came into the café because he’d seen her from the street, maybe he’d fallen for her simply on glimpsing that girl whose harmoniousness, definition, and serenity Clarisse hoped she expressed. How she would love that, if he confessed that he’d fallen in love with her purity!
She began to wait for him as noon neared, unworried, knowing he would come.
And when he did, he found the courage to look her in the eye, which he’d never done before, and she looked back, just as frank, just as direct, because ever since she’d fallen in love with that boy she’d lost all trace of coyness, every impulse to look away through lowered lashes.
He sat down at his customary table and she hurried over, indifferent to the other waitresses’ arch little smiles.
“Your usual Perrier with a slice of lemon?”
Just four days he’d been coming here, and she was talking to him like that!
She felt her entire face reaching out toward him in a shimmering of white teeth and sparkling pale eyes, she felt and saw her face giving itself to him like a magnificent lily proudly and trustingly presented, sure of the offering’s value, and the flexible stem of her body bent toward him, too, under the weight of that luxuriant flower.
Fleetingly, she thought of her mother—that lowly flower from the far end of the courtyard, the awful pity she felt for her.
She recovered her face as one recovers one’s composure, she dimmed it, closed it, but not so completely that the boy with the tremulous skin wouldn’t see it still shining with love for him.
She sensed that he had something to tell her, and then that, lacking the nerve and being so young, he’d thought better of it for the moment.
And so, when she came back with his drink, she took her time at his table, aware of the perhaps excessive hopefulness she exuded, like her own scent, but powerless to stop it from spreading around her and perhaps intimidating the boy. But, she wanted to cry out with a laugh, what more did she have to hope for? Just being a girl in love was so good in itself, shouldn’t it be more than enough for even the most exorbitant hopefulness?
“I don’t think I’ll…Well, I mean I know I won’t, obviously…be coming in tomorrow, or the day after, for that matter.”
What on earth was he saying, compulsively stroking his bubbling glass, sometimes staring at her in despair, sometimes studying his hands clenched around his drink?
What he was saying she understood, but not quite what it meant. Still as merry as if he’d ventured some subtle joke and she was waiting to fully grasp it before bursting into a laugh, she breathed:
“Yes? So?”
“Well, I…”
Desperately, he plunged in:
“Would you like to come with me this afternoon? Because I’m going home, I have to go back home to Langon.”
“You want to take me with you?”
He blushed violently, misreading her.
“Forgive me, maybe it’s…I don’t know…forward, but I’m not…it’s just that the idea I might never see you again made me so miserable…”
And that teasing hopefulness dissipated at once, replaced by a joy so intense that for a moment it felt like the opposite, like the bleakest desolation, which she would have survived, so well did she know that feeling and its distinctive warmth, and so attached she was to it, in a way, like a faithful companion. Then she realized it wasn’t that at all, and she let joy bloom unconstrained in her mind, thrown slightly off balance though she was.
The boy was fingering his glass again, still not lifting it to his lips.
He seemed distraught at what he’d let himself say, and perhaps convinced all was lost.
She forced her face to mirror the happiness she was feeling, the radiant gratitude, forced it to drop its dramatic, dumbfounded look, which, although more eloquently expressive of the depth of her emotion, might give the boy the idea he’d shocked and upset her.
“That’s wonderful,” she whispered. “I’ve never been to Langon,
She began to wait for him as noon neared, unworried, knowing he would come.
And when he did, he found the courage to look her in the eye, which he’d never done before, and she looked back, just as frank, just as direct, because ever since she’d fallen in love with that boy she’d lost all trace of coyness, every impulse to look away through lowered lashes.
He sat down at his customary table and she hurried over, indifferent to the other waitresses’ arch little smiles.
“Your usual Perrier with a slice of lemon?”
Just four days he’d been coming here, and she was talking to him like that!
She felt her entire face reaching out toward him in a shimmering of white teeth and sparkling pale eyes, she felt and saw her face giving itself to him like a magnificent lily proudly and trustingly presented, sure of the offering’s value, and the flexible stem of her body bent toward him, too, under the weight of that luxuriant flower.
Fleetingly, she thought of her mother—that lowly flower from the far end of the courtyard, the awful pity she felt for her.
She recovered her face as one recovers one’s composure, she dimmed it, closed it, but not so completely that the boy with the tremulous skin wouldn’t see it still shining with love for him.
She sensed that he had something to tell her, and then that, lacking the nerve and being so young, he’d thought better of it for the moment.
And so, when she came back with his drink, she took her time at his table, aware of the perhaps excessive hopefulness she exuded, like her own scent, but powerless to stop it from spreading around her and perhaps intimidating the boy. But, she wanted to cry out with a laugh, what more did she have to hope for? Just being a girl in love was so good in itself, shouldn’t it be more than enough for even the most exorbitant hopefulness?
“I don’t think I’ll…Well, I mean I know I won’t, obviously…be coming in tomorrow, or the day after, for that matter.”
What on earth was he saying, compulsively stroking his bubbling glass, sometimes staring at her in despair, sometimes studying his hands clenched around his drink?
What he was saying she understood, but not quite what it meant. Still as merry as if he’d ventured some subtle joke and she was waiting to fully grasp it before bursting into a laugh, she breathed:
“Yes? So?”
“Well, I…”
Desperately, he plunged in:
“Would you like to come with me this afternoon? Because I’m going home, I have to go back home to Langon.”
“You want to take me with you?”
He blushed violently, misreading her.
“Forgive me, maybe it’s…I don’t know…forward, but I’m not…it’s just that the idea I might never see you again made me so miserable…”
And that teasing hopefulness dissipated at once, replaced by a joy so intense that for a moment it felt like the opposite, like the bleakest desolation, which she would have survived, so well did she know that feeling and its distinctive warmth, and so attached she was to it, in a way, like a faithful companion. Then she realized it wasn’t that at all, and she let joy bloom unconstrained in her mind, thrown slightly off balance though she was.
The boy was fingering his glass again, still not lifting it to his lips.
He seemed distraught at what he’d let himself say, and perhaps convinced all was lost.
She forced her face to mirror the happiness she was feeling, the radiant gratitude, forced it to drop its dramatic, dumbfounded look, which, although more eloquently expressive of the depth of her emotion, might give the boy the idea he’d shocked and upset her.
“That’s wonderful,” she whispered. “I’ve never been to Langon,
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