nonetheless I do not breakfast eagerly, so for me this poses no great problem”, and wondering how you slip
that
information into casual banter) to eschew all contact with fellow US graduates and meet only Czech people – but, you know …
Nick explained to her earlier today: Jean-Luc’s bell doesn’t work, and so you have to call from this phone cabin on the end of V.P. Čkalova – a cabin that, like most in Prague, doesn’t work either, i.e. it takes your money and then cuts you off as soon as you connect. But don’t worry, Nick told her, because Jean-Luc is intimately acquainted with the disconnecting sound that this particular cabin makes as opposed to the disconnecting sounds of other malfunctioning telephones, so will know there’s someone just around the corner trying to get in: she should just trot over to the front door as soon as she’s made the call. Like, right. She’s done this three fucking times already, and the fucking door has remained firmly fucking closed. And so she’s standing out here in the cold cursing this Nick and this Jean-Luc and that Alexander Graham Bell and V.P. Čkalova too, whoever the fuck he was …
Now a young guy’s appearing from around the corner carrying a crate of beer towards the door. So Heidi perks up and addresses him in Czech, and he responds by asking her if she’s trying to get up to Jean-Luc’s – a question she understands, and replies yes to. He says he has a key and opens up the door, then jams open the lock with a match stick so no one else will have to go through what she just has,he explains – which she also sort of understands, though more from the context than the language. But all the same, she’s getting quite excited, hardly ever having spoken Czech this much before and wondering if she might even be able to get the breakfast line in somehow when this guy switches to English and asks her, in an American accent which is totally native, how she knows Jean-Luc. Fucking typical.
It turns out this guy is Roger, whom she’s heard about from Nick and his real Yugoslavian friend Mladen. He tells her he’s heard about her too, from ditto sources. As they turn the banister into the third flight he tells her he knows her father makes the glue that weapons manufacturers use to stick guidance cameras onto the main body of long-range missiles, which
really
doesn’t make her happy, and in fact she wishes she’d never let that slip to Nick in the first place, and wonders why he’s so damn fascinated by it. Roger’s a West Coaster and, she being from Vermont, Heidi assumes that the old US intercoastal enmity will make itself felt before they reach the top flight – but he turns out to be quite gracious, complimenting her on her Czech which is no great humble-pie fest on his part since his is ten times better but still – and he gives her to understand without actually
saying
as much that don’t worry, he’s not getting on her case politically or anything about the smart-bomb glue, his father worked at Lockheed for ten years. By the fifth banister bend he’s asked her if she’ll let him film her talking about whatever she wants, because he’s collecting short episodes of people talking about themselves, wants to create a picture of what’s generally going down here – and at this point he uses words like “barometer” and “epoch” and “Zeitgeisty”, which she finds a little grandiose but lets slide. He says she wouldn’t even have to mention the glue on camera, although it would be nice if she did but, really, anything will do, he finds her “visually fascinating” – which he says in a way that implies she’s pretty-photogenic rather than, like,Elephant-Man-photogenic. And so by the time they swing into the final stretch and Roger kicks open Jean-Luc’s door she’s on an up.
Jean-Luc’s atelier turns out to be big. The front door leads into a kind of antechamber which itself is larger than her whole apartment. There’s a storage
that
information into casual banter) to eschew all contact with fellow US graduates and meet only Czech people – but, you know …
Nick explained to her earlier today: Jean-Luc’s bell doesn’t work, and so you have to call from this phone cabin on the end of V.P. Čkalova – a cabin that, like most in Prague, doesn’t work either, i.e. it takes your money and then cuts you off as soon as you connect. But don’t worry, Nick told her, because Jean-Luc is intimately acquainted with the disconnecting sound that this particular cabin makes as opposed to the disconnecting sounds of other malfunctioning telephones, so will know there’s someone just around the corner trying to get in: she should just trot over to the front door as soon as she’s made the call. Like, right. She’s done this three fucking times already, and the fucking door has remained firmly fucking closed. And so she’s standing out here in the cold cursing this Nick and this Jean-Luc and that Alexander Graham Bell and V.P. Čkalova too, whoever the fuck he was …
Now a young guy’s appearing from around the corner carrying a crate of beer towards the door. So Heidi perks up and addresses him in Czech, and he responds by asking her if she’s trying to get up to Jean-Luc’s – a question she understands, and replies yes to. He says he has a key and opens up the door, then jams open the lock with a match stick so no one else will have to go through what she just has,he explains – which she also sort of understands, though more from the context than the language. But all the same, she’s getting quite excited, hardly ever having spoken Czech this much before and wondering if she might even be able to get the breakfast line in somehow when this guy switches to English and asks her, in an American accent which is totally native, how she knows Jean-Luc. Fucking typical.
It turns out this guy is Roger, whom she’s heard about from Nick and his real Yugoslavian friend Mladen. He tells her he’s heard about her too, from ditto sources. As they turn the banister into the third flight he tells her he knows her father makes the glue that weapons manufacturers use to stick guidance cameras onto the main body of long-range missiles, which
really
doesn’t make her happy, and in fact she wishes she’d never let that slip to Nick in the first place, and wonders why he’s so damn fascinated by it. Roger’s a West Coaster and, she being from Vermont, Heidi assumes that the old US intercoastal enmity will make itself felt before they reach the top flight – but he turns out to be quite gracious, complimenting her on her Czech which is no great humble-pie fest on his part since his is ten times better but still – and he gives her to understand without actually
saying
as much that don’t worry, he’s not getting on her case politically or anything about the smart-bomb glue, his father worked at Lockheed for ten years. By the fifth banister bend he’s asked her if she’ll let him film her talking about whatever she wants, because he’s collecting short episodes of people talking about themselves, wants to create a picture of what’s generally going down here – and at this point he uses words like “barometer” and “epoch” and “Zeitgeisty”, which she finds a little grandiose but lets slide. He says she wouldn’t even have to mention the glue on camera, although it would be nice if she did but, really, anything will do, he finds her “visually fascinating” – which he says in a way that implies she’s pretty-photogenic rather than, like,Elephant-Man-photogenic. And so by the time they swing into the final stretch and Roger kicks open Jean-Luc’s door she’s on an up.
Jean-Luc’s atelier turns out to be big. The front door leads into a kind of antechamber which itself is larger than her whole apartment. There’s a storage
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