Taxi to Paris by Ruth Gogoll Page B

patio and walked without hurrying - something that took a considerable effort - to the table. She was looking in another direction, so I had a good view of her classical profile. Her beauty almost frightened me. The symmetry of her features was almost surreal. Never had I seen anything close in another woman. She first noticed me when I was close enough for her to hear my footsteps on the stones. Almost startled, as if she'd been thinking about something totally unrelated and wasn't expecting me at all, she looked up. I felt like a troublemaker. I deliberately put on a friendly smile, to take some of the uncomfortable intimacy out of the situation. "Hello. I'm sorry if I'm late."
    She smiled back with the same friendliness. "You're not. I like to wait for people in peace and quiet."
    "Peace and quiet" in conjunction with "waiting" was a in itself contradiction to me. I hated having to wait, and tried to avoid it whenever possible. In this respect, we seemed to be very different. I hoped that wasn't true in other things.
    "Have you been here long?" A little small talk couldn't hurt. After all, this situation was really very different from all of our previous meetings.
    "Not more than half an hour." Apparently, that was quite normal to her. It seemed like an eternity to me. I probably would've died from impatience.
    "I hope you haven't been too bored." I still couldn't imagine why anyone would intentionally come an hour early.
    "Bored? No. I'm never bored."
    I wondered at the way she took this statement for granted and sighed a little. "I could never say that about myself. Just the opposite."
    She laughed softly. "I can't imagine that."
    I sounded to myself like a teatime chat in Queen Victoria's salon. That would definitely have bored me. I reached for the menu that lay on the table. "Have you ordered yet?"
    She looked at me and grinned a little. "How could I? There's nothing Chinese or Italian here."
    I got a terrible feeling in my gut. "Would you rather go somewhere else?" Damn it again, I'd picked the wrong restaurant! The evening was shot.
    She looked right at me. Her eyes seemed to drill right through me. It was incredibly uncomfortable. I tried to hold up to her and not look away. "You are much too serious for your age," she finally revealed to me, conclusively.
    "For my age? I just turned thirty-two!" I sputtered, because she'd surprised me so much.
    She laughed, satisfied. She was obviously having a heathenishly good time. "Thank you!" she said with a little nod and a slight emphasis on the second word. "That was all I wanted to know."
    At first, I had to steady myself a bit, but then it began to seem funny to me as well. "And I bet that if I ask you how old you are now, you won't answer, because it's not polite to ask a woman her age."
    She winked at me. "Right."
    Such a little tart! I was no longer so sure that I was ready for her. It was really difficult to guess her age. She could be anywhere between twenty-five and thirty-five, or so it seemed to me. I gave up. One would probably never get that secret out of a woman like her. Nevertheless, I assumed for no apparent reason that she was younger than I. But why did that matter? She was flirting with me; that was all that counted. And she was an expert at flirting.
    I noticed how her magic worked on me, and I didn't even get the impression that she was doing it on purpose. She possessed a natural charm that was only emphasized by her impeccably good manners. I knew, though, that she could also put them aside if she wanted. Maybe that was part of her attractiveness. After all the effort and nerves it had cost me to get her here, and the cool precision with which she had made the date, it surprised me how relaxed she was. She laughed at my jokes and was incredibly charming. I was captivated. When she was this loose and relaxed, the whole world seemed to revolve around her. I'd never seen her like this before. She seemed more and more like the embodiment of my dreams.