It was as if a comma had left the white linen of the tablecloth and
curled up inside the bottle of Burgundy between them. She thinking how
it would be wonderful - oh - to drink anytime glass after glass of it in
France native soil vines and cheeses hundred franc banquets lavender
fields of Haut Provence town of Aix fountains smell spring evenings Mont
Victoire couldn't they go, just go to Bourdeau, and Marsailles eat
Boullabaisse and dream in front of the ocean - its not as if he'd be
bored there could visit Montaigne's room all those amazing essays excite
himself with the thought of them again fierce then but more tender too.
He: holding forth. Words. Vectoring his way through the field. Non stop.
Pauseless. Bound to the spell. As if he might disappear if he stopped
too soon, as if ..... "Care for desert, sir?", the French waiter crashes
through the ceiling. He and she, they order creme brule and orange
sorbet. Eager to move he gets the bill. Why do the French write commas
and not decimal points in their numbers? She says she prefers it that
way, you could pause before plunging on. He couldn't see why you'd want
to hesitate in the middle of a number: being trapped motionless in the
center of a French thought. And what's more, she says, unlike dots,
commas had a shape. That's not the point, he says. But why, she asks, do
questions have to have a point, why they couldn't have a - a pause - a
comma. He, ever punctual, says: seven-twenty-nine. Let's go.