He was just here

   Raymond felt he sand between his toes and just kept on walking, not even realizing he was walking towards the ocean. To him, it didn’t matter anymore. His life was stuck on a loop and he had lived what he needed to live. He felt there was nothing more he could do or that he could get out of life on Earth. He had decided to think things by taking a walk and, unknowingly, his subconscious had already decided that it was time to end it all. The water reached his pants fast, and then his underwear. Then his belt, his shirt and finally his glasses. The current and the sheer strength of the ocean did the rest, taking his body from that cold, windy beach to the bottom of the ocean, from where no one would be able to take it for some time.

 He wasn’t someone people would miss and, although the ocean released the body, the police didn’t identify him for several months, as no one would ask for him. When they finally did identify the body as Raymond Bloom, it happened just because of a casual matter and not because someone was looking for him. The truth was he had no wife, no children, no parents and no friends. According to the information an officer was able to gather, he had lived alone for at least twenty years in a small attic on a very old building. The place smelled awful, as no one even knew the owner was dead. The officer found there some leads on who the man was and, maybe, on why he had done what he had done.

 Officer Jenny Marshall was one of those people who believe the best of every single person. It was strange for a cop to have such an attitude towards life but there she was, trying to cheer people up and making the best of her day every single day. She had been transferred recently and it was only the second post she had held ever so she wasn’t really assigned to the streets or to some interesting investigations. Jenny normally did the paperwork for every case and was in charge of keeping the archives in order, something she took very seriously. Deep down, she knew that her male counterparts loved to see her tie down to a job that didn’t lead anywhere but she ignored that fact and just did her work.

 Investigating the death of Raymond was assigned to her because she requested it. She told her boss she wanted to change her work a little and such a case would be perfect for her. After all, it seemed pretty straightforward and she could even do all the paperwork herself. So she convinced her boss and there she was on Raymond’s apartment, pinching her nose to avoid the foul smell of rotten food and trying to uncover the reason why he had committed suicide. To Penny, personally, it was not clear how a person could do such a thing. For her, life was sacred and no one had the right to take their own, even if they felt helpless and desperate. She knew there were always better options.

 She went through Raymond’s things and discovered that he had been published. The books did not look very nice on the outside but then she decided to sit down on the bed and just read one of the many stories the man had written in them. One was particularly moving; dealing with a ghost that saw how his childhood home was tore down to build an apartment building. She found very interesting but very sad too. She kept on looking for clues on Raymond’s house but she realize the only thing worth looking in there was his books so she put them all in boxes and took them to the station. She would try to find something in them and get to the bottom of the case, that way making everyone realize she could be a great agent and even a decent detective.

 Jenny started ready every single one of Raymond’s stories at work. No one really said anything to her because she wasn’t annoying anyone and she was doing her main job, which was taking care of the all the data. As she did that and on her free time, she would only read and read everything. Months passed until she had read every single piece of writing in Raymond’s apartment.  It was winter now and the last words she read from him where strangely appropriate for the climate: “I feel the cool breeze coming and telling me it’s time to go”. That was a short story about a man radically different from Raymond, with family and love all around him.

 The officer decided to let the case go for a while, so she went home and spent the holidays with her parents and her boyfriend and every other family member that had decided to come to the city for Christmas. She had a wonderful time eating and talking and dancing. She laughed a lot and wished for life only to be like that, full of joy and people whom you loved and who loved you. She realized Raymond’s writing had begun to depress her a bit but her family and all the love and special mood of the season brought back to her the best feelings and that nice warmth that only love can take to someone’s heart. And then, right in the Christmas dinner, she understood what had happened to Raymond.

 He had killed himself, not because he was weak or suffering in a too awful way. He died because he was alone; he had no one to take care of him or to even listen to what he had to say. And that was obvious just by reading what he wrote, as he said everything about anything he had ever thought about in life. It was amazing to read about so many things, but funny and serious, happy and sad, short and extremely long. His writing had been the way for him to externalize every single thing he had bottled up inside, as he ad never had anyone to properly talk and share his thoughts with. He had been trapped by his own life or, at least that’s what Jenny thought. Even if he was to blame, he had no choice.

 When the holidays ended, she wrote her report on the death of Raymond Bloom and decided to properly request her transference to the detective’s unit. She knew she could do more there and when her demand wasn’t accepted, she resigned the police. Jenny had learned from investigating Raymond that she needed to do with her life as she wanted, she couldn’t afford not living and not doing what her heart demanded of her. She didn’t want to end up like Raymond, all alone and talking to the books because there’s no one there. Unappreciated by the world and ignored to the point when, at her death, no one would ever think of grieving her. She wanted more from life and, eventually, she got it.

