Read Online Paris Trance by Geoff Dyer - Free Book Online Page B

wearing a bra. He unclipped it and pushed her against the wall. She tossed the bike lights on to the bed. They were turned on still. She reached between her legs, moved her knickers aside and guided his fingers into her, kissing him hard.
    They felt bewildered afterwards, by this fundamental breach of etiquette: screwing before they’d even unwrapped the wine – let alone opened it – while the lasagna was still baking. Nicole took off her wet knickers and they lay on the bed, not speaking until Luke said:
    ‘Would you like some wine now?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Stay there. I’ll get it.’ His jeans were around his ankles. He took off his socks as well, turned down the oven and came back with wine, glasses, a corkscrew, olives and a bowl to put the pits of the olives in. She was still wearing her suede jacket.
    ‘What about the heating? Would you like the heating on?’
    ‘Is OK.’ Luke opened the wine. They clinked glasses and sat with their legs entwined. The light was fading. Occasionally there were shouts from the street. There was a silence in the room. She was at the centre of the silence, he was at its edge, constantly on the brink of saying things: It’s lovely wine . It’s a lovely evening. You look lovely. If he could have thought of a sentence which did not have the word ‘lovely’ in it he would have said something. Instead, he waited for her, watched her chew away the olive and then, discreetly, put the stone in a bowl. After a while, she said:
    ‘It’s lovely wine.’
    When it had grown dark he put on a light and took the lasagna from the oven. He served it and brought it to the bed where they ate off their knees. Nicole had half a plate left when Luke served himself a second portion.
    ‘What do your parents do?’ he asked.
    ‘My mother was a professor. Now she is retired. My father was a doctor. He’s dead.’ Immediately, instinctively, Luke thought, she is the first woman I’ve been to bed with whose father is dead . This seemed to explain everything even though he was unsure what it explained. ‘He died when I was eleven.’
    ‘What happened?’ said Luke, unsure, even as he asked, if this was a question he should have avoided.
    ‘He had a heart attack.’ Matter-of-factly. ‘What about your parents?’
    ‘They split up when I was sixteen. My mother remarried but it was my father who left.’
    ‘He met someone else?’
    ‘No. That’s the strange thing. He went to live on his own. He died when I was twenty-two.’
    ‘Were you close to him?’
    ‘Not really. I hardly saw him after he left. He was nice when I was young but, well, he made my mother incredibly unhappy. She met someone else but I think she never really recovered from my father’s leaving like that. He ended up very twisted, bitter. An alcoholic. He was a disappointed man.’
    ‘Disappointed by what?’
    ‘By everything, I think, but himself mainly. I have a friend here, Alex. You’ll meet him. His parents are still alive but they’re old. He doesn’t see them much and he’s worried about their dying. He asked me if I wished I’d told my dad I loved him before he died.’
    ‘Did you?’
    ‘No. But I wished I’d told him I hated him.’
    ‘That’s terrible.’
    ‘I know, I really missed my chance.’ She hit him on the arm, not sure if he was joking. Luke had already polished off his second plate of food; Nicole had not yet finished her first.
    ‘You know that picture,’ she said, ‘of me in Belgrade?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘You have a picture of me before we met. I’d like one of you.’
    ‘I don’t know if I have one.’
    ‘You must have.’
    ‘Actually, maybe I do. Does it matter when it was taken?’
    ‘No. As long as it’s you.’
    He took the plates away and began trawling through the box file in which he kept his papers.
    ‘Here you are.’ He handed her the photograph. It showed a little boy wearing a cowboy hat, standing in front of a car, pointing a toy gun at the camera.
    ‘Is it really