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way young people do.
And then the babe asked:
So what does your father do? (It s a question that
girls ask at this sort of affair.)
He pretended to be distracted, spinning her around as
he answered:
He s the CEO at Rofitex I dunno if you ve heard of
it. . . . Two hundred empl
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104 Anna Gavalda
1 She didn t give him time to finish. She stopped danc-
2 ing at once and opened her setter s eyes wide:
3 Hold on . . . Rofitex? . . . You mean the . . . the . . .
4 the condoms, Rofitex?
5 Now that, that was the best.
6 No, the lawn furniture, he answered, but really, he d
7 been ready for anything but that. But really, what an air-
8 head this girl was.What an airhead. Fortunately, the mu-
9 sic had stopped and he could head for the buffet to drink
10 a little champagne and digest it all. Really.
11 Turns out she wasn t even one of the society girls
12 she d snuck in.
13
14 Twenty years old. My God.
15
16
17 It took young Devermont two tries to pass his gradu-
18 ation exam, but not the driver s test.That was all right. He
19 just passed it, and on the first try.
20 Not like his brother, who had to retake it three times.
21 At dinner, everyone is in a good mood. It wasn t in the
22 bag, because the local examiner is a real asshole. A drunk,
23 too. It s the country here.
24
25S Like his brother and his cousins before him, Alexander
26R got his license over summer vacation, out at his grand-
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Junior 105
mother s place, because the fees in the provinces are a lot
less than in Paris: nearly a hundred and fifty euros differ-
ence for the driver s ed course.
But finally,the drunk was more or less sober and put his
scrawl on the pink slip without being a smart ass about it.
Alexander s allowed to use his mother s Golf as long as
she doesn t need it. Otherwise, he s supposed to take the
old Peugeot that s in the barn. Same as all the kids.
It s still in good condition,but it smells like chicken shit.
It s the end of vacation. Soon he ll have to go back to
the big apartment on Avenue Mozart and get into the
private business school on Avenue de Saxe. A school that s
not yet accredited, but whose name is complicated, with
lots of initials: the IHERP or the IRPHE or the IHEMA
or something like that. (The Institute of Higher Educa-
tion My Ass.)
Our little suckling pig has changed a lot over the sum-
mer. He s been dissolute he s even started smoking.
Marlboro Lights.
It s because of the new company he s keeping: he s got-
ten chummy with the son of a big local farmer, Franck
Mingeaut.This kid is a piece of work filthy rich, flashy,
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106 Anna Gavalda
1 rowdy,and loud.Says hello politely to Alexander s grand-
2 mother and checks out his younger cousins at the same
3 time.Tsk-tsk.
4
5 Franck Mingeaut is happy to know Junior.Thanks to him,
6 he can enter society, go to parties where the girls are slen-
7 der and pretty and where they serve the families own
8 champagne instead of cheap Valstar beer. Instinct tells him
9 that this is the way to go if he wants to land himself a nice
10 cushy setup. The back rooms of cafés, unsophisticated
11 Marylines, pool tables, county fairs none of that stuff
12 lasts.Whereas an evening with the Widget girl in her home
13 at Chateau Widgetière . . . now there s energy well spent.
14
15 Junior Devermont is happy with his nouveau riche friend.
16 Thanks to him, he skids through gravel courtyards in his
17 sports convertible, he charges down the back roads of the
18 Touraine, giving rednecks the finger to get them to move
19 their Renaults out of his way, and he treats his father like
20 crap. He leaves an extra shirt button open, and he s even
21 started wearing the pendant from his baptism again, like a
22 tough guy still tender at heart.The girls eat it up.
23
24
25S Tonight is the party of the summer. The count and
26R countess of La Rochepoucaut are receiving in honor of
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Junior 107
their youngest daughter, Éléonore. All the upper crust
will be there from Mayenne down to the far end of
Berry, from the Society Pages, you name it.Young virgin
heiresses as if they grew on trees.
Money. Not the flashiness of money; the odor of it. Low
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