Agnes makes lunch

Agnes brought Frederick’s keys up to the lock of his door. She located the apartment key, opened the front door and walked in. Without Frederick with her, everything felt very different to her. She was aware of the silence and she was conscious of the fact that she was alone, surrounded by all his possessions.

She had a task to complete and she was anxious to get on with it but first of all she wanted to take this opportunity to look around, uninhibited; to just let her eyes go where they would without Frederick possibly observing her as she did.

She tried to imagine Frederick within the framework of his life; a single man with a good many interests and no doubt, many friends and past lovers. Had he committed to remaining a bachelor? He seemed very settled in this singular life. Perhaps all he needed was already here, she pondered. He was comfortable. He had his books. He had sufficient technology to keep up with associates and friends. Every last chair or table or painting had been chosen and distributed around the apartment solely for his pleasure and comfort. Everything had a place and there was a place for everything. Perhaps he was a man who would always live this way and there was no place for a woman to live here permanently.

Agnes thought about her family home; all the comings and goings of a busy household. Her mother had a large pot of soup cooking on the stove most days to feed her growing children and the house was invariably in organized chaos. No matter how many times her mother requested that the boys leave their shoes in the mudroom, shoes and sweaters were often strewn about the house, along with homework and books and notes and movies to be returned to the video store. Invariably, somebody would be lounging on the couch reading the newspaper or one of her younger brothers would be absorbed in their Game boy, unaware of the existence of anybody else. She could not remember the last time she was in the house completely alone as she was now alone in Frederick’s apartment.

Agnes pulled herself out of her thoughts and reminded herself that she had a task to complete. She went to the kitchen and familiarized herself with the room, first opening the refrigerator and gathering all the contents she could find to make tasty sandwiches. She found some cooked chicken in a container; that was a good start. In another container was what appeared to be freshly made coleslaw. Then she opened a drawer and found lettuce, bean shoots, celery, cucumber. The smell of the vine ripened tomatoes had hit her nostrils the moment she walked into the kitchen and she took one from the lovely wooden bowl on the granite kitchen bench and a few sprigs of the basil plant next to it.

From the bread container, also on the bench, Agnes cut four slices of bread and carefully she began to cut and prepare the food and then pile it onto the bread. She was beginning to enjoy the task of creating an appetising lunch for them. She took care to find some mustard and to sprinkle some salt and pepper onto the food before she closed the sandwiches with the other slices of bread and cut them diagonally both ways to make eight pretty quarter sandwiches that she could display on the plates when she got down to the courtyard.

Bit by bit, Agnes gathered what they would need; plates, glasses, wrap for the sandwiches, a peach and an apple, a bottle of mineral water and some napkins. She placed all the items in the wicker basket which was exactly where Frederick said it would be. Then, she returned the kitchen to exactly the state in which she had found it. Her inner instinct told her that Frederick would want her to do that and not to leave anything out of place.

Agnes was ready to collect the picnic basket and return to him when she wondered if she might take this chance to look about his apartment just a minute longer. As quietly as a mouse she moved out of the kitchen and towards Frederick’s bedroom, noticing his choice of paintings along the hall as she went – modern and rather angular. She approved of his choices and her photographer’s eye felt that he had a keen eye himself.

She entered the bedroom. She wanted to understand him and to know him in a way that she only could when she saw how he lived and what choices he made. She walked about the room surveying it all at her leisure and at close range. The book on the top of the small pile of books on his bed was a biography of Francois Mitterrand. She read the spines of the other books in the pile and noted that one book was about design, ‘Bringing Tuscany Home’ and another, a novel, ‘Consequences’ by Penelope Lively. She thought she might have seen that one in the book store. He appeared to be an avid and wide reader and she approved of that, books being one of her great joys.

She knew she should not, but she could not resist the temptation and she opened his cupboard doors to reveal his clothes, perfectly aligned and presented. His crisp white shirts were all hung beside one another and next to them were his pants and then his dark suits. There was a pile of sweaters – a light blue one, a navy one and two black. She opened the drawers to discover that he had several pairs of the same socks, some black, some brown and two beige; perhaps a dozen pairs of the same style underpants. His shoes were neatly displayed on the shoe rack.

She was surprised to note that he clearly loved his leather boots; a black pair and a brown pair to the ankle and a high pair too; shiny black to the knee and with laces. She smiled for boots were something that Agnes adored too. She had her eye on a gorgeous black leather pair in a store close to work. She was hoping that there might be a sale soon for the price was the equivalent of two weeks’ wages and she simply could not afford them no matter how in love she had fallen.

He was a most orderly man, she realized, but not extravagant with himself either. Here was what he needed but not at all to excess. Agnes thought about the mess in her wardrobe and realized that before she could ever have him over to her little apartment she would need to sort herself out. He would be appalled to see the state of her wardrobe in its current state. She closed the wardrobe carefully. He would never know she had been snooping.

Agnes’ eye returned to the odd shaped chair and she wondered again about the shape. She was well aware that modern, urban furniture sometimes meant that chairs were unusual shapes but she had never seen anything quite like Frederick’s chair. She had an impulse to sit on the chair but moving towards the side of it that was straight and higher than the other but with a curved finish, she bent over it instead. The palms of her hands found their way onto the seat. Her mind was filled with thoughts as to how Frederick may have used this chair with women; if he was still using this chair with women; how recently he had made love to a woman in this chair.

Agnes thought to look on his desk. Perhaps there were photographs there that would give her some clues. She was right. There were a few group photos; possibly one was a family shot with siblings and their children and the other, perhaps a group of male friends. There were three separate photographs of women. They were all pretty and they all seemed more sophisticated and older than her. It didn’t make her feel any more secure. She picked up a photograph of one woman; blonde with brown eyes and a lovely smile. She was very pretty and soft looking and Agnes was curious as to who she was and what she meant to Frederick; surely she was important if her photograph was so prominently displayed in his every day eyesight.

She moved closer to the desk to be sure to put the photo frame back just as she had found it but she unwittingly brushed against the side of the desk and in so doing disturbed a pile of papers on his desk. They fell to the floor in a jumble. Her heart lurched and she went down on her knees to gather them, trying to figure their original order. She did her best but the facts were she had no idea at all which papers were on the top of the pile and which on the bottom.

She suddenly had an urgent desire to leave the apartment and be on her way. She wanted to rid her mind of these thoughts immediately. She collected the picnic basket and the keys and made her way out of the apartment and back to Frederick, doing her best to expunge the thought that Frederick should ever find out what she had been doing in his apartment all alone.

She needed to settle her mind before she returned to Frederick and so as she moved the foliage aside to make her way down the stairway, she again found herself in the intrepid jungle, this time a foreigner with her medical supplies and equipment in her basket looking for an, as yet, undiscovered specie. When she spied Frederick in the distance, she smiled. Ah, there he was! Her undiscovered specie; a man she very much wanted to explore herself.