 Raymond’s books were donated to a public library and it was almost two years later when Jenny saw Ray’s name on the news. She was working with the FBI and now had a partner and was properly working the field. But during the investigation of a case, she saw the headline and bought the newspaper to find out what it was all about. Apparently, a book expert had been investigating the libraries of the cities looking for antiquities and particular books and so on. He had discovered Raymond, who had been an unknown author all his life, and declared he was one of the best storywriter he had ever found. He didn’t know that Ray was dead but he did know something else that Jenny didn’t: Ray hadn’t been as alone as she had thought.

 According to the article, the man had found several letters in the apartment Raymond had lived in, now turned into a posh flat. During the reforms on the place, they had found several letters and the expert had read them, discovering he had owned a dog for a long time and that he had died just about the time the author had stopped writing. Besides the dog, he had been in love with someone he described thoroughly in his letters, every physical aspect and some traits of characters. The letters, with such richness and passion, ended up being edited into a book that sold millions of copies, making the expert a rich man.

 Jenny was sad that Raymond had not been there to enjoy his fame and fortune. They eventually discovered he had committed suicide and that made his letters and all his books even more popular. Eventually, there was no one that didn’t know the name of the author and his tragic story. Jenny had thought, for a moment, that she had known the author but she realized she never did. She realized that no one had ever known him properly. He had been in love, that man who felt so alone and so sad. He had experienced life and life had not experienced him and Jenny felt that he finally understood why he had done what he had done. It was clear as water and she wouldn’t argue with it.

 Raymond became famous, as well as his views on life and his pain, which was painted all over his letters. But no one would ever know him as he was already gone and everyone had lost the chance to tell him “I’m here”.

You must...

   Kate had never worked in her life and it appeared as if she wasn’t going to work ever. She had graduated from college five years ago and she was still not able to find a proper job. She had sent her CV to every possible company that would be willing to hire someone with her profile but that was no good. She tried both with state-owned companies and with private ones. She talked to people she hadn’t talked in years and was even so desperate with it all that she had tried to be considered for posts in several fast food chains and retail stores. None of that had worked.

 She had literature and was only finding out now how difficult and competitive the world was. She never dreamt of someone hiring her just after finishing school but she had always thought people with a higher degree of education had a little more chance to be hired faster. That wasn’t her case at all. In those five years she had even decided to study a little more and left the country for a year in order to get her writing improved and to learn new things to make her skills much more interesting. But time passed and no one noticed.

 Stress was really winning for most of the time. On the social networks, Kate saw how many of her friends where even getting married and she hadn’t even earned her first paycheck. Some of them bragged about their complicated lives as doctors or architects or accountants. True, their life didn’t seem extremely interesting but at least they were doing what people were expected to do at that age. People were even expected to have children before thirty and Kate was rapidly nearing that number.

 Her older brother had already left home, living now with his eternal girlfriend, who would obviously turn into her wife in the years to come. He had chosen to be an engineer and was always working. He travelled a lot because of his work and seemed stressed sometimes but then he also hung out a lot with his friends and girlfriend so it all seemed ok. Besides he had his own place, or this be more exact, he paid the rent of his own place which gave him an incredible level of independence and Kate envied that.

 During the last year, she had begun writing several types of pieces, but did so in her own space. She had tried selling some of the articles to magazines but apparently they were more comfortable with people they already knew. So she did all by herself and was thrilled to see that a few people, not that many but still, had begun reading her. There were not many comments, but the few that she received were good. People that read was she had to say specially liked the short stories although some others, mainly women, were very interested on her articles about beauty and related subjects. She was proud of that, as she had never thought people would read her but still no one was paying her for it.

 The thing was, and most people out of college would agree, there is an urgency to do a certain amounts of things as you turn into “an adult”. First of all, just like the song says, it’s all about the money. There’s a feeling of failure when you haven’t transformed any talent that you have in physical prize for it. And, let’s face it; money is the oil of the engine that is the world. Without money there is not much that you can do in life, unless your goal is to be hippie. And people look at you weird when you are a certain age and you haven’t achieved that part of the goal, even more when people in the family have been working since they were teenagers.

 And then there’s the feeling of achievement, of having gotten somewhere with what supposedly made you special. Kate had always felt, for one that she was very skilled at telling the best fantastical stories ever. One thing that she loved was visiting one of her cousins and just make stories for her right on the spot. Kate didn’t tell her about princesses or things like that but about space battles and fantastical creatures and more realistic worlds but settled in the weirdest environments. It was fun for her and her cousin loved the stories, always asking her for others or for the “sequels” of some of the ones she had told her before.

