Rose Royal by Nicolas Mathieu

Author:Nicolas Mathieu [Mathieu, Nicolas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Other Press
Published: 2022-02-08T00:00:00+00:00

FROM THE VERY next day, Luc began picking her up after work. Rose had asked him to park a little farther away, near the sandwich shop, because she was wary of what her colleagues would think if they saw her get into Luc’s enormous Audi. But the strip mall where she worked wasn’t all that large, and Nadia, the HR assistant, had seen them. Rose didn’t admit it, but she was actually pretty thrilled about this. Being given a ride in a Q6 was a bit like being given a promotion. Small pleasures…

“What would you like to do?” Luc asked.

“I don’t know really. You can decide.”

“We could go for a drink if you want.”

“Sure, why not.”

“Shall we go back to the Royal?”

“Oh, no. Not the Royal.”

“Okay.”

They wound up at Plum, a vaguely trendy place with a clientele that mixed gray-haired Casanovas wearing Stan Smith and sexy girls with bangs, smiling hipsters, and female lawyers with painted nails. Rose never went there normally, on the grounds that it was full of pretentious assholes. The truth was that the prices were prohibitive and the clientele intimidated her. Luc, however, was friends with the owner. He seemed to be friends with everyone. He ordered a beer and Rose went for a gin and tonic. It cost twelve euros and Luc didn’t even blink. In fact he bought her two more. Rose loved the buzz she got from gin, especially in summer, and it wasn’t long before she was feeling perfectly at home in this place that she had loathed only two hours earlier. Perched on her barstool, she took pleasure in checking out the other customers as they went to the restrooms, and laughed at the owner’s jokes. He turned out to be a very nice guy. He even gave them a plate of tapas on the house.

Later, in the Audi, Rose held Luc’s face in her hands and kissed him. They rushed back to her place and fucked on the bed. It wasn’t great: typical drunken sex, listless and unclimactic. But at least they’d done it. Their affair had begun.

The next day, Rose was afraid that Luc wouldn’t call her, but her phone rang during her lunch break. That evening she was back on her stool in Plum. Gin and tonics, smiles, whispers. They ate tapas again and the owner came over for a chat, almost exclusively with Luc. Actually, though, Rose enjoyed that role of spectator, being an extra in someone else’s scene. The two men spent their time discussing people she didn’t know. They talked about the money that each of them was earning, about their success and hard-luck stories, about ways they might make even more cash in the future. Rose discovered that Plum was a bit like a chamber of commerce. People went there to pass on contacts, good ideas, to negotiate potential partnerships, to keep their finger on the pulse of the market, to find out what everyone else was up to. Above all it was a

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