The 2084 Precept (22 page)

I had three reactions to this,
blitzartig
. The first one was SHIT, I'll be turning off onto
the A3 in a few minutes, and on up to Belgium, nowhere near Paris.
The second one was wow, her English has a French accent, she's
French, and if you want to categorize women by nationality, which I
admit you shouldn't, a French woman to me is like having caviar on
your toast instead of marmalade, even if the marmalade is Chivers.
And that, not illogically, triggered my third reaction, those
neurons up there in my skull accelerating to cosmic speeds within
milliseconds. If I were to drive in the direction of Paris, I could
take her as far as, say, the E17. From there she could hitch on
into Paris on the E50, and I could simply drive on in a virtually
straight line up the E17 and the E15 to Calais. It would take me an
hour or so more, maybe even two, but the neurons had already
performed their Cost/Benefit analysis. A young French female in the
car for a few hours was a major benefit. I could also try to pull
her. I would in fact try of course, an inevitable consequence of
one of the fixed laws of nature, no harm done. Possibility of
success unknown, but attempted seduction is one of life's delights.
Yessir, even if you fail, which happens. And the cost? A couple of
hours extra travel time. Laughable; even if it were going to cost
me an extra twenty hours, there was no need for further evaluation.
No need at all.

My good old neurons had achieved all of this
in approximately 2.3 seconds, bless their clever little hearts.

"More or less," I said, "I can take you
about two thirds of the way there if that is of any help." In fact
I'll take you
all
of the way there I thought to myself, if
things work out. Postpone my meetings and spend a few days there
even.

"Oh yes," she said, "that is fantastic,
thank you very much."

I climbed out of the car, took hold of her
rucksack, quite a heavy one for a girl, and put it into the trunk.
I got in some good glances at her. Not one of your world's
beauties. But pretty. She had a small chip out of the corner of a
front tooth, erotic, nice blond hair, dark blond, tied in a
ponytail at the back, also erotic, a slight figure but nice
breasts, also erotic. And—hugely erotic—she wore glasses, they made
her look waifish, shortsighted. I couldn't see her legs, she was
wearing jeans, but her figure told me they would be great legs,
they couldn't possibly be any of those thick ones which are a real
turn-off. And not of Scandinavian design either, those formless
goalpost-type things. She was much shorter than me, about 5' 6" I
would guess. Wearing a green and red pullover, old but clean. And
no rings, I noted, not that that means anything these days, one way
or the other. Noted, however, nevertheless.

We both got into the car and I started off
again, reprogramming the neurons into their French modus.
"
Allons-y donc,
" I said.

"
Mais tu es français?
" she asked,
"
avec une voiture allemande?
"

"No," I replied, carrying on with the French
"I am English, but that wasn't my fault."

"So you were somebody else's fault," she
laughed, "but one of them must have been French, you speak perfect
French."

"Not really, my French is good but you'll
begin to notice the foreign accent here and there before long. And
the odd grammatical mistake."

"Well I'm very lucky today, you are giving
me this lift and you speak good French as well."

"My pleasure," I said. Little did she know
how much.

I stayed on the A66 past Wiesbaden and
headed off onto the A63, direction Kaiserslautern. It's easy for
you to prove to yourself just how stupid a large percentage of the
human race is—all you need to do is drive your car for a few hours,
anywhere, particularly at the weekend. The weekend is when all of
the spastics are out, they can't judge speeds, they can't judge
distances and they have the reflexes of a dying snail. Really
dangerous, some of them are. The weekend road death statistics do
not lie. I say no more, I rest my case.

So I was concentrating on the driving
instead of the talking. She wasn't talking either, not the born and
bred conversationalist obviously. She had this habit of frequently
pushing her glasses back up on her nose. Don't ask me why, but I
find glasses sexy on women, I really do. And when they keep pushing
them up, it makes them even sexier. I have no idea why. If I were
interested enough, I could ask a sexologist. There are plenty of
those nowadays, doing whatever it is that they do. They are
apparently very necessary for the current generation. Or so they
say, and so I have read.

