patate
Élodie came at two with her brother. Packing Patate's things took ten minutes. Packing Patate took forty: under the bed, behind the fridge, the bathtub. Her brother went to return the car and Élodie stayed. She'd take a taxi.
We made tea. It was her first time here since December and she walked around touching things, the doorframe, the tiles by the stove that never matched.
I played her the clips, all of them, in order. She listened with her hand over her mouth. After "only the cat" she laughed, once, and said sorry.
Then she said, "That's what I used to hear." Both voices, the low one too. One night in October she sat up and asked who I was talking to, and I answered her, very clearly, still asleep: "She can hear us."
She never told me because it sounded crazy, and because by then she was leaving anyway.
We ordered pizza. We talked about her new job, and Félix's new girlfriend, who we both like, and her sister's dog. It was really nice. At nine her taxi came, and she carried the cat basket down the twenty-three steps with Patate yelling the whole way.
The flat is very quiet.