French Lessons Read online

  “I think that’s a terrifying story,” Nico says.

  “There you go. Vive la différence.”

  “Between boys and girls?”

  “Between a nice young Frenchman with blue eyes and a crazed American woman.”

  Nico reaches over and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

  “You’re not crazy.”

  “And that’s another thing. I need a haircut,” Josie says.

  “Perhaps we can do that.” His fingers linger briefly in her hair.

  “All in one day?” Josie asks.

  “And you thought I was a mere French tutor.”

  Josie sees Nico’s mischievous glance and notices how young he looks. There are no creases in the corners of his eyes. She has spent so many months looking into Simon’s eyes.

  “I made up that story,” Josie tells him. “There is no book. There never was.”

  Nico smiles. “Perhaps you’re not crazy, but you’re very creative.”

  “I think the little girl never goes home. I think she finds the guard and asks him to take her home with him.”

  “That might be dangerous.”

  “But he’s a very nice man. He owns three dogs, all of them bigger than the little girl. They live together in his tiny apartment on the top of a hill in Montmartre.”

  “What about her parents?”

  “You’re so responsible,” Josie complains.

  “I would miss my little girl,” Nico says.

  “Of course you would.” She remembers that Nico has a child somewhere in Morocco, a child he’s never seen. She thinks of Nico as a child, lost in the root cellar, his parents searching for him. This is a man looking to be found, she thinks.

  Simon stroked her back. They were sprawled in bed, post-sex, pre-sex, all of their time together a blur of sex. They were in San Francisco, at yet a different hotel. Simon saw someone he knew at the Clift and Josie had to pretend she was a stranger, asking directions to a club. “Sorry,” he told her, the friend in earshot. “I can’t tell you anything about clubs in this city. I’m an old man. Why don’t you ask the concierge?” Later Simon told her that the friend had said, “That girl is hot,” and Simon had said, “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “Of course you wouldn’t,” the man had said. “You’re the last married man in America.”

  Simon had informed his wife about a series of Saturday meetings-he’d invented a nonprofit group that needed his expert help. He’d told his admin not to schedule anything for him at the end of the day on Friday because he needed to get back to San Rafael for a project he was working on with Brady. He was lying to everyone, and he did it with such ease that Josie thought he must be lying to her as well.

  “How do you know this is love,” she asked, “rather than love of sex?”

  He ran his tongue up the line of her spine.

  She rolled over and faced him. “You said you loved me.”

  “I do.”

  “Maybe you just love sex with me.”

  “I do.”

  “Why is it that now that I have love, I’m immediately scared of losing love?”

  “You think too much. Stop thinking.”

  “When we make love I stop thinking.”

  “Then let’s make love. It’s been too long.”

  “Does this-does sex-matter more than anything else? Does it matter more than raising kids and having dinner parties and going to Cabo on vacation?”

  “I wish I could do all of that with you.”

  “But you can’t.”

  “You wouldn’t even want it, Josie. You’re twenty-seven years old.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Please. Come here.”

  “I’m right here.”

  “Come closer.”

  “Did you have this with your wife?”

  “Don’t.”

  “I’ve never had this before.”

  “I know, Josie. I’ve never had it before either.”

  “But you trust it? You can tuck it inside of you and take it home with you?”

  “We have to. There’s no other way.”

  “Let’s make love really slowly. Let’s make love so it lasts for hours and hours.”

  “It does,” Simon said. “It lasts for days. It lasts for all the time that I’m not with you.”

  Josie moved into his arms.

  “A haircut,” Josie says, pushing herself up off the lounge chair. “Off with her hair!”

  “You feel better?” Nico asks, eyeing her warily.

  “I do.” She puts her hands on her back and stretches, arching her back. She can feel the sun on her face. “Where shall we go?”

  Nico stands and leads them to the exit of the Rodin Museum.

  “There are lots of shops on rue Saint-Dominique. We’ll find something there.”

  “Do you mind?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Does your language school have rules about this sort of thing?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “How to spend your day with a client. Is my wish your command?”

  “It’s not usually so complicated. Most students are happy to learn the names of vegetables at the market.”

  “Have you ever fallen in love with a student?”

  Nico smiles. “Before today?”

  “You’re not in love. You’re a wonderful flirt, though. You can put that on your résumé.”

  “Isn’t it possible that it’s love?”

  “What about your French tutor? Aren’t you in love with her?”

  “She has Philippe. I was just a diversion.”

  “But you love her. You could love her.”

  “I could love you.”

  “No. It’s just a foolish question. I drank too much wine. Let’s find a hair stylist. I can’t go to Provence looking like a teenager.”

  Josie’s hair is long and straight. She carries a clip in her purse, and when she’s warm she twists her hair and pins it to the top of her head. When she lets it down it falls to the middle of her back, a horse’s mane of deep chestnut that swings as she walks. She has never cut her hair more than a few inches.

  They walk across the esplanade des Invalides and Nico reaches up and runs his fingers through her hair. She looks at him, surprised. It’s as intimate a touch as she’s felt in weeks. It stirs her and then angers her. She doesn’t want to remember.

