Chapter Text
Every worker's dream is to sleep a little longer and be able to leave work early. That's what Ophélie was thinking as she got off the train.
She was in a bad mood. Her hair was not in a good way, even though she washed and dried it as she always did. Her head was throbbing from a bad night's sleep, but that was her own fault. She spent the night looking for houses and apartments to rent in Florence, Italy.
She woke up late and had to run to pick up a suit from the dry cleaners, which was probably worth more than her salary, and then catch the train.
She really wanted to nap for at least 20 minutes, but she had to get off at the next station and run to get to the Esplanade to catch a bus to Rue Saint-Dominique. If she was lucky, she would be there in 15 minutes.
She was very well paid, but not well enough to spend more time on public transport than anywhere else.
The most humiliating part of working for someone and not being your own boss is not being late or spending more time than you'd like on public transportation, but not being appreciated for all your hard work.
- You're late.
- I know. I have a watch.
- I wonder what time you would be if you didn't have one.
Ophélie would love her job if she had a nicer underling. The pay was great, but maybe even that wasn't enough to mitigate his terrible personality.
The underling in question was Thorn, a famous pianist, who in Ophélie's opinion was not so good as to be given such an adjective. He played on black and white keys in a certain order that was written on a piece of paper in a language as strange as Russian.
When she arrived at his apartment, a beautiful French Second Empire-style building in a well-located neighborhood in the 7th arrondissement, she found him sitting in the living room, cross-legged, irritated. When she started working for him six years ago, she was given a specific warning: never, under any circumstances, be late
The reason? Phone calls.
- I went to pick up your suit from the dry cleaners. - She lifted the hanger of the garment protector with her index and middle finger.
- Finally! The concert is tomorrow and for a moment I thought you weren't going to pick it up. - Thorn got up from the couch where he was sitting and walked over to her to pick up his suit - The phone rang five times and my email inbox was full.
Emails were another thing he hated answering.
- I am sorry. I'll return the calls and answer the emails. - Ophélie quickly hurried to take off her coat and change her shoes for slippers. It was totally forbidden to enter the apartment with the shoes that were being worn on the street. Thorn had a mania for cleanliness and would not allow dirt from the street to be brought into the house.
- No need, I've already done that. I'm playing at the Hotel Matignon early next month for diplomatic guests of the government. The rest of the calls were nonsense. - He replied, turning towards the stairs, probably to go back to his office, but looked at Ophélie again - Don't be late any more. I don't pay you to have to answer calls and reply to emails.
She was left alone in the room.
𝘐 𝘩𝘰𝘱𝘦 𝘢 𝘱𝘪𝘢𝘯𝘰 𝘱𝘭𝘶𝘮𝘮𝘦𝘵𝘴 𝘧𝘳𝘰𝘮 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦𝘸𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘭𝘢𝘯𝘥𝘴 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘰𝘯 𝘵𝘰𝘱 𝘰𝘧 𝘩𝘪𝘮.
Ophélie was something between a personal assistant and a housekeeper.
She took care of the house, answered phone calls, answered emails, shopped, organized trips and accompanied Thorn to public places when he needed her. The only thing she didn't do was cook. She was terrible when it came to cooking. The last time she tried to prepare something she blew up a kitchen. So she was forbidden to enter kitchens, but that wouldn't last long.
She was ironing Thorn's suit for a concert he was attending the next day at the London Symphony Orchestra. Luckily she wouldn't have to accompany him, which meant she would have a day off.
You could research more about rental houses and universities in Italy.
She had spent the last few years putting money together so she could invest in her own education. No one believed she wanted to do gastronomy, even more so in Italy, for two reasons: Ophélie couldn't cook and she lived in France, which was considered the cradle of world gastronomy. But Ophélie was tired of living in France and of the French. She wanted to do and see things other than French.
And she wanted to do gastronomy because of a dream she had a few years ago.
Did it seem strange to want to do something that she wasn't relatively good at just because she had a dream? Yes, but she took dreams seriously, plus it would be great to know how to cook for real, so she decided to be what she wanted, she just needed money.
The latter was another problem.
Leaving home at a young age makes you have weird choices, and by weird she meant "Do I buy that nice skirt I saw in a store window or do I buy fresh vegetables?"
The second option was not chosen and she spent almost a month eating only instant noodles.
There was no point in earning a good salary when you lived in a world-famous capital city with absurd rents, an appreciating currency, expensive clothes and exorbitant food.
It was like painting good pictures, but with no one to buy them.
At least she wouldn't have to dance in nightclubs at dawn again, which was a good start.
Next year she would probably move to Florence and enroll in the Cordon Bleu School of Culinary Arts, which had nothing to do with the Cordon Bleu in France. And as if it couldn't get any better, she was going to resign.
Finally, after six years of scraping together enough money, she would resign. The last few years had probably been the worst of her life.
Maybe it was a bit of an exaggeration on her part, but working for the most famous and grumpy pianist in Paris was not easy. She was proud of herself for not resigning earlier, but even if she didn't want to she needed to keep her job.
Living alone wasn't easy, and with a bad job it was even harder. If she didn't pay her rent properly she would be evicted by the Landlord and would have to move back in with her parents. At the time, before she had a stable job, she was almost, almost, resorting to prostitution, because living in the capitalist system was not a thousand wonders, until she heard that a famous pianist, who she had no idea who he was at the time because she was too busy staying alive to know who the pianists of Paris were, was looking for someone, a woman, who would take care of the apartment in which she lived, answer calls and answer emails. She didn't think twice.
She made an appointment and went to see if the pianist would like her enough to hire her.
Well, if Ophélie had been employed up to that point then it meant that he had been pleased enough not to fire her, up to that point at least.
She was ironing one of the sleeves of his jacket when she heard footsteps on the stairs.
- Ophélie?
- Near the balcony.
A tall, blond figure appeared in the doorway between one corridor and another. I didn't like him, but I couldn't call him ugly.
- Did you get my shoe from the cobbler? - Thorn asked.
Ophélie narrowly missed dropping the iron on the floor.
She had completely forgotten to pick up her shoes, and the cobbler's shop was already closed. She almost hit her own hand on her forehead for being so stupid.
The good thing was that she didn't have to break the news to Thorn, because he understood that she had forgotten her shoes.
She would pick them up the next day, but that wasn't possible. Thorn would be leaving shortly to catch the plane to London.
In the end, Thorn left for London without his shoes, and Ophélie thought that maybe she didn't need to resign, because Thorn would fire her as soon as possible if she continued to make mistakes.