The 2084 Precept

by Anthony D. Thompson

  "Yes," I said slowly, "on a few occasions." This happens to be true, but never overdo it, it can cause suspicion. "And certain pieces of music can make me emotional as well, but you know how we men are, we try to keep our tears at bay."

  Right tone, I think. Right balance.

  "Have you ever written anything?" she asked. Pushed up her glasses again.

  "Not really. I wrote a couple of short stories when I was young and I wrote a few poems as well. Since then I have written a few articles on this or that for minor publications you would never have heard of. But that's it, you are not having lunch with a famous novelist or some other kind of literary celebrity, I'm afraid."

  "Were any of your stories or poems published?"

  "A couple of poems. Back in the day. But minor stuff, minor publications. I was paid £10 each for the two poems, can you imagine that? A kind of scrap metal value."

  "What kind of stories and poems did you write?"

  "Well, let me see. The stories were either romantic ones, or dark and nasty thrillers. The poems started off being romantic ones because I was in my early teenage years and you know what we're all like back then." I chuckled and hoped she was silently chuckling as well and thinking back then, but now we're more mature. "But then I started choosing stranger subjects, just to be different. That was the only aim really, to be different."

  "And do you still write things?"

  "Oh no," I laughed, "I'm not good enough for it and on top of that it's too much hard work. Two pretty good reasons, don't you think? But I may continue to contribute an article or two, here or there, at some point in the future, who knows? I might even write a business book one day. No idea."

  "What exactly do you do business-wise?" she asked, still looking at me in that admiring way. The great POD. If nothing else, she has become interested in me, not as a man, I don't think so, but as a person. Progress of a kind.

  "I'm a consultant, self-employed, I help companies. It means that I travel a lot, but usually only in Europe. And I like my work and so I am a happy guy. If you enjoy your work, you enjoy your evenings, you enjoy your weekends, and—quad erat demonstrandum—you enjoy your life."

  "I have never heard it put like that before, Peter. You have just described a hugely important philosophy using a few very simple words. You are an interesting man."

  Aha, a major advance. Women love 'interesting' men as much as they love 'humorous' men or men who can cook. I glanced sideways at her and she was looking at me in that way again.

  "And you are off to one of your consultancy jobs now?" she continued. "Is it somewhere in France?"

  I wish it were, oh how I wish it were.

  "No," I said, "It's in London. For a few more days or a few more weeks, I'm not sure yet."

  "Hmm," she said again, "you are an interesting man."

  She didn't say anything else, she just looked at me and smiled. That tooth, it drove me crazy.

  We stayed like that for a while, looking at the goldfish. I snuck a few careful glances at her breasts out of the corner of my eye. Very careful sidelong glances. And then I went inside to the bar and paid the bill.

  She went quiet again in the car and I decided to do the same. I think she was the kind of girl who liked a bit of silence between two people, not all of the time but some of the time. So do I. If you are really attracted to someone it's a comfortable feeling, not having to talk all the time. You can both think your thoughts or you can be like Mr. Brown and do some deep philosophizing.

  It was great weather for driving, but hot. I switched the air conditioning on. We were a long way past Metz before I said, "And what are you doing this evening Céline? In Reims?"

  There. I had used her name. Not too soon I hope, don't think so.

  "Oh nothing. I'll just be checking into the hotel, wandering about and doing some shopping."

  Here we go, as low-risk as we can.

  "Nothing? Well, why don't we go out for a drink afterwards, or a meal perhaps?"

  "Oh no. No thank you."

  "Or the cinema? Nicer than just doing nothing on your own."

  "No."

  This was not good, not good at all. 'No' on its own sends a powerful signal. Best not to say anything for a while again. I couldn't think of anything appropriate anyway.

  The countryside we are driving through is green. Pleasant, nothing spectacular; it is, after all, fairly flat Champagne country. It is also mass slaughter country, an area where untold millions of young humans died in World War I in places such as Verdun. Plenty of young human skeletons still beneath the turf.

  My silence lasted for about half an hour.

  And then I decided to put a question to her of the kind you should never, ever put, to a woman after she has told you no. But with my lottery chances now down to about 10%, if that, I figured I had little to lose.

  "Why not?" I asked.

  "Why not what?"

  "Why not go to the cinema?"

  "Peter, it's not about going to the cinema."

  "It's not?"

  "No."

  "What's it about then?"

  "It's about what you are going to want afterwards."

  A nuclear bomb.

  Of course she was right. My faithful neurons immediately slammed into high speed, extremely high speed, and produced a psychologically correct answer within about 0.8 seconds.

  "Céline, I have to admit you're right. Yes. Yes, I was thinking about that. But O.K., let's forget it please, I won't try anything, I won't say anything, it is something I won't even think about anymore, I promise you, I guarantee it."

  No, I am not a liar. I am merely an honest man who occasionally lies.

  "Let's just go to the cinema," I continued in desperation. "I enjoy your company, we don't have to have a meal afterwards if you don't want to, I'll just get back in my car and drive off on the road to Calais. Catch a night ferry, be in London early morning."

  She thought about this shameless and pathetic begging for a while and pushed her glasses higher up her nose a couple of times. It must have sounded like desperation to her, and of course it was. Mortifying and unadulterated desperation.

  She looked at me. "Tu es vraiment sympathique," she said. You are a really nice man.

  "Perhaps, Peter, perhaps we can go to the cinema after I have done my shopping."

  My heart leapt. I don't know why we use that expression. The heart is merely a pump. It does not leap. Actually, it is a verily amazing pump. It pumps 10 liters of blood around your system every minute and it beats 72 times in order to do it. That is roughly 14,000 liters of blood per day and over 100,000 beats. Or 4 trillion liters of blood and 29 trillion beats in your average lifetime. And whenever it stops, you die. We don't know how it does it and we don't know why it does it, we talk about electrical charges and so on and so forth, but we don't know where they come from. Be that as it may, my heart, whether it had leapt or not, had added a considerable number of beats to its programmed workload today.

  Just to be able to spend a few more hours with this girl had somehow become a matter of great importance to me. And if it had to be without sex, then that was O.K. with me also. A strange feeling. A feeling belonging to the dreamy, erotic and hopeless world of your average twelve year-old male.

  We switched back to our silence routine as far as the turn-off onto the A17 toward Reims, at which point I dangerously edged a little further along my dead-end street. "Which hotel are you staying in?" I asked.

  "The Hotel Bristol," she replied. "The street is the Rue de Verdun. Do you have a navigation system?" A strange question nowadays for a car like mine, proof that even teachers can have knowledge gaps.

  I nodded and typed the address into the system. For some reason there are millions of hotels in France which go by the name of Bristol. The name is used by hotels of all types, from luxury five star establishments right down through to the low and also the very low categories. It's the way of the world. When you have the money you stay in good hotels and when you d
on't have the money, you don't. And as she was hitchhiking, she can’t have much money, this was going to be one of the bad hotels, one of the ones with musty smells and tiny, century-old bathrooms and sheets which may be clean but don't look it. Not a problem for me of course, it being 99.8% certain—my best estimate—that I wouldn't be staying there anyway.

  Even so, my hardworking neurons had worked out a way to keep the remaining dregs of hope alive. Even if they felt as the Germans must have done as the Russians closed in on Berlin.

  It was early evening when we reached the hotel. It was in a back street somewhere and I had no problem finding a place to park. I fetched her rucksack from the trunk. And launched the last salvos of my impossible struggle.

  "Céline," I said, "while you're checking in and doing your shopping, I think I'll just take a nap here in the car until it's cinema time. That will be around 8 o'clock, I think. I'm tired, and I still have a lot of driving ahead of me."

