Chicken Skin – Chapter VI

Christine got into the restaurant where Antoine and she had agreed they would meet for dinner that evening.

He had booked for two but didn’t arrive yet.

The maître d’hôtel led her to the table. She sat down on the seat he presented her.

The restaurant wasn’t really crowded at that early time of the evening. Apart from a couple of retired persons who were placing their order, all the tables were empty.

Christine looked all around herself while waiting for Antoine. She observed the simple and elegant decor of the place, liked the setting of understated elegance that emanated from the spot. Everything contributed to create an atmosphere of discretion and coziness: the spacing of the tables, the walls with their old rose paper, the thickness of the carpet that covered the ground up and the skillfully softened lightening.

When Christine looked at her watch, it was already a quarter to eight.

Christine, although she never had any appointment with Antoine elsewhere than at his firm premises before, knowing him very well yet in his professional life, was aware that he often finished his day of work at an advanced time and that he also was late some times. More or less, she had expected he would be late that day.

After she had seen various patrons, who began to converge as minutes passed by, got in the restaurant and when she finally saw Antoine arrive at eight, she esteemed that the time he imposed on her to wait was acceptable and smiled at him.

Antoine was walking toward the table, smiling back at Christine.

He cut a fine figure in his charcoal-gray three-piece suit.

Christine felt proud of his style. Meeting Antoine that way, in a public place, far from the usual secrecy of their meetings in Antoine’s study, suddenly drove her mindful of his physical beauty, of his elegance and of the appeal that emanated from his simple presence.

She felt proud of him under the eyes and in the presence of the other persons there in the restaurant.

No other couple was as beautiful as they were: Christine in her delicate fairness, her freshness of newly opened flower; Antoine in the maturity of his thirties, the skin olive and the eye sharp.

Christine noticed the insistent look on Antoine of a middle-aged woman escorted by a man about who one could reasonably deduce, being around about sure not to make a mistake, he was her husband. She looked enthralled by Antoine. Without any coyness nor any embarrassment, she had put on him an openly admiring eye. That didn’t escape Antoine’s attention. He arched his back, raised his voice, just as he sat down at the table, in front of Christine. As she got aware of his slight change of attitude that betrayed his sensibility to another woman’s attention than hers, Christine couldn’t repress an expression of sadness. That made Antoine instantly go back to the privacy of their conversation.

During the whole meal, delicious courses came one after another. Antoine perfectly chose his restaurant.

He was peaceful and relaxed that evening. He kindly chatted with Christine who had found again her usual good mood and was enjoying the sweetness of that light conversation, very far from the office tensions.

Little by little, their exchange became more serious though. Antoine talked about his wife to Christine. He alluded to the difficulties of a relation already bygone, their arguments and her continual reproaches. He was sort of setting the scene, sketching the surroundings in which he was developing. Christine was carefully listening to him who was disclosing a whole part, she didn’t know so far, of his privacy. She felt that, in spite of the discord and the difficulties, Antoine and his wife’s relationship had taken root in a communal past, some good memories and his strong sense of family.

Antoine also talked about his son. From under his affectionate tone leaked the muffled and untold regret of not being able to give him more time, share his games and talk to him about life in general.

Antoine was drawing that way, under Christine’s eyes, in simple and accurate sentences, a married life as there are so many, a seemingly neat and irrevocable life.

Christine came to talk about Benjamin.

She didn’t know anymore where she was in her relation with him. Antoine’s new attitude, that was giving her hope in something different, more serious and more intimate with him, was baffling her existence. So if her relationship with Antoine was to become sustainable, she didn’t know anymore how to maintain her liaison with Benjamin whom to she didn’t talk about Antoine differently than about the head of the firm she was doing an internship in.

She didn’t say anything to Antoine about all this, but her hesitations and her scruples were so tangible that he detected them. Christine, who wasn’t very good at concealing, knowing that in spite of the detached tone she had adopted, her trouble was palpable, felt Antoine’s satisfaction, or more precisely, the hope that crept in him at that very moment that he might be one day the only man in her life.

By the by, it didn’t displease her.