Hilary Reyl - Lessons in French

Would this disaster turn out to be my fault? I had never done the apartment walk-through with Clarence that Lydia had asked for, comparing his vision of the wall colors to mine, giving her a report. But she had mentioned the idea only once and I hadn’t thought it was my place to bring it up again.

I pulled Orlando down chestnut-lined allées, dragged him brutally fast to judge by the cross looks I drew .

Shit, were my German time lines all wrong? Had I hidden the Rushdie photos well enough? Lydia didn’t want Clarence to see them at this juncture, and Clarence, she warned, was always snooping. And what about the envelope of proof sheets, the one labeled “Book Burning in Bradford, January 14, 1989?” with the close-ups of the word “Satanic” as the flames were beginning to lick it, right before it was engulfed? Had I buried those proofs in the right drawer?

Was Marine, the snotty black and white printer, going to tell Lydia that I was a ditz when it came to photography? Would she say that my look was blank when she mentioned Magnum? That I did not know that Picto was the only photo lab in France? That I had no lay of the land? And would Lydia defend me while secretly wishing she had hired someone more with it? Or would she fire me on the spot?

Orlando was miserable. He didn’t like to run. “Your dog is dying of thirst!” snapped a passing businessman.

I stopped. Orlando’s tongue was hanging low and puckered. There was white phlegm webbing the corners of his mouth. Of course he was thirsty. How could I be so blind? I lead him to the closest puddle, which the poor dog began to lap furiously, and where I immediately drew more indignation. “C’est dégoûtant!” “Pauvre bête.” I burrowed my hands into my jacket pocket and fidgeted stupidly with the red note that Olivier had left under my door.

“Hey, you went to Yale, didn’t you?” It was a jogger.

Before I could answer, I realized with blinding certainty that I had to destroy Olivier’s letter before anyone saw it. I started to crumple the paper. I thought I looked like I desperately had to go to the bathroom because a shadow of disgust crossed the jogger’s face. But I quickly saw that she was not watching me squirm but focusing on the passersby.

“The people here can be so rude. That’s nothing but rainwater he’s drinking. It’s fine for a dog.”

I wanted to hug her.

“I totally recognize you,” I said. “You were in Branford, right? I’m Katie.”

“Christie.”

It turned out she was here doing the sort of paralegal job Mom wished I had. And she seemed so cheerful and blond and unconfused that I thought maybe Mom was right. Here Christie was jogging in the park before a normal day’s work, while I was subjecting a panting sheep dog to one of my anxiety attacks.

She and I had surely passed one another thousands of times in college, with no flicker of conscious recognition. To say she was a pressed and pretty WASP from prep school, and that I was a mutt who still could not place Groton and Choate, was too reductive. There had been more blending of worlds than that at Yale. But perhaps not so much that she would have felt this friendly, immediately locking me into a drink date at Les Deux Magots two Fridays from now, were we not the only ones of our species in the Luxembourg this morning. As I took in the pert ponytail and perfectly open smile, the INXS lyrics “You’re one of my kind” unfurled inside me. I remembered a passage from Proust where the narrator goes to a seaside resort for the summer and realizes that people from classes that would never interact in the city are delighting in one another’s company in a foreign atmosphere. The Proust, the INXS, the beautiful girl who wanted to know me, the river of Parisians going by, I suddenly saw it all in a Baroque X-ray.

As I fumbled in my bag for a pen to write down Christie’s number, I felt for the fifty-franc note that Clarence had given me to buy lunch on the way home. It wasn’t there! I felt again, found it, recalled my shock of shame at the tremble in Clarence’s voice as he had gone over what to buy with me.

“Get a poulet rôti, well done, and some céleri rémoulade. She likes jambon cru, but for goodness sakes don’t get any regular cooked ham. She can’t abide the stuff. Says it’s watery. You might pick up some of those puff pastry things with the béchamel and the chicken. She loves those when she’s not dieting.” No ham, nothing with mushrooms. No eggplant or peppers. No egg.

The man was terrified, reduced. He would have no time today for my musings about the Luxembourg as art, and neither should I. We were both in grave danger of fucking up.

I told Christie I would call her to confirm that I was free as the evening of our drink approached. I wasn’t my own master, I explained. “Well, I’m off at six every day,” she said with sweet certainty. “So great to run into you.” And she jogged away.

I pulled the crumpled money from my pocket. I walked to a poubelle with every intention of throwing away Olivier’s note, but buried it in the pocket of my jeans instead.

Then I led Orlando out of the park toward the food shops on our list. One by one, we hit them.

The baker slipped him one of yesterday’s croissants. The traiteur had a sliver of pâté for him, but none for me.

Apparently, I did not err buying lunch because Lydia ate with pleasure, chattering about how each taste brought Paris back to her, how good it was to be here.

She did not mention the paint colors. She talked instead about the perfect crisp weather and how telling it was that Orlando liked me because he was such a good judge of character and would I mind spending a couple of hours with her in the office after lunch? She had some letters to dictate.

She was framing the day to make it pleasant, getting Clarence and me to smile. We agreed with her that the poulet rôti from the rue du Cherche-Midi was indeed the best and the most evocative of our little corner of Paris. Where in the States could you find a chicken like this?

“Have you explained the office system to her yet?” Lydia asked Clarence.

“I wouldn’t call it a system, exactly, my dear. ‘System’ is a trifle too serious, don’t you think?”

“Call it what you like,” she turned to me, “but Clarence and I are very private about our workspaces. He doesn’t come into mine, and I don’t go into his. It’s respectful, if you will. But it does mean that you, Katherine, as a neutral party, will have to carry messages from time to time.”

I almost said, “I know. Olivier prepared me for this.” And the deliverance I felt at not having slipped made me fear I could never come clean.

“So,” Lydia looked at me mischievously as we sat down in her office after lunch, she at her desk, I in a nearby chair, “I’m going to do something simply awful and I hope you won’t mind.”

I couldn’t think of anything funny to say back.

She gestured to a pile of envelopes. “I’m sinfully late answering some of these people. I’ve missed about ten invitations this past month, given no word, no sign of life. With Germany and Rushdie side by side, my social life is starting to look like Beirut. So, here’s where you come in. I’d like to blame some of this on you. Our line will be something like, ‘My new assistant is a Deconstructionist from Yale. She doesn’t do the date and time thing very well yet, but she’s a quick learner and we have high hopes for the future. So sorry your invitation had to be a casualty of literary theory,’ something like that. You can refine it. I’m sure you’re a better writer than I am. Is this terrible? Do you mind? I mean you don’t know these people. You don’t begrudge me a little scapegoating for a good cause?”