Anything Considered by Peter Mayle

head cocked to one side. “And you’re disgustingly brown. But it’s quite nice to see you after what I had to sit next to coming over.”
    “It wasn’t the one in shorts, was it?” Bennett took her arm, and they walked over to the baggage claim area, Susie’s heels clicking on the floor.
    She nodded. “He asked me if I liked hiking. Can you believe it? I mean, do I look like a hiker?”
    “You look like a dream come true to me, Suze.”
    “Wanker. There—that’s mine, the black one.” She pointed to a squat mass the size of a steamer trunk, and Bennett wrestled it off the carousel, marveling at the sartorial requirements of the modern woman.
    “You’ve got some heavy swimsuits, Suze.”
    “Funny you should say that. I need to get some. They’re always better in France. And a hat. The sun’s very bad for your hair.”
    Bennett, risking rupture, heaved the suitcase onto a trolley. “Can you survive lunch without a hat? I thought we might go into Nice to eat. There’s a good little place in the flower market.”
    Susie approved of the Mercedes and liked the simple fish restaurant in the Cours Saleya. It was one of her protein days, she told Bennett, so clams and a grilled
daurade
would suit her very well. She was into health, she said, lighting another cigarette and draining a glass of Muscadet, very strict about not mixing protein and carbs in the same meal. Bennett sat back and enjoyed her as she ate, drank, smoked, and chattered about her life over the past two years.
    Work had gone well, and she had been promoted from production assistant to Producer—with a capital
P
, she emphasized—complete with all the trimmings: expense account, phone in the handbag, extensive wardrobe of black clothes, and membership in one of London’s most fashionable gyms, where she and others like her strove to achieve the sculptured perfection of bust and buttock while comparing notes on the shortcomings of the men in their lives. And here, Susie said, the news was disappointing. She allowed Bennett to pour her another glass of wine and pat her hand in sympathy.
    “What’s the problem, Suze? Are all the good ones married?”
    “Worse,” she said, and wrinkled her nose. “Divorced, and sorry for themselves. I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve had to sit through dinner and listen to horror stories about ex-wives. And then they have the nerve to try to jump on you afterwards. Animals.”
    “Outrageous,” said Bennett, admiring the sheen of a silken thigh as Susie leaned back and crossed her legs. “Never mind. The age of chivalry isn’t quite dead. Finish your wine, and we’ll go and buy you the most fetching hat in Nice.”
    Susie looked at him over her glass. “I never asked,” she said. “You didn’t get married, did you?”
    “Me?”
    “Silly question.” She grinned. “No one would have you.”
    ——
    They strolled arm in arm through the sunny streets behind the Promenade des Anglais, where the boutiques lie in wait for those lulled into extravagance by a good lunch. Bennett’s tolerance of shopping was normally limited to a brisk and decisive half hour, but today he made an exception, following Susie in and out and back again to Saint Laurent and Armani and Cacharel, acting as the guardian of her handbag when she disappeared into minuscule curtained alcoves, and as fashion critic and interpreter each time she emerged to face the shameless flattery of the salesgirls.
    “
Mais c’est génial
,” one of them declared in rapture as Susie emerged in a microscopic shift that seemed to have been made from three gauze handkerchiefs.
“Moi, j’adore ça. C’est très, très cool.”
    Susie turned to Bennett. “What do you think?”
    Bennett blinked. “Where’s the rest of it?”
    “I knew you’d like it.”
    Two hours later, weighed down by their trophies, and with Susie feeling, as she said, shopped out for the day, they drove slowly through the traffic fighting to leave Nice, the