Read Your Face Tomorrow: Dance and Dream for Free Online

you, don't be impatient, and don't worry, I'm not going to waste any more of your time. I'm a nuisance, I know, or I'm being a nuisance, but that's just part of setting the scene, you've noticed that, you can see that, you've realised that already, you're not stupid, just new.'
    'I wanted to ask you a favour,' she said. 'It's a big favour as far as I'm concerned, but less so for you.'
    'Ah, so she's asking me for something,' I thought. 'She's not proposing or offering, she could have done either, but she hasn't. She's not unburdening herself, or confessing, or even telling me something, although every request contains some story. If I let her continue, I will already be involved; afterwards, possibly caught and even entangled. It's always the same, even if I refuse her the favour and do nothing, there is always some bond. How does she know that it's less of a favour for me? That is something no one can know, neither she nor I, until the favour has been granted and time has passed and accounts have been drawn up or time has ended. But with that one phrase she has involved me, she has casually injected me with a sense of obligation or indebtedness, when I have no obligations to her nor, as I recall, any debts. Perhaps I should simply say straight out: "What makes you think you have the right to ask me a favour, any favour at all? Because you don't, when you think about it, no one has the right to ask anyone, even the return of a thousand favours received is entirely voluntary, there's no law that demands it, at least no written law." But we never dare say such things, not even to the stranger who approaches us and whom we do not like and who makes us feel uneasy. It seems ridiculous, but, in the first instance, there is usually no escape, and I have no escape from young Pérez Nuix: she's a colleague; she has come to my house on a night so foul that even a dog shouldn't be out in it; she's a half-compatriot; I let her in; she speaks my language; she is quite disinterestedly showing me her thighs, and very nice thighs they are; she's smiling at me; and I am more of a foreigner here than she is. Yes, I'm new.'
    'How can you possibly know what something will cost someone else?' I said, trying to rebel at least against that assumption, against that one part, trying, with that reply, to dissuade her subtly and politely — too much politeness and too much subtlety for someone who really wants something and has already started asking for it. I was seduced, too, by curiosity (not much yet, just the unavoidable minimum; but that is all it takes) and, perhaps, by flattery; discovering that one is capable of helping someone or granting them something, let alone of saving them, usually heralds complications, possible upsets, all disguised as simple satisfactions. It was because of that sense of being flattered that I was about to add: 'What can I do for you?' But I stopped myself: that would have meant the immediate cancellation of my mild attempt at dissuasion or timid rebellion. Given that I was going to surrender, I must at least go down fighting, even if I fired only warning shots. There would be no shortage of ammunition.
    'Yes, you're right, forgive me.' She was cautious, as I knew, she wasn't going to challenge anything I said until she had asked me for whatever it was she wanted from me, nor would she contradict me or fall out with me, not before, although possibly afterwards, in order to persuade me or to frighten me if I dug my heels in or proved stubborn. 'You're quite right, it's a baseless supposition. To me it seems like a really big favour, and that makes me think that for the other person, in contrast, it won't be that difficult. Although I genuinely believe it wouldn't be difficult for you. But perhaps, on second thoughts, I shouldn't ask you. It's true, one never knows.' And when she said this, she sat up on the sofa and straightened her neck like an alert animal, nothing more than that, like someone acting as if she were