Free Enough About Love by Herve Le Tellier Page B

father will corner you and then we’ll be really late. And you, daddy, stop teasing Yves. Yves, if my father’s bothering you—”
    “Not in the least, your father’s not bothering me …”
    “Are you working on a novel at the moment, Mr. Janvier?”
    “Yves. Please, Mr. Stein, call me Yves … Yes, I’ve started on something, about a relationship … Well, when I put it like that, it sounds terribly banal …”
    “No it doesn’t. Do you have a title yet?”
    “I’d like to call it
The Together Theory
, together as in ‘being together,’ not ‘get it together.’ Or maybe
Abkhazian Dominoes
, I’m not sure yet.”
    “Abkhazian?”
    “From Abkhazia. It’s a small state to the north of the Black Sea.”
    “They’re both good titles. A bit intellectual, though, wouldn’t you say? My daughter’s right, I’m teasing you.”
    “Um … Yes, what I wanted was—”
    “Okay, I’m ready.”
    Anna emerges from the bedroom, sheathed in a red satin dress with oriental patterns on it. Yves thinks she looks dazzling. She has bare feet, and is holding a pair of sandals in each hand.
    “Mom, do you think these ones, the Cretan look, or these which are more Roman?”
    Yves can see no difference at all. The mother can, though. She opts for the Cretan pair.
    “We’re off, mom. Maureen’s just called. She can’t find anywhere to park and she’s waiting outside. Bye, daddy. Kids, are you going to give me a kiss?”
    Lea and Karl hurtle out of their room and almost suffocate her with hugs, Lea acting abandoned, laughing as she pretends to snivel. Anna tears herself away from them gently in the hallway. She goes into the elevator and Yves follows her. He has one last look at the little red Ferrari. The door closes.
    There are four inches separating Yves and Anna. She wears a fresh perfume, all woods and ivy, she says nothing, smiles, lowers her eyes. To resist the urge to take her in his arms, Yves concentrates on their surroundings: elevator branded ART, tinted mirror, coarse black carpeting on the walls. A copper plaque: M AX : 3 P EOPLE , 240 KG . A control panel with six black buttons, GROUND , 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, one red button, STOP , one green button, 24 HR. CALL . A cutout area covered with wire netting, a loudspeaker, and a microphone. I N THE EVENT OF AN INCIDENT, PLEASE REFER TO TL1034.
    But there is no incident, and the trip down takes fifteen seconds. Yves succeeds in trying nothing. All through theevening he will not have another opportunity, however slight, to kiss Anna. She and her cousin Maureen will go home early.
    In the morning, when Stan comes home from night duty, she will tell him about Christiane’s party, at length, more than usual. About Jean, Maureen’s new boyfriend, “charming, but maybe a bit smug,” about Christiane’s illness, “stabilized,” about the famous and very talented filmmaker who was there, “of course you remember, Stan,
Thirty Years Without Seeing the Sea
, he directed that, we saw it together.”
    “
Thirty Years Without Seeing the Sea,”
Stan says. “Yes.”
    About Yves, Anna says nothing.
    3. Pascal published a challenge, offering prizes for solutions to two complex mathematical problems involving Cavalieri’s calculus of indivisibles, problems he himself had already solved. He sent the challenge out to Wren, Laloubère, Leibniz, Huygens, Wallis, Fermat, and several other mathematicians.

ROMAIN AND LOUISE
• • •
    Paris, October 3, midnight
.
       Romain, it’s late, you’re still working at the lab and I’m writing this letter on the computer while I wait for you, which is in fact my way of not waiting for you. It’s nighttime, I’ve put the our children to bed, they’re asleep. I haven’t written to you for a long time I wish I didn’t have to write you this letter. Maybe I’m only writing it so that I’ve written it, and I’m hesitating I don’t know if I’ll give it to you. When you leave a man, what’s the point of