In Over Her Head by Elsie Russell - Parnasse.com

up like storybook cottages with white picket fences and on to the Place
de la Concorde.
Back at the hotel, they collapsed together on the yellow
bedspread, and shut the light. Without the blinding chandelier, the
room assumed its hotel-ness, smelled like any old Marriott or Best
Western. Traffic noises filtered in from the busy Place de la Concorde,
but it could have been Boston or Helena, too. What she missed the
most were the birds around the pear tree in the mornings.
"I don't know, maybe we should just go back to New York. I
have an appointment with the grant board after New Year's, and I gotta
be there. What do you think? And Ula's got the perfect practice place
there. It's nice here and everything, but all we can expect from the
grownups is more trouble."
"Bene! I ask Ula tomorrow what she thinks."
"And since money is no problem, like you say, then you can
quit staying in these lobotomized hotel suites and get yourself a cool
bachelor pad around the corner from us, how's that sound?"
"Bachelor pad? I think we need to talk about this."
"I am so zonked, can it wait 'till tomorrow? I need a bath."
"I make it. Bubbles?"
"Yeah, lotsa bubbles."
It was already afternoon when she woke from endless
nightmares the next day, and he was already gone, having put up a do
not disturb sign on the door for her. But she got nowhere that day,
having fallen asleep at her desk and waking with a terrible taste in the
back of her throat, so she just stretched out on the bed for a minute or
two, but was asleep in less than that and only woke with the slam of the
door when Sandro blew in fuming.
"Do you know what he wants to do now? Have you been
asleep all day? Are you unwell?"
"Uh, no?"
"Do you know? So I talk with Ula about our New York plan,
and she is so happy! Then after lunch Dick comes to visit, and she tells
him! She tells him! So now, he says he is moving to New York. For his
new 'business.' Imagine."
"Why did you tell Ula? At least to keep it under wraps."
"Because I am an idiot, that's why! She was so excited she did
not think herself, and it had cascade effect! Of course he says he was
going to do this all along and suggested we all live together in a big loft
in Chelsea."
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