The Suitors - By Cecile David-Weill Page 0,38

ideal consultant.

“The secret lies in telling the client what he wants to hear,” he’d explained to my patient. “But to do that, you must know how to listen, watch, and talk, all at the same time, so as to observe the effect of your words on your interlocutor. For example, you begin, ‘My friend, your company is too small to survive in the face of the competition out there. You are thus at a strategic crossroads. You must make a choice. Either you face the music and decide, in spite of the years of effort and energy you’ve put into your firm, to sell …’ And now, while still emitting sounds that can pass for words, you study your client carefully, scrutinizing the slightest quiver of his body and face. And if you detect a tiny tightening of the jaw, a sign of protest, you segue immediately into ‘… and that’s the solution most of my colleagues would doubtless recommend to you.’ There you pause, to make your slowness seem solemn and thoughtful, before continuing: ‘The way I see it, such a solution takes the easy way out, and I do not advise you to embrace it. You have the mettle and ambitions of a major player: give yourself the opportunity to show what you can do in a bigger arena. And let me remind you that I already have in place, twenty-four/seven, research groups that ferret out the kind of acquisitions that will raise you to the level of the market leaders.’ If, however, your client welcomes your initial allusion to the sale of his firm with a hint of a smile, or reveals a furtive flicker of relief, your pitch should be: ‘And although most of my colleagues, taking the usual tack in such situations, would advise you not to sell, evoking the years of effort and energy you’ve devoted to this company, my personal opinion is that on the contrary, the solution is to sell. A courageous, I would even say ambitious choice …’ ”

So we’d thought it hardly surprising both that this high-flying power player was so popular and that at the same time, since he’d never had any business ideas or even any idea what business is, he nevertheless gave bad and sometimes even catastrophic advice. Besides, the stories about him were legion. A particular favorite, set in a company where everybody relished their anecdotes about his sliminess, was the tale of how he had somehow extorted obedience from a lackey forced to alert him every time the big boss went to the bathroom, so that Gandouin could pretend to run into him there by chance. And there was the time when he finally decided to unveil the results of weeks of five-hours-a-day private English lessons, and showed off with an American client.

“Yes, I understand you perfectly,” he’d said. “You want to focus on the business, you want to focus on the contract.”

A reasonable statement, except that his accent was so bad that what he’d really said was, “Yes, I understand you perfectly. You want to fuck us on the business, you want to fuck us on the contract,” and that had created a diplomatic incident of no small consequence.

But I couldn’t share all these delights with my sister, unfortunately; my profession was indeed a weird one, obliging me as it did to keep quiet outside my office about what went on inside it. Sometimes I even ran into patients out in the “real world” whom I scrupulously pretended not to recognize, leaving them free to react as they wished. At the same time, I met strangers about whom I sometimes knew every detail of their lives, character, or sexual proclivities, information revealed to me by their spouses, children, colleagues, employers, or competitors.

Luncheon, Saturday, July 15

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Stuffed Baby Vegetables

Melons, Figs, Prosciutto

Pasta Salad with Chicken and Pignoli

Crab Parisienne

Curried Lamb

Waldorf Salad

Tomato and French Green Bean Salad

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Coeur à la Crème with Berries

Marie and I went back on duty with our guests only at lunchtime, in the loggia, where the view now featured an ocean liner that had appeared on the horizon, visible through the scattered parasol pines, like a toy set down on a shelf. Four round tables had been set up along the edge of the terrace. This was an almost daily occurrence, because many people considered lunch at L’Agapanthe an obligatory part of their stay in the Midi. Like the most fashionable restaurants, we were thus forced to turn people away, and for the same reasons: because