Which Appetizer Natalie Chose at Lunch with Markus

Soup of the day.m Ninety-six

Charles was no longer at all the same man who’d passed the night with Markus. Halfway through the morning, he’d recovered his spirits and regretted his behavior. He was still wondering why he’d lost his footing at the sight of the Swede. Maybe he wasn’t totally fulfilled and suffered from a variety of anxieties, but that was no reason for reacting like that. Especially in front of somebody. He was ashamed. It was going to push him into drastic behavior. Just like a lover can prove to be aggressive after a far from stellar sexual performance. He felt all the fragments of combat coalescing in him again. He began to do a few push-ups, but at that very moment, Natalie came into his office. He got up.“You could have knocked,” he said curtly.She walked toward him the same way she’d walked toward Markus to kiss him. But this time it was to deliver a slap.“There, I did it.”“But you can’t do that! I can fire you for that.”Charles brought a hand to his face. And tremblingly repeated his threat.“And I can attack you for harassment. You want me to show you the e-mails you sent me?”“But why are you talking to me like that? I’ve always respected you.”“Yes, that’s it. Put on your little act for me. All you wanted to do was sleep with me.”“I honestly don’t understand you.”“Well, I don’t understand what you went and did with Markus.”“Don’t I have the right to have dinner with an employee?”“Yes, okay, that’s enough! Understand?” she shouted.This did her a world of good, and she would have wanted to fly into an even bigger rage. Her reaction was excessive. By defending her territory with Markus like that, she was betraying her confusion. The confusion she was always incapable of defining. Dictionaries stop where the heart starts. And maybe that’s why Charles had stopped reading definitions when Natalie returned to work. There was nothing to say beyond giving voice to primal reactions.As she was about to leave the office, Charles declared, “I had dinner with him because I wanted to get to know him … to know how you could have chosen a man that ugly, that insignificant. I can understand your rejecting me, but that’s something, you see, I’ll never understand …”“Shut up!”“I you think I’m going to leave things just as they are. I’ve just been with the stockholders. Any moment now, your dear Markus is going to get a very important offer. An offer he’d be suicidal to refuse. Just one small problem: the job is in Stockholm. But with the benefits he’ll get, I think he won’t hesitate long.”“You’re pathetic. Especially since nothing can prevent me from resigning and going with him.”“You can’t do that! I forbid it!”“You’re a pain, you really are …”“And you can’t do that to François, either!”Natalie stared at him. Immediately he wanted to apologize for what he’d said; he knew he’d gone too far. But he couldn’t move a muscle. Neither could she. That last sentence had knocked the life out of them. Finally, she left Charles’s office, slowly, without saying anything. He sat there alone, certain of having lost her forever. Then he walked to the window to gaze out into empty space, intensely tempted. Ninety-seven

Once she was back sitting at her desk, Natalie consulted her calendar. She called Chloé to ask her to cancel all her meetings.“But it isn’t possible! You have to head the committee in an hour.”“Yes, I know,” interrupted Natalie. “Okay, good, I’ll call later.”She hung up, not knowing what to do. It was an important meeting, and she’d spent a lot of time preparing for it. But it was obvious that she could no longer work in this company after what had just happened. She remembered the first time she’d come to this building. She was still a young girl. She recalled those beginnings, François’s advice. Perhaps that’s what had been the hardest thing about his death. The sudden, brutal absence of their discussions. The end of those moments when you talked about each other’s life, when you commented on it. She was finding herself alone at the edge of the abyss and deeply understood that her fragility was degrading her. That for three years she’d been putting on the most pathetic act there is. That deep down she had never been persuaded she wanted to live. She still felt so much guilt, so much ridiculous guilt when she returned again to the memory of the Sunday her husband had died. She should have held him back, kept him from going running. Wasn’t that a wife’s role? See to it that men stop running. She should have held him back, kissed him, loved him. She should have set down her book, interrupted her reading instead of letting him smash his life to pieces.Her anger had subsided now. She gazed at her desk a moment more, then threw a few belongings into her bag. She turned off her computer, tidied up the drawers, and left. She was glad she didn’t pass anyone, didn’t have to say a word. Her escape had to be a silent one. She took a taxi, told the driver to go to the Saint-Lazare railroad station, and bought a ticket. As the train was leaving, she began to weep. Ninety-eight

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