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She was beautiful, intelligent, witty, and delicate. Her legs were not very shapely but they were very long. The few wrinkles only added to her charm. The trophy wife of the guy chased by most of the women in the Commission.
    She could have anybody. He was an idiot to think about another man’s wife so much.
    “So what did the squirrels do?” he asked.
    And at that moment a text from her arrived.
    When the front door banged shut and the children ran to greet Megi, Jonathan went downstairs and kissed his wife on the cheek. “You haven’t put the shelves up, you haven’t made sure Antosia is doing her homework, you forgot to buy the meat for tomorrow …” he heard.
    He discreetly hid the cell in his pocket. He knew the text by heart anyway: “Enjoyed talking to you, Andrea.”
    That night he slept with his hands behind his head, his underbelly restless. Why had he flirted with Andrea? Why had he thoughtlessly replied, “Would willingly do so again”?

6
    L’A TELIER D ’E CRITURE was located in a nineteenth-century apartment. The way in was up some stairs, passing the stone sculptures in a little garden.
    The woman who met Jonathan had silver-gray hair and spoke perfect French. She set a few subtle traps in their conversation but luckily he knew the French idioms and the books she mentioned. He threw in a handful of titles on literary theory, quoted the contents of articles he had recently read in professional publications until her face lit up. She was over fifty but so attractive that her gray hair seemed merely flirtatious.
    “You’ve got a group of seven. That’s how many registered but things can change. People generally drop out during the course.” She got up and held out her hand to him with a smile.
    “Thank you, Mme Lefebure.”
    “Cecile,” she corrected.
    Leaving
L’Atelier d’écriture
Jonathan made his way along the main axis of the city straight to the stone arch crowned with a sculpture of galloping horses, which stood on the wings of pavilions housing museums and a nightclub. Despite the monumental grandeur of the building, the area was cosy. Mobile stalls selling waffles were parked on the square, cyclists circumnavigated the arch, strollers sat eating sandwiches and reading on the grass and on the steps.
    Even though it was autumn, the grass in Cinquantenaire Park was as green as the parrots squawking, in the branches. It was a mystery how those exotic birds could survive European winters and yet they were still here, losing their emerald feathers, which on days like these merged with the background.
    Jonathan’s cell beeped in his pocket. He stopped; pigeons scraped at his feet, ruffled in a frenzy of love. Megi was texting him to call. He deleted the message and stared at the one that had arrived the previous day – from Andrea.
    Since that first text, messages had filled their small screens more and more frequently. The dramatic tension was like a game of cat and mouse – once he was near her, then she was almost touching him. He remained cold blooded and planned several moves ahead, interweaving wit with tenderness, compliments with elliptical statements, so that even he thought himself attractive. He hadn’t seduced anyone for years and now ideas were popping up with the force of popcorn fried in oil. How it drew him in!
    He looked around the park, semiconscious. On the right, a deep blue patch flashed by – a group of cadets from the nearby military academy warming up. They ran with a spring, half-boys, half-men. White and black, they passed elderly gentlemen dressed in white,
à la tropique
.
    Jonathan squeezed his cell, sweetness running through his body. He didn’t see the birds in their love dance on the path. To write or not to write to Andrea? He should phone Megi; she had asked how the interview had gone. “Best wishes to the most beautiful woman in Brussels from a new lecturer in creative writing,” he typed on his cell. He broke out in sweat and cancelled the text.