Enough About Love

THOMAS AND LOUISE

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“THUNDERBOLT.” At first Thomas Le Gall smiled to hear Anna use that expression. He did not ask whether she had counted the seconds between the flash of lightning and the sound of thunder. But life is facetious: a few hours after that appointment with Anna, Thomas was to be struck by a thunderbolt too. It would be at the “ritual” dinner held by Sammy Karamanlis, a young sociologist who held an open house evening once a month. Thomas did not know Sammy, but a friend took him along: “You won’t be bored, you’ll meet people, pretty women, delightful people.”

Sammy lives in a one-bedroom apartment on the rue de Grenelle, just where the Seventh Arrondissement likes to think it is already part of the Latin Quarter: high ceilings, bourgeois furnishings, views onto a massive paved courtyard. It would be improbably luxurious for an employee of the National Center for Scientific Research if the researcher’s father were not involved in banking in Lausanne. The guests, about thirty of them, seem to be regulars, but their conversations only rarely roam in the direction of their private lives. Thomas circulates discreetly from one group to another: someone else might have fun diagnosing a case of hysteria here, a breakdown pending there, the odd depression. Thomas knows how social posturing can mislead with its pretenses, appearances, and control. He forbids himself opinions.

He quickly notices a young woman with short blond hair, pale eyes, and a lot of people around her. She is leaning against the wall in the huge hallway, holding an orange-colored cocktail glass, its surface quivering from her voluble conversation. Thomas moves closer, listens. He grasps that she is a lawyer. She is talking about Chinese, Albanian, and Romanian mafias, about their extreme violence, their explicit threats, about the interpreters who dare not translate every word, she describes terrified witnesses and the sinking fear in her stomach when she looks into the cold eyes of a killer. Three weeks earlier, a Romanian pimp bound one of his girls’ hands and feet, gagged her with duct tape, and threw her in the bathtub. Then, slowly, with a razor, he slashed her, really deeply, almost cutting her into pieces. All the blood drained out of her, “two or three hours,” the pathologist reckoned. So that they knew what he was capable of, he made all his girls file through the bathroom, one after another, forcing them to touch the blood-soaked woman who was still gasping for breath, her eyes bulging with fear and pain. She eventually died. A colleague has to defend this man, and the young lawyer is haunted by the case. Just by describing it again, she relives the nightmare that words still cannot drive away.

With a pretty flick of her hand she pushes back a drooping lock of hair, she suddenly notices him and smiles: Thomas knows instantly that he is caught, and is happy to be. He feels an irresistible magnetic draw, one he takes pleasure in resisting. A pull that would be called attraction in physics too. He gathers the woman’s name is Louise, then she specifies: Louise Blum. She has fine features and is slim enough to emphasize her muscularity. What else to say about her, how to discern what he finds so erotic? The fleeting certainty, he will think later, that she smiled only at him? And he repeats it to himself: Louise Blum. He thinks how totally she suits her name.

As luck would have it, they end up sitting next to each other, but who believes in luck? She is still talking about organized crime and the role of defense lawyers, because there must be a defense, after all. He stays rather quiet, because he does not want to fill any gaps with his own words and also because he prefers listening to her. He likes her voice, the immediacy she injects into verbs. Then, when she shows an interest in him, he thinks he is telling her what he does but only says the word “analyst.” “Analyst?” she repeats, as if suspecting him of being an economist or a financier. He adds the psycho-. She behaves as if she is fascinated, perhaps she really is? Though she acts all anxious: “I often do slightly weird things. Like I talk to myself. Do you think I should have analysis?”

“Everyone should have analysis. It should be compulsory, like military service used to be.”

Thomas is only half joking. She nods.

“I know a place where everyone does, a whole nation of analyzed people: the East Village in New York. Never seen so many crazy people per square foot.”

Her laugh is deep in her throat, slightly hoarse, a laugh he instantly loves.

They play a social game: they look for things they have in common. And have no trouble finding some. He knows a psychiatrist friend of hers by reputation, she knows a lawyer he has done business with.

“He’s a complete asshole!” she says without a moment’s hesitation. It was not a slipup because she laughs as she adds, “He’s not a close friend of yours, is he?”

Thomas shakes his head, flustered, but then nods: true, he is a complete asshole. By digging deeper, they also find some journalists, a few artists …

“Pathetic,” smiles Louise.

“What?”

“How small the world is … No one ever just falls out of the sky.”

“I’m so sorry,” sighs Thomas.

His answer is formulaic but sorry he is, all the same. He would like to have fallen out of the sky. But they have found common ground, there is a familiarity between them — with her leading the way — that feels natural.

Very early on, in passing, she refers to a husband, children. From the twinge of disappointment these words produce, Thomas realizes how attracted he is to Louise. But he cannot draw any conclusions from the way she says them, certainly not that Louise is trying to convince him, or herself, that their meeting has no right to lead to anything. No, for the whole dinner, he leaves his experience as an analyst at the door. It is also true that, sometimes, women who say they have a husband and two children are just saying they have a husband and two children. Hey, he thinks at one point, Louise Blum could be Anna Stein’s blond twin. They are alike, they really are, even their lives are similar.

It is getting late, the evening is coming to an end, Louise hands out her e-mail address and telephone number. She has run out of business cards so she scribbles her details on the ends of napkins, which she tears off carefully. He folds the piece she hands to him and puts it in his pocket; on the way home he will check — twice — that he has not lost it, and as soon as he is home he will put the information on his computer and in his cell phone.

On this late summer’s morning, as he waits for Anna Stein, Thomas is writing this first e-mail to Louise Blum, so belatedly — he made a point of waiting a whole day — and so careful with respect to what he truly wants: “Thank you for such a nice evening, even though I wasn’t in great form. I hope I’ll see you again soon, at Sammy’s or somewhere else. Thomas (the analyst) XOXO.” Well, it’s hardly original, Thomas thinks. But if Louise replies despite his banal e-mail, that would at least prove she has some interest in him. He stretches in his chair, reaching his arms up and yawning loudly, a common gesture for the body to dispel the mind’s agitation. Click. Send. His Mac imitates a gust of wind and his nine o’clock appointment rings the buzzer. Anna Stein is ten minutes late.