The Yellow Eyes of Crocodiles Read Online Free PDF Page A

have to face your fear. Otherwise it’ll eat you alive.”
    “No, leave me alone. I don’t want to think.”
    “Tell me what scares you.”
    “How about that coffee and chocolate?”
    “Okay, but you’re not off the hook,” Shirley said with a smile. “Arabica or Mozambique?”
    “Whichever. I don’t care.”
    Shirley took out a bag of coffee beans and an old wooden coffee grinder. She sat on a stool, wedged the grinder between her thighs, and began to steadily turn the handle, without taking her eyes off her friend. “It’s like my brain. It grinds slowly, but exceedingly fine.”
    “You look so pretty sitting there in your apron like that. I feel so ugly.”
    “Don’t tell me
that’s
what’s scaring you!”
    “Who taught you to be so direct? Your mother?”
    “Life did. It saves time. But you’re cheating again; you keep trying to change the subject.”
    Joséphine looked up at Shirley, squeezed her fists between her knees, and started talking. She began in a rush, then slowed down, stopping and repeating herself.
    “I’m afraid. I’m afraid of everything. I’m a great big ball of fear. I want to die right here, right now, and not have any more worries. I’m afraid I’ll never find love again. I’m afraid of losing my job. I’m afraid of talking to people I don’t know. I’m afraid of losing my mind. I’m afraid of breast cancer. I’m afraid of dying alone.”
    “Tell me your worst fear, the one that paralyzes you and keeps you from being the brilliant Jo who can speak so wonderfully about the Middle Ages that I sometimes want to go back there. What is it that makes you shrivel up into a ball?”
    “I feel ugly. I keep telling myself no man will ever fall in love with me again. I’m fat. I don’t know how to dress or fix my hair. And I’m just going to get older.”
    “That’s true of everyone. What is it that you can’t face?”
    Joséphine looked bewildered.
    “You really don’t know?” asked Shirley.
    Joséphine shook her head. Shirley stared at her for a long time and then sighed.
    “That’s the fear you have to identify, Jo, the one that’s behind all the others. Once you do that, nothing will frighten you ever again, you’ll see.”
    “You sound like a fortune-teller, Shirley.”
    “Or a witch. In the Middle Ages they would have burned me at the stake!”

    “What are you doing tonight?” asked Bérengère, pushing the piece of bread away from her plate. “If you’re free we could go to Marc’s opening together.”
    “I have a family dinner,” said Iris. “Is the opening tonight? I thought it was next week.”
    Bérengère Clavert and Iris Dupin met at the same restaurant every week. It was a trendy place where you could see politicians whispering; a starlet trying to impress a director; a few titless models with bony hips. At a table for one, a regular waited for a tasty piece of gossip like an old crocodile lurking in a swamp.
    Bérengère picked up the bread again, and impatiently flicked it with her index finger. “I feel like I’m surrounded by vultures watching an animal die. They won’t say anything, they’re way too polite. But it’s in their eyes. ‘How’s the Clavert woman doing, now that she’s been dumped again? Thinking of slitting her wrists?’ It’s humiliating. Marc will be showing off his new girlfriend, and I’ll be sick with rage, love, and jealousy.”
    “I didn’t know you had such deep feelings,” Iris said.
    “How can you say that?”
    “Because you’re mixing up pride and love, and I’m not buying it. You’re irritated, but you’re not hurt.”
    Bérengère wasn’t sure whether to cry or counterattack. She’d initially planned not to tell Iris anything, to protect her friend from the rumor going around Paris. But she also loved gossip and backbiting, and she wasn’t about to let her own ox be gored without retaliating. She put her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, and smiled.
    “Not everyone can have a