read a text showing she's guilty. It's in Chinese. All offices worlwide listen to her saying she's ashamed of what she has done. A woman with a tchador laughs under the grey fabric. A man shows is hand and use it as a gun, with a bullet.
A little girl says to her to catch a butterfly.
She sleeps but her body moves while she dreams.
The door bell rings. It's the political team working on the other floor checking she's ok.
They look at her weirdly. The windows are wide opened. One of them says she should clean her face. In the bathroom, she sees dark circles under her eye, due to the mascara. Her hair are all over the place.
During a few days, she has a strange way to stare at people, as an animal in front of hunt men.
Paris 2015 , Mars
Morphine
I'm sick. So sick. I will be dead within a few weeks. When. I don't know. I loose my mind many times in the day. The nurses say that I talk a lot during my dreams. I was always very careful to be under control, all my life. Shy as a child, "réservé" as a teen ager (and all girls thought I was smart because I wasn't talking to much, somehow mysterious), and "bysantin" as an adult and leader in my field.
I'm concerned to say something that could be used in tabloids, or just to be embarrassed. I don't know them and they look at me as they do. Their smile and glaze at me make me think they know things they shouldn't. One of them is wearing a heavy make up, another one is wearing Angel, I hate that fragrance, it smells barba-papa like in cheap fests.
I feel naked in my silky pajama, in my prestigious suite royale, ready to die. This hospital is in the middle of trees, I can see them by my window, I never looked at them when I was doing my annual check up in this luxury suburb. Life goes fast.
I didn't ask myself any question before that day. I remember, it was because of my divorce, I didn't want to sell my boat, and came to my bank to borrow a big amount of money. They were very polite and underlined that my career was a garantee, the only risk they had was my health, but as a sportsman and healthy business man, the complete check up was a routine. Results came back with something that made the doctor call me.
I remember the tone of his voice.
The brunette nurse is sweet, beautiful lips and skin, I ask myself if she's naked under the white uniform as in series and movies.
I was so much loving women. All women. Any women. Tall, small, girly, smart, assertive, fresh and young… I love to look at them when making love.
The tiny Tina, smelling the watermelon. The big party in Shanghai with all this beautiful women around me, impressed by my being a leader of this worlwide luxury brand. We had great nights, in plenty of differents clubs and vip rooms. Exciting and suprising places. Surrounded by skins and lips.
It took so much of my live. Travels all over the world, Bangkok is hot and wet, Shanghai is lively and polluted, Sao Paulo is gigantic, Moscow is warm if you know some people, Tokyo is refined, Séoul is trendy and tech, Dubai is like being nowhere on the planet, New York is my prefered. Meetings and meetings.
I enjoyed it. A form of power. How people stare at you when you enter a room, anywhere in the world. Any room, wether the federation of luxury companies, with all this men in grey suits and nice think silky tie looking at me, as a big boss, someone they would like to be, the big brand, a worlwide one, one hundred and thirty five countries, double digit growth, an amazing margin that makes all Universities work business cases inspired by what we have accomplished…
The look at the people in my executive comittee, and in country meetings, business review and marketing plan, I was the one to decide, they were the one to be scared, scared of their future, their earnings, their promotion, their business plan, their forecasts, what I was thinking about them.
And in the flagships, our free standing stores. All salers in lines to welcome me, the staff scared about what I could think about the windows showing the latest collection, if they had followed the guidelines, scared about their figures if anything was less than double digit, knowing I would question their performance and compare to other stores.
Not mentioning nights and parties, "J'étais le roi du monde." All this asian girls thinking I was the king of luxury, the path for a new heaven. With waiters and restaurant owners offering extra services, to make sure I was happy and I would come back in another trip. Rio. Osaka. Buenos Aires. Cape Town.
Barbara left me. The woman of my life as I said when I married her for the second time. Barbara played piano, my prefered one was the Beethoven part, especially when I was tired. She didn't drink any drop of alcohol. That look of her when I took a cigar and a whisky. She was the one defining our holidays. Bahamas. Maldives. Caraibes. She liked the sun and I accepted it as they were destination where I could take a break and enjoy the blue of the water, the softness of the sand in my hand, the green of the golf, as you can believe it, even when the place lacks of water, by miracle, where there is money, there is water.
