The Age of Reinvention by Karine Tuil Page B

fluent Arabic, he has clients in Dubai, in London, he—”
    â€œSo you hired him because he’s useful to the firm . . .”
    â€œWhat the hell are you getting at? Yes, of course, I hire all my employees because they bring added value to the firm. All employers do that, don’t they?”
    Losing his temper, Pierre knocks over his cup, spilling coffee on the papers arranged on his desk. Shit! Samir gets up and helps him clean the fast-spreading brown stains from his desk. “It’s fine, I can do it . . . I think you’d better go to your meeting.” Hearing these words, Samir grabs his coat and stands immobile for a few seconds, watching Pierre, not knowing what he should do. Then, finally, he mutters that he’s sorry— really sorry—and walks away.
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    1 . Group Union Défense is the name of a succession of violent French far-right student political groups, founded in 1968 at Panthéon-Assas University (otherwise known as Paris II) by Gérard Longuet.
    2 . The Union Nationale des Étudiants de France—Indépendante et Démocratique was a far-left French student union that existed between 1980 and 2001.

7
    That evening, Samir arranged to meet Nina in a large Parisian restaurant situated under the alcove of an elegant townhouse with a view over a verdant garden. It’s beautiful and chic, he thinks, the kind of thing that might impress her: that bourgeois minimalism, that well-ordered sobriety, that quietude provided by the feeling of being among your own kind—something he discovered quite late, mainly through his wife, who had never known any other world. Having asked the hotel concierge to reserve a small table set aside from the others, he arrived early. Even so, he has trouble concealing his excitement when he sees Nina enter the restaurant, shoulders slightly hunched in a defensive posture, wearing a little low-cut red dress that gives a glimpse of her opulent breasts. When she walks into the room, she is all that he—and every other man in the room—sees. He stands up to kiss her cheek, letting his lips linger on that soft square inch of skin close to the corner of her mouth, while his hands touch her arm, feeling her shape and warmth through the fabric. She turns him on—everything about her turns him on, even her perfume, a mix of mandarin, incense, and cedarwood—and he finds it hard to move away from her. It’s physical: even if he takes a step back, lets go of her arm, looks away from her face, it is obvious that he wants her, that his body and mind are in turmoil; it is obvious that he wants to touch her, to keep her next to him, to take her. They sit side by side, their bodies close, looking out across the room, waiters scurrying past in both directions. Nina has never been taken anywhere so elegant before, she has never tasted such fine food. She is excited, nervous; he sees this and is pleased. He pretends to be surprised by her reaction. This is all perfectly normal for him. It is normal to be served, pampered, flattered. He enters the room and they give him the best table. Before he has even ordered anything, the waitress brings him a glass of his favorite champagne. He asks a question about the menu and the chef himself comes out to greet him. His aura of power is natural now. And he has acquired something else, through imitation, through contact with his wealthy wife whose every wish is granted: the false simplicity of people who have everything. We are together, we are having a conversation; I am a normal man, an accessible man; this surprises you, delights you; but look more closely, look at how I hold myself, listen to the way I articulate my words . . . can’t you perceive the distance between us now? The extraordinary self-importance conferred by a privileged social position. Samir is there, at the center of everything, in complete control. And suddenly Nina feels pathetic in