Castle of Water: A Novel(51)

“What would I say?”

“Nothing, because you’d be trop timide. You’d just watch her, trying to work up the nerve, but you wouldn’t be able to. You’d hope she’d look your way and invite you with her eyes, but she would not, because she’d be in love with the bartender Antoine, and she would be staring at him.”

“Well, that would stink.”

“Yes, it would. You’d watch when she gets up to speak with him, and you’d see her kiss him on the cheek, and you’d decide not to talk to her, because she’s obviously in love with him.”

“This doesn’t sound like much of a meeting.”

“Oh, it wouldn’t be. You wouldn’t meet her this night. You’d only see her for the first time. You’d finish your beer and walk out the door, and you’d go home, a little upset.”

“Obviously.”

“Yes. But you would be so filled with passion, you’d decide to make a painting of her from your memory. And you would stay up all night, painting with your shirt off, with the moon coming in through your window, and you wouldn’t stop until dawn and then you’d look at it and decide it looked just like her.”

“With my shirt off, huh? How would my muscles be?”

“They’d be okay.”

“Just okay?”

“Come on, it’s not what matters. It’s your art.”

“So I’d be a talented artist?”

“Yes, of course, although you wouldn’t know it yet. You still wouldn’t be sure what you are.”

“Fine. So I’d have this painting.”

“Yes. But after you finish it, you’d be disgusted with yourself, and upset that you wasted so much time on it, because you wouldn’t think you would ever see her again. So you’d hide it in the bathroom behind the toilet, and you’d go to bed. And you would try to forget about this girl you had seen, and you wouldn’t think about her anymore. And you’d go back to your routine, you know, you’d eat your lunches at a little Turkish soup restaurant on Saint-Denis to save money, you’d smoke cigarettes out your window and knock the ashes into a flower-pot, you’d walk around the city to decide what to paint. But two weeks later, you would see her again at the same café. Only this time she would not smile at the bartender Antoine and give him kisses on the cheek, because he broke her heart.”

“How would he have done that?”

“He slept with her, of course. But afterwards, he would have ignored her. Like a typical French guy. She would be very upset, but Chez Suzette is her friends’ favorite café, and the best in the quartier, so she would have to go back. And that is when you would talk to her.”

“I’d walk up to her this time?”

“No, of course not. You are an American, Americans wouldn’t do such things. What would happen is that you would go to the toilet, but you wouldn’t be able to find out how to use the sink. It would be different than American sinks, and would use a foot pedal to start the water. But you wouldn’t understand it, and you’d have soap all over your hands and you wouldn’t be able to wash it off. So you’d walk out of the bathroom and ask the first person you see how the sink works.”

“And that person would be her?”

“No, that person would be her friend. We can call her Berenice. But you’d start to talk to Berenice, and she’d think you are rather nice, even for an American, and she would know that her friend is unhappy about what happened with Antoine, so she would invite you to come join them. And you would.”

“And this girl would finally fall for me?”

“No, pas de tout. Not at first, anyway. But your little accent when you speak your terrible French would be rather cute, and you’d be different than the Parisian men she is used to with their ridiculous scarves and leather jackets and their macho bullshit, and she would decide to talk to you. You’d still be too shy to ask her to do something with you alone, so you’d invite her and her two friends to come over the next night for une petite fête. But you wouldn’t realize that fête means ‘party’ because your French wouldn’t be that good. You’d think it is more like a small gathering of friends. So when the girls come, they’d be disappointed. They would have been expecting a cool party full of handsome men and loud music, and instead it would be just you with a cheap bottle of wine.”

“Sounds pretty bad.”

“That’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that you’d serve them salade ni?oise from a can. This girl is from the south, where they take cuisine very seriously, and one simply does not do such things. After that she would decide she cannot stay any longer and that it was a mistake to come. But because of all the cheap wine you gave her, she would have to pee very badly. So she’d ask if she can use your bathroom before she leaves, and when she’d go in, she would see the painting behind the toilet. She would know instantly that it was her, and she would start to cry.”

“Why?”

“Because no one had ever done such a thing for her. Not once in her life. And because she would feel badly for the way she had been treating you. And that is when she would decide that she is going to kiss you.”

“So she’d go straight out and kiss me?”