Barbara was always tanned. She loves scarfs and bags. "My It bags" as she used to say. Pink, yellow, whites, python, crocodiles, she liked colors. And shoes. Plenty of shoes, Christian Louboutin was her prefered designer.
Long legs, red stilletos. I liked her being beautiful, always perfect, the hair, the nails, from head to toes, beautiful toes, she cared of herself. That was her job, and to play piano and organise our diners.
She left me. I couldn't believe it. For a millionnaire. Living in London. A three year love story. She wanted to say something to me but I was always in a plane. I think she was waiting to have a good lawyer to rob my money, the max she could have, whatever the millionnaire of her.
Two children, she left them to me because she left. I struggled for that. She abandoned me for another man, I had to made her pay for it in a way or another. That was the best means, she loves her children, she lost them.
I used the fact that she left without us being aware of where she was.
They're back to her now, with this new guy as a second father, raising them.
It hurts.
At the same time, I lost my job. My shareholder was upset by my success. Thirty years of career and these amazing results.
I was the guy in charge of the foundation, I hate foundations and charities. I hate rich people trying to help the world to be better. They're selfish, they don't care one minute of what happens to the planet or human kind, they just want another stage, where they can shine again and again. To see the respect and the admiration in the eyes of others. It's pathetic. I'm sick, I can't breath… Perhaps I should call the nurse to have more morphine, I feel the pain, but if they drug me, I can't think, it's like dreaming awake, and I loose time, my precious time before disparearing. I try to makes things right. At least, to sort out my life, what was important or not.
I want to shout. I want to live. I'm fifty six. It's too early to die. Why me ?
I've lost fifteen kilograms. I refuse anyone knowing me to come and see me. I want them to remember of me as the king of the world, the man they envied, not a ghost waiting to die. I'm so vulnerable now. The other morning, I was crying. The blond nurse saw me and gave me a glass of water. I did avoid her eyes.
Will my children remember me ?
My first marriage was a disaster but my children are smart and assertive. Nicolas and Armelle. They're adult now. I don't remember a lot of their childhood. If I believe their mother, I was never here. I remember me offering ET puppet to Nicolas, and a Barby to Armelle, I didn't purchase them, my assistant did, as I had forgotten coming back from Los Angeles.
They were so happy. I lied to them, I said I took them at the airport and came back home directly. Instead I took a shower at my office. I saw Sophie at that time, blond and long hair, gracious neck, thin and nearly skinny. She liked to fuck standing up, never on a bed.
Armelle waited for me at her dance competition, I had a long meeting with our shareholder, and then I forgot to go as I was upset. I must say I had some failures as a dad.
I came to see Nicolas wh
en he played saucer. It was boring, and the fathers present were boring and stupid people. But I liked his face looking at me, he was proud and happy to see me.
What do they do in their life ? Armelle as a boyfriend, I don't even know him. I know that Nicolas is happy as a lawyer, and loves living in Berlin. Perhaps he's gay. Perhaps not. I don't know them very well indeed.
I remember one day saying to him : "Never put me in a retiring house, even an expensive one, it's awful, all this people, nasty and useless, avoid me that nightmare." It was not necessary to be frightened. Death has chosen to surprise me when I was not ready.
In the middle of a divorce, at the end of a brilliant career but without the new life beginning.
I could have done so many things. See my friends. Peter and Charles. Boys will be boys. They knew anything about me. The worst part too. They accepted me as I was. Insecured and childish, but in apparence, mastering life as a great cocktail party, you say hello to plenty of people with a smile, talk to a few of them, and with a drink in the hand, in preference champagne, you go from one group to another. "Would you excuse me. It was lovely to discuss with you. See you soon."
My father has died at eighty. I will be dead thirty years before him. I was always thinking he and my mother had a little life, peaceful,
On the top of the world Page 5
