Ellen Sussman - French Lessons

He unlocked the door to his apartment and she dashed into the dark room. He reached for the light switch on the wall and flicked it on, closing the door behind him. Then he wrapped his arms around her from behind.

“You’re shaking,” he said.

“I’m scared. I feel like a thief breaking into someone’s house.”

He turned her around. “Look at me.” He lifted her chin.

She looked into his eyes and smiled. He made it easy. He looked so sure about this, as if there was no question in the world they should be standing here, wrapped in each other’s arms, gazing at each other. Maybe her fears were childish, immature. An older woman would be able to do this without trembling knees.

“I met your wife,” she said.

“Shh,” he said, leaning down to kiss her. She could feel her heart pounding against his chest. And then, lost in the kiss, she forgot everything for a moment. When he pulled his mouth away, she caught her breath.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“This is her place,” Josie said.

“No. It’s mine, really. I mean, it’s ours, but she rarely uses it. I stay here when I have late meetings or early meetings. On a rare occasion we stay here when we come in for a show or dinner.”

Josie pulled away from him and looked around. The room was masculine-all leather and dark wood, with a cool blue ocean painting that filled one wall. A model airplane hung from a wire in the middle of the room. Josie reached up and touched a wing; it spun in the air.

“I have a pilot’s license,” Simon explained. “That’s a model of my Cessna.”

Josie looked at him. “Your wife is perfect,” she said. “I mean, she’s not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?”

“Someone I could hate.”

“I didn’t fall for you because I hate my wife.”

“Why did you fall for me?” Josie turned away from the long, cresting wave of the painting and looked into Simon’s eyes.

“I couldn’t help myself,” he said simply. “I saw you onstage that day-I don’t know-I was starstruck. Can that happen?”

“Have you brought other women here?”

“No. I told you. I’ve never done this before.”

“I’m an idiot. I believe you.”

He pulled her into his arms. “I promise you.”

They kissed and she pressed herself into his body, wrapping her arms low around his waist, pulling him closer. She felt too many layers of clothes between them. She started to pull off his coat.

“Wait. There’s a Murphy bed. I have to pull it down.”

She turned around, surprised. It was a one-room studio and, sure enough, there was no bed.

Simon walked to the wall unit, then slid the bookcases aside, revealing a bed built into the wall.

“Amazing,” she said.

He pulled a cord and the bed descended gracefully. It was neatly made, with pale blue sheets and a gray blanket.

“I can’t,” Josie said. She could feel her throat tightening.

Simon looked at her.

“It’s her bed. It’s where you sleep with your wife.”

“Josie.”

She shook her head. “I feel like Goldilocks in someone else’s house. I can’t do this.”

“The sheets are fresh. I made the bed this morning.”

“No.”

He came toward her and took her in his arms again.

“She’ll never know,” he said.

“Let’s go. Somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

Later, in their room on the fourteenth floor of the Clift Hotel, they lay in each other’s arms after sex and Ghirardelli chocolate and scotch and more sex.

“How did Brady do?” Simon asked.

Josie looked at him. “I wondered why you hadn’t asked.”

“I should have been there.”

“You’ll come tomorrow.”

“I didn’t want to be there with my wife. I didn’t want to stand next to her and shake your hand. She knows me too well.”

Josie climbed on top of him. She looked down into Simon’s face.

“We can’t do this, can we?”

“We have to do this.”

He pulled her face to his and kissed her.

“Why?” Josie asked.

“Because I have to trust this. I know what love is-I love my wife, I love my son-I won’t lie to you. But I’ve never felt this-I don’t know- need. Desire . I’ve never known this”-he pressed her close to him, finishing his sentence as a whisper in her ear-“before.”

Josie watched him for a moment. “I don’t know what this is,” she said. “I’ve had boyfriends, but this is not what that was. What is this?”

“Kiss me,” Simon said.

Josie can hear the shoe saleswoman and the tutor talking to each other. She hears the words petite amie: girlfriend. “Does your girlfriend do this often?”

The tutor doesn’t correct her. “No,” he says. “She’s not feeling well today.”

Josie rinses her hands in the tiny sink in the back of the store and considers slipping a pair of shoes into her bag. She has never shoplifted in her life, but who knows what she might be capable of now? The saleswoman didn’t want her in the bathroom of her piggy store, but Josie had marched through the curtains anyway and found a toilet to throw up in rather than the white marble floor. She picks up a pair of red shoes-Dorothy-in-Oz shoes-and clicks the heels.

There’s no place like home.

Why should she fly home on Sunday? Why not stay in Paris and become Nico’s girlfriend and shoplifter of expensive shoes?

She puts the shoes back on the shelf. She steps back into the showroom.

“Ça va?” Nico asks. He looks concerned. Most of his students are not pregnant, crazy ladies, she assumes.

“Ça va,” she sighs, and offers a smile. Poor guy. He deserves better in a girlfriend.

“I don’t want the shoes,” she tells the saleswoman. “I seem to be allergic to them.”

Nico nods and takes her arm, guiding her out of there.

“Does your boyfriend know?” he asks her when they are on the street, standing close to each other in the middle of a crowd of shoppers, all of them wearing extraordinary shoes.

She is not surprised; this tutor seems to be a jack-of-all-trades. Why shouldn’t he also be able to guess her secrets? She shakes her head.

“Will he be happy?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says, assuredly. “He will be very happy.”

“Good,” Nico says. “I once had a girlfriend who broke up with me and then, a month later, called to tell me she was pregnant. She wanted to have the baby. I told her I’d raise the baby with her. She said she was moving to Morocco and that she would send me pictures of the kid from time to time. I never heard from her again.”

“That’s awful.”

“I think about it all the time. The kid would be three now. I wander through playgrounds looking for him. Or her.”

Thunder rumbles through the skies.

“Let’s find someplace to go,” Nico says, “before it rains.”

But the skies open immediately and the rain blasts them. Josie feels Nico’s arm wrap around her back and move her along rue de Grenelle. She doesn’t mind the rain; she doesn’t mind his arm around her. She’ll give herself up to this, she decides. It is easier than every day of the past weeks.

Nico opens a door and leads her inside. It is a small museum, though it looks nothing like a museum. It has vaulted ceilings and pale marble walls and floors. A sign reads: MUSÉE MAILLOL. A teenage boy chews gum behind a counter; he doesn’t even look up. Josie glances around-she doesn’t see anyone else in the building. Ahead of them is an enormous statue of a nude man.

Nico leads her to the desk and buys two tickets.

“I can pay,” she says.

“No. Please.”

The boy cracks his gum and pushes his comic book under the counter. He passes them the tickets and a brochure: Marilyn Monroe: The Last Photographs .