"Put this on your eye before it gets worse," said the old woman who was manning the front desk; while handing me a refrigerated gel pack wrapped in a cloth.
I thanked her, and taking the pouch coming straight out of the freeze where the ice cream and other frozen foods were stored, put it on my left eye; which in addition to my usual dark circles, was now sporting a black and purple halo starting to turn yellow at the edges. The contact with the gel bag made me flinch. It was really cold.
And already she was back to reading a magazine about hiking. She hadn't even asked me how I'd managed to get hurt.
I had woken up alone, in the room; and persuaded that I had once again been abandoned on the spot, I had gone directly to the first floor. And in spite of my even more unkempt appearance than when I had arrived - the addition of a black eye and shirt splattered everywhere with small stains - this woman who was seemingly the owner of the business hadn't flinched at all. As if she was somehow used to seeing this kind of thing happen.
I, for one, was hoping that this kind of thing wouldn't happen again. Although, in the back of my mind, I was now suspicious of the female detective. I was indeed hoping to cross her path a third time. A thing more than likely, given that we still hadn't resolved the situation that had brought us together in the first place.
I then decided to ask the owner some questions, in case a message had been left for me.
"Excuse me..." I said to get her attention.
She lowered her magazine slightly to see me above the pages, the rest of her face hidden behind a cover showing a happy, smiling couple climbing a tree.
"You can keep the gel pack, I have more..." Said she on a detached tone.
She was about to resume reading her magazine; when I interrupted her again.
"No, I didn't want to talk to you about that," I said hastily. "The woman I was with..."
"Ah, she already left," the landlady replied immediately. "But don't worry, she didn't leave anything for you to pay off."
It wasn't really the fact that I had to pay her bills for her that bothered me.
She was gone, and all that was left of our encounter was my sore eye and her not-yet-registered phone number showing up in my message log.
Talk about a shadow of a solution to my problem.
Besides, with answers so far from what I wanted to know, I thought that the landlady probably didn't know any more than I did.
Quickly, I looked at the time on my cell phone, and saw that it was almost noon.
I could already hear my manager yelling that I was late and that I was only doing what I wanted.
And for once, he wouldn't be wrong. I had wasted time, doing something that had absolutely nothing to do with my job.
I suspected that the young woman had already been gone for a while, so my priority was to get the two manuscripts I had been entrusted with to the office in time.
Leaving the inn, I got back to my car and started the engine.
I didn't understand why she had bailed on me like that again. Was it a bad habit she had? Or was it her way of being suspicious of me?
Or was she too busy - as she had explained earlier - and therefore had to be somewhere else?
Without any answer that would suit me, I stared at the phone number attached to the messages I had received earlier in the day on my phone screen.
Well, whatever.
I saved the number in my contacts, but as I entered the person's identity, I remembered the fact that I still didn't know the young woman's name.
I couldn't leave it blank, could I?
Let's see...
Thinking for a few minutes, I found the name that seemed the most appropriate; waiting to find better, or to know her real name.
Satisfied with my choice, I put my phone in my bag, ready to leave.
My car took the dirt path back to the main road; and turning right, I headed for the prefectoral expressway to get to the highway.
It would probably take me a good two hours to get back to the office, since there were a lot of people on the road at lunchtime. It wasn't exactly the best time of day to drive. But I didn't really have a choice. I was already way too late to worry about traffic.
Finally getting onto the highway interchange, I was not surprised to see that all the lanes were full of cars, trucks, and long-distance buses. If the train was preferred to travel long distances between prefectures, private vehicles were still preferred, especially on the outskirts of big cities.
And while I was waiting to enter the fast lane, I saw a truck with a red trailer passing in the next lane.
Almost immediately, my throat tightened, accompanied by a sudden headache.
In my haste, I had forgotten to put on my sunglasses, forcing me to see the awful color in all its intensity.
I had to loosen my already sloppy tie to catch my breath. But the unpleasant sensation had already taken hold of my body.
Abandoning any possibility of returning to my normal state, I closed my eyes for a few minutes, until I could no longer see what was around me. The sounds had already almost entirely disappeared, reaching me in a muffled and intermittent way.
It was the brief sound of a car horn that made me open my eyes again.
I had been resting on my steering wheel long enough for the line of cars in front of me to advance a good ten meters without me following the movement. This had caused the people behind me to become impatient.
But I was rather relieved by this sudden interruption.
Thanks to this, I had returned to the present moment; and I had almost forgotten about the truck, which was already out of sight.
However, the suffocating sensation I had experienced still persisted; although it had greatly diminished.
I thought that my aversion to this color had passed, since a long time ago. But I was wrong.
Some things just couldn't change that easily.