“No, no, you’re misunderstanding me. I’m not here to pick you up or anything like that.”
“No? You’re just here to buy me a cappuccino because I have an intriguing face and speak French?”
“Maybe. Maybe all I will do is buy you a cappuccino. It’s up to you.”
I was locked in my motion to get up and leave, but I hesitated. What did he mean? What could be up to me? What was he offering?
“So what’s your story?” he asked when I relaxed in my chair again.
I thought a moment and decided to test him with the truth. “My father threw me out of our house the other day. I’ve been excommunicated from my family for committing a series of somewhat unforgivable sins. My father was brought up in a military family, so after just so much KP duty, there was nothing left to do but give me a dishonorable discharge.”
He didn’t laugh or smile. “How serious were the sins?”
“A little pilfering here and there, insubordination in school, unmotivated in my schoolwork, failing some classes, caught smoking some weed in the girls’ room, violating curfews. Things like that. I was working up to first-degree murder when I was kicked off the base.”
He smiled again. “You don’t look like the average dropout,” he said, “and your French is perfect. I spent quite a long time in Paris and return often. And I have visited most of the Riviera. Places like Cannes, Monaco, Èze. Have you been?”
“My mother is French. Her family is there. We’ve visited them in and outside of Paris but not for some time. No, I’ve never been to the Riviera.”
“How is she taking this excommunication?”
“She’s my father’s wife.”
“So?”
“My mother is old-fashioned. She’s the obedient sort,” I said. “I don’t think she’s happy about what’s happened, but I don’t think she’s going to do anything dramatic about it, either.”
“Do you plan on going home soon?”
I looked away and then turned back to him. “I don’t want to, but I don’t seem to have much of a choice in the matter.”
“Maybe you do.”
“What are we back to, an invitation to come home with you?”
“No. Not that I wouldn’t like that. It’s just not what I do.”
“So what do you do, Mr. Bob? I think I’ve been honest with you. How about a little quid pro quo?”
He raised his eyebrows. “?‘Quid pro quo’? You’re a bad student?”
“I didn’t say bad. I said unmotivated, but I read.”
He nodded. “You might be just the perfect candidate.”
“Candidate? For what? Congress?”
“No,” he said, laughing. Then he leaned over the table to whisper. “How would you like to be really independent? Live in a beautiful place, be able to buy the most expensive clothes . . .”
“And marry a prince?”
“Seriously?”
I tilted my head, looking at him askance. “I try to keep up with the
newest approaches. Older men have hit on me, but this is definitely a first for me.”
“I told you. I’m not making a pass at you,” he said, now with his first note of annoyance.