  “It’s a nuisance,” she says, tossing her head and stepping away from his hand. “I’m done with all that.”

  “A shame,” Nico says.

  “Voilà,” Josie calls after they’ve turned onto rue Saint-Dominique. She points across the street. “Perfect.” It’s a small salon, with a sign in the window that promises a shampooing et coupe for twenty-five euros. “On y va.”

  Nico follows her. Josie has taken charge of the tour now-Nico follows a half step behind. She pushes open the door of the salon, which is all bright lights and gleaming chrome surfaces with techno music pounding, and greets the young woman at the desk. The woman’s hair is chartreuse and spiky. Maybe this isn’t the place to get a grown-up haircut after all.

  “I’d like a cut,” Josie tells the woman in French. “I don’t have an appointment.”

  “I can do it,” the young woman says, and Josie wonders for a brief moment if she’s really a stylist or if everyone’s out to lunch and the assistant wants to make some extra money on the side.

  But soon enough Josie is draped in a robe, her hair is washed and combed, and she’s staring at herself in the mirror. She sees Nico standing behind her. The stylist asks what she wants and the music pounds in Josie’s ears.

  “I want to look older and wiser,” Josie says. “I want to look like someone with a job and a boyfriend and a house in the country.”

  “Non,” the woman says. “C’est pas possible.”

  Josie looks at Nico as if she needs a translation. He shrugs. The woman starts cutting.

  “Wait,” Josie says. “What are you going to do?”

>   “I will make you look like a movie star.”

  “I don’t want to look like a movie star.”

  All the while the woman’s fingers move at the speed of light and the click-click-click of the scissors reverberates in Josie’s ears. Hair drops to the floor in long clumps.

  “Everyone wants to look like a movie star.”

  “Which movie star?” Josie says weakly. She’s feeling nauseated again and this time it has nothing to do with the pregnancy.

  “Where are you from?” the woman asks.

  “The United States.”

  “You speak French. Americans don’t speak French.”

  “Some of us do.”

  “There is an American movie star filming in Paris today. On the Pont des Arts in about an hour. We’re closing the shop soon. My receptionist already left to get a good spot.”

  “Who is it?” Josie asks.

  “Dana Hurley. She is incredibly sexy, no?”

  “You’re cutting too much hair,” Nico tells the stylist.

  “Who are you? The boyfriend?”

  “No,” Josie says.

  “Yes,” Nico says.

  Josie glares at him.

  “Alors,” the stylist tells Josie.

  Josie closes her eyes and feels the young woman’s hands ruffle her hair. She feels light, weightless, as if she might float away.

  “Does Dana Hurley have short hair?” she asks, her eyes still closed.

  “Yes,” the stylist says. “Oh, I don’t know. They change their hair so often. In her last film she had a bob. It doesn’t matter what she does with her hair-she is someone I want to fuck.”

  “She’s old, isn’t she?” Nico asks.

  Josie hears them as if they’re far away. With her eyes closed and the snip of the scissors in her ear, the pounding of the techno-pop in her bones, the sensation of air on her neck, she feels transported somehow. Maybe she’s on her way to becoming someone else.

  “Oh, she must be forty-five or so, but she is the woman we all want to be. She is sexy and passionate and good in her skin. You know what I mean?”

  Bien dans sa peau. Good in her skin, Josie thinks. I haven’t been good in my skin since the last night I spent with Simon.

  “I don’t know,” Nico says. “I’ve never gone for the older woman thing.”

  “That’s because most older women lose something,” the stylist says. “They lose their fuckability. They stop thinking about sex all the time and they think about jobs and country houses.”

  Josie opens her eyes. She sees someone else in the mirror. Her hair frames her face and her eyes look wide, her mouth looks full. She looks older and younger-she looks wild and she doesn’t look scared.

  “Oui, chérie?” the stylist says, leaning close. “See what I mean? You are a movie star, no?”

  She was grading papers in her cottage late at night when the doorbell rang. She opened the door and saw Simon standing there in the porch light, his hair tousled, his dress shirt untucked from his pants. He looked at her, his expression dark and unfamiliar.

  “What’s wrong?” she said.

  He stepped in and pulled the door closed behind him. He pushed her up against the wall and pressed his mouth on hers.

  His kiss was hard and insistent. He pushed his leg between her legs and she could feel the weight of him against her.

  When his mouth moved away from hers he made a noise, something low and guttural.

  He took both her hands in one of his and held them above her head, pressed hard against the wall. She heard her own voice say his name. His other hand slid under the band of her pajama bottoms and rubbed against her, urgently, while his leg pushed her legs farther apart. She was wet, and when she started to say something only a noise escaped her mouth and again his mouth was on hers.

  He pushed her pajamas down and they tangled at her feet. She heard his hand pull at his belt, at the fly, and he lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around him and then he was inside her. He released her hands and she wrapped them around his back while he pressed her hard against the wall, each thrust pounding her back, pushing them closer. A painting on the wall rattled. She could feel him deep inside her and she wanted even more of him.

