Page 25, “The
Persuasion”
“Sorry.” I picked up the pen and dropped
it again. “Excusez-moi, excusez-moi,” I kept saying.
“Oh,
not to bother, my dear,” the woman said. She resembled the teenager in the
Breathless café. Did all the women in Paris look alike? But this one was older,
hipper, more American. “I’m just composing some thoughts about twin stars that
mutually circle in heaven.”
“Listen
to her.” Tonin took the pen from my hand and pulled my notebook out from under
my elbow. “And for the record, you’re zero for zero. And you won’t be needing
these.”
I thought he would put my things on his newspaper, but he placed only
the pen there. He slipped my notebook under him. “Now interview me.” He leaned
on his elbows—and shifted his gluteus maximii on my precious pages and grinned.
I
saw sludge in my cup. Stop. No more men. Nor did I like the woman at the next
table mentioning twin stars. I hated the interpretation of life as an endless
treasure hunt, whereby each moment, each word, was so weighted with meaning
that it could sink you. This was Red Bird’s way, not mine. Every copper penny
she spotted on the street was another earth-shattering clue to her future,
which connected directly to the color of the shirt on the man who passed while
she was picking up the coin. For me, raised as a “gastronomic Jew”—my mother’s
description of our household theology—there were coincidences, yes, but life
did not play out as if it had been scripted, as if I were reading the lines
from a part written for me in a different dimension. Life to me was choice,
benefiting from wise decisions in the here-and-now, not strange, invisible
providence.
“So if you must know,
I’m a count.”
“You’re
a what? A count? Like Dracula?”
“I’m
a Czech count, actually, sometimes in Papal favor, sometimes not.”
“I’ve
gotta write this down.” I reached across the table for my pen but he caught my
hand.
“You’ll
remember.”