= 96.8 Degrees Fahrenheit

March 2, 12h 53, exit the motorway towards Lisieux, several roundabouts, earth and straw landscape, blue sky. Stop
lunch menu 11 euros, the village stretches along the national urban elastic, vans standard on the car park.
I go.
A lady silhouette stovepipe tells me "the table at the bottom where there are two gentlemen."
I cross the room. I discovered the two men side by side watching television in the direction where I am: a thin, bronze-green shirt and tie, mouth hyphen, shoulder-length hair plated, the other farmer or builder or both, the five fingers as thumbs, mug red, turquoise blue eyes.
I sit facing the second.
I salute them. They respond politely and
back on TV, a show animal, it seems. I feel
they cling.
buoy.
I broke, right under their nose, it unleashes waves: storm on the paper tablecloth. Slapping the face of a stranger there, a few feet away ...
buoy. I
order.
They chew: one bib, the other a pie. Silence. TV occupies its space, the space light, space anguish. The peasant worker
building intrigues me. Behind the stature and the mine closed in caret, you can feel the cracks. I think of an old wall.
Although I know the answer, I asked him: Lisieux How much is it? Ten? Fifteen miles? It takes time for reflection, the question is important, and answered:
- Although fifteen ah yes.
That's all he said. Here's mine again tip the screen.
He finished his dessert.
He rises.
He whispers a goodbye.
It goes away.
Him, I would have painted his face.
My attention then reverted to another type located diagonally. His glasses give him a square air traveling salesman. I begin to question: Is the region?
- No.
- Where?
- Sotteville-les-Rouen.
- Ah.
- Yes.
- Hon Hon.
- This side of Rouen.
- Ah.
- Yes.
- Hon Hon. And you work in what?
- Data processing. Technician on printers.
I exclaim:
- People like you are precious.
- Oh no, he replies. Oh yes, he corrects the next second.
He blushed, I think, unless it is an illusion.
The conversation begins: the profession, the crisis, unemployment, the gulf banks, forcing news ... Suddenly the whirling billion euros over the table, doing loops, escape, return, s' envolent again and disappear, Definitive. Ah heaven!
- I do not have too much conscience, confess my interlocutor on several occasions. Should the numbers.