It had been a month since I saw Louis at the exhibition night. He just vanished in the thin air. Was I imagining our encounter? Maybe he didn't exist, like Tyler Durden.
The spring had arrived. Flowers were blooming. Everyone was more hopeful. Hay fever was back too. My ears were itchy and I was sneezing nonstop when a text from Louis arrived. Maybe he woke up from the hibernation too.
Are you free tonight?
"Yeah." I sneezed.
Good. Let's go to see a concert tonight. Meet me at 7:30pm in front of Opéra Garnier
"Ok" I replied.
Concert in The Opéra Garnier. I had to dress up again. Why couldn't we just go to cinema for a movie as a date night, like normal people would do? I should go on Tinder next time to date some normal people. Or maybe they are creeps, they are not normal too. What is normal? Normal is boring.
Classical music Concert. Opéra Garnier. Code: long dress.
I dug out a navy dress from Zara in the closet. I had to iron it. It was 5 pm, I had to hurry up for the shower and makeup in order to arrive on time. Mr Grey was sitting on the toilet seat, quietly judging me.
"Where are you going to whore yourself again? You think you are in Pretty Woman?" Mr Grey looked from up and down.
"What? Mr Grey. It is the Opera House. I have to at least look decent."
"With you puffy eyes, your red nose and your non-stop sneezing, do you think they will let you in?"
"With Louis de Vallois standing next to me, they will even open all the doors for me," I replied.
"Crazy woman. I am going to my warm bed now. I hope they won't kick you out of Opera Garnier. I am not going to pick you home, because you know, I am a cat. And don't forget to leave me some food before you go." he meowed and left my tiny bathroom.
I took metro line 14 and exited at the Pyramides station. As I walked on Avenue de l'Opéra, Paris was in its usual mess. Cars were horning, people were zigzagging on the roads. Most of the people just finished their Saturday shopping trips and headed home, or they just started their Saturday night life in a restaurant or cinema. As I crossed Rue de la paix I could see the Colonne Vendôme on Place Vendôme, where you find all the Haute Joaillerie boutiques and their ateliers. This was literally the Parisian vault for the diamonds, gold, and precious stones. People would walk in the boutiques to spend hundreds of thousands euro to buy some coloured stones and solidified carbon.
I walked up the stairs of the main entrance. Louis was waiting for me. He was wearing a dark grey suits with white shirt today. He opened his arms to hug me and kiss me on my head.
"I am glad you can make it tonight. I was afraid it was too last minute and I had to attend this concert alone," he said, "You looked wonderful tonight."
"You know me, what will I do on Saturday night? Probably eat dinner and fall asleep at 10 pm in front of the TV. I might fall asleep during the concert though, elbow me to wake me up, ok?"
He laughed. "Same for me. I just arrived from Shanghai this morning."
"Why did you come then? Go home and get some sleep!"
"I don't want to stay at home and do nothing. It's Saturday night, I need to go out to change my mind and disconnect from the job."
We passed through the security checkpoint and entered the dimly lit entrance hall. We walked up the grand white marble staircase, which divided into two divergent flights of stairs that lead to the Grand Foyer. The pedestals of the staircase were decorated with female torchères. We continued to walk and entered the auditorium, which was a huge red room. In the middle of the ceiling there was a gigantic bronze and crystal chandeliers. On the ceiling there were painting depicting the opera scenes from 14 famous composers including Mozart, Beethoven, Verdi and Tchaikovsky. It was repainted in 1964. In the middle of the stage there was the huge velvet red curtain. The stage of Opéra Garnier was the largest in Europe. The whole auditorium reminded me of the Phantom of the Opera. Old, creepy, haunted by many ghosts from the past.
Louis walked straight to the front row and sat down.
"We should have a drink before the concert, but I was caught up with some work in my studio. I couldn't come out earlier, sorry," he said it in a low voice.
"It's alright."
"We will have a late dinner after the concert to make it up."
I nodded. I ate a salad and soup at home before I left. Concert-goers had dinner at 10 pm, I couldn't follow them. When I was hungry, I would be irritated and impatient. I could not sit in a concert for two hours like an obedient model student. When you were hungry, you would not be yourself, right?
The concert started shortly. They played pieces of Schumann, Chopin and Mozart. There were many moments I could not help but dozing off. It took me an enormous effort to stay awake.
At the end of the concert, a middle-aged tall man with a beautiful supermodel-like woman stopped to say hello to Louis. They look very familiar to me.
"Hello Charles! Hello Anna! Great to see you guys," Louis said cheerfully.
"Weren't you supposed to be in Asia?" Charles asked.
"Yeah, just arrived this morning."
