Foreign Tongue (24 page)

The late-afternoon sun streamed in through paned windows, and we sprawled on the sofa with tea and biscuits. Lucy listened and supplied tissues while I gave her a nutshell version of the Timothy story, then a more detailed account of the Olivier story.

“One right after the other,” she said. “Gosh, that’s rough!”

“Yeah,” I said, but I sensed an opinion lurked beneath the sympathetic words. “Now tell me what you really think,” I said, steeling myself. “I mean it.”

“Let me ask you something,” she began. “Did you ever talk about seeing each other exclusively?”

“Well, no. I just sort of assumed,” I said. “Between the time we spent together and his play, it didn’t occur to me—I mean, where would he
find the time? Of course, that was dumb,” I said, thinking of the evenings he’d spent at the theater.

“And you’d been seeing each other for, what, a few weeks?” she asked. I nodded. “Which is a relatively short period of time.”

“True. But I thought we both felt the same way,” I said.

Lucy gave me a kind look, like I’d made a very human mistake. “Well, it
is
abominable behavior on his part…”

“But?” I prodded, though I knew I wouldn’t like what she’d say. Already I felt like a recalcitrant cow being dragged down a steep slope. I wanted to dig my heels in and snort, or at least moo in protest. If I wasn’t the wronged party, I didn’t know where—or even how—I was supposed to stand.

“What is it?” She looked at me over her cup. “You look so nervous! Like I’m the angel of doom.”

“You think I overreacted. That the situation was relatively banal,” I accused.

“I don’t think you overreacted,” she clarified. “But perhaps things aren’t as irretrievably dire as you think. Look, you have a nice connection with him. He’s in a tricky situation that predates you, and it’s hard for him to extricate himself right now, but maybe it’s worth hanging around to see if things get straightened out.”

“But he’s sleeping with her!” I blurted out.

“That’s problematic.” She bit into a biscuit.

“And he’s not breaking up with her!” I added.

“I got that.” This, with her mouth full.

“And—and—he lied! He hurt me! I feel bad! Humiliated, stupid, wronged! Betrayed!” These were very good reasons, damn it.

“Got that, too,” she said, nodding her head. “If you want me to tell you he’s a shit, I will. But there may be another way of looking at it,” she said.

I folded my arms and burrowed deeper into the sofa. Lucy poured another cup of tea. I noticed the fine lines around her eyes, the worried
furrow above her arched brows. I’d known her for over ten years. We’d met after college.

I looked down at my hands. I had a thin, maroon-brown scab on one knuckle. There was a pale, silvery scar the shape of an eyelash on the back of one hand where I’d scratched myself ten years ago, ripping the thin skin. The magazines said the back of your hand was as fragile as an eyelid: easily scarred and just as fine. I’d altered two of my fingerprints over the years: one from careless chopping with an expensive chef’s knife, the other from overambitious use of a pair of jewelry pliers. The scar tissue underneath the pad of each finger would never go away. I had scarred hands, scarred fingers, a scarred heart, but I wasn’t tossing them out the window.

“You think I shouldn’t necessarily throw this away,” I said in a low voice.

“It’s a risk, but—yes,” she said, her blue eyes clear and direct.

I looked out the window at the treetops, the pub chimney across the street, the second floor of a double-decker bus as it drove past. Down below, one of Lucy’s neighbors watered his plants. The sunlight caught the water, shooting a spray of rainbow drops, and something like hope leaped in my chest and fell.

“No. It’s been a lie from the start,” I said. “You could be right, but I can’t do this. I can’t do this
again
.”

She nodded as I spoke, and I wanted her to argue with me, to convince me I was wrong, because I wasn’t sure I believed myself. But she didn’t.

L
ucy and I caught a taxi and rode into somewhere she described vaguely as “North Londonish.” I was lost. None of the letters and numbers that designated London’s regions and subdivisions made any sense.

“At least with arrondissements, you not only know where someone lives but what their zip code is,” I said. “You know where to send mail, a thank-you card.”

“The French are famous for food and logic, the British for gardens and eccentrics,” she said and asked the driver to pull over so she could dash out to an ATM.

“Off we go then, love,” said the cabdriver when she came back.

“It just happened again!” I hissed. She looked bewildered. “He called you ‘love’! And went
willingly
to a cash machine!” I shook my head in awe. “I’m moving here.”

