convince herself that Tristan would call anyway, because he had enjoyed their night together too. She just had to believe it.
Suddenly a customer roused her from her reveries: “Where can I find a shower gel that goes with this scent?”
Tristan slammed the receiver down and typed something into his computer. He narrowed his eyes as he followed the trajectory of an insurance company that had just nose-dived.
“Whatever happened there?” he whispered to himself and switched to a different window to try to find the cause of the collapse. But none of the data could explain it.
“What’s going on here?” he called out to his colleague Marcus, who was sitting only a few feet away from him. Marcus quickly typed a few characters, pressed the Enter key and pushed his chair over to Tristan on its castors. In doing so he almost knocked over a rubbish bin crammed full of left-overs from a Chinese take-away that was positioned between them.
“Ah, Fensec. Yes, Tom was just sending his positive analysis for the next few months by video link to New York and Tokyo. As he was doing it, though, he suddenly had the mother of all nosebleeds and that put the mockers on it. The dealers switched off like a flash, and this,” Marcus pointed to the flickering line heading diagonally downwards, “is the result.”
“Congratulations!” exclaimed Tristan with a sardonic smile and shook his head. But Marcus had pushed himself away again and rolled back to his desk laughing.
At lunch in one of those little French street cafes near the City, Tristan was chatting with two colleagues about Tom’s misfortune.
“You’re an idiot, Tom,” said Steve straight out – he was a gaunt-looking man with short, cropped, fair hair.
Tom, who was visibly irritated, scratched his nose and cast a furious glance at Steve. Before the others had stopped laughing, he retorted loudly and clearly, addressing the whole group: “It could have happened to any one of you. So why don’t you just go fuck yourself?”
But his words only made the others laugh all the louder. George picked up the ketchup bottle and turned away, and when he turned back to face Tom he was sporting a thick, blood-red moustache above his upper lip.
“See, Tom, that’s how you looked in Tokyo!”
He turned away briefly and then looked back at the others. Nothing had changed. The tomato puree was still dripping from his nose.
“And that’s how you looked in New York!”
Tom went scarlet. Through half-closed eyes he shot poisoned arrows in the direction of the others. His pale-blue eyes blazed with anger. Then the blood spurted out of his nose again and on to his clean new tie.
“And that’s what you looked like in Frankfurt!” cried George and banged on the table, giving one of the waitresses a fright and making her drop a knife. Tristan bent down and picked up the knife, which had fallen near his shoe, while the noisy guffaws of the other two reduced the whole cafe to silence. As he raised his head and looked at the embarrassed waitress, a smile flickered across his lips. The girl was wearing white socks to the knee under her dark skirt. Her white shirt was adorned with a black bow tie. Her arms, projecting from her short sleeves, were a delicate pink, like fine china. His fingers brushed lightly against hers as he placed the knife in her hand.
“Look at that, it’s an absolute scream and Tris isn’t the least bit interested,” one of them shouted as the others all laughed.
“Of course I am, it’s hilarious,” said Tristan, with a wry grin. He took a look at Tom’s shirt and bit into his baguette. Tom realized that dabbing with his serviette was never going to rescue his shirt or his tie. So he put it aside and looked at Tristan.
“By the way, what was going on yesterday with you and that bird?” he asked.
Tristan looked up from his salad and allowed his gaze to rest for a moment on the expectant face of the banker.
“With us? Not a lot,” replied Tristan finally, then looked away and sampled the salmon pâté.
“Don’t bother to ask, he never talks about his affairs. He takes his pick-ups home one after another, but he’d like us to think that nothing ever actually happens.” Steve gave Tristan a slap on the back. “Tristan is a monk, didn’t you know that?”
“Me, I had a ball yesterday,” George interjected. “The little darling screeched like a harpy, but I’m telling you, my friends, it was a night to remember.” As he spoke, he made an unambiguous gesture, which left Tristan choking on his pâté. This looked like the start of one of those conversations that normally led to general fraternization, as each of them in turn, like a hunter with his kill, deposited the game on the table, raw and bleeding, and began to tell the rest of them all about his conquests. And as they gutted the prey all over again to satisfy the wide-eyed curiosity of the brothers, the cafe gradually emptied – the lunch break was nearing its end. Relieved it was all over, Tristan agreed to take care of the bill while the others went ahead to have a smoke, then said to the girl as he got up to go: “I’m sorry, mademoiselle. I hope you can forgive these yobs.”
“No problem.” She smiled shyly.
“Are you new in town?” he asked.
She nodded.
He contemplated the blonde for a moment. She didn’t seem to believe that he could possibly want to ask her any more questions. So he just smiled, nodded to the girl and opened the door of the cafe.
Tom pushed past George and Steve as he went through the door, jostled a passer-by and hurried off with an angry look on his face. He ran past the display windows of the bistros and cafes that lined the street.
Tom’s face was that of a fine-looking man. However, a persistent tension was gradually beginning to leave its mark. His jaw was permanently thrust slightly forward, and this had affected the muscular structure, strengthening the filaments at the side of his face, while weakening those in the cheeks that controlled the action of laughter. As long as the fibres of his teeth and bones were still young, these filaments had retained their shape. Now, though, his cheeks were beginning to look hollow. To the side of his mouth the skin bulged and sent vertical creases down from the corners of his mouth, bespeaking prolonged dissatisfaction. He liked to think that this was a genetic predisposition, but no face is proof against tens of thousands of hours of the same facial expressions constantly repeated, and sooner or later these inevitably leave their mark.
What was more, Tom’s skin colour seemed to be no longer as fresh as that of his colleagues of a similar age. But can the skin be expected to be radiant when the tissue underlying it is exposed to such continual stress? Tom’s face lacked spontaneity thanks to this ingrained grim determination. He regularly smiled a few seconds too late, and his laugh was never able to completely free itself of a certain mask-like rigidity.
Unconsciously reacting to this blemish in order not to alienate his conversational partners, Tom tended to support whatever it was that his interlocutor was saying by affirmative nodding or interested murmurs. This was apt to suggest insecurity, although this would have been a mistaken impression.
On the other hand, Tom’s eyes had never lost their brightness. Even if for most of the time they were focused on the other speaker, they reacted to any touch of humour with a smile. It was perhaps due to the keen intelligence of this man that his eyes revealed this reaction more quickly than was the case for other people, which meant that there was an odd mismatch between the eyes and the mouth region when the conversation took a less serious turn. All in all, Tom was self-contradiction personified. His handsome appearance, his intelligence and athleticism ought to have made him the centre of attraction in any society. But his highly strung mentality, constantly close to breaking point, and his restless nature, prevented this. In the end, this was bound to lead to his downfall.
This was also reflected in the way Tom spoke. His voice sounded distorted, like a discordant whine proceeding from the consciousness of his inner conflicts. It was as though half his vocal cords wanted to give expression to what was being said – shrill and emotionally