Chapter 6 - The Anatomy of a Parasite
While I was drinking Sancerre near the Louvre, the Castillo family was discovering the harsh, non-negotiable reality of low-budget European travel.
I didn't have to guess what was happening; Rachel, my friend in Atlanta, had been monitoring the digital fallout.
At 4:00 PM Paris time, Rachel called my international number.
"Val?"
"I’m here, Rach."
"Where are you?"
"Sitting in a café near the Comédie-Française. Drinking wine."
Rachel let out a long, wheezing laugh that crackled through the earpiece. "Oh, thank God. I was terrified you were going to turn around in Atlanta and let them talk you into an apology."
"That didn't happen," I said. "What are they doing?"
"Your mother found my personal Facebook," Rachel said, her tone shifting from amusement to disgust. "She sent me an eight-paragraph message accusing me of being complicit in 'elder endangerment.' Apparently, they are currently sitting in the lobby of a two-star hotel near the Gare de l'Est with eight pieces of luggage, and the front desk is demanding four hundred euros cash upfront because Hector’s Visa card was declined for international fraud."
"Hector forgot to set a travel notification on his bank account," I said dryly. "He always forgets. I usually log into his account three days before a trip and do it for him."
"Well, he didn't do it," Rachel said. "And Danielle has been posting Instagram stories from the sidewalk outside a McDonald's near the train station, crying without makeup, claiming that her sister stole her graduation gift and left them to die in the Parisian slums."
"The Gare de l'Est isn't a slum," I remarked. "It has excellent bakeries."
"Val, they are completely unhinged," Rachel continued. "Elena told my cousin that Hector is going to file a report with the American Embassy claiming you stole funds from their joint business."
"There is no joint business," I said. "Hector’s consulting LLC was dissolved by the state of Georgia three years ago for failure to pay annual registration fees. I have the Secretary of State certificates saved on my drive. If he goes to the embassy, they’ll hand him a list of English-speaking lawyers and tell him to take a train to the airport."
"What are you going to do when they get back to Atlanta?"
I looked down at the unlined notebook on the café table.
"I’m changing the locks on the Inman Park loft tomorrow morning," I said. "I’ve already contacted a real estate agent. I’m listing the loft for sale by the end of the month."
There was a silence on the line.
"You're selling the loft?" Rachel asked softly. "You love that place. You spent six months choosing the reclaimed timber for the kitchen island."
"The loft was where they came when they wanted things," I said. "Hector has a key. Danielle used the guest bedroom as a free storage locker for clothes she didn't want to keep in her apartment. Elena would let herself in while I was traveling for work and reorganize my closets to show me how 'chaotic' my life was. Every time I walk through that front door, I feel like I’m waiting for a subpoena."
"Where are you going to go?"
"Chicago," I said, the thought forming clearly in my mind for the first time. "Apex Logistics has been asking me to take over the Midwest regional hub for eighteen months. It comes with a thirty percent salary increase and an executive relocation package. I turned it down twice because Elena told me she couldn't manage Hector’s medical appointments without me in the city."
"Valerie," Rachel said, her voice thick with emotion. "You're actually doing it."
"I did it the second he hit me, Rach. The rest of this is just logistics."
After hanging up, I paid the bill, leaving a twenty-euro note on the silver saucer, and walked back toward the river.
The afternoon rain had begun—a fine, misty spray that turned the slate roofs of Paris into sheets of polished pewter. The streetlamps along the Quai Voltaire flickered to life, casting long, wavering pools of amber across the wet asphalt.
I didn't put up an umbrella. I pulled my cashmere collar higher around my neck and let the cool mist touch my face.
A parasite does not hate its host. A parasite simply feeds until the host can no longer sustain the biological cost of the relationship. Hector, Elena, and Danielle didn't hate me because I was cruel; they hated me because I had suddenly developed an immune system.
They had spent twenty years conditioning me to believe that their survival was my moral responsibility.
If Hector failed in business, it was because the market was unfair, and Valerie must bridge the gap. If Danielle couldn't find a job, it was because the world didn't appreciate her delicate artistic temperament, and Valerie must pay her rent. If Elena was unhappy, it was because Valerie was cold, distant, and ungrateful.
May you like
The architecture of their delusion was total.
And the only way to destroy an architecture like that is to walk out of the front door and let the roof collapse on whoever chose to remain inside.