Charles Portier, that was the step-brother of Aurélien. His wife Anna was a former supermodel, 12 years of his junior. It was his second marriage. She just gave birth to a baby boy two months ago, and she was back to her old slim and fit self, as if pregnancy did not happen. Maybe she faked the pregnancy and hired a surrogate mother? Conspiracy theorist would definitely think so. Charles looked very much like his father Arthur. Tall and slim, his hair was partially white. He had this quietly judgmental look on his face all the time. He was observing at me from head to toes.
"And this is?" He looked at me and asked.
"This is Delphine Pelletier," Louis answered.
"Hello, nice to meet you," I said.
He ignored me and said to Louis, "You certainly have a wide range of taste in women. Well, have a nice evening. See you next week!" He held his wife's hand and walked away.
I was very surprised how different Charles and Aurélien were. I hadn't met him in person in the past. I certainly did not expect him to be that rude and arrogant, especially his father, Aurélien and Maxime were very polite and civilized to everyone.
"He could be an asshole sometimes," Louis said.
"Most of the time, would be more precise. Wow, what did I do to make him dislike me so much? Because I was not a supermodel?" I just laughed it off. I wasn't mad, really.
"He is not the best judge for women either. He was just into one kind : supermodels."
"Was he rude to everyone who works for him?"
He put on a faint smile and said, "People who met him face to face are usually Directors or VP, they were not the nicest people in the company either."
"Right, I forgot, only the psychopaths can be the top executives, because they have no empathy and they have a very high tolerance of stress. They are all cold-blooded, heartless and cruel," I replied.
"CEO with a heart cannot make the company successful."
"Earning the top 1 % salary doesn't give them the right to be disrespectful and imperious. How hard it is to be civilized and decent!"
"Well, being extremely wealthy means nobody will take you seriously. If you want the respect from the others, just work hard and be successful."
"Do you truly think that? That he worked hard to be where he is now? He was just lucky to be the son of a billionaire. On the day he was born, he was entitled to take over the his dad's company and inherit billion of dollars one day. He didn't need to work hard on anything and he would be the CEO of any company his dad owned. The only thing he worked really hard is to stay alive, after his dad's death he will own half of France. Ordinary people who are more intelligent than him and work very hard might take the whole life to earn what he makes in one morning. The least thing Charles can do is just to be decent to other people!" I said angrily.
"You know it is not easy to be a CEO, not everyone can do it."
"Well, I am sure many people can do a better job than him, unfortunately not everyone can be Arthur Portier's son. If Charles was born in an ordinary family, he would probably be a middle-management manager of a small company for his whole life. He was so rude that nobody liked to work with him. He would never get the promotion. With his tiny salary he could not even afford to live in Paris."
"I honestly would love to see this alternate universe myself. Life is not fair. Enough talking about him, how about we discuss where shall we go for dinner?"
"Louis, I had dinner already. I think I will just head home now."
"Come on, don't let him ruin our night. That is not fair," he protested.
"Life is not fair, get over it!" I replied calmly.
As I walked home, I couldn't help but thinking back our conversation. People like Charles, Louis or Aurélien could never understand how ordinary people struggle in their daily life. Wealthy men think the others are poor just because they are lazy. They have no empathy to the suffering of the others. They did not realize that they themselves have access to all the material resources and social networks to become who they are now, while poor people did not even dare to dream, no matter how hard they work. Their only goal was probably to have money for tomorrow's dinner, or pay the rent on time. 'Dreaming of going to Harvard, stop the madness and find a minimum wage job once you graduate high school, son! Because I will never pay for your bullshit dream.' That's the reality, that's the real life, bills and rents to pay, suburban trains to catch, just live paycheque to paycheque, stop dreaming, there is no tomorrow. We are just one paycheque away from being homeless.
Look at me. I went to the most prestigious business school of France. All I could afford was a studio which took one third of my salary, with my dad as my guarantor or the landlord would not rent it to me. After I bought my Picard frozen food and Persil detergent, I barely have money left. Oh, and the Royal Canin cat food for Mr Grey took another 40 euro from me. I had to put my bonus aside as the wardrobe fund, so I could buy a fancy gown to go to the fancy events. Even with the employee discount those gowns still cost me an arm.
Dream high and aim big? All I wish was to have a closed bedroom apartment so my bedsheets would not smell like my dinner.
When I arrived home, I received a text from Louis.
I don't understand why did you get mad tonight. It was not our fault that we were born in a wealthy family. It is what it is, we did not choose it. How about we start over our date another night?
I was in no mood arguing with him. I just replied, "Don't take it too personal. I am sure that you are not an asshole like Charles, or are you? Good night."
I should stop dating men from the other world. We would never understand each other.
Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus. Rich Men? They are from Pluto. Cold-hearted and distant from everyone. They lost contact with earth long time ago.