Sex as a Second Language

by Alisa Kwitney

  “Thanks for the advice,” said Kat, thinking, If you hadn’t turned my facial into an interrogation, I wouldn’t have said anything about my father. “Can I open my eyes? How do they look?”

  “Much better. Of course, your face is a little inflamed now, because of all the pores I cleaned, but by tomorrow you will see a huge improvement.”

  That didn’t sound too good. Kat stood up and walked over to the wall mirror. What she saw made her wish she still had her eyes plastered shut. “Galina! What’s wrong with my face?” There were red blotches all over her cheeks and forehead, her nose was peeling, and the black dye had stained the skