11:46 p.m.

     He looked English. He hadn't spoken a word to her or anyone else at the bar for that matter, so she couldn't be sure.  It was something to do with his neatly tailored suit, his slim tie, his slightly thinning hair. Yes, the hair, a dull lump of chesnut-colored curls that were too understyled to be American yet too neat and well-kept to be French.  He leaned into the counter as he reached for his wallet to tip the barman.  He then stood up straight, with an adgitated bounce, to put the wallet back.
    She looked at his polished leather shoes and wrote his life story for him. He was born in London, or its whereabouts, and he was probably the kind of man that would say "born and bred" when referring to his hometown. He grew up in a good home with a good family, and made good enough grades to go to some good business or law school. Let's say law.  The law firm that had employed him for the last four or five years broke the good news to him after a Christmas party ; there was an opening at the Paris branch for someone like him who had studied European law, someone who spoke a bit of French, someone young, unmarried, childless, uninhibited and willing to be uprooted and transferred into a foreign garden.  So they recommended him for the job and he thought, why not?  He imagined his new flat (because he'd call it that, now wouldn't he...) in Paris, some simple yet elegant space with a breathtaking view of the Eiffel tower.  He thought about going out to dinner and drinks at fabulously expensive restaurants with his future French collegues.  He'd meet a girl, he knew it, and she'd be so fascinating, so foreign, such an intellectual, so complicated, and he'd discover the city with her and, like so many couples before, be carried away by the romance of the place.  He'd go back to England for the holidays, and while having a pint with the lads...ah, she loved that phrase and mourned the fact that her American accent rendered it silly when speaking it ouloud...he'd say, it's crazy, but it's just become home, I think I'll be there for life.
    His name was probably Paul.
    Bernard had come back to the table with drinks and said something.  She responded while watching Paul order another beer.  He looked around him, nervous, embarrassed even, then raised the new pint to his lips, sipped, put it down and opened a newspaper.