  “Don’t stop,” she managed to say when he started to come and his orgasm kept rolling and their bodies, now slick with sweat, kept pounding together against the wall.

  When he was done, he held her for a moment, and their hearts beat furiously against each other. They stepped out of their pants and he carried her to the bedroom, laid her down, and buried his face between her legs. She pressed the back of his head, arched her back, and came in waves that rolled on top of one another.

  And then he was inside her again. He was still hard, but he held her still and they didn’t move, their bodies wet and trembling.

  She waited for a long time. Stay with me, Josie thought.

  When he pulled out of her he looked at her and smiled-a sweet, exhausted grin.

  His breath slowed. He ran his fingers over her stomach, her hips.

  “Look at you,” he said. His voice sounded sad and lost.

  His fingers moved to her breasts, massaging them and then teasing her nipples.

  “You’re so young,” he said. “So impossibly young.”

  Josie reached out and touched his face, ran her finger along his jaw.

  “Don’t get all old man on me,” she teased.

  “I can forget about youth,” Simon said, his voice quiet and serious. “I mean, I see it all the time-in movies, in ads, young men and women and their firm bodies, their smooth skin. But my own youth slips away, not noticeably, not enough to terrify me, until one day I end up in bed with a beautiful young woman. And then all at once, I’m an old man.”

  They looked at each other, their faces close together on the bed, their hands both resting on each other’s hips.

  “Is that it-your age? That’s what’s upsetting you?” she asked.

  He winced, then closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he looked terribly sad.

  “I’m a good man,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  “I never meant to do this to my wife.”

  “Did she-”

  “No, she doesn’t suspect. She wouldn’t suspect.”

  He stopped and she waited for him to finish. She brushed his hair back from his forehead.

  “It’s not an affair,” he said.

  “What is it?”

  “I’m too old to start over.”

  “I’m not asking you to start over.”

  “But I can’t give myself to you.”

  “You give yourself to me every time we’re together.”

  He touched her lips with his fingers.

  “No, it’s not that,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s that I can no longer give myself to her.”

  He looked close to tears. He looked like someone else, like someone she’d never seen before.

  “You’re so fucking young,” he said.

  “Why does that matter?” she asked.

  “My wife. Now, every time I look at her, I see-”

  “No, don’t. I don’t want to blame myself for that.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Don’t compare us. That’s not fair.”

  “I can’t leave you behind. You’re with me all the time.”

  He pulled her to him and they held each other.

  “How long does it take for hair to grow?” Nico asks. He looks like a frightened boy.

  “Oh, don’t be foolish. This is great. This is just what I wanted if only I had known what I wanted. I needed a lesbian to unleash me.”

  “Turn around,” he says.

  He spins Josie around, in the middle of the sidewalk, and a few people stop to stare. They all smile, as if they too are pleased with the tousled hair, the shy smile, the adoring young man.

  “Bon,” Nico says decisively. “I still love you.”

  “Don’t talk about love,” Josie
says. “You’re not in love with me.”

  Nico leans over and kisses Josie on the mouth. She steps back, her mouth open in a small O of surprise. Nico smiles and turns away from her.

  “Follow me,” he says.

  She stays where she is. People pass her on the street. She watches Nico walk jauntily ahead. She remembers the last time she saw Simon. “Wait for me,” he had said. He had kissed her, standing on her porch, more daring in the light of day than he’d ever been. She had watched him walk away, down the long, sun-drenched street toward his car. His body disappeared into the harsh glare of sunlight until her eyes burned with the strain of keeping him in sight. He was gone. Still she stood there, feeling his mouth on hers. Wait for me.

  “Are you coming?” Nico calls from the corner.

  She shakes her head. She watches him walk back toward her.

  “Don’t be mad,” he says sweetly. “I had to do it.”

  “He’s gone,” Josie says.

  “Your lover?”

  “I can’t show him my new haircut.”

  Nico waits quietly for the rest.

  “I can’t say goodbye.”

  Nico puts his hand on her arm. “You are saying goodbye.”

  Josie shakes her head and her hair tousles, then settles again. “You know what he taught me? He taught me to feel more. He taught me to give myself over to feelings. And now that’s all I have. I’m swamped by them. I can’t breathe because I feel so damn much.”

  Nico takes her arm and leads her down the street. They walk for a long time. Finally they come to the end of a small street and ahead of them is an open stretch of lawn.

  “I know where we are,” Josie says.

  She looks down the stretch of grass and there sits the Eiffel Tower. It’s grand, majestic. It doesn’t matter how many times Josie has seen it, each time it takes her breath away.

  “Let’s go,” Nico says, and Josie knows exactly what he has in mind.

  Brady knocked on Josie’s office door even though it was open.

  “Hey, you,” Josie said.

  She stretched out a hand, offering him a seat across from her. She was reading a contemporary French novel that she had thought she might teach next semester. She wanted something new, something the kids would relate to. She already knew that the story was too adult for her kids, too racy and full of sex scenes that they would undoubtedly love, and that would get her into a ton of trouble, but she kept reading.