“Assez! Assez!” Her voice booms down the stairs. “We have had enough of you and your violin!”
R
I knew her at once, sitting in the cavernous shadows of the café, swallowed up by the cushions of a red plush sofa: a frail, shrunken woman in a mauve silk dress, with silvery hair glued in stiff waves to her skull, and a pasty mask of thick rouge and lipstick on her face. Before her a flute of champagne, its bubbles winking in the half light of a smoked glass chandelier dangling overhead.
“Oh, but you are very young,” she said as I introduced myself. Then, “Why do young women wear these dockworkers' trousers? They are so unfeminine. Aren’t they uncomfortable, hot and rough to tender skin?”
She gave me no time to apologize for my outfit, as her next comment was, “I am terribly hungry. Do you
