24.

Frances awoke to find Malcolm had gone out on his bicycle, and so she dressed and left the apartment on her own. She had begun frequenting a café nearby, but only when she was by herself. The staff called her Jackie O for her coldness, her inscrutability, her fashionable beauty. She drank red wine; she spoke to no one; she tipped lavishly, absurdly. She watched passersby on the sidewalk but never an individual, only the mass in motion. On this day she did something new, which was to fill out a postcard. Walking to the café, she’d seen two young girls sharing an elaborate farewell in the street: they shook left, then right hands; they simultaneously curtsied, cheek-kissed, twirled, and parted, smiling in affection for one another. It was a routine, a private tradition, and it put Frances in mind of Joan, hence the postcard.

She wrote: I saw a man’s penis yesterday. He was pissing in the courtyard of the apartment. Actually I’ve seen a number of penises since my arrival. Have you noticed men simply take them out and use them here? No harm in it, I suppose, but it takes some getting used to. Yesterday’s was memorably large. What a gift that must be for a man. What a lottery life is. It was nice to see it, I’ll admit. Frances described the second part of her private, two-part plan for Joan, concluding the note with words of devotion and love. I’ve always admired your heart. Your heart is the rightest of all.

She called for the check, and in the time it took to receive it she decided she could never send the card. She folded it and left it on the table beneath her empty wineglass. The waiter found it but didn’t understand English. He showed it to the other waiters and the cook but none of them knew English either. On his way home from work he stopped by the post office and mailed it. It was out of character for him to do this but he thought Frances was a special case. Recently she’d tipped him a hundred euros on a glass of house wine, and when he had protested she had said it couldn’t matter. What did she mean by this? The waiter had mailed the card not because of the tip but because of what prompted her to leave the tip. He wasn’t certain what that was, of course, only that it was something fearsome, and so, worthy of his esteem.