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He sits across from Andi at the same restaurant, the same table beneath a night sky that hangs a moon a mere 48 hours older than when he last watched her silhouetted against it. Across the waters and away from the wreckage of the Glass Onion that smears trails of smoke over the stars.
A small candle burns on the table, casting a glow that cannot compare to the triumph on Andi's face. She has achieved exactly what she set out to do for her sister. Before, when they were solemnly reviewing their plans, her expression was shrouded in doubt over her own capabilities – and now, her entire world blazes bright. She leaves the wig on the table, burnished gold in the night. Nods at Blanc, and then departs, the white fabric of her sister's clothes fluttering in the warmth of the breeze which flows from the conflagration that is her revenge.
His world, however, will feel neither bright nor warm until he returns to his home, and is in his refuge surrounded by his books and the sounds of his partner's humming. The bathroom is the farthest point in the house from the kitchen, and Phillip's colorful cursing is barely discernable while he fills their house with the smells of something freshly cooked.
Phillip will call him into the kitchen. Blanc will emerge in his bathrobe and behave as if it's perfectly normal for a person to have spent the past three hours in the bathtub, surrounded by creature comforts, because it is. They'll sit across from one another, and for one moment the muted, stormy gris walls around him will slide away to pink and yellow – Nadine's favourite pink kissing Blanc's favourite yellow, with teal cupboards that they chose together.
There is no preventing the guilty dissonance that needles at his soul, accusing himself for being able to feel so content in a kitchen after what he did in another kitchen decades ago. What he shouted to a woman whom he'd promised to cherish so long as they both would live.
Your brain is sick.
She had done everything expected of her in their little corner of the world, hemmed in by all the expectations of society to be his dutiful wife, to keep house and feed him and their daughters. And when she had been given that one outlet to express herself, dangerous as it was, he had condemned her and her cooking, and walked away.
He wonders if she would be proud of what Andi had cooked up for Miles.
The skies were muted grey the day that Blanc had chased after a woman onto Phillip's bus, just to hand her one of her gloves that she'd dropped in the street.
What a peculiar person, Philip had thought to himself as he'd closed the doors behind the man, and then proceeded to fall a little bit in love.
Would you like me to stop the bus? He had asked Blanc, given that the other man hadn't intended on boarding it to begin with, and Phillip always planned his routes with some padded time at each station for unforeseen circumstances.
That's alright. A voice with as much treacle as his own demurred, and Blanc took a seat facing Phillip's seat, which was lofted further up from the floor than Blanc's own.
If you're going to stay, Phillip said politely, then you'll need to pay the meter.
Blanc did, and rode the entire length of the route with him. He wasn't the most sparkling conversationalist, but he was observant and attentive, and gave no impression that he was a highly sought after private investigator with a dark past.
Phillip has never heard the full story from Blanc himself, about why his partner steps into every kitchen as if it's a graveyard. Blanc's older child has told him about the cause of her mother's death, and had Phillip not known the sort of trouble that Blanc got himself into at that point, he would have doubted what she'd told him as a fanciful and macabre lie.
Dying after ingesting a concerning concoction of pizza-topped hot dog pepper root beer soaked fritos-and-raisins mayonnaise is about as absurd and harrowing as being handed a bomb by a waiter, Phillip imagines. Not that Blanc sees it that way. Phillip certainly wouldn't try to talk Blanc out of the atonement that fuels his work, because he understands how necessary it is to value the work one does. And he for one gets to draw a pension as a bonus.
There are no bonuses for Blanc built into his work, but Phillip can make sure that when Blanc comes home, it is to a hearty meal set out on their balcony where Blanc's daughters have arrived after receiving Phillip's call. And Phillip will pretend not to understand, because he truly believes that it is something that cannot be understood unless it was witnessed, when Blanc's daughters hug him by his shoulders and needle their father, chiding looks but warm voices when they remind him:
"You saved us from the overnight salad."