Angéle is French

Angéle is French.

She came to our San Francisco office twelve weeks ago as a liaison between our teams.

It’s forty degrees and raining and we’re shivering on a bench in a gazebo, white paint peeling off gray wood. Figures on the path form as they approach, then are lost in the fog and rain as they move away. She watches them, taking a slow drag on her cigarette.

I kissed Angéle for the first time in the alley next to a dumpster behind Johnny Foley’s. We’d both had far too much to drink, and were arguing about… I can’t remember.

That was two weeks ago.

She’s flying back to Paris in a few hours.

So here we are, sitting in a gazebo as I study the curve of her skull under long black hair, the slant of her smile, the shape of her nose, the swirls in her ears, the freckle on her lip.

“Je t'aime,” she says, breaking the silence. Her voice is soft, barely audible. Then she becomes self-conscious and pulls her collar around her face. I look at my shoes.

She’d join us after work for drinks. At first we sat on opposite sides of the table. As the weeks progressed the number of people between us shrank, until we were sitting side-by-side.

We’d left our friends at the bar for a five-minute smoke break.

We were out there for over an hour.

“That shouldn’t have happened,” she’d said.

“I know.”

“I’m married.”

“Me too.”

“Never again.”

I agreed.

But every night afterward Angéle came over to my efficiency apartment to cook us dinner. We’d have some wine and watch old movies, curled against each other. We’d make love. She snores.

“I wish it could be like this always,” I said once, when I thought she was asleep.

“I have a husband,” she whispered into the darkness. “I made a vow.”

“I know.” A sigh. “And I have two kids.”

“Je sais.”

Sitting here, shivering, I start to say I love her too— 

She drops her butt, grinding it into the wet brick with a heel as she checks her phone.

One night she asked me if I loved my wife.

“I want to,” I replied, then paused. “Do you love your husband?”

A sad shrug in reply. “We’re… on s’entend bien… comfortable, no?”

In the gazebo she stands, and I—but she presses a finger to my lips and looks into my eyes. “Partir c'est mourir un—” She frowns. “Connerie. C'est pire.”

And then she walks away.