Page 34, “The Persuasion”
Chapter 6
Tonin never winced, not once when I opened my hand and exposed the bloody palm of crushed glass that passed for my family tree. He just kept asking questions, telling me more about himself in response, and then performing the magician’s trick of getting me to expose even more.
He wanted to know whether I got my big ears from my father or my mother, a remark that I would have interpreted as an insult had he not quickly followed with his belief that big ears (he had them too) were the sign of great intelligence. He wanted to know the colors of the ugliest outfit I’d ever worn (his was a green jacket and orange pants for a Bar Mitzvah at Central Synagogue); the meaning of my middle name, Ariella (my mother always said a woman needed to be “fierce like a lion,” I explained, to which he nodded as if he believed that too); who the boy was who’d gotten my first kiss (my friend, Teddy, but we were only five and sitting on the bench in front of our school, waiting for our mothers to pick us up). And then he asked whether I was still in touch with Teddy and, when I said that I was, he asked when he could meet him.
Three espressos, two glasses of wine, two croque monsieurs and a salade nicoise later, we were in front of my hotel and I was back to the shape I was in at the Breathless cafe. How did this conversation end? He lifted my right hand. “Bon soir, Mary Jane.” He swiped his tongue lightly across his lips then touched my palm to his mouth. “Jusqu'au demain, ma belle petite amie, Marie-Jeanne.”
Then he drew my hands to his temples again, placing his on mine. This time, he slid our hands down my face, across my shoulders, and along my arms as if he were sealing us together and soon I was doing the same to him. When our hands met, he threaded his fingers through mine then wrapped our wrists and rested his forehead on mine, but did not kiss me.
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