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rnoon. He reached toward the sound in the darkened room with eyes closed, cursin
g the world. “Oh yeah, I took a bunch of sleeping pills,” he remembered: “Daniel
le is gone!”
The call was from her. She was at Dulles Airport near Washington, DC.
She just wanted to let him know that the recipes for his favorite dishes were on
slips of paper in the back of the French cookbook on the second narrow shelf to
the right of the stove.
He intended to say thanks, wish her “bon voyage” or something but she hung up wi
th a stifled sob.
She was gone. The marriage had lasted eight months. A relief. What choice did he
have? Now he could go on with his life, find someone new. Maybe not on this col
d rainy day but when spring comes or the summer. He was sadly mistaken. His “bon
vivant” self never recovered. He had to grow old before he could develop a pers
pective on what happened; get rid of what he called “the loop.”
It all began in 1979.
Bernard, in his mid-forties at the time, was divorced. The two children from the
dissolved marriage, a boy and a girl, lived with his ex, a lawyer by profession
who managed to sting him comatose with the “division of assets” and a stiff chi
ld support.
He worked for a large export-import company, traveled around the world. That yea
r took him to Abidjan in the Ivory Coast. The deal he negotiated had to be quite
significant because it involved different governments in the region and the Wor
ld Bank. Bernard was well chosen for the job. He spoke good French and loved Afr
ica.
He stayed at the town’s most prestigious hotel, sitting under a beach umbrella o
n the patio during the two-hour siesta, sipping orange juice, reading newspapers
, going over business papers.
That’s where he spotted Danielle, swimming in the pool all by herself.
“She looked like a beautiful swan,” he liked to say when confronted with the rec
urring question in social settings: “So, tell us how the two of you had met?”
She was about ten years younger, French-born, also divorced; a 12-year old son l
iving in Strasbourg (with her parents, I presume) -- and beautiful, indeed.