The Thursday Night Men by Tonino Benacquista Page B

to be drawn into a spiral of luxury without trying to justify it. Tomorrow there would be ample time to put the evening in perspective. No sooner had they arrived at the Carré Blanc than Mia threw herself around the owner’s neck as if they had saved each other’s lives, something Philippe viewed as some sort of indispensable worldly posturing, a code of recognition, an extreme indicator of notability. They were seated upstairs, in an opulent American bar where impeccable waiters in livery paced back and forth to a background of jazz. Mia ordered a stiff dry Martini, with Tanqueray gin and an olive. Philippe wondered where her panicky fear of calories had vanished to, with all its science of
lite
and
diet.
But maybe these calories were counted differently, because they offered much more than mere energy: calm, or dreams, and one could not do without either.
    “There’s a club in the basement. We’ve had some memorable parties there.”
    The minute she said it she was sorry:
club, parties
, so
not
the image she wanted to give this man. Even her
we
sounded dumb: what could it refer to other than a handful of decadent princes ruining their golden youth? And what’s more, it was at that club that she had met that bastard Ronnie, who’d dragged her through the mud the instant they broke up.
Memorable parties
, and at what a cost. Mia swore she’d spare the philosopher any further outbursts of frivolity.
    Back in the days when he was just a student of the humanities, Philippe might have viewed Mia as a fabulous subject for a thesis.
Esthetics and Representativeness of the Contemporary Icon.
Enough to assure himself of the jury’s congratulations. This evening, as she started on her second dry Martini, he began to view her differently, this famous specimen, situating her at last among her fellow creatures, complex beings as individualistic as they were gregarious, capable of the worst but often of the best as well.
    “In my profession, you retire at thirty,” she said. “I’m twenty-eight.”
    “In mine, I still have a ways to reach maturity. I’m forty-one.”
    Mia’s gaze was suddenly drawn to a discreet figure in the half-light, taking his seat at a table not far from theirs.
    “It looks like Bryan. What’s he doing in Paris?”
    “Who?”
    “Bryan Ferry. The crooner. You must have heard of him.”
    Philippe wondered if someone were playing a trick on him.
    “He must be here for a concert,” she continued, “but I haven’t seen any posters. Do you mind if I go over and say hi? I’ll only be a sec.”
    Was it really Bryan Ferry?
The
Bryan Ferry? The Bryan Ferry of his adolescence? When his entire generation was into electronic funk and New Age, Philippe constantly played records by Dylan, Sinatra, and Bryan Ferry, all three of whom were considered dated, borderline uncool. Tonight, in this all-night bar, just when he least expected it, as he gazed at a gentleman of sixty-five or so, with a very British elegance and a voice of pepper and honey, Philippe remembered what it was like to be young.
    “He and his wife came up to me to congratulate me after a show for Vivienne Westwood in London, and we hit it off. He’s a charming guy, he’s got these old-fashioned manners, it’s really nice.”
    Nostalgic for his teenage years, Philippe ordered another cocktail, which he drank down without savoring it, like the adolescent he had become again. What was the point, here and now, in sticking to his theorist’s reserve and vigilance? He was drinking dry Martinis with one of the most beautiful women in the world, a few feet away from a personage who had inflamed his youth—why would he need to play the observer? Didn’t he have better things to do just now? Such as, for example, live in the present moment?
    Mia, all her freshness intact, kept the conversation on course and led Philippe into far less innocent territory. With the skill of a duelist, and without him noticing, she launched into a heated exchange