FOUR FRIENDS huddled at a small table in the dim rear of a homely sidestreet bistro in Paris. The exaggerated tones of their conversation made them appear to be a group of young girls. They were not. Marie, pleasantly capacious of frame, with a broad face and net of brown curls, had most recently seen her friends Jeanette, Anna, and Delphine, at her own thirty-second birthday celebration in her small flat.
Marie was pressing for advice about Wayne, an American she'd started sleeping with when they met in the registrar's office of the university where she worked and he was enrolled as a visiting graduate student in the department of Comparative Philosophy.
Her friends knew only that Wayne was hairy, somewhat vain, twenty-three, and had an unaccountable sexual power over Marie. He had recently regressed to Michigan and broken off contact.
"Call him," said Jeanette; "Write," said Anna. Delphine chewed her salad. She thought that Marie seemed incongruently smug.
"Forget him," Delphine said. She leaned in. "Don't waste your precious time."
A nearby bustle interrupted. A corpulent American and his corpulent wife flailed in distress. The man held doubled hands to his throat, his ten fingers like a package of hot dogs. His wife seemed unable to muster words. "He's ch—ch—ch—chh—. He's ch—ch—ch—chh—. He—."
Marie, irritated, pushed her chair out, adjusted her shawl, strode to the Americans' table and with surprising strength hauled the fat man up, digging her small hands into his solar plexus and squeezing violently.
A clod of reticulated gristle and fat dislodged from the American's guts and arced gracefully over a nearby table. The man wheezed and sniveled. Marie released him and looked into his blood-reddened face and rheumy eyes. He blubbered attempted thanks; she patted his shoulder and turned away, disgusted.
At the table again, she perceived her friends differently, seeing Anna's thinning hair, patches of dryness on Jeanette's skin, and a new wobble in Delphine's upper arms.
She herself felt radiant, almost beatific. She pushed a dish of crème brûleé away from her daintily, and knew two things. Frist, she would follow Delphine's advice. Second, she would keep Wayne's baby, and raise it. She could already see an expensive basinet, festive as a cake, in a corner of her small apartment.
She resolved never to mention Wayne again, and to tell her son that his father had been a sailor.
