Free Juliet Was a Surprise by Gaston Bill

more explanation is needed. Look at me. Now look at Juliet. Even in a hospital bed, Juliet has me beat. Even now she has someone in there tending her hair, as it were.

Tumpadabump
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    C hantal stops the taxi five blocks early, wanting to walk. Actually wanting not to walk, wanting this not to happen at all, this final dispersing of the will. She has not been this far downtown in months and she hates it. She believes she probably always has, the soulless glass towers and banal exhaust fumes. She wants home and its grand stone buildings, each as ripe with odd spirit as a human being; she wants the Seine’s good stink.
    But there is only today. With the doling out of Bill’s assets, maybe he will exist a little less. Maybe this will help clear her head. Dr. Michel said that today’s meeting “might unstick the glue. It might trip up the rhythm.” Those were his words. Also, “Maybe he’ll stop seeking your attention.” Dr. Michel was a bit of a caricature getting her to come here today, excited and gesticulating to shoo her from his office, Go! Go!
    She glances up to the green glass tower, stomach hollowing. Bill’s son, Cameron, will be here. She has met him many times, including Christmas dinner twice. It was not terrible. She would watch him, civil in his upright posture, wrestling intelligently with himself, trying to get on with this Frenchwoman, only ten years older than him, this salope who had displacedhis mother. But now here she is getting more money than him, much more, and even to her this feels not right. The condo she is fine with—it is her home. She is also getting the Porsche, which she has not yet driven. But then she is getting the insurance money, which for an accidental death is exactly one million dollars. Cameron gets two hundred and fifty thousand, un peu excessif for a twenty-four-year-old aimless kid, but nothing to replace a father, and not as much as she is getting, which is the point. She who came along and broke up a family, who was married to him a mere three years. And in their country not much longer than that. Cameron’s mother is getting nothing. Bill composed the will and allowed no grey.
    Today Chantal wants to tell him, she wants to say to Cameron that she did not expect this money. She wants to say how much she loved his father. She needs him to believe her grief. Mostly she wants to tell him—yes—how bizarrely Bill died. And explain that an emergency can be endless. That sound can become a parasite.
    She reaches the building. In Paris they would have demonstrated against this green atrocité . Only two people have recognized her on her five-block walk. That quizzical stare— Now, who …?—before they realize she is Metro’s Meteorologist. “In the flesh” is the expression. Her apparently famous cheekbones. Her “European flair,” whatever that is. She suspects it is just her accent. To find flair in imperfect speech is to infantilize, but so be it. She suspects accents are sexy in men because they suggest exotic knowledge, but in women they suggest vulnerability. It took her some months to learn how not to call him Beel . In any case, as Bill cheerfully pointed out, her careeronscreen was going to have its superficiality. It does disturb her, being recognized. Though she always smiles back, for her career. She has not given up her dream of serious journalism, of anchoring, despite the bad signals she has had. Bill called these the ghosts of freedom fries.
    She pushes through the tower’s revolving door, a seemingly playful technology that unnerves her, but once through she enjoys the cool, cleaner air (Bill’s “corporate air”) of the atrium, its vast, alert space and the spatter of the gauche fountain. It does clear her head for a moment … then Bill comes back.
    In fact they met here, at that party on the top floor. The concierge at the central desk offers his “Hello,