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Page 36.
Chapter 8
 On a day not longer after, by the Rue des Bernardins, trees glowed brightly and the buds on the trees were even brighter golden-green as Marc Fontbleu and Emma Delors sat on the little balcon outside her bedroom sipping iced tea and lazily regarding Saturday morning tree tops.
“This looks like a day to drive somewhere,” he said.
She sat back contentedly, hands folded in her lap, a restful smile turning her cheeks solar. “What did you have in mind?”
He lifted the tea glass and studied its fresh sediment in the morning sunlight. In some spirit of mutuality they had invented this small gesture, They shared a glass. They drank from this glass in turns, refilling it often from a plastic pitcher full of clacking ice cubes. “Where would you like to go?” he asked.
She pursed her lips and arched her back. Her bare ankles wriggled on the porch palisade. The late June breeze ruffled her fine yellow hair. “When was the last time you were in Versailles?”
He shrugged in some embarrassment. “I haven’t been to Versailles in five years.”
“It’s only a few kilometers away, but another world.”
“I know. Isn’t it sad? I live here, and don’t get around as much as I should.”
She sat back, giving him a sedate and reasonable look. “We could take my car.”
“We could spend the weekend!” he enthused. Anything to get her out of here.
She shook her head. “I keep thinking Jérôme might call.”
Marc set the glass down, careful to avoid any show of jealousy. What right did he have? He’d resolved not to question her commitments. Somehow he always returned with a faint bitter taste to these reminders that their relationship was bounded, that there were limits. A thunder clap, a landing Airbus, a few bones from Australia, and Marc must run. She was by now the only thing keeping him contented with his lawns and flower gardens. He wondered if he’d have quit by now—perhaps find some coat-and-tie job or maybe bury himself a few more years at some graduate school, only to end up mowing more lawns because he had no inkling of the practical now nor would he then. Sadly, the Jérômes of the world were born with this kind of street savvy. They had this boardroom, mahogany-row deep pile carpet smell in their blood from birth. Marc Fontbleu, first in his family to rise above trucking or mucking, had cruised into the sky but was lost, flying blindly in dense cumulus clouds of poetry, artfulness, and sincerity.
Emma bit her lower lip speculatively and looked at him. “I have a week’s vacation I can take this summer. That’s nine days, if you count weekends. If you want, maybe I and my imaginary girlfriend Mimi could take a week’s ride up out of town to visit her sick mother.”
He frowned, more for her than himself.
She held out her hand for him. “You care about me, don’t you?”
He took her hand in his. “I love you.”
“No.”
“What else could this be? Am I sick?”
She smiled. “That’s Shakespeare. This is reality. Marc, I love you too, like a—”
“—Husband?”
“Like a lover. You are my lover. I am your—”
“Wife?”
“Silly man. I am your girl, your dream, your pute, your bitch, anything you want me to be.”
He wanted to be in love. She wasn’t playing along.
She pawed at him. “What do you want, Marc?”
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