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‘Troquer la salade pour le cheeseburger maison,’ she said, instructing the waiter to swap Dan’s salad for a burger.
Dan looked bemused but made no objection.
‘Avec de la sauce secrète?’ asked the waiter.
Noémie nodded to agree that the secret sauce was a good idea. ‘Et des frites,’ she said.
The waiter took note.
‘Et deux verres de whisky, s’il vous plaît,’ she said – and sat back in her seat.
‘That bad?’ said Dan.
‘Dan—’ She was shaking her head.
He sucked in his core muscles. He was ready, he thought, to take rejection on the chin.
‘Oh, Dan,’ she said, and put her hand over her heart. ‘I am sorry.’
The waiter returned and placed two glasses on the table.
Dan picked up his and knocked the whiskey back in one gulp. His throat burned, and his eyes watered.
‘It’s okay,’ he said, swirling the single cube of ice around the bottom of his glass. ‘We’ve had a good time together. I shouldn’t have ruined it by getting all heavy about it.’
‘You haven’t ruined it.’
‘I haven’t?’
She looked confused. ‘No. I don’t know. Dan, I am sorry – I do not understand this.’ She held up the notebook and waved it at him. ‘I don’t know what it means.’
‘You mean, you don’t understand the words?’ Her English was pretty good, he’d thought.
‘Some words I don’t understand, but even the words I do understand, I don’t know what it means. Like this part .?.?.’ She read from the page: ‘“To wish to forever wake in a watery forest with fronds of waving blue.” What does itmean, Dan?’
Her face was so earnest; it was painfully obvious to Dan that she was being completely honest. She’d read twenty pages of his writing without grasping an iota of what he had been trying to say.
So much for that plan.
Maybe it was just as well. Maybe, if she had understood, she would just have laughed at him, at his surfeit of emotion. Maybe it was all too hard.
‘I can’t explain it,’ he said.
‘Try.’
‘It’s too hard.’
‘Si tu le dis.’
The waiter came again, served Noémie with her selection of falafels and presented Dan with his burger.
‘Merci,’ he said, and took a bite. The cheeseburger was hot and juicy and, yes, comforting, but it wasn’t what he wanted.
Noémie stretched across the table and stole some frites. He wondered if, just this once, she’d got it wrong.
‘Do you want to swap?’ he asked.
Noémie looked at his plate and looked at her own and then looked up at him. Her face, again, was filled with confusion.
