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Page 19.
 “We can help each other. Not that I’m in much need.”
“Me neither. Or maybe we are and don’t know it.”
“You’re nice to look at,” he said. “More nice to sit with, look in your eyes, watch how your lips gleam in this rainy light, and love the warmth in your soul.”
She pulled herself close as if they were high school kids on a date. “We can split a banana some time.”
He laughed. “A banana split.”
“Splat.” Her eyes glittered and she looked gamine. Her lips glistened.
He knotted his hands together on the table, squeezing her yielding hand close to his chest. “Why you have this thing about you, something young? At twenty feet distance you could pass for twenty-one. You’re like”(he groped for words, diplomatically)”not yet domesticated. A girl.”
“A girl, always young.” She looked grateful. “I’m still filled with impulse.”
“Yes.”
“A colt.”
“Yes.”
“I am careful, though.”
“Are you sure nobody from the faculty would recognize you here? I mean, after all, we’re at the center of the university.”
“In a restaurant? Some university—I’m sorry. Like there are spies everywhere.”
He detected a brief flare of resentment at the world, her world, her tormentors, who had shaped her, such a fine vessel, and yet just property. “You can be a little cynical.”
Biting, maybe, which gives you a cutting edge.
“I’m sorry. Sometimes I get to be a wise guy, a wise ass chick. No, I doubt if anyone would recognize me. Jérôme takes me to parties and shows me off. I don’t really mind. Are you shocked? I was brought up that way.”
“You told me you are from Chaillot.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m spoiled. My daddy is a famous surgeon. My older brother is an architect. Groomed for Sorbonne, so naturally he went to Polytech.”
“And you?”
“Do you know the Style commercial?”
“You mean that new cigarette.” He remembered the ads—always anchored on a smiling, tanned blonde accepting a Style from some curly-haired rascal holding a crisp new red-and-white, candy-striped pack of The Really Thin Cigarillos.
“It’s a cigar,” she corrected. “I was groomed to smile and hold the cigar. Like Momma. She held the cigar for years. It was the only thing she could train me for. So I hold the cigar for Jérôme when he needs me. My face and a few cocktails too many got the chair in Anthro somewhere in Vienna or London to invite Jérôme to teach for a year. Jérôme turned it down for Sorbonne-Pantheon. But now he’s in Upskate, and here we are.”
Without you, Marc thought. He must be such a fool.
“Here we are,” Marc said. “Doesn’t he want to feel jealous?”
She shook her head with a rueful smile. “He knows I would never cheat on him, and nobody could take me away from him.”
“He assumes a lot.”
She took a deep breath and looked at the floor, away from Marc. “We’ll see,” she whispered.
I don’t know either, he thought.
She did not resist when he took her hand in his. It was so warm, and suddenly her gaze turned to him full of gratitude and warmth. Her moment of uncertainty had vanished. Her tone became strong and sure. “My parents trained me for the game. They set me up, and Jérôme found me. Bought me right off the shelf. We were all so happy.”
“We?”
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