Page 49 of The Lonely Road

“Okay.” She opens her eyes. “You can speak now.”

“High praise.”

“The best duck I’ve had since Paris.” She considers. “Maybe the best duck. The Paris one had the advantage of being eaten at midnight after walking twelve miles, which makes everything taste better—but on pure technical merit….” She gestures at her plate. “This might win.”

“Was this the time you were in Paris, flying private?”

“No! I’ve been to Paris since. Several times.”

“Paris at midnight.” I pick up the wine and take a sip. I have to drive, so I’m making the one glass I allow myself last. “Deliberate or accidental?”

“Deliberately accidental. I was there for a water law conference—yes, those exist, stop looking like that—and I spent three days in a room with forty lawyers arguing about riparian rights under the EU Water Framework Directive. So on the last night, I decided that if I didn’t walk until I found somewhere worth eating, my entire memory of Paris for that trip was going to be a conference center near Charles de Gaulle.”

“And you walked twelve miles.”

“I walked until I found a place with a handwritten menu, five tables, and a proprietor who looked like he’d stepped out of Chocolat.” She lifts her wine. “And called me ma chérie.”

“And you had duck.”

“I did.”

“But this is better.”

“Most certainly.”

“Good.”

We order dessert—a tarte tatin for her, a Peruvian chocolate tart for me that looks like an architect designed it—and the conversation does what good conversations do in good restaurants, it moves entertainingly without an agenda.

“Did you like being in the military?” she asks.

“Yes.”

She sets her glass down and spears a slice of pear on her fork. “Where were you stationed?”

“Germany for a while. Parts of Central Asia. I spent a winter in a place I’m not going to name, that I would not recommend to anyone.”

“You sound like you enjoyed it.”

I consider her question and then tell her the truth. “I liked the structure of it. Doing without thinking too hard about what you’re doing—just following the edict that’s been set before you.” And not worry about the morality of it.

She leans back in her chair as she picks up her glass of Sauterne. Since I am driving, I’m having a double espresso with my dessert.

“You don’t look like the type who enjoys being ordered around,” she muses aloud.

I smile. “That’s why I left and started my own business.”

“Do you miss it—the military life?”

I think about this honestly, which is something I don’t always do with this question, but she compels candor from me.

“I miss being certain,” I explain. “You always knew what the mission was. What success looked like. Out here—” I pause. “The parameters are less clear.”

“Is that better or worse?”

“Both. Better because I decide what I will and won’t do. Worse because I have to decide what I will do and won’t do.”

She nods slowly, like that’s the right answer even if it isn’t a comfortable one. She turns her wine glass in her hands—the gesture I’ve come to know, which means she’s settling into something.