She spent most of the time looking out of
the window, occasionally looking around the car as if she wasn't
used to big cars, good big cars. I can remember that feeling from
way back. Maybe she was of a shy nature, a bit of an introvert
perhaps. Or maybe she was just a little nervous, could be, sitting
in a big car with a man you didn't know. He could turn off the
autobahn at any time and take you down a lonely road to anywhere,
and the best thing that could happen to you would still be very
bad. Whatever, I would have to go very carefully with this one,
bring all my 'good guy' skills into play, no flirting around except
maybe with the eyes, keep off all ambiguous subjects, no risky
jokes. Hey, I'm just a normal sincere kind of bloke, I like your
company, I am not interested in sex. Not at all. Not even in my
dreams.

"My name is Peter," I said, putting on my
number one non-suggestive smile.

"And I am Céline." A small smile but that
was it. She had nothing to add.

"And where have you come from?" I asked.

"I spent a few days visiting Prague. It's a
city I always wanted to see and now I am on my way back home."

"And which part of Paris is that?"

"Oh, it's not Paris, it's Rouen."

Rouen? But that's way over the other side of
Paris. In fact it's a long way over, it's on the way to Le
Havre.

"And you expect to get there tonight?"

"Oh no, I am staying overnight in Reims and
will finish my journey tomorrow."

Hah, Reims! Dead on the A17 which takes you
in the direction of Calais. My chances of winning the lottery have
just risen from the 50% starting point to around 55%. No more, but
55% is not to be sniffed at.

"Reims," I said, "well I can take you right
the way there, it's on my route."

"Oh really? That is fantastic," she said,
"thank you, it's really my lucky day, I am very grateful."

"Not at all, you're welcome."

And then there was silence again. She kept
looking out of her window, sunny day, green countryside, obviously
wanting as little eye contact with me as possible. She wasn't
interested in where I'd come from or where I was going to, or why,
or anything else. She was a nice, clean, friendly girl, otherwise I
might have classified the silence as a bit of impoliteness. After
all, if you get a lift right to where you want to go, and it would
obviously cost me an extra hour or so getting into and out of
Reims, then it doesn't hurt to be a little sociable, it doesn't
cost anything.

So what was my plan now? Well, let the
silence hang for a while, that's the first phase. She's clearly
more comfortable with that, she might even be appreciative of me
deciding not to rattle away all the time. Then I'll wait until we
get into France, stop for lunch—which I wouldn't normally do, I
usually drive straight through on trips like these—and, Step Two,
invite her as well. It will make me seem like a really nice guy.
Which of course I am, albeit with ulterior motives with a 55%
success ratio.

We crossed the border at Saarbrücken. I know
a little restaurant with a pond literally two minutes away and you
can sit outside. "Lunch," I said as I turned off the autoroute.
"You don't mind? I feel a bit hungry and I still have a long drive
ahead."

She looked at me and smiled and nodded, the
ponytail bobbing nicely. Wow. But not a word.

I pulled into the parking lot and got out of
the car, waited for her to get out as well. But she remained
inside. So I went around to her side of the car, politely opened
the door.

"Hey," I said, "aren't you coming as
well?"

"No," she said, "no thank you."

"No? But aren't you hungry? You must be
hungry as well, come on and join me," I said with my nicest smile,
the one which makes me look as innocent as a eunuch, an ancient
eunuch.

"I have some sandwiches with me, thank you,"
she said. Well, how about that? Or maybe she just didn't have much
money and didn't want to say so.

"But I am inviting you, no problem. Got paid
my bonus last week," I said. The latter was intended to strengthen
the impression of a pleasant, disinterested sexless neuter of
course. God and Allah both forbid that she might think the lunch
offer to be an investment of mine for possible future returns,
dividends required, oh yes. Which of course it was, we males do it
all the time, there's nothing wrong with it. And we also take the
risk of a zero return, so who's to complain?

"No thank you," she said, not really looking
at me, "the sandwiches are fine and I'm not that hungry."

