Xavière

Sitting with my coffee, I began to listen to a conversation two students were having at the table next to mine (eavesdropping, I know, but unavoidable). I'd seen them come in; one had blonde hair, a slightly foreign accent and a russian-looking face (if there is such a thing). The other unmemorable: I don't remember. I could hear the accented voice talking about a man she was attracted to, but who was involved with someone else. "I don't want to break them up" she said. The friend mumbled platitudes.
"I'll make friends with him - surely there is nothing wrong with being friends." The unmemorable one didn't answer: it wasn't a rhetorical question to elicit advice, just a bold statement of fact.
I began to think of Xavière, Beauvoir's ill-fated character in She Came to Stay. I didn't like Xavière. She infuriated me.
My neighbour reminded me of Xavière: the terrible mixture of naivité and diabolical intent; the sense of impending disaster. She forces everyone who encounters her to realise that this world isn't a Schopenhauerian world.
One moment in her company will be infused with indescribable shades of exhilaration, followed by another of almost farcical exasperation.
'Suffering and boredom', my pessimistic German friend?