Love's Requiem (ENG)

Chapter 1 : Kim

Los Angeles. The sun, the blue sky, the endless ocean, the beaches where rich and poor mingled with its junkies, most of them had already met her bright blues eyes somewhere on the shores. She had spent all her teenage years there, though now she lived on the hills, in a spacious villa. 

Kim Lowell was now 23 and had spent the most part of the last two years on the road with her band "Fleet".

The august sun was burning the tourists coming from all horizons to taste the Pacific waters. The large window of her bedroom offered one of the best views on the beaches down the hills. She watched these very small characters come and go, without really seeing them, her eyes wandering far in the ocean.

- KIM !

A voice shook her out of her daydream. Her older brother, James, called her from downstairs.

- Kim, hurry up, please !

She picked up her purse from the dark wooden floor of her bedroom. She then crossed the central sitting room of the first floor of her house, switched off the tv and rearranged the pillows on the sofa, just to calm herself. She didn't want to have to answer her brother's questions if he saw her like this. Kim walked down the imposing carved wood stairs as fast as she could, closed the French window from the dinning room to the garden behind her and ran to the taxi in the street.

***

The young woman threw herself on the back seat of the taxi, next to her brother, always so elegant in his usual black suit, his thick black hair always up in a mess so he doesn't look too uptight, his blue eyes in a thin line trying to spot any detail on his latest pictures. James, or Jim, 26, was the spitting image of Kim, though he was only her half-brother. This did not stop him from making frequent trips from New York, where he was a fashion photographer, just to keep a close eye on his little sister.

They both looked like their father, the only parent they shared. A very busy doctor, always away for a conference or a meeting. And a womanizer, surrounded by numerous women he didn't mind seeing outside of his clinic. That's the story of Kim's birth: a conference trip somewhere in the mid-west. When her mother was incapable of taking care of her, one of her many 'step fathers' tracked down this Dr Lowell and dropped her at his house, unannounced. She was 6, and her "father" couldn't deny how similar they looked, how she looked like Jim. This was all bad news to Mrs Lowell, who discovered the depraved life her husband had been leading behind her back all these years, while their two children, James and Rose, then 9 and 1 years-old, were waiting for him at home. Heather Lowell left with her children and forced her ex-husband to recognize his daughter, condemning her to a lonely life under the care of Bryan Lowell.

End of the story, she didn't like to think too much about it, or give too much details to the press. That was how her father had behaved all her life: always too late, only there when she was already down. He was just painting over his daughter's problems when the walls of her sanity had been shaking for so long. She had spent all her youth trying to fill in this emptiness with all sorts of excesses, surpassing any American teenager with the same lust for freedom and madness. Though he was sometimes insufferable, she was glad her brother was not following in their father's footstep.

***

The taxi stopped in front of a glass building, so familiar to Kim, LAX. She helped her brother get her suitcases out of the car, in silence. They went to the registration desk.

- You didn't say a word during the ride...

Jim was worried. Kim only answered with a heavy sigh. A female voice rang out of the nearest speaker: "Boarding of flight FA2324 to Helsinki Vaantaa has been moved to Door 15". She knew boarding would start soon so she didn't have time to explain herself. She left her luggage on the conveyor belt and whispered, watching her suitcase disappear slowly :

- Don't worry, I'll be fine.

Kim quickly walked away from a startled Jim, who couldn't take his eyes away from his sister, though she was already buried deep in the crowd, her long black coton dress almost swiping the floor behind her. She was lying when she said she would be fine. He knew it.