What You Don't Ask

I didn't say anything to him.

I still don't know why. I had the whole evening to say it. We ate mussels in the same brasserie in Het Zoute, at the same table, and this time the waiter didn't call me Madame Verhaegen, he called me Madame, and he called Adrien Monsieur, as if we'd always been together. Adrien told me about his day: the hull of a fifties yacht, a Dragon, which some Germans wanted restored exactly as it had been, with hand-forged copper nails. He was laughing. He had sawdust in his eyebrows. He'd taken my hand across the table, between the pot of mussels and the bowl of chips, and he kept hold of it, and ate with the other.