We pulled up to a striped awning. A doorman dressed in a Nehru coat and turban opened a carved wood door. A square brass plaque read
BHANGRA
.

“Open says me,” Lucy trilled and swanned in. She wore a slinky white dress, and I followed her, wearing a silk jacket and jeans, clutching her ancient green pashmina around me like a bath towel. A willowy blonde with a jeweled bindi between her eyes led us around a reflecting pool strewn with rose petals. A reclining gold Buddha lay at the other end. We went down candlelit stairs into a cavernous dining room.

Our “table” was a white bed covered with multicolored sari silk pillows. Underneath a tented ceiling hung with hammered brass lanterns was a sea of beds. Everyone ate and reclined at the same time.

“Someone,” I said darkly, “has been peeking into my fantasies.”

Lucy hopped onto the bed and ordered champagne. “You see why I wanted to bring Angus,” she said.

“His loss is my Ganesha,” I muttered, glancing at a stone statue of the elephant god. Bollywood remixes played on the sound system, and the smell of spices wafted through the air. “This place is trippy.”

“Bhangra-la,” Lucy said, kicking off her heels. A waiter in a pink kurta poured champagne into two jewel-encrusted flutes. “By the way, we don’t order, they bring us food until we say stop. And I booked you a fortune-teller and me mehndi painting.”

We clinked glasses, and I took a big gulp of icy champagne. Over crunchy pakoras, Lucy filled me in on her romance with “the handsome Scot,” as she called him. A mehndi painter, a woman in a peacock blue sari, came over and applied a brown crust of intricate curlicue patterns around Lucy’s ankle. Then she sprinkled lemon juice over it and propped Lucy’s foot up on a terry-cloth stool to let it dry.

“Everyone drinks too much in England,” I remarked over my third glass of champagne. Perfumed courses arrived on hammered brass plates: baby dosas, small cornucopias stuffed with cardamom and fen
nel spiced potatoes; samosas; coconut and tamarind rice; spinach with cheese; and fried puffy bread that looked like a flying saucer and came with a chickpea curry. Over pistachio ice cream, a rotund, middle-aged gentleman in a white suit and turban introduced himself as Sanjay, the fortune-teller.

“I hope you ate well?” he asked. He had almond-shaped eyes and a mustache.

“Very well, thank you,” I said.

“Wretched excess,” Lucy said. “You’re reading
her
fortune,” she added, pointing at me. “But you probably knew that.” She laughed. He gave a polite smile. “You probably knew I would say
that,
too,” she said, giggling. “Terrible thing about fortune-tellers,” she whispered loudly. “You can’t have a conversation with them—they always know what you’re going to say.” She nodded her head up and down knowingly. I swatted her arm.

He studied me for a long moment. “Please try to bring your mind into the room. Focus on being present but blank,” he said and held his hand out for my palm.

I’m not good at making my mind blank. The only surefire way I know is to sleep. I have a contradictory streak, and being told to make my mind blank elicits a mulish laundry list of random thoughts. My mind raced through everything from Olivier to the fennel seed stuck in my molar to wondering if Lucy had any aspirin for my impending hangover. Sanjay studied my hand, then spoke.

“This is a symmetrical story. You have come from far away, and before that, from even farther. You have had two years of bad luck, which has been concentrated around an unsuccessful love life. There are two men. I will tell you who they are.”

“Uh-oh,” I joked, casting a glance at Lucy. She stared at Sanjay, glassy-eyed.

“Neither of them is right for you, though you have not closed the
door on either one. I see they are both artists, and they have much in common.

“The first one is a charmer, a trickster, a magician. He dazzles you with sleight of hand, then disappears before the smoke has cleared. Your mistake is confusing a skilled display of artistry for substance—you have a tendency to do this, and it is something you must be wary of. You cannot hold on to him, not because he doesn’t want to be held but because there isn’t anything there for you to hold on to. He
is
the smoke.”

He looked at my palm again. He spoke the way you would imagine a true seer would, if you believed in such a thing: not picking his words, merely a conduit for them.

“The other one holds on to a very old thread. The more he has held on, the more it has spun around him, until now, this thread he thought he could snip with ease has become a cocoon, though he may not know it or want to be free. You could help him. It would require effort and patience on your part, and in the end, the challenge may end up meaning more than the prize. A gamble.”

