There was an additional incentive for playing football at passage Thiéré: the women who each day passed by, carrying books, talking or pushing bicycles. They were on their way back to offices or to lectures at the university after their lunch break, just strolling, or eating ice cream when it was hot. Men walked by too but that was just an accident whereas the girls, we liked to think, came by deliberately. Just a slight preference for this route back from the café rather than another one, a simple suggestion by one of a group of friends — ‘Let’s walk past the playground at Thiéré’ — that was always approved by the others. No more than that. And even if it was not the consequence of any kind of preference, even if it was just a short-cut that extended their lunch break by five minutes, we preferred to think that they came by primarily because of us. Certainly there were other places we could have played football; even if they didn’t come by because of us, we played there because of them.
Luke noticed one woman in particular. She was tall with a mass of black hair that fell down below her shoulders. One day, when he was over that side of the yard retrieving the ball, he smiled, ‘Hi’, and she smiled back briefly before walking on. Contained in that look perhaps there was the seed of another meeting of eyes when, weeks later, undressing each other for the first time, his fingers in her hair, their eyes flicked open at exactly the same moment.
Luke watched her walk away, wondering if she would look back. Her legs were tanned, she was wearing tennis shoes, there was something floaty about the way she walked. A lightness. She didn’t look back.
As we traipsed back to work, Luke said that the next time she came by we should kick the ball to that side of the playground so that he could talk to her. Thereafter, whenever we were playing and she walked past, the rest of us gestured to Luke to let him know she was there but kept passing the ball in the other direction, luring him away from her. Either that or we eliminated him from the game completely, refusing to pass to him as he inched his way towards her side of the playground. Then, when she had walked past, then we would kick the ball over that way — ‘Go on Luke, now’s your chance!’ — leaving him to retrieve the ball and gaze after her retreating form.
One day, though, after we had got Luke running round like a dog, I relented and floated an inch-perfect pass across the yard, landing a metre or two in front of her so that Luke could catch her eye, smile, kick the ball back and wait for her to draw near. When I next looked over he was speaking to her, hanging on to the wire diamonds. We only granted him a few seconds of repose before booting the ball over his way and shouting to him to kick it back, making her conscious of the way we were all standing around, watching and waiting while Luke trotted after the ball and curled it back to us. We let them have a couple of peaceful minutes and then Matthias blasted the ball over that way again, smacking it into the wire a couple of feet from her head like a cannonball. She jumped, Luke turned round and saw us all laughing like yobs while he was obviously trying to impress on her that he was not devoid of sensitivity and actually spent a great deal of time reading, maybe even dropping a hint that he was not without literary aspirations himself. And at the same time that he was annoyed about us louting up his chances you could see he also enjoyed it, the way that we imparted a hint of the ghetto to his wooing.
There was no sign of Lazare when we got back to work and so we sat with our feet up on the packing tables, eating sandwiches, gasping after sips of Orangina, crunching chips.
‘Did you see Luke after all that running around, legs buckling—’
‘Breathing hard, unable to speak—’
‘Coughing up blood — “Just let me get my breath back, you see I’m not like the others” — then bam! the ball smacks into the fence about an inch from her face.’
‘What she say Luke?’ Matthias wanted to know. ‘What she is like?’
‘She’s nice.’
‘What is her name?’
‘Nicole.’
‘Oh Nicole! Horny name. And what does she do, horny Nicole?’ Matthias pushed his tongue into his cheek, moving his hand back and forth in front of his open mouth. Luke shook his head. Matthias belched and tossed his empty can, clattering into the bin.
We would happily have spent the whole afternoon like that, grilling Luke about his attempted courtship but, hearing Lazare’s decrepit Renault scrape through the gate ten minutes later, we leaped to our feet. By the time he walked in we were hard at it, as if we had been so busy packing orders that there had scarcely been time to grab a sandwich.
A few days later, when Nicole next passed by the playground, we decided to let Luke go over and talk quietly, without the ball thudding into the fence, like we were on our best behaviour. She was wearing a dress and a quaint mauve cardigan so that he could not see her arms which one day soon would be around his shoulders as he kissed her, which one day he would grip hard in his fists, shaking her, leaving ugly bruises. I can still see them over there, separated by the fence, wondering what each other was like. She was holding some books in front of her. The sun flashed out from a cloud, the wire fence threw angles of shadow over her face. She held up a book for him to see and he bent towards her and conceded that he had never read Nietzsche or Merleau-Ponty or whoever it was she was reading. Not that it mattered: the important thing about the book was that it served as an intermediary, a bridge between them. Luke watched her looking at him through the fence, sweat dripping from his hair, breathing hard. His sleeves were pushed up over his elbows, the veins stood out in his forearms. Strands of her hair breezed free. She fingered them back into place, over her ear, and he noticed her hands, her woman’s hands holding the large book of philosophy.
They were running out of things to say. Luke asked if she would like to meet up sometime if. . His voice trailed off, he looked to the floor, at the sun-catching grit, making it as easy as possible for her to say ‘Well, that’s difficult.’ He was still gripping the fence, separated from her like a prisoner or an animal. When he looked up again he saw her pausing, weighing things up, knowing the hurt a man has the power to inflict on you. But that pause was already giving way to a smile of assent.
She smiled at him and he looked into her eyes which, at that moment, held all the promise of happiness the world can ever offer. He suggested Tuesday which was no good for her.
‘Thursday maybe. .’
‘Thursday I have dance class.’
‘Oh. .’
‘I could meet you afterwards.’
‘After your dance class?’
‘Yes.’
‘This is what it means to be a man,’ said Luke, glad he was saying something clever-sounding. ‘To be a man is to meet women after classes. After dance classes, after Spanish classes, after acrobatics. Women go to classes, men meet them after their classes. After your dance class would be perfect. What time?’
‘At nine?’
‘Yes. Where shall I meet you?’
‘My class is at the Centre de Danse, in the Marais. Do you know it?’