found themselvesunable to compress the duration of the dinner, much like unmatched objects of different weights, ill-suited to prop up books upon a bookshelf. The wine was good; the dishes followed one another. They sampled the food on their plates and drank till their bill came.
Back at the hotel, they undressed in silence. Their room, cleared of the evidence of their passionate struggle, welcomed their unease without dispelling it. An angry David pondered Amélie’s lovelessness, her frenzied respect for proprieties, while she mused sadly on the pertinence of the evening’s events. It was their last night. And their future rendezvous, left to the whims of fate and desire, drew a swarm of question marks under their bed’s canopy.
CHAPTER FOUR
A mélie was supposed to meet a friend at the Flore at half past twelve. Chantal was always late, but she did not mind waiting. She liked this café, the waiters’ long aprons, the bewigged, sad-looking manager standing near the cashier’s desk, and the regular customers, like the two old gentlemen seated on the imitation red leather banquette at the back, reading and making discreet comments on the press from behind newspapers spread out in front of their espressos.
They were always there. One wore a Swiss voile shirt with a dark, faded business suit: a handsome man betrayed by aging, whose cumbersome burly build contrasted with a bilious complexion; his austere, old-fashioned elegance breathed the bygone era of Central Europe. While his companion, a bald civil-servant type, his eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses, had the rosy cheeks of a chitterlings sausage fancier,and wide suspenders on his round belly. Both of them sneaked away at the same time, just before the lunch crowd turned the pub’s peaceful landscape topsy-turvy.
Twelve thirty-five: they got up. Amélie greeted them by a slight toss of her head. Were they brothers in arms, or retired office colleagues? At any rate they were dignified in their observance of a discipline known to them alone. It was also wise on their part to flee the crowd of press attachés in miniskirt business suits and the day’s divas jostling one another at the narrow stands.
Her eyes swept the room, in search of a new center of interest. A muddy-complexioned young woman kept on scraping her spoon in her cup of coffee. Her pointy, fleshy breasts stood out, unbeknownst to her, like intriguing, bold stowaways. Amélie thought she recognized her bulging eyes, her energetic yet vulnerable features. An actress no doubt, whose careless attire, tentative demeanor, preserved her incognito. Shaped by the cool transience of the place, a mystery lingered above the tables of the café.
Chantal was running really late. Like a crossword-puzzle buff intent on solving a particularly thorny definition, Amélie concentrated on identifying this discreetly famous woman. Though history, or the workings of institutions, seemed unintelligible to her, Amélie was thoroughly adept at everything that dealt with the love affairs, disappointments, and irrational opinions of both large-and small-screen stars. She possessed a fund of information as vast and delicately shaded as the civil code, one systematically updated by magazine gossip columns, which furnished her with a subtle jurisprudence geared to uphold a point of tittle-tattle law.
Amélie would never admit to these little weaknesses. Recognizing celebrities became for her a special point of honor. She was peeved when she failed to do so. Over and above the fact that the bits of futile information cluttering her memory held no glamor in her estimation, she felt that behaving like a rubbernecker would only open a void between her and people of renown. She preferred to keep silent about her satisfaction in identifying a famous musical composition, or a painter’s trademark brush stroke, as these did nothing more than produce proof of her limited culture.
She made do with the gaping holes in her
Back at the hotel, they undressed in silence. Their room, cleared of the evidence of their passionate struggle, welcomed their unease without dispelling it. An angry David pondered Amélie’s lovelessness, her frenzied respect for proprieties, while she mused sadly on the pertinence of the evening’s events. It was their last night. And their future rendezvous, left to the whims of fate and desire, drew a swarm of question marks under their bed’s canopy.
CHAPTER FOUR
A mélie was supposed to meet a friend at the Flore at half past twelve. Chantal was always late, but she did not mind waiting. She liked this café, the waiters’ long aprons, the bewigged, sad-looking manager standing near the cashier’s desk, and the regular customers, like the two old gentlemen seated on the imitation red leather banquette at the back, reading and making discreet comments on the press from behind newspapers spread out in front of their espressos.
They were always there. One wore a Swiss voile shirt with a dark, faded business suit: a handsome man betrayed by aging, whose cumbersome burly build contrasted with a bilious complexion; his austere, old-fashioned elegance breathed the bygone era of Central Europe. While his companion, a bald civil-servant type, his eyes magnified by the thick lenses of his glasses, had the rosy cheeks of a chitterlings sausage fancier,and wide suspenders on his round belly. Both of them sneaked away at the same time, just before the lunch crowd turned the pub’s peaceful landscape topsy-turvy.
Twelve thirty-five: they got up. Amélie greeted them by a slight toss of her head. Were they brothers in arms, or retired office colleagues? At any rate they were dignified in their observance of a discipline known to them alone. It was also wise on their part to flee the crowd of press attachés in miniskirt business suits and the day’s divas jostling one another at the narrow stands.
Her eyes swept the room, in search of a new center of interest. A muddy-complexioned young woman kept on scraping her spoon in her cup of coffee. Her pointy, fleshy breasts stood out, unbeknownst to her, like intriguing, bold stowaways. Amélie thought she recognized her bulging eyes, her energetic yet vulnerable features. An actress no doubt, whose careless attire, tentative demeanor, preserved her incognito. Shaped by the cool transience of the place, a mystery lingered above the tables of the café.
Chantal was running really late. Like a crossword-puzzle buff intent on solving a particularly thorny definition, Amélie concentrated on identifying this discreetly famous woman. Though history, or the workings of institutions, seemed unintelligible to her, Amélie was thoroughly adept at everything that dealt with the love affairs, disappointments, and irrational opinions of both large-and small-screen stars. She possessed a fund of information as vast and delicately shaded as the civil code, one systematically updated by magazine gossip columns, which furnished her with a subtle jurisprudence geared to uphold a point of tittle-tattle law.
Amélie would never admit to these little weaknesses. Recognizing celebrities became for her a special point of honor. She was peeved when she failed to do so. Over and above the fact that the bits of futile information cluttering her memory held no glamor in her estimation, she felt that behaving like a rubbernecker would only open a void between her and people of renown. She preferred to keep silent about her satisfaction in identifying a famous musical composition, or a painter’s trademark brush stroke, as these did nothing more than produce proof of her limited culture.
She made do with the gaping holes in her
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