French Lessons by Ellen Sussman

don’t understand her.”
    “But you love her.”
    “Oh, I don’t know if I love her. She’s beautiful in a very serious way. Not like you.”
    “I’m beautiful in a silly way.”
    “Not at all. Even now, you have something so alive in you.”
    “Even now.”
    “You will come through this.”
    “You’re very kind. And you’re off the subject. Chantal.”
    “Yes,” Nico says. “Chantal was angry. She doesn’t show her emotions very easily. But I watch her face and I see how it changes.”
    “I like you, Nico.”
    He stops walking and looks at Josie.
    “No kissing,” she says. “Keep walking and keep talking.”
    “Chantal doesn’t like dogs. The girl’s little dog climbed up on Philippe’s lap and sat there looking very smug.”
    “And the girl?”
    “She was loud. She told a bawdy story about getting a lap dance from a stripper in a club the night before. Philippe asked her if she likes girls, and she said she likes girls and boys and foreigners. She especially likes foreigners.”
    “Charming.”
    “Chantal asked me to walk her home. Philippe was supposed to say no, that he would take her. Philippe was too busy having his fingers licked by the awful dog.”
    “You walked her home.”
    “I walked her right into bed. It was revenge sex. But when we were done Chantal asked me not to tell Philippe.”
    “So why did she sleep with you?”
    “To prove that she didn’t care about the girl and her dog.”
    “Does she know that you love her?”
    “No—yes. I don’t know what I feel. How could she know what I feel?”
    “Sometimes women are better at this than men.”
    “True,” Nico says. “If I meet her for a drink tonight she’ll tell me if I love her. But if I go with you to Provence, I’ll never know.”
    “You deserve love,” Josie tells him.
    Nico looks at her and she sees that his face is open with hope.
    “Look,” Josie says, pointing ahead. “The film shoot that the hairstylist told us about.”
    They can see a mass of people ahead, spread across both sides of the river. On the Pont des Arts, an iron pedestrian bridge that crosses the Seine from the Institut Français on the Left Bank to the Louvre on the Right Bank, there are cameras and lights and a couple of tents set up at the far side.
    “Let’s go watch,” Josie tells him, her voice excited.
    “Why is everyone so starstruck?” Nico asks, holding back.
    Josie takes his hand and pulls him forward. “Oh, come on. We need our movie stars. We need the big screen.”
    “Why? Why is that any more important than this? Because it has bright lights and cameras?”
    “Because it’s bigger than we are. We disappear. This day? Tomorrow it’s gone. But that—that might be a day on the Seine that happens over and over for a hundred years.”
    After the funeral—with the two matching caskets—after Josie left the hundreds of students and parents and friends and relatives and drove herself home, she lowered the shades in her cottage and crawled into bed. She took a sleeping pill and sometime in the middle of a dreamless sleep, the phone rang.
    Before she thought better, she reached over to her bedside table and answered it.
    “You okay?” It was Whitney again. After months of silence, Whitney was back. The married boyfriend was gone.
    “I can’t talk, Whitney. I’m sleeping.”
    “Don’t talk. Listen.”
    “I don’t want to listen.”
    “This is for the better—”
    “Fuck off, Whitney.”
    “I don’t mean his death. That’s tragic. And his son. I can’t believe it.”
    Josie hung up the phone. Her mouth was dry and there was no water left in the glass by her bed. She pushed herself up and out of bed. She was sweaty from sleeping under too many covers. She threw off her clothes and when she glanced in the mirror she saw her body, the body that Simon made love to over and over again. She turned away, found fresh pajamas, and covered herself in them.
    She shuffled to the kitchen and poured a glass of water.
    The