 One day, Kate decided staying home was the worst she can do. She had decided to stop sending her CV everywhere and just think everything through. She felt she was aiming her bullets all over the place, without ever hitting anything or not even knowing what she was aiming for. That had to be changed urgently because she was on the verge of a nervous breakdown and she didn’t want to add a clinical state to her slate of mental issued. It would be too much for her.

 So Kate took a walk. She decided to go to one of those neighborhoods filled only with houses and where people rarely walk around or anything. It was located on a hill, not that far from her home, so the walk was really difficult at times but the beautiful old houses that had stood there for many decades compensated it. She saw some of them hosting cafés, some others were small libraries and some more were dancing academies or were simply abandoned. She imagined various stories for the people she saw through the windows, the signs and the names.

 She finally arrived to a small park, located on the edge of a cliff overlooking the city. She had no idea that park was there and it was beautiful. The day was bright and almost cloudless so the city could be seen for kilometers in various directions. No people or cars could be seen though, only the trees, the buildings and, farther, the airport. She sat down on one of the benches and imagined so many stories she regretted not having a notepad or something to write on. She then remembered phones were more advanced now so she took it out and made small audio fragments, each one with a different idea. It was weird talking alone to a phone without anyone hearing it but she was glad the ideas wouldn’t be forever lost.

 Suddenly she felt someone close and turned around in middle sentence as she saw a guy about her age feeding the pigeons. He had thrown some breadcrumbs on the small patch of grass of the park but also kept some in his hands, where the pigeons would come to feed themselves. Kate looked closely at the guy and realized he was wearing an overall. Maybe he was in construction or something related. But he didn’t have plaster or white paint stains. He rather had small stains of several colors and she even noticed he had some on his neck.

 He then noticed her and smiled. Kate turned red fast and tried to turn around but the guy talked to her. She asked her that he had always loved the view from there, since he was a kid. She then asked him if he lived there and he answered that he had lived there since birth. He still lived in his parent’s home, not very far from there. He got closer and sat down next to Kate, followed by some pigeons that thought he had more breadcrumbs but soon became disappointed.

 They then had a very nice chat about the view, about what each of them did and what they liked. The boy’s name happened to be Julian and he was an artist, or so he said at least. She told her he had gone to France to study but he had left the career before finishing it. He had decided that painting was not something that needed a degree and he also realized he hadn’t had any money to go on living as if his parents were not struggling to get him through college. So he came back and was very happy with his decision.

 He invited Kate to his studio, to see his paintings, as she was openly skeptical that he was an actual artist. Realizing she should be a little more adventurous, she accepted the invitation. They had only walked a couple of blocks when he opened the gate of one of those old houses and let her in. They entered the house and then went down to what would be the parking area but there was no car. He turned on the lights and, effectively, there was a studio right there. Most canvases were in the ground against the walls but a couple of them were on easels and she thought they were great.

 One of the paintings was a scenery, possibly the city from the hill, and the other one seemed to be a human face but it was difficult to see what kind of person that was. Anyway, she liked the drawings and asked her if she sold them. He told her that he had just sold his first in a flea market, just because he had dare to go to one and just pay for one of the spaces for a day. It was all the money he had but he recuperated it with the selling of the painting, which was a nude male.

 Then, Kate’s phone began to ring. It was her mom asking her where she was, as she had promised to join her to go to the supermarket. She told her she would be there in half an hour and hung up before her mother could say anything.

 Julian joined her to the gate and told her to come any time she wanted. He realized she was just as free as him and that she appreciated things like his paintings. Besides, he confessed, he had heard her talking to her phone, summing up the ideas she was having by looking to the cliff. Then, unexpectedly, he put one hand in one of her shoulders and told her not to worry about anything. Artists had to create and find themselves before bringing people into their worlds. It was just a matter of time and patience.

 All the way home, Kate had a big smile on her face.

Austerlitz

Chef Michel Jacquet was the best in his craft and there was overwhelming evidence of this all over his prized restaurant, the Austerlitz. Medals, cups, plaques and ribbons were displayed all over the dining hall, for every client to see.

This, of course, had not happened out of miracle. No. Michel was born a chef. From age five, he enjoyed staying at home with his mother and grandmother and see them planning breakfast, lunch and dinner. He was particularly fond of grand feasts that his family held every once in a while to celebrate important days as July 14th, every family member birthday or a town gathering which his family was always asked to cater.