Damn. Down from 55% to maybe 30%, no point
in kidding myself.

"O.K., a pity. Eating alone is not much fun,
but never mind, I'll see you later. In about forty minutes,
O.K.?"

She nodded. I reached past her to take the
IHT from the back seat and I could smell her. It stirred me up,
it's one of life's persecutions. If you are a man, that is. I went
through the restaurant and out onto the terrace at the back and I
took a seat and lit up a cigarette, one of the much needed
ones.

I ordered a chicken salad and a glass of
Chardonnay and picked up the newspaper.
Suicide bomber kills
43
was on the front page. Not too much space wasted on the
item, interest is limited these days, what's new? And does it
bother us whether it's Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Egypt, Sudan or
somewhere else? Not really, we read it all out of a kind of
inertia. So the mentally diseased bosses got hold of another
mentally handicapped person, or a poor child, explosives in the
rucksack or around the waist, or else it was some moron who
believes (believed) the shit they told him about the 72 virgins
waiting for him in the sky (waiting for him
personally
, they
have a boundless supply of them up there) if he blows himself up.
What's new? The bosses themselves of course are in no hurry to get
to the virgins, they can wait for later. Neither was Hitler, he had
plenty of young soldiers to do that for him—except that they
weren't dying for a god, oh no, and they weren't going to get any
virgins either, or even any non-virgins, they were dying a personal
hero's death for the
Führer
himself, no less. The human
species is certainly an interesting spoecies, right enough.

But I didn't get to read anything else at
all because she came and sat down on the other side of the table. A
cheery smile. But still shy, not looking directly at me, maybe
she'd decided it was impolite to let me eat on my own. Which would
mean she had been well brought up, good manners, great news.

"I thought I would join you for a coffee
while you eat," she said, "I discovered that I am really not hungry
at all."

I would guess that she
was
hungry.
There probably weren't any sandwiches. I would bet that she just
didn't want me to pay for a meal for her, didn't want to feel in my
debt. Who cares, here she was, chipped tooth smiling away, green
and red pullover, the body behind it. And the sun was shining, it
was getting hot, and the goldfish were swimming around in their
pond and I had the feeling there was nothing else I would rather be
doing on this planet than sitting here with this amazing girl and
enjoying my lecherous thoughts. Even if my lottery chances were
moving in the direction of zero. Zero, yes, but a nice feeling, an
unreal feeling, where is the cynic, where is the male on the hunt
who loses interest as soon as the fox has gone down its hole? Don't
ask me; it was just great to be around this girl, just to be able
to look at her, just to be able to be with her, and it wouldn't
have mattered if lottery chances had never been invented.
Temporarily of course, you understand.

My meal arrived and I ordered her coffee. I
reminded myself not to look at her breasts, NOT ONCE, it could
destroy the remaining 30% chance or whatever it had become by
now.

"And what exactly do you do in Rouen?" I
asked. "Studying, or perhaps working?"

"I am a schoolteacher," she said, flicking
her ponytail and pushing up her glasses. "My main subjects are
English and art."

"But it's not school vacation time, is it?
How come you are travelling around?"

"No, it's not vacation time," she said,
smiling, and that chipped tooth started to drive me crazy again.
"But the school is closed for two weeks. An epidemic, we're not
allowed to go anywhere near it until a week on Monday."

So she's got another week free! The guy on
the hunt was back and he noted this down in his neuron cupboard
under the filename 'Potentially Useful Information'.

"Hey, that's a piece of luck," I said, "And
what do you plan on doing for the remaining week? Maybe help out
your Mum with the gardening?"

Yes, a bit lame I agree, but it fishes for
two important pieces of information, two birds with one stone.

"Oh no," she replied with a laugh, "I have
my own apartment. My parents live way down in Biarritz. No, I'll
just be preparing some work for my classes next week. We're doing
some poetry at the moment, very modern stuff, very weird, excellent
for enhancing creative critique skills. And we're also doing some
old stuff like Coleridge, not weird exactly, but…well, let's say
different."