“So it should be.” Isa sidestepped a hurried trader. “That’s what I aspire to once I’ve finished topping up my pension pot here.”
Sylvie frowned. “Don’t you think you’re a bit young to be thinking about your pension?”
“I am very serious about retirement planning.” Isa looked like she was trying to keep her face serious. “That is, will I have enough to buy a vineyard in my fifties?”
“I’ll go Dutch with you on the vineyard. Tuscany? Or Provence?”
“I don’t think we’ll ever afford Provence on our teaching salaries, my angel. Let’s set our sights a little lower. Perhaps a small plot in Bulgaria?” Isa’s coarse laughter rang out across the rows of stalls.
“Speak for yourself! I intend to make my millions from touring a one-woman show with my unique commentary on European feminism.”
“I’ll buy a ticket.”
“I’m not sure anyone else will.” Sylvie groaned, stepping over the carpet of a stallholder laying out his secondhand wares. “I need to finish the book before I can go on tour.”
“How’s it going?”
“Let me think. If I was to compare my progress to say, the harvest of a vineyard, the roots are strong, but this season has yet to produce the yield we were expecting.”
Isa chuckled. “The fruit has not yet sprung?”
“Oh, it has sprung. There are words aplenty: too many words, according to my editor. They’ve yet to ripen. To mature into their full-bodied potential.”
“This analogy is making me thirsty.”
Sylvie looked over the tram car park hosting the oversized yard sale. “Does this happen every weekend?”
“Yep.”
“People just come down here and walk around people’s junk.”
“It’s not all junk, sweetie.”
Sylvie raised her eyebrow. Much of it looked like the rejects of a thrift store. It was hardly the Parisian flea market she used to meander on her free weekends.
Isa flicked her gaze beyond the stalls. “Shall we find a bar?”
“I thought you’d never ask.” Sylvie rubbed her hands together. “Did you bring your chess set?”
“I don’t travel without it. You never know when you might meet someone who’s up for a quick game.” Isa winked. “Talking of which, that woman behind us can’t keep her eyes off you. You should chat. Maybe invite her to join us.”
Sylvie snuck a look behind her at the figure in question. Tall, attractive, and looking straight at her. She cricked her neck to face forward, hushing Isa’s gleeful excitement. “That’s enough. She’llknow we’re talking about her.”
“Well, don’t talk about her, talktoher.” Isa shoved her toward the next stall, right into the path of the stranger.
Sylvie smiled politely, raising an object to inspect it.
“Nice ashtray,” the woman said, her voice like velvet.
“Isn’t it?” Sylvie gulped.
“You don’t see many of that type anymore. It could be mid-century. Perhaps even pre-war.”
On any other day, Sylvie would’ve enjoyed a conversation about the weight of the marble. It may have even led to a drink or two at a bar. But today, she shut down and strolled to the next table. She had enough going on in her life without spending energy nurturing another connection that would cost her time and emotion.
She glanced at Isa, grateful for her company. As she moved along the stalls, she noticed a postcard of a Francois Truffaut film, its familiar New Wave artistry standing out among a table full of trash. “How much is this?” she asked the stallholder.
He mumbled something and pointed to the sticker on the back. A single euro. She remembered the night she’d shared with Ade a few weeks ago: the peaks and troughs of Ade’s passion and ambivalence for the film.What would Ade make of this little card?
