THIRTY

Kezia

The worst,” confessed Grey, “is that I actually think I’m becoming stupid. I get exhausted when I think. Because when I have occasion to speak, I speak in English, but I intrinsically use—”

“Instinctually,” said Nathaniel.

“—I intrastinctually use the same words in English that I understand in French. I think, what would I understand if I were me? Hello. How are you? I am going to the bank. Do you know where the toilet is? Your child is cute.”

“Is there anything left in that?” Kezia pointed at a bottle of wine, its dark glass withholding this valuable information.

They ate their meal on a white lace tablecloth. Grey lit candles in various stages of use. With the exception of the Bang & Olufsen speakers on the fireplace ledge, it felt like dining in a prewar Paris apartment.

Nathaniel lifted the bottle and it went zooming up into the air.

“Nope. Hey, Paul?”

“You’re not getting stupid, sweetie. You just refuse to conjugate.”

“I would like a pen. I do not have need of an umbrella. How much for this?”

Nathaniel rubbed his eyes with his thumb and his forefinger. “Paul, is there more wine?”

“Grey,” Paul said, resting his hand on the side of her head, “what you think of as an atrophying of your vocabulary is just your brain making room for French. Trust me, it gets better.”

Satisfied with his diagnosis, he took back his hand and picked the last of the remoulade off her plate, rotating his jaw happily.

Kezia wouldn’t trust him on this if she were Grey. They had arrived in Paris on the same second of the same hour of the same day. Paul had no authority when it came to things “getting better.” His wife, meanwhile, was living out her own version of Lost in Translation, wandering around Shakespeare & Company, simultaneously hoping that customers assumed she was French while luxuriating in the sound of overheard English. On her darker days, she confided in Kezia, Grey was dousing herself in imported hand sanitizer and sneaking off to the Burger King at Saint-Lazare.

“The spoon is not here.” Grey tossed her spoon to the other end of the table. “Because the spoon is over there. I have syphilis.”

“You know how to say ‘syphilis’ in French?” Paul beamed.

“I don’t think that’s what she’s trying to tell you,” Nathaniel burped into his fist.

“They call it the French disease, mon amour.” Grey broke her own spell. “I’m taking an educated guess.”

“See? I told you you weren’t getting stupid.”

Nathaniel creaked his chair at an angle until he could whisper in Kezia’s ear.

“You know that scene in Better Off Dead with the Fraunch fries and the Fraunch dressing?”

“Shh.” She put her finger to her mouth.

“It’s the international language of love, Ricky.”

“They must have more booze in the kitchen.”

“Damn, girl. Since when do you drink drink?”

“Since I found out I’d have to share a bed with you.”

“I told you I’d sleep on the couch. I could fall asleep standing up right now.”

Kezia gave him a look. The couch was not a couch, but a hard chaise covered in Louis XVI silk and intentionally hostile triangular pillows. Paul had purchased it at his favorite stall at Clignancourt along with some tintype photos of random dead Parisians.

“Like a horse,” Nathaniel said. “Ne-e-e-e-eigh. Or we can sleep head-to-toe if you want. I know you’d rather stick yourself in the eye with a hot poker than be in the same bed as my hot poker.”

“Why are you here, again?”

“I needed a vacation.”

“Weren’t you just in Miami five seconds ago?”

“Did that feel like a vacation to you?”

“Point taken.”

“And maybe you’re not the only one with a stressful job. L.A. has pressures you can’t even imagine. I’m pulled in a thousand directions at once. I needed a break.”

“I’m amazed you were able to get away.”

“You don’t believe me? That’s okay. I don’t need you to believe me.”

“Don’t you, though?” She raised her glass to her lips, momentarily forgetting there was nothing in it.

“Maybe I just like spending time with you in cities where neither of us live.”

This was the closest he had come to mentioning her disastrous last trip to L.A. when he had spoiled her long-held impression of him, and she, in turn, had let him drive home drunk. Were there apologies to be exchanged? Not right now, apparently.

“You’re pretty cranky for someone who got laid last weekend.”

“Why, whatever do you mean?”

“Don’t play coy with me, young lady. Felix’s friend, Judson.”

Nathaniel knew his name. He must have torn himself away from his phone and his screenplays just long enough to watch Judson hit on Kezia, to ask: Who is that guy?

“Huh. Doesn’t ring a bell.”

“Then you should get your bell fixed, baby.”

“Judson already fixed it.”

“Ah-HA!” Nathaniel leaned his chair back too much and had to grip the table to keep from falling.

She burst out laughing but Paul and Grey noticed nothing.

“. . . and let me tell you about my office.” Paul’s voice was rising, assuming Kezia and Nathaniel still wanted in on this. “Everyone gets to work around ten but because everyone knows that’s the base time, it’s more like ten twenty. Then they socialize and drink coffee for about two hours. And then, well, it’s about lunchtime and you have to take a two-hour lunch. If you don’t, people assume that you’re not getting the most out of life, the most out of whatever deal you’re working on, or the most out of who you’re fucking.”

“I always knew I was meant to live here.” Nathaniel shut his eyes and inhaled.

That’s why there was no wine left. Because Paul was drinking for two and now the fissures in his one-man tourism board were beginning to show.

“Magically,” he continued, “the French do get work done. They’re not lazy. They’re not the Spanish.”

“Jesus, Paul.” Grey crammed her finger into a mushy drip of hot wax.

Kezia and Nathaniel began taking turns yawning. They started to clear plates and escort them into the kitchen.

“You don’t have to do that,” Grey muttered, not moving.

Nathaniel put his hand on her shoulder. “Grey, we’re going to go to bed.”

“Oh.” She perked up. “There’s towels in your nightstand. And extra blankets on top of the closet.”

Paul waved. “Good night, kids.”

Paul meant nothing by it, Kezia knew that, but only last week she and Victor had been horrified on Paul and Grey’s behalf, imagining the two of them stuck in the backseat of a car behind Caroline and Felix, demoted to children. But now she and Nathaniel were the odd men out, the ones living out of suitcases while their married and pregnant friends slept soundly and smugly in the other room. Now they were the ones astray, the ones who would make a moat of pillows between their bodies. Though Nathaniel was more jet-lagged than she, so it must have been he who kicked all the pillows to the floor at three in the morning, falling back asleep with his calf flopped over hers.