  I wasn't tired. This was King Canute trying to turn the tide. Trying to have her take pity on me and invite me up to her room.

  Which she didn't.

  "O.K.," she said, and off she went into the hotel.

  But she was back five minutes later. "You're tired, Peter. Why don't you use my room while I'm out," she said. "The desk is unattended at the moment, but be careful, check it before you go through." And she gave me the key to her room, number 14.

  Call me Wellington, not Canute. Blücher had suddenly arrived. What a turnaround. I would never have thought it. No way, not with this girl. The lottery chances were up to 70%, at least 70%, in one fell swoop. My heart did its acceleration trick again, it pumped like a suicidal maniac. Despite knowing that all she was doing was being kind. But let us wait and see, you can never tell, an angler’s patience is required. I would continue with this ploy to the very end. This attempted ploy I mean, of course.

  "Thank you," I said, "that will be great. Many thanks."

  And off she went looking for shops, and off I went along to the hotel. I looked in at the entrance. Nobody at the desk, up the stairs as fast as I could and into her room. A tiny room, a double bed right up against the side wall, just enough space to walk around it. I closed the curtains, shut out the dusk, got undressed and under the covers and lay facing the wall. I'll be pretending to be faithfully asleep when she comes back. But I was naked under those covers and she would see my naked back when she came in. I would make sure she did. And what then?

  And what then? Well, you won't believe it.

  She was back after only half an hour. She switched the light on.

  "Peter?" she said quietly, "are you asleep?"

  I put on a mumble and a sigh, and turned onto my back and sat up. Top half naked, bottom half also naked—under the covers.

  "Not really," I said. "Too early, probably."

  "Oh," she said, "well…do you play cards?"

  Cards? CARDS? CARDS? I told you that you wouldn't believe it. I myself, however, had no other choice but to believe it. She rummaged around in her rucksack, found a pack of cards, sat on the bed, explained some kind of a game to me and started dealing. Me, naked in the bed. She, fully clothed on top of it. Looking beautiful, tooth, ponytail, pushing up her glasses. And we're playing cards.

  CARDS. The game took about twenty minutes and she won it. Not just because it was a game I didn't know, but because my neurons were reaching their limits, vast quantities of messages being shipped in machine-gun mode to my groin area—a polite way to put it, I am sure you agree—and an equal number of other messages being transmitted to my brain's internal control department, and the few remaining left-over thoughts being devoted to selecting a card each time it became necessary to do so. A looming computer crash.

  "Another game?" she asked and my lottery chances, in yet another fell swoop, fell definitively down to around 0.24%, give or take a point or two. She obviously did not intend for anything to happen, absolutely nothing, she was a nice girl. And I had to respect that, I had to admire it. A fine girl, a great girl, a fantastic girl. And a nice girl, so nice that she had caused one of life's huge waves to come along and swamp me and wash my raft away in the direction of a barren and rocky coast..

  She won the second game as well.

  Well, said my neurons, in about twenty minutes you are going to have to get out of this bed and go to the cinema. And no way was I going to spend that time playing yet another game of cards. So what your itinerate gambler does, he puts his remaining roulette coin on a single number and he kisses it goodbye in advance and he starts thinking about where he can go for a much needed single malt and a cigarette, the latter probably in the plural.

  I said, "Céline, I am just going to snooze for ten minutes if you don't mind, and then we can go out, O.K.?" And I lay down and turned my face to the wall again.

  Nothing happened. A minute or two went by. And then she said, "I think I'll snooze for a while too." And she lay down, fully clothed, on top of the bed. Thereby causing my raft to be swept onto the rocky crags and smashed to pieces.

  "Would you mind if we had the light out for ten minutes?" I asked. The jittery and despairing poker player's impossible last hope for the jack of clubs, and only the jack of clubs, to arrive on the last turn and create his virtually impossible royal flush.

  She got up and switched the light off. And then nothing happened again. Nothing happened at all for at least a quarter of an hour, no word was spoken, the sounds of silence.

