Cold Sweat . . .

The telephone rings.

Hello, Jacques. It’s Pépé. How’s it going? I would like to invite you to have dinner with us next Tuesday. Okay? Oh la la, I have to tell you a story. Do you remember my wife, Marie?

The other day, she was in a store, at 91 Loge Street. She was buying sweaters and shirts for Christmas. The salesman, Mister Delacour, asked her if everything was fine, and she thanked him. She continued to talk to him while leaving the store. She was walking, but without seeing the mannequin on the sidewalk that was showing the clothes. With a lot of noise, the mannequin fell and broke in the street. Marie was horrified. Mister Delacour took the head of the mannequin and my wife tried to explain that she was sincerely sorry, that she hadn’t seen it, and that she would pay for it. The salesman thanked her, and he asked her to pick up the pieces because he hated seeing the disorder. Marie wanted to know what he wanted her to do with the pieces. In leaving, he said that it wasn’t his problem because she’d already paid. After having responded, he went back into the store.

Upset, Marie started to put the pieces into the trunk of the car. She thought that he could wait forever because she would never put another foot into his store. A little while later, she braked in front of our house when I was arriving. Angry, she ordered me to empty the trunk and that she would explain afterwards. I opened the trunk and there was a body! I jumped and shouted, and all at once I shut the trunk. At that moment, I felt sick to my stomach. I thought that my wife really had killed someone and that she had put the piece in the trunk. In a panic, I ordered Marie to stay calm and I wanted to know how it had happened. She told me that after she had left the store, she hadn’t seen him and that she had ran smack into him. Then, she declared that the worst part was that the tailor made her pick up all the pieces because he didn’t want a mess near his storefront.

Baffled, I explained to her that she should have put the pieces elsewhere than in the trunk, and I asked her what we should do now. She suggested that we put the pieces in the trash can because she didn’t want to keep them as a souvenir. I commanded her to stay quiet at once! She asked me what I was doing. I told her that I was thinking.