Chapter 9 #5
The words settle between us, warm and quiet beneath the room’s noise.
I hold his gaze.
“That’s a dangerous thing to say to a woman with a notebook.”
He looks at the notebook, then back at me.
“I assumed.”
“You assume a lot.”
“I observe first,” he says. “Then I assume.”
“That is not better.”
“Maybe. But it’s certainly more accurate,” he replies.
I shake my head, but I’m smiling now. He sees it.
The conversation moves after that, not in a straight line but in the way good conversations do when both people stop managing the outcome.
We talk about food first because it is the safest dangerous thing on the table.
He asks what I ate in Lyon. I tell him about Alain and the menu being taken away from me.
He approves of Alain before he knows him.
I tell him the quenelle was perfect, and he asks whether I mean perfect or merely comforting.
I tell him I do not use perfect as a decorative object. He says good.
He says the word like approval should annoy me.
It does not. He talks about Paris without sentimentality.
He likes the markets before the restaurants, the bakeries that do one thing without apology, the old men who know which stall is lying by smell alone.
He hates food trends with a disdain that borders on personal injury.
I tell him tomato air should have remained atmosphere, and he laughs hard enough that the bartender looks over.
“You wrote that down, didn’t you?” He asks.
“I did,” I say.
“Good.”
“You approve of cruelty?”
“I approve of precision,” he says.
“Cruelty and precision often travel together.”
“You said that about arrogance and truth this morning.”
“I’m building a theory.”
“A dangerous one,” he says.
“Most useful theories are.”
He looks at me as if I have said something worth keeping.
The table fills slowly with small plates we do not properly order.
The bartender brings saucisson, then cheese, then a dish of small potatoes in something green and garlicky that he says needs more acid before I taste it.
He is right, which irritates me enough to argue the point anyway.
He lets me, then asks what I would use instead.
I answer. He disagrees. I revise. He watches the revision happen on my face, and his attention is so complete that I feel it like a hand at the back of my neck.
At some point, the first bottle becomes a second glass, then another taste from something the bartender insists we compare.
He argues that a certain natural wine has confused flaw with character.
I argue that flaw can become character if the rest of the bottle knows how to carry it.
He looks horrified enough that I laugh again.
“You cannot mean that,” he says.
“I absolutely mean that,” I say.
“Then you’re more dangerous than you look,” he says.
“Careful,” I say. “You don’t know how dangerous I look.”
His eyes move over my face, then lower, not far, not crudely, just enough to make the air at the table change temperature.
“No,” he says. “I don’t.”
The words are quiet, but the room is not.
Still, I hear them as if he has said them against my skin.
I look away first because I am beginning to understand that if I don’t, I may forget several things I have been very proud of remembering.
Such as restraint and judgment. The fact that strangers in wine bars should remain strangers long enough to become less interesting by morning.This one does not seem likely to cooperate.
By the time the bartender announces last call with the resigned authority of someone who has shepherded too many beautiful mistakes toward the door, I’ve lost track of how long this devastatingly handsome stranger has been sitting across from me.
Three hours, maybe. Long enough that the room has emptied in stages around us. Long enough that the bartender has stopped pretending not to watch. Long enough that my notebook remains open beside my elbow with only two lines written since he sat down.
One says: He tastes like he listens.
I do not remember writing that.
I close the notebook before he can see it.
Damien notices the movement, but he doesn’t ask.
That may be the most attractive thing he has done all night.
Outside, Saint-Germain is warm and dim, the streetlights throwing gold along the wet-looking pavement even though it has not rained.
The air smells like stone, wine, tobacco, and the faint sweetness of the bakery down the block working toward morning.
He stands beside me outside the wine bar with his hands in his pockets, the sleeves of his shirt still rolled, the collar open at his throat.
I should say good night.
He should say good night.
Neither of us seems in a hurry to behave.
“Which direction?” He asks.
I point vaguely toward the river. “Le Marais.”
He nods. “I’m the other way.”
“Of course you are,” I say.
“Would it be better if I lied?”
“No,” I say. “It would be more convenient if you wanted to.”
His mouth curves.
“I try not to lie for convenience.”
“That must make you difficult.”
“It does,” he says.
A taxi passes slowly, its light already off. Somewhere behind us, the bartender locks the wine bar door with a decisive click.
He looks at me. “Good night, Serena.”
My name again.
Still a problem.
“Good night, Damien,” I say.
He doesn’t kiss my cheek. He doesn’t touch my arm.
He does not take the obvious step closer just because the street and the hour have made it available.
He only looks at me for one last moment, and the restraint of it lands hotter than contact would have.
Then he turns and walks away. I stand there for two seconds longer than I should.
Then I start back toward the hotel alone.
The city is quieter now, but not asleep.
Paris never fully sleeps. It just lowers its voice and waits to see what you will do with the dark.
I cross the river with my notebook pressed against my side and his wine still warm somewhere in my blood.
The Seine moves beneath me in black silver strips.
A couple kisses near the railing. A man walks past carrying flowers wrapped in brown paper.
A bicycle bell rings once behind me, sharp and bright.
I do not look back, but I want to. By the time I reach Le Marais, I know exactly three things:
1-The beans needed more salt.
2-Damien was right about the wine.
3-I did not want the evening to end.
The third one is the problem.
It follows me upstairs, into the room, through the careful act of removing my earrings and placing them in the small dish beside the bed.
It sits with me while I wash my face, brush my teeth, and change into the thin cotton nightgown I packed because Paris in late June has no respect for sleep.
It stays near the window when I open it, letting in the faint street sounds and the warm city air that smells like stone and someone’s late cigarette. I stand there longer than I mean to.
Across the courtyard, one window glows behind gauzy curtains.
A silhouette passes through it, then disappears.
The world keeps being full of private lives, which is rude of it when mine has become briefly preoccupied by a man who can argue about wine, insult tomato air with proper appreciation, and leave without touching me as if restraint is its own form of pressure.
I don’t know who he is.
I don’t know whether I will see him again.
That should make him easy to set down.
Instead, when I finally lie in bed, I think about the way he looked at the plate of beans before he sent the wine—not at me first. Not at the room—at the food. He noticed the dish, the wine, the shift after the third bite. He noticed the problem before he used it to reach me.
That is a very specific kind of dangerous. I turn onto my side and close my eyes.