  And then I won the lottery. And the roulette number came up as well. And the jack of clubs showed. And a small dinghy came floating by for me to grab hold of.

  "J'ai envie de toi," came her voice out of the darkness. I want you.

  I turned around and I held her and I kissed her. I stripped off her clothes and threw them on the floor and I kissed her again, I kissed her lots of times. And then I started kissing her more slowly, on the mouth and then the neck, and then the shoulders, and then her breasts. I licked her ears, I freed up the ponytail and smothered myself in her hair, her soft, silky hair. I kissed her stomach, I kissed her legs, I kissed the insides of her thighs, everything soft and fine and silky and moist.

  I stroked her and touched her more and more and she began shuddering, writhing, moaning and then she suddenly screamed 'Now, for god's sake now, oh now oh now, please'. And it happened, a sweet explosion, much longer for her than for me and after that we played and we stroked and we got to know each other and we got to know what we liked and it went on for hours, it went on for years, and it happened twice again.

  And then we were quiet. She lay flat on top of me and we just looked at each other, we inspected each other, and we wondered how something could be as good as this and what we had done to deserve it. We stayed like that for a long time and then I couldn't stay still anymore and I started to stroke her back, gently, delicately, and my hand moved down onto her buttocks, and then in between her buttocks, into her buttocks, everything tender and moist, incredible moistness everywhere, and then things became less gentle, less delicate, and we couldn't stop ourselves again.

  And then she suddenly she sat up. This magical girl sat up on her knees, straddling me, her hair just touching my shoulders, peering shortsightedly at me without her glasses, her throat and her breasts gleaming with sweat, and the perfume of our lovemaking enveloping her, and me, and the bed sheets, and the whole world.

  She had an impish smile on her face.

  "Cinema time, Peter, come on, you have to get up."

  "What time is it?" I groaned.

  "It's half past eleven, not bedtime yet."

  "Half past eleven? But the only movies you'll be able to find at this hour will be pornographic ones."

  "I don't need pornographic movies now that I've got you," she said. "Come on, let's go and find something to eat. Or if everywhere is closed, let's find a bar, it's Saturday night, we can have a drink to celebrate."

  "Celebrate?"

  "Yes, celebrate finding each other." She smiled. "On a small a
utobahn feeder road somewhere in Germany."

  "O.K., but no shower. I want to smell you all the time."

  "Naughty, naughty boy, you're not a dog. Anyway, I've got some of you in my hair. I have to shower. Come on."

  We both got into the shower together, a tiny space, and we had to stand right up against each other, and we stroked each other all over and we soaped each other all over, and it took a long time and in the end there wasn't a square centimeter of either of us which wasn't as clean as a freshly bathed baby.

  DAY 10

  There was no-one at reception as we left the hotel. Not surprising in this kind of hotel, at this time of night, just gone midnight. Probably asleep in the office at the back, customers please use the bell on the counter.

  There was a bigger street at the end of ours and we walked in that direction. I lit up a cigarette. We held hands as we walked. Holding hands can produce powerful emotions, as both Lennon and McCartney knew when writing the lyrics for that song, not that I am a particular fan of Beatles music. Nor, come to that, was Lennon, as we know. We didn't talk, we didn't need to. I had a funny feeling inside of me. I had the feeling that I had found something unbelievably precious, something incredibly valuable. Possibly, at least. And I was very scared in case something might happen to cause me to lose it. I was scared that I might not be a good enough person for her. I was scared it might turn out that she didn't like cynical types.

  We turned the corner. There were a few lights here and there down the road and we walked towards them. The first was a dry-cleaning store closed down for the night. A few doors along there was a restaurant, its sign shining brightly, but it was empty and also closed for the night. And about fifty meters further on there was a wine bar, Chez Maurice the sign said, and the wine bar was open. Until 3 a.m. on Fridays and Saturdays the sign said.