The sun tickled the carved statues on the building across the street, the citrus juicer grumbled, the kettle sang, the oven clock read 7:42 A.M., and Michel Delpech (or Fugain) (or Polnareff) (or Berger) (or Jonasz) (or Sardou) (or take your pick) bleated good morning.
Julie was checking the expiration date on an organic fair-trade prune soy-milk yogurt. Pauline asked anxiously, “Have you seen Mathilde?”
“No, she’d already gone out when I woke up.”
“Again? What is she up to so early?”
“July second . . . we’d better hurry.”
“What?”
“The yogurts. Want one?”
“No thanks.”
“Look, a lot of this stuff is going bad. It’s because of her, too! She never eats anymore!”
“But why is she getting up so early these days? Did she get a job?”
“I have no idea.”
“And have you seen the maps in her room? With thumbtacks stuck in them all over the place?”
“Yeah.”
“So what is she doing?”
“No idea.”
“Does she want to move out?”
Julie ignored this, while Daniel Guichard repeated over and over again: le gitan le gitan le gitan le gitan le gitan le gitan le gitan le gitan le gitan le gitan le gitan le gitan le gi . . .
Help.