French Lessons by Ellen Sussman Page A

window was filled with late-evening light and her father’s blue irises. She had forgotten to move them and lower the shade. She dropped into the seat and gazed at the flowers. Then behind them, through the window, she saw a deer. It looked at her and tilted its head to one side. Then it turned away, and in one graceful leap, it crossed the creek and disappeared into the woods.
    I want to leave, Josie thought. I want to flee.
    She walked to the phone and picked it up. She called her boss, the head of the school, at her home.
    “Did you go to the funeral?” Stella asked. “There were so many people there. I didn’t see you.”
    “I was there,” Josie said.
    “That poor woman,” Stella muttered.
    “Listen,” Josie said. “This might be bad timing. But I wanted to tell you that I won’t be back next year.”
    “Let’s talk about this on Monday, Josie.”
    “I have to do it now. I’ll finish up classes. But that’s it.”
    “What are you planning to do?”
    “I don’t know,” Josie said.
    “You’ve been very distracted. Is something going on?”
    Josie mumbled her goodbye and hung up.
    She walked back into her bedroom. She was thankful for the darkness again. The room smelled rank. For a moment she remembered Simon’s smell and she felt an ache in her chest. She covered her face with her hand and breathed in her own sour smell instead.
    She walked to her dresser and picked up an envelope. She saw the drawing of the Eiffel Tower. At the top of the tower she saw two tiny figures. One had long hair; the other was very tall, with two green dots for eyes. She touched his mouth with her finger.
    She opened the envelope. In two and a half weeks she would go to Paris. She didn’t know what would happen after that. But for now, she had Paris to get her through her days.
    Josie and Nico finally find a spot from which to watch the film shoot. Nico has led her to the top deck of a floating restaurant on the edge of the quai. It’s a long boat, with beautiful teak floors and deck chairs and white umbrellas. There’s a bar at the far end of the boat, crowded with people, all with drinks in hand. Josie and Nico squeeze past the crowd and lean against the railing with an unobstructed view of the bridge.
    Next to them, a waiter has opened a bottle of champagne as if this were a premiere or a national event of great importance. He pours champagne, and the group—young office workers, perhaps, all escaping work to watch the filming—clink glasses.
    “I’m not convinced that this is art that will last for a hundred years,” Nico says.
    A bed sits in the middle of the Pont des Arts. It’s just a bed—a frame and mattress, thrown onto the wooden deck of the pedestrian bridge. A naked woman sprawls across the bed, on a rose-colored sheet. She’s young and beautiful, and the enormous crowd on both sides of the river seems caught in a kind of reverential silence.
    “Stop being a grump,” Josie whispers. They are pressed together against the rail of the boat. “Isn’t that Pascale Duclaux?” She points to a woman with a wild mess of red hair, perched in a chair at the edge of the set. “She’s a very serious director. This may very well be great art.”
    “A bed on a bridge? A naked nymph?”
    “And a man,” Josie says. “Check out the old man.”
    A gray-haired man, also naked, circles the bed, his eye on the lovely girl. Dana Hurley, the American actress, stands at the edge of the bridge, her back against the rail, watching them. Unlike the other two, she’s fully dressed. The man doesn’t seem to notice her.
    Then the man stops for a moment, his penis wagging between his legs, and he looks up, as if searching for something. He seems to catch Josie’s eye and he holds it, a half smile on his face.
    He’s no older than Simon, Josie thinks. So why does it bother me so much that he’s stalking this girl?
    She looks away, breaking his stare. When she looks back, he resumes his awful walk, around the bed, as