Trafika Europe 12 - French Bon-Bons

Anne F. Garréta

Here you go again out of your room, taking the elevator back down, threading the maze of hallways toward room number you don’t remember what. There is something rather delightful, you think, in journeying thus in the middle of the night, walking past door after door, and knowing that a woman is waiting for you behind one of them. It’s a scene out of a very bad novel or a bad film, and the professional mechanic in you relishes it. You’d think it was a parody. And you the willing character. You have taken a seat in a driving school two-cylinder, with two steering wheels, two sets of pedals. The gears shift with terrible scrapings, reverse is barely distinguishable from fourth, the suspension is abominable, and the landscape goes by slowly. The other driver pumps the accelerator and the brakes with both feet at the same time. What a ride. And before calling you, she has taken a double dose of sleeping pills, or so she tells you…! You’re not even sure there’ll be enough fuel to reach the next step… She is awaiting, furthermore, an important phone call that she would like to be confidential. You’ve never seen a driver so terrified of the road she’s taken. Has she only ever driven on an uncongested highway, on flat terrain, and with automatic transmission and cruise control on top of it...? Let’s engage. It was as though she was witnessing the spectacle of her own stunned desire. The suspicion even crossed your mind that she was faking it, faking the revving up of the engine, as one does when sitting in a cardboard box and

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