The Match

“Do you want dessert, chérie?” 

Their hearing aids match. His is in his right ear, hers in her left—the profiles they are showing me—and I can see them clearly. They hook over the top of the ear with a little clear plastic pipe leading to a clear plastic crescent bunked tightly in the ear. They seem to work well because he and she are speaking so softly I can barely hear them at the next table fifty centimetres away, but they are getting along just fine, discussing their lunch. They have ordered the daily special—today it is roasted veal with an abbreviated gratin dauphin for 13€50—and they both have eaten their meat first, then finished up with the potatoes and cheese. Were synchronized lunch-eating a sport, they could compete for France, at least in the masters’ division, matching cut for cut and forkful for forkful and no less word for word and gesture for gesture as they chew and talk their way through their meal. 

Of course she wants dessert: she always does. He always asks, she always says yes. He knows her answer just as she knows his question. To ask, and to answer, is part of the meal, always, no less than arranging their napkins on their laps before looking over the menu carefully, then ordering le plat du jour from the chalkboard that the waiter brings over to their table. He would no more wait to let the waiter ask if they—in the plural, somehow impersonal—want dessert than he would fail to suggest they each have a glass of Sancerre or Chablis with their lunch. Everything belongs, in its place and in good order, and there is nothing to be gained by skipping or abbreviating: I wonder if they are displeased with gratin dauphin on the blackboard when they know it is properly gratin dauphinois and know as well that everything should be spelled out. It’s worth taking the time. 

They are at leisure, but there is nothing studied or stalling about their easy pace and careful inclusiveness over lunch. They may have nothing else to do and may be pleased to let the time pass, but they do not give off any odor or breath of killing time, of forcing themselves to slow down lest they find they have paid the check, walked out onto the busy sidewalk, and have no idea what comes next: no, time is good. They are enjoying the time it takes to eat—the time together—as much as they enjoy the meal they are sharing. If only one were right-handed and the other were a gaucher, they would be mirror images of contentment: the same meal, the same pace and gestures, the same hearing aids.  

And like many older couples, they have not just looked into the mirror of the other, but walked right into it and come out the other’s side. They have long since begun to look very much alike, she a bit more masculine than she was when they first met, he a little more feminine, his hair a longer (if thinner) and hers shorter than it used to be, her shoes more blocky and mannish than you’d ever imagine on a younger parisienne, his collar open and without a tie to match the open collar of her blouse. 

You could tell me that, if I came back a week from today, I would find them at the same table having the day’s special for lunch. Maybe that would be true, but I have no appetite to try the experiment, nothing to prove, because I do not see anything stale or time-worn in this elderly man and woman. Nothing about them tells me they are joylessly doing the same old song and dance they have always done, here on Mondays, around the corner on Tuesdays, and on and on through one week after another and another, making their circuit through this corner of the Fifteenth Arrondissement for twin plats du jour like clockwork or like the horse that pulls the milk-wagon and knows where to stop without being told.  They always eat the same meal as if at home because here, and everywhere else they go for lunch, they are chez eux.  Nothing about them speaks the sadness of routine, however familiar and right everything they do may seem even to the stranger, to me.  

They give me the sense that they are still courting each other. She wants to know that he is enjoying his veal, and he may believe that the gratin she still makes at home on Sundays is actually better and, if that is the case, he wants to tell her, and, yes, they both like the tarte tatin for dessert. Courtship requires attention—to details, to the things at hand, to one another. It was surprising to me when I sat down at my table, so close to theirs that my elbow could have bumped his if we had both had to saw into a piece of tough meat at the same time, that they did not even look at me or at the waiter as he squeezed in to hand me a menu and announce the special of the day or at the woman seated on my far side who shortly after I arrived finished her coffee, paid her bill, and made her way out between the tables and actually brushed lightly against the back of his chair. They need hearing aids, but they can surely see and feel, yet nothing could distract either of them from one another and what each was sharing with the other—the meal, the talk, the time, the courtship. I was surprised only because I had not figured them out. Now I am wondering if they will help each other on with their coats when they get up to leave, but my time is up and theirs is not. 

“Do you want coffee, chérie?” 

© Joseph Lestrange

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