This Little Family. Inès Bayard

head for business. This afternoon she’ll be introduced to the Paris-based company’s new CEO for the Tenth Arrondissement. He’s made a point of attending such meetings to encourage his teams. Everyone at the bank is fretting at the thought of being reprimanded for poor results.

      Hervé, the other asset management adviser, is particularly anxious. He knows he hasn’t made the grade during this first trimester and Marie feels bad for him. She can tell that this man, pushing fifty and coming toward the end of his career, is especially despondent about his work, his clients, and the pace imposed by the company’s new diktats. He’d like to give up but has no choice. He needs to pay the mortgage, provide pocket money for his thankless teenage daughter, support the wife with whom he hasn’t been able to picture a loving future for years, and keep a little money for his passion, ornithology. Hervé is fascinated by wild pigeon species, turtledoves in particular. In a drawer of his desk he keeps a secret file of all the articles he’s found on the subject. He’s very proud of it. After a difficult appointment with a client or sometimes simply for the pleasure of it, he takes out his file and spends the rare moments of peace in his life leafing through these yellowed photographs of birds gliding through the air. Hervé is endearing but deeply unhappy.

      Marie sits herself at the meeting table, laden with a pile of files that she hopes will be adequate in her defense. There’s a deathly silence in the large room except for the crackling of a fluorescent light with a loose connection. The branch manager gets up to switch it off. Marie has always been awed by her crisp manner and authoritative stride. When the two of them are alone in her office, Marie keeps her head down, trying to avoid eye contact. Colette Sirmont is a strong, willful, demanding, and almost oppressive career woman. Marie sees nothing of herself in any of her characteristics, either in her professional or her personal life. When Marie has meetings with her clients alone she’s relaxed, at her ease, and sometimes even surprisingly amusing. Her work at the bank allows her to play the part of someone else. With Laurent she can’t seem to establish her identity as anything other than gentle and restrained, just as she already was with him and his friends ten years ago. All around the room people eye their colleagues, studying them in an effort to determine who’s in the worst position.

      The CEO arrives and slams the door. Faces screw up, hands don’t know where to put themselves, throats constrict politely. He’s tall, imposing, a rather attractive man. The women have noticed. With the sharp eyes of someone accustomed to managing other people, he quickly takes up his position at the head of the table. And is happier staying on his feet.

      Marie watches him from afar. While his assistant starts up the overhead projector, he begins his talk, saying that he won’t have time to discuss things case by case and would prefer to analyze individual results in one-on-one meetings over the coming week. There’s a ripple of relief around the room. Marie is asked to speak about her experience selling the new life insurance package. She stands up, eyes lowered, and walks over to join the CEO. He stares at her intently, appraising her. Marie can smell his scent. A powerful combination of eau de cologne, leather, and sandalwood. She never wears perfume, Laurent doesn’t like it. When Marie has finished her report she walks back to her seat, under the satisfied gaze of the CEO. A colleague congratulates her, saying she argued her case well for her marketing methods. After an hour the CEO brings the meeting to a close and everyone leaves the room to return to work. Hervé is relieved but he knows it won’t last and that he has only a few days’ respite before receiving his sentence. As she leaves, Marie catches the CEO’s eye, and he smiles and nods at her. She has three more meetings this afternoon. She gets on with her day.

      It’s six thirty. Marie has finished helping the day’s clients understand financial codes of practice and can leave at last. Once outside, she finds to her surprise that she still has that effervescent feeling. She’s so calm, level, moderate, and patient, Paris gives her a buzz, brings her alive. She always felt slightly wrong living out of town as a teenager. Granted, Bois-le-Roi isn’t far from Paris, but she was frustrated by the journey she had to make on the transilien train every weekend to meet up with her friends in the city. She always knew she’d live in Paris later.

      The October night is closing in and she thinks the rue Meslay feels darker than usual, perhaps one of the streetlights isn’t working. Marie doesn’t remember exactly where she left her bike. Maybe outside the little Turkish restaurant where she likes to have lunch on Thursdays. The street is as good as deserted, with just a few pedestrians hurrying home. The tall buildings are lit up with warm lights. She’s always liked looking into apartment windows when she walks through the city’s streets. Discovering people’s intimate lives, their taste in interior design, seeing children playing and parents chatting on the balcony or cooking. She suddenly wonders whether other people do this too, whether anyone watches her walking around her apartment. Under the weak glow of the streetlights she can make out her bicycle in the distance. It’s tipped onto the ground, the front wheel horribly twisted, one tire gone, and the frame broken. Horrified, she runs over, tries pointlessly to stand it back up against the pillar, but quickly realizes she won’t be able to ride it. She feels helpless. This is the first time in her life she’s been the victim of an act of vandalism. She casts around for some form of help and reaches into her bag for her phone to call Laurent. She knows that he won’t come over for such a small thing and is bound to tell her to catch the Métro home, but she needs to hear his voice, to be reassured. He picks up on the second ring.

      “You’ll never believe this, someone tried to steal my bike. I don’t even have a front wheel now, they trashed the whole thing.” Laurent is on edge, he’s about to go into a meeting to set up Gérard Lancarde’s defense. He tells her to take the Métro and leave her bike where it is. While she’s still talking to Laurent she notices a familiar-looking silhouette on the same side of the pavement as she is. The company’s CEO recognizes her.

      “Well, well, what happened to you?” Marie hangs up. She’s slightly ashamed, feels stupid with her beaten-up bike. She explains the situation, doing her best to disguise her distress. The CEO smiles and tries to calm her with a friendly pat on the shoulder. “Look, my car isn’t far at all. I could drive you home if you like. Where do you live?” Marie looks at him for a moment, embarrassed. Then, not keen to take the Métro, which will be packed with rush-hour commuters, she decides to accept his offer.

      On the way to his car they fall in step together, the clipped rhythm of their footsteps resonating on the pavement. He hardly says a word but smiles at her from time to time, turning to face her. She’s awed by him. He’s the CEO. He takes his car keys from his coat to open the Mercedes that’s perfectly parked by the curb. The headlights flash. He seems somehow proud of this flourish while still careful to remain strangely modest. Marie settles into the passenger seat. The smell of leather mingles with a strong blast of the scent she smelled on him during the afternoon’s meeting. He throws his coat onto the rear seat and then sits down and starts up the car; the engine purrs. Marie is relieved it’s not a very long journey. Her phone chimes in her bag. It’s a message from Laurent, asking if everything’s okay. He’ll be home late because he’s agreed to have dinner with his client, and tells her not to wait up. Marie’s disappointed, she would have liked him to be with her this evening to comfort her.

      The CEO turns on the radio and Marie recognizes the opening notes of Erik Satie’s Third Gnossienne, her father’s favorite. In an instant this composition with its ambiguous melodies darkens her interpretation of Paris. The darkness feels stifling, the heady smell of sandalwood and the lights reflecting on the windshield giddying. The end of boulevard Voltaire appears at last. The man doesn’t move a muscle, his hands clamped firmly to the steering wheel, his eyes staring ahead, his lips motionless. She doesn’t dare turn to look at him. Time slows, freezes, chokes the space. Everything stagnates. She wants to get out. A car stops on a level with them at a red light and a woman smiles at her briefly before looking away. The car sets off again. There are only a few buildings left before they reach her apartment but there are no parking spaces and the boulevard is full of traffic. Marie wants to be let off onto the street but he chooses instead to drive around into rue Richard-Lenoir to find a better place. “This city really is impossible for cars.”

      Marie feels the engine slow at last and the radio snaps off. They now enter a private car park where he pulls into a space. Silence settles