
“How long has this been going on?” he asked both of them and neither answered.
Philippe put on his glasses and tried to look respectable, but his shirt was buttoned wrong, and hanging outside his trousers.
He normally looked pompous and dignified.
He was somewhere in his sixties and not a handsome man, but Brigitte was no beauty either.
And she looked genuinely frightened. She had just lost the use of all the threats and leverage she had used on him for three years.
Xavier pushed his way past Philippe, who shrank back, thinking Xavier was going to hit him.
He was in much better shape, and Xavier reached into the closet, located his suit, and took the list he wanted out of the inside pocket and backed away again.
“For what it’s worth, I think the two of you are pathetic and disgusting.
I expected better of you,” he said to Brigitte, “in exchange for thirty years of hell. I’ll let you know what I want to do about it, but I’ve got a plane to catch,” he said.
He strode out of the room and left the apartment, as Brigitte and Philippe stared at each other, and Xavier ran quickly down the stairs and out of the building.
He filled his lungs with fresh air, hailed a conveniently passing cab and asked to go to Orly.
He sat back against the seat, closed his eyes, and replayed the scene that had just happened.
It was like an unbelievable movie. It was so sordid, it was more embarrassing in memory even than when it had unfolded…
the sound of them coming when he had walked in on them, the look on Brigitte’s face when she saw him, the hatred still bright in her eyes even then, and more so, and Philippe attempting vainly to regain his dignity.
There was no doubt that Xavier was the winner of the ugly scene, in spite of being the cuckolded husband.
He wasn’t sure yet what he would do about it, but Brigitte had lost all her power in a single instant.
The door to his prison cell was wide open now.
He just hadn’t decided yet what form that would take, and how it would translate to real life.
There was no way Brigitte could recover from it and retain a shred of the power she had wielded over him for years, particularly since his fall from grace.
But the tumble she had taken now was fatal.
Xavier would find his footing again somehow, with the hotel or something else, but Brigitte would never be more than scum in his eyes now, a dishonored and dishonorable woman.
He’d been right. She wanted a doctor, and now she had one. But she no longer had Xavier.
He paid the driver, adding a big tip, and wandered into the airport.
He bought a cup of coffee at a coffee stand, thought about having a drink, but didn’t want one.
He wanted to hold on to the moment cold sober and decide what the best plan of action was.
If he wanted it, morally he had just won his freedom, but he wanted a clean sweep this time, he just wasn’t sure yet what that would be.
She had proven herself to be a liar and a cheat and had punished him mercilessly for his losses.
What she had lost was Xavier’s feelings of remorse for his losses, his compassion for her, his willingness to be generous with her.
All bets were off. He wouldn’t give her a penny more than he had to.
She had lost her bargaining power along with the last shred of his respect.
He didn’t bother to eat lunch, he wasn’t hungry, and within an hour Brigitte was sending him frantic texts that they needed to talk, that it wasn’t what it looked like, which made him laugh out loud.
There were seven texts from her and he didn’t bother to read them all, the first few were enough.
He was going to call his lawyer, but he needed time to absorb what he had seen.
It felt like both a victory and a humiliation at the same time.
She preferred overweight, balding, unattractive Philippe in bed to Xavier. It was the final blow.
He took his seat and sat staring out the window.
He watched as the plane took off, and he saw Paris shrink beneath him.
He wasn’t going to come back for a while, and he needed to figure out what he was going to do before he contacted Brigitte, and there was his daughter to think about too.
But she wasn’t a child anymore, and she had grown up in a war zone, so the final chapter wouldn’t come as a surprise to her.
She was almost thirty years old. There was so much to think about, his head was exploding, and he still felt dazed when they landed.
He walked to the garage and got his car, and sat silently in the car for a minute.
His head was still aching, but his heart was numb.
The tawdry scene at the apartment hadn’t touched it.
He drove to the hotel then, to meet his partner and give him the list of permits they needed.
He was very quiet at the meeting with the contractor, which his partner, Pascal, noticed, and looked at him afterward, concerned.