His hands fluttered in the air.

“But all this is secondary. You must focus on your limitations, not another’s. This is one source of your distress: locating their solutions in another. Why do you choose these men? What do you learn from these situations? You must look inward, past your deepest fears. Beyond them is the treasure of pure self, no less complicated but true. That is where you must start. It is where we all start. Begin there, and you will begin again. Do not rail against fate. Some things are meant to be.”

He stood up. “Otherwise, health good. Less indulgence, perhaps. You must do something for your neck, and it would behoove you to practice meditation. It is very noisy in here,” he said, tapping the center of his forehead. He bowed and left. Lucy and I gave each other spooked stares. My skin was taut with goose bumps.

“He’s good,” I said, rubbing the right side of my neck, where it was always stiff. Across the dimly lit restaurant, I saw a tall man with dark hair. His back was turned to me, but my pulse sped up. He turned around: it wasn’t Olivier. It was someone else, and when he saw me, he glanced away. I had to talk to him, I had to tell him I wanted to see him. I had to tell him
right now
.

“Lucy, I need to borrow your phone,” I said. She pulled her BlackBerry out of her evening bag. Clutching it in one hand, I wove through the restaurant, somehow managing not to trip over any of the low tables or woven rugs, and found a garden in the back. It was tented in red silk, and candles in ruby glass holders hung from the branches of a potted tree. It was like being inside a heart.

I misdialed the first time I tried. It took me a second to remember how to call France from the U.K. I tried again and it rang. I looked at my watch. It was only a little past eleven my time, past midnight for him.

“Allô,”
he said, his voice congested and groggy.

“Olivier, c’est moi. Ecoute, je t’appele de Londres. J’ai envie de te voir, de te parler—”
The words tumbled out, clattering like dice. I want to see you, to talk to you.

“Mais—”

“Non, laisse moi continuer.”
Let me finish, I insisted, pressing the device to my ear. “I’ll be back Monday afternoon. Can I see you Monday night?” I hoped I wasn’t slurring my speech, but I couldn’t tell.

“Je suis désolé, madame. Vous avez fait faux numéro.”
He hung up.

I stared at the screen. A wrong number? But it sounded like Olivier. I’d thought it was Olivier. I thought about redialing, but it was too late. Metal pans crashed inside the kitchen, followed by mad shouting in a foreign language. The moment was gone.

Lucy and I puttered around on Sunday, going to museums and an arty Japanese movie. On Monday afternoon, I took a half-empty train back to Paris. I tried to nap, but even with two empty seats, I couldn’t get comfortable.

At home, a red “6” flashed on the machine. Three messages from Laveau, one from my mother, and one from Pascal, telling me I’d missed a spectacular party.

I stared at the wall, at a nineteenth-century etching of a dying horse. The last message was Tante Isabelle, sending her love and asking me to be home for the installation of the new washing machine she’d ordered.

In the desk drawer, I found a pack of Olivier’s cigarettes. I wedged myself onto a corner of the balcony and smoked. Across the street, the line at the
boulangerie
stretched six deep onto the sidewalk.

I thought about the first time I’d met Timothy. I’d gone to a New Year’s Eve party in Santa Barbara with a friend who didn’t want to drive up alone. I’d been sitting on the deck when he came over to me. We ended up talking about books and film, but I’d assumed he was merely being friendly, despite how much fun I was having, as he’d brought a date.

Later, after midnight, when the party was in full swing, I slipped out and went for a walk on the beach. I walked and wished for Timothy, or someone like him. It was late, early morning on the first of the year, and I let myself wish.

And then he was there. I’d conjured him up out of thin air. I don’t mean a ghost. I mean, one moment he was in the house, the next he was there, on the sand, not ten feet away, pants rolled up to midcalf, his head cocked to the wind.

I froze. I’d wished for him, and there he was. But instead of going toward him, I turned and walked away.

When I got back to the house, he’d left. We didn’t see each other again until a chance meeting over a year later.

There’s a corollary to never looking a gift horse in the mouth. Never walk away from a granted wish. Even if the granting of it stuns you. Even if it reveals something to you about your own wishes that you’d prefer not to know. Not to have known.

I’ve always been good at not getting what I want. Even when I get what I want.