He lived all of his childhood and teenage years in the small town of Vaite, relatively close to Germany and Switzerland. And during all those years he watched his mother do hundreds of dishes, as well as his grandmother and the baker, Monsieur Grand.

From Mr. Grand, he learned the art of pastries and by the age of fifteen he did the best éclairs Vaite could offer its few visitors and residents.

Encouraged by his mother, he left Vaite for Paris at age seventeen, to live with an uncle and learn the craft of the best teachers he could get. They were a middle class family but Michel had the advantage of being an only child so there was some money to spare on his education.

It was his dream to be on the Cordon Bleu school but the tuition was prohibitive and they only selected the best in all fields and Michel was only a skilled pastry maker. He had no idea of meat or fish or how to cook grandiose meals as his mother used to do.

The solution? Learn by himself. His uncle was a postman and left early and got in late. This time was used by Michel to watch all kinds of cooking shows on TV. He would also look for high cuisine books in a nearby library and would even come in the butcher's store to ask him to teach Michel how to cut pork, veal and lamb.

Believing to be ready, he went through the hard test in the Cordon Bleu. He was denied entrance and that put him in a severe depression that lasted for a couple of months. It was a hot summer but he wouldn't come out of bed. His uncle begged him to go out, meet girls and go dancing but Michel wasn't interested.

In order to stretch our of his misery, he looked for more schools and found Mrs. Villette school for cooking. True, it was a modest place to learn but according to many older students, Juliette Villette was among the best cooks in France but some bad reviews of her restaurant brought the place down and she decide to teach instead of fighting and ever demanding crowd.

Be that as it may, Michel excelled in all classes and soon got his diploma with the highest honors. Then, again, he applied for Cordon Bleu and failed once more. This time, however, he wasn't sad or disappointed. He had decided to be the best french cook to have ever lived and nothing would be able to stop him.

That was his turning point. He became obsessed with success and recognition. He went from loving cooking and food to just use them to surprise people and be loved as he had always wanted to be loved.

Although no one ever knew it, Michel had never really been physically attracted to anyone. He had never had the need for romantic love or sexual intercourse. But he was obsessed with people knowing who he was. This was likely to be a result of people never really believing in him, except his mother. He did not trusted people and had a passive aggressive behavior, that rarely bursted out.

He visited her only after he got his first restaurant job. He was sous-chef for Gaston Bisset, a respected chef in the city of Lyon. The man had seen Michel's talent and decided to hire him for his restaurante, the Licorne. When Michel told his mother the news, she just hugged him and kissed his cheek. It was all she wanted. After all, the father had died when Michel was very young and she had always regretted not giving him a sister or brother to share with.

In the Licorne, Michel excelled. He was fast, thorough and clean. His cuts were precise and his deserts found a place in the restaurant's menu. Everyone in Lyon knew of this young man that made the most delicious deserts.

Bisset soon became annoyed because everyone came to eat Michel's deserts and not his more recent creations such as lamb in tangerine sauce or his version of the popular ratatouille. No, everyone wanted an éclair or millefeuille from Michel.

The situation became tense. People saw them quarreling, yelling at each other and not talking to one another for days. It all ended one day when Bisset didn't show up and Michel had to take care of everything. Bisset was said to be very sick and Michel took this to his advantage: the Licorne was his. In one week, he created the most splendid dishes: salmon in lychee sauce, passion fruit chicken and macadamia nut ice cream on chia seed cake.

Bisset died. Officially it was a stroke. Some wanted Michel to stay in the Licorne but he decided to leave as he needed to create his own place and did so in the city of Quimper.

Not really known for its cuisine, Michel made the city renowned with the creation of Austerlitz, his restaurant. And that was how he got all the prizes and awards and how France and the world fell in love with his creations, in special his pastries.

Bu then, when all was great, Justine Bisset arrived went to Paris. She had seen her father in his last days and believed in her heart the stroke was just the final part of his death. She proceeded to sue Michel of killing her father.

Soon, the necessary evidence was gathered and, sure enough, the Austerlitz was lost, as Napoleon did many years ago. Justine cried in the court and explained how Michel poisoned her father in a moment of weakness and then proceeded to take over the Licorne. Michel always denied it all but the evidence was hard to overlook.

But he wasn't surrendering. In a stroke of genius, he escaped the police and the country. He grew a beard, started to exercise and opened a small pub in Scotland. Every now and again he made his amazing pastries for the townsfolk. And when someone was too disrespectful or didn't like his creations, he simply added a thin extra layer cream on his sweet works of art.