then smacked a bell on the table.
“Deux cafés,” Madame told an Arab girl. “With milk?” she asked Nina.
“Un café au lait,” Nina said. The waitress looked at her, uncomprehending.
“Un café au lait,” said Madame, with more success. “Your flight was smooth, I trust.”
“Sort of,” Nina said. What would she add if Madame followed up on that sort of ? Would she say that the Belgian couple had pushed in front of her twice, once at the check-in counter, once again while boarding, so she had focused on them, despised them long before they began their anti-Semitic eye-rolling knee-slapping good time?
Did that call into question that purity of Nina’s response to their filthy sneering race hatred? Would Nina find some subtle means of signaling Madame that she wasn’t Jewish? Oh, Leo was right to have left her and to have devised this wicked good-bye, packing her off to his former mistress in a sleazy whorehouse.
“Always it’s sort of,” said Madame. “Unless one takes the Concorde.”
“This was coach,” said Nina.
“Pity,” Madame said. And then, after a pause, “You are writing for Allo! ?”
Nina nodded vehemently. “Low budget. We always fly coach.”
That we hung in the breakfast room like a hive of hostile bees shifting and thrumming between them. Madame tossed her head and raked her short blond hair with her fingers.
“How is dear Leo?” she said.
How did normal people navigate these conversational shoals when the current seemed to be spinning you toward the churning rapids of confession? What if Nina surrendered and told Madame the whole story: How, from the night she’d met Leo, she’d felt helpless, out of control, how once she’d run twenty blocks to a bar from which he’d called, wanting to see her. At first she’d been playacting, pretending that nothing else existed, nothing mattered beyond the well of white light in which she lay with Leo, until at some unguarded moment the game changed and became real, and she looked away from Leo and the world had ceased to exist, or at least his absence had bleached out all its color and now turned all Paris a muddy gray and left her a prisoner in her hotel room.
Telling Madame that would certainly change the terms of their brief acquaintance, ratchet their level of intimacy up a notch or two. Perhaps she would even mention that conversation in Leo’s office, how her silly pleased smile had stuck on her face like a fly trapped in amber. She wished she could remember when exactly she’d figured out that their romantic long weekend in Paris was a trip she’d be taking alone. She would describe how he’d made her cry, his Nina, I’m over here .
And perhaps she would discover: The same thing had happened to Madame! Then they would be more than intimates. They would be sisters, fellow victims. Why not fling herself at Madame’s feet? Leo had made her realize that she was a passionate person.
But wait. Wouldn’t it be far worse to see Nina’s private tragedy reduced to one of Leo’s bad habits? And whom was she going to tell all this to? Leo’s former mistress? Nina wasn’t one of those people who confessed their darkest secrets to the first person who made eye contact with them for more than half a second. She hadn’t needed Leo to enroll her in the Billie Holiday school of manners, to tell her that mystery and passion lasted longer if one refrained from discussing one’s relationship , from analyzing one’s feelings . What amazed her most was that—in light of everything that was occurring—it still cheered her immensely to recall that she and Leo had this…reserve…in common.
“Oh, Leo? He’s fine,” said Nina.
“I am sure Leo’s fine,” said Madame. “The streets will be littered with corpses and Leo will still be fine.”
“Pardon me?” said Nina.
The waitress had brought their breakfast. Nina poured her coffee with what she hoped was panache but the pot was soon leaking a fecal ring onto the snowy
“Deux cafés,” Madame told an Arab girl. “With milk?” she asked Nina.
“Un café au lait,” Nina said. The waitress looked at her, uncomprehending.
“Un café au lait,” said Madame, with more success. “Your flight was smooth, I trust.”
“Sort of,” Nina said. What would she add if Madame followed up on that sort of ? Would she say that the Belgian couple had pushed in front of her twice, once at the check-in counter, once again while boarding, so she had focused on them, despised them long before they began their anti-Semitic eye-rolling knee-slapping good time?
Did that call into question that purity of Nina’s response to their filthy sneering race hatred? Would Nina find some subtle means of signaling Madame that she wasn’t Jewish? Oh, Leo was right to have left her and to have devised this wicked good-bye, packing her off to his former mistress in a sleazy whorehouse.
“Always it’s sort of,” said Madame. “Unless one takes the Concorde.”
“This was coach,” said Nina.
“Pity,” Madame said. And then, after a pause, “You are writing for Allo! ?”
Nina nodded vehemently. “Low budget. We always fly coach.”
That we hung in the breakfast room like a hive of hostile bees shifting and thrumming between them. Madame tossed her head and raked her short blond hair with her fingers.
“How is dear Leo?” she said.
How did normal people navigate these conversational shoals when the current seemed to be spinning you toward the churning rapids of confession? What if Nina surrendered and told Madame the whole story: How, from the night she’d met Leo, she’d felt helpless, out of control, how once she’d run twenty blocks to a bar from which he’d called, wanting to see her. At first she’d been playacting, pretending that nothing else existed, nothing mattered beyond the well of white light in which she lay with Leo, until at some unguarded moment the game changed and became real, and she looked away from Leo and the world had ceased to exist, or at least his absence had bleached out all its color and now turned all Paris a muddy gray and left her a prisoner in her hotel room.
Telling Madame that would certainly change the terms of their brief acquaintance, ratchet their level of intimacy up a notch or two. Perhaps she would even mention that conversation in Leo’s office, how her silly pleased smile had stuck on her face like a fly trapped in amber. She wished she could remember when exactly she’d figured out that their romantic long weekend in Paris was a trip she’d be taking alone. She would describe how he’d made her cry, his Nina, I’m over here .
And perhaps she would discover: The same thing had happened to Madame! Then they would be more than intimates. They would be sisters, fellow victims. Why not fling herself at Madame’s feet? Leo had made her realize that she was a passionate person.
But wait. Wouldn’t it be far worse to see Nina’s private tragedy reduced to one of Leo’s bad habits? And whom was she going to tell all this to? Leo’s former mistress? Nina wasn’t one of those people who confessed their darkest secrets to the first person who made eye contact with them for more than half a second. She hadn’t needed Leo to enroll her in the Billie Holiday school of manners, to tell her that mystery and passion lasted longer if one refrained from discussing one’s relationship , from analyzing one’s feelings . What amazed her most was that—in light of everything that was occurring—it still cheered her immensely to recall that she and Leo had this…reserve…in common.
“Oh, Leo? He’s fine,” said Nina.
“I am sure Leo’s fine,” said Madame. “The streets will be littered with corpses and Leo will still be fine.”
“Pardon me?” said Nina.
The waitress had brought their breakfast. Nina poured her coffee with what she hoped was panache but the pot was soon leaking a fecal ring onto the snowy
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