12
The private car dropped them at a small restaurant perched at the top of a winding road. The white stucco building was framed by a terrace draped in bougainvillea. The menu was handwritten in Spanish. They ordered a little of almost everything. Leo let Marcel pick the wine. Marcel, pointedly, left his phone in his pocket.
It’s weird not having anywhere I need to be.”
“It’s a good feeling. You should try it more often.”
Marcel gestured vaguely at Leo. “How do you spend a day when you don’t have to do anything?”
Leo speared a grilled prawn with charred lime and extended his fork to Marcel. “You sit down to a meal and savor it so you remember what you ate later.”
Marcel closed his eyes as he chewed. The seafood was delicious and quite possibly the first thing he’d actually tasted all week.
“It’s that simple?”
“You don’t have to spend the rest of your life reminiscing about twenty stolen minutes in Paris, you know. You’re traveling right now. You’ve just forgotten to look up and see it.”
Marcel looked up now. He looked across the candles and prawn shells. He looked into Leo’s face, and whatever half-ironic thing he’d been about to say died in his mouth, because Leo was looking at him the way you look at someone you want to keep.
And that was a view he wouldn’t tire of for a very long time.