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So, once upon a time, Amelie Poulain, daughter of an iceberg and a neurotic, waitress at The Two Windmills, skipper of stones and occupant of the fifth floor flat over Le Marche Collignon, met a boy.
Well, to be perfectly accurate, she first spent quite a while observing the boy from afar as he collected discarded instant photo machine pictures.
Later, she acquired his album of said pictures by accident, which happenstance led to her trying to return it to him at work, first at the adult entertainment store and later at the fun fair.
And, still later, actually returning it to him by arranging an assignation near the carousel and calling the nearby public telephone to send him to look for it through the viewing binoculars on the overlook, only to see her depositing it in the saddle bag of his motorbike.
That allowed her to arrange another assignation, this time at The Two Windmills, where she continued to watch him and managed to arrange yet another meeting, via a note slipped into his pocket by one of her fellow waitresses.
There, she revealed the identity of the mystery man in the boy's collection of instant photos.
And then they rode off into the sunset on his motorbike.
Except that it was never going to be that simple. Life didn't just freeze in that hazy orange-yellow glow of the sun slipping away beneath the horizon, in that one perfect moment of easy wordless connection, but then it never does.
Relationships take more work than that.
***
Some evenings Amelie grates cheese over dishes of pasta, one, two, three turns of the handle, while the lettuces sit glistening, waiting in their bowl. Everything else is ready, too, except for Nino.
She finds him sitting in her lounge, piecing together his latest photographic treasures, carefully making places for them in the album which brought them together. She watches him a moment, unspeaking, as she did of old. And then he looks up and sees her and closes up his glue pot, getting up without a word from her, bidden by whatever it is he sees in her expression.
She has not meant to look irritated or angry or annoyed, but perhaps she has anyway. Or perhaps he merely thinks she has. People often misinterpret the things her face does.
Later, after he's done the washing up and gone back to his album, she sets an espresso and an almond cookie at his elbow without him asking, as an apology, but she's not entirely sure that he knows that she means that by it. Though he does thank her. And she thinks that's maybe enough.
***
They see a movie every Friday night, an old black and white one if there's one to be had. Amelie doesn't turn around once to look at the people behind her, ghostly-blue in the light of the projector. Nor does she say anything to Nino while the movie plays out before them. The little things she notices stay secreted between her lips, though they sometimes startle her into nonsensical almost-laughter.
She laughs when things are properly funny, too, of course. And Nino mostly laughs with her, then. But she can't quite bear to share the other parts that have always been hers alone.
***
One night, Amelie comes awake unexpectedly, lying in the bed beside Nino, to find him turned on his side, propped up on one elbow, looking intently at the lamp beside the bed. It's almost as though he's listening, as though he's considering whatever it is the pig which acts as the base to the lamp might be telling him.
And maybe he is; Amelie can almost hear the pig speaking now she thinks on it, like a radio frequency her ears aren't quite tuned to. She watches and listens as best she can, but falls back into sleep before the conversation ends. And in the morning she's not entirely sure that it wasn't a dream.
She likes to think it wasn't, that Nino tells his secrets to someone, even if it isn't her. And that his world also has corners which other people can't peer around.
***
No matter what, life at The Two Windmills goes on. Sometimes Nino comes in. If Amelie is working, she sometimes serves him his coffee. But sometimes Gina does instead, even if Amelie is there. She asks him about his day. On Amelie days, she just smiles her secretive little smile and lets their fingers brush as she hands him the coffee cup.
He smiles back.
***
Sometimes, at the weekend, Amelie will buy two handfuls of the green lentils it feels so lovely to hold. And then she will take them home and cook them up with ham and onions and garlic and smoked sausage - and serve them for dinner with crusty bread and a sharp cheese.
Nino smiles when he eats his portion, though she knows he has a taste for more sophisticated foods than she has ever learned to cook. Her mother's nerves wouldn't bear such usage as fancy cooking and her father's culinary repertoire extended only to the simplest of soups and pasta dishes - and the occasional roast chicken. And cooking for herself has never inspired her to great flights of experimentation.
When she asks him, hesitantly, how he likes it, however, he answers her with a shy pleasure which she cannot help but believe.
***
One evening after supper Amelie unearths her old dominoes set and they set the pieces up in complicated patterns on the floor, before knocking them over in acts of carefully calculated, beautiful destruction. And then they set them up again. And again. Until Nino looks up and notices the time and the spell is broken.
After that first evening, it is only a matter of time before one of them suggests doing it again. And after that it becomes a habit, almost a ritual. Sometimes they do this for an hour or more, all in silence, their shared smiles the only communication they need for this simple act.
Sometimes Amelie can almost feel the words bubbling up behind her lips, wanting to be spoken, but she fears for breaking the magic spell cast by the lamplight in the evening and the dominoes click-clack-clacking, one into the next and the one after that, like beads on a string or an abacus or a rosary.
She's not sure what she thinks will happen if she does break the spell, but she's used to silence mostly, anyway.
***
Amelie still skips stones on the canal, still picks them up wherever she finds a good one. Her aim is still true and her wrist still strong and supple.
She likes going best on Sundays in the spring when everyone else is in church or in bed or at brunch. Sometimes she slips out of Nino's bed while he sleeps off another late shift at the adult entertainment store and walks there and back before he wakes, returning with pockets emptied of stones and a bag filled with freshly baked pastries.
She wakes him with coffee and pain au chocolat and he smiles and commends the baker and her skill with an espresso.
***
Sometimes she catches him watching her, considering her in some unexpected moment. She doesn't know what he sees then, in her face or the line of her back or the way she washes a pot or chooses oranges. But she wonders. And she thinks, sometimes, that someday she will ask.