The Butler(30)

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    Olivia met Joachim at the new apartment on Monday. He was overseeing the installation of the Ikea kitchen. The workmen were making an appalling mess, but they seemed to know what they were doing. They were leaving fingerprints everywhere, and she cringed when she saw the chaos in the kitchen.

“Don’t worry. It’ll be perfect when they’re finished. Their installers are magicians,” he reassured her. It was too soon to tell, and she was interviewing three cleaning women that morning. Two of them were very young, and only had short-term references. The third one was slower, older, but had worked for twenty years for the same woman who had recently died. So she had no reference, but she was immaculate and Olivia liked her. She looked trustworthy, and as though she knew her job. She was fifty years old and had worked for the Plaza Athénée before her long-term job. Olivia’s instincts told her she was the right one, and she hired her, to start immediately. They had managed with Alphonsine’s minimal English and Olivia showing her what needed to be done. And the agency had provided translations of her references. Olivia wanted the whole apartment scrubbed before she moved in. Alphonsine promised to start the next day. Olivia told Joachim over lunch that she had hired her.

“You didn’t like the younger ones?” he questioned her.

“Neither of them has stayed in a job longer than six months and that didn’t look good to me. Alphonsine worked for twenty years for the same woman. She just died so she has no reference, but she looked spotless and seemed serious.” He nodded.

    By the end of the day, the kitchen was fully installed, and looked perfect other than the mess everywhere, which the new maid could deal with the next day. Joachim was very pleased with the kitchen installation, and Olivia was happy with it too, and liked the way it looked. The whole kitchen was lacquered white.

He drove her back to the seventh arrondissement, and then left for the night. He said he had promised to make dinner for his mother.

“She doesn’t eat well if she doesn’t have anyone to eat with. She says it bores her.”

“My mother was that way too, and once her mind started slipping, she couldn’t remember if she had eaten or not. I had to have nurses for her eventually. Losing your mind is a terrible thing.” Olivia had noticed that he was cool with her when they met again on Monday. She wondered if her mention of his brother had made him retreat. She had inadvertently touched a nerve, but by the end of the day he had warmed up again.

“What did your mother do before that?” he asked her.

“She was a book editor. Eventually, she only edited one very famous author.” She looked out the window, thinking about George, and their cowardice at not telling her the truth before he died so she could speak to him about it, and his selfishness in taking over her mother’s life, stealing her youth, and feeding her addiction to him. She didn’t mention any of it to Joachim. He could sense there was more to the story. They each had their secrets. But they weren’t friends, or just a man and a woman. She was his employer, so different rules applied, and there were only certain questions one could ask. He had very careful boundaries, and never crossed them.



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    For the rest of the week, deliveries arrived. Her new bed came, they sent the old one to the owner’s storage and threw away the old mattress. Alphonsine cleaned the bathrooms and kitchen until they shone. She scrubbed the floors after the deliveries and used a special leather cream on the four vintage chairs. The new Ikea dining chairs improved the dining room, and made the existing table look better. And the coffee table from the flea market looked handsome in the living room. The Ikea cupboards they’d bought turned the second bedroom into an efficient dressing room and storage space.

Joachim hung the three new paintings she had bought, and spent a whole day installing light fixtures. He was good with his hands and was undaunted by anything they needed to do. And Olivia was thinking about shipping the few pieces she’d kept of her mother’s furniture to Paris from the storage facility where she had sent them. She didn’t need them in New York, and she thought they’d look well in the new apartment. She gave Joachim the relevant information to research the shipping. There was nothing he couldn’t do.

Within two weeks the apartment was well set up, and livable. She began packing what she had at the apartment on the quai Voltaire, and Joachim moved it all to the new place, and she gave up the temporary apartment a week early.

She bought fresh flowers and set them around the new apartment and unpacked all her things. Joachim asked her if she wanted a safe, and she hadn’t thought of it, and told him it was a good idea. He arranged to have one installed, but they were booked solid for two weeks. They said there had been a number of burglaries in the sixteenth recently, and the demand for home safes had increased. Olivia didn’t own any major jewelry, just a few pieces that had been her mother’s, and she was going to use the safe for them, and whatever documents she brought with her.

    She’d been sleeping at the new apartment for a week when she decided to get out of her work clothes and put on a decent outfit for a change. She put on black slacks, a white cashmere sweater, and high heels. Joachim noticed it but didn’t comment. It wasn’t his place. She was a strikingly pretty woman, and close to his age, which made it all the more inappropriate for him to remark on her looks. He knew his place and he always respected the limits. He saw her walk into her bedroom and come back with a strange look on her face, as though puzzled by something.