seventeen

As we sat down Juliette pointed to the mural and asked me if I liked it.

‘It of course depicts a truth – the extraordinary power of women over men. Women are without question the more dangerous sex,’ I replied.

Juliette was now looking at me in a particularly unthreatening way. She looked about as dangerous as a dormouse.

‘Oh, but you’re wrong,’ she said. ‘Men make women dangerous.’

Did she mean ‘make’ as in make up or ‘make’ as in incite? I really couldn’t be bothered with her riddles. I was just about to change the subject when my elbow grazed against my glass of red wine and knocked it over. The table cloth was soaked and we had to move to another table.

We talked for an hour or so while eating a bland, unappetizing pasta, but I managed to learn little about her or Justine.

‘Whose funeral was Justine at?’ she asked.

‘My mother’s.’ I expected the standard response of sympathy but she said nothing.

‘What was she like?’ she asked.

‘Beautiful’ I replied.

‘I don’t mean Justine.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘And?’

‘And? What else do you need to know? Isn’t a woman being beautiful enough for you, enough for anyone?’

Juliette looked down at the table and I tried to read her face. Seven different emotions seem to cross her face at the same time, not one of them I could distinctly interpret. This was why Juliette could never be beautiful: too many emotions ran cross-current in her. She lacked the severe implacability whose raison d’etre was to be ruffled by desire. Juliette had too much character in her face to allow a lover room to leave his mark. Her countenance left nothing for him to do. Far better the tabula rasa, the divine blankness of a Justine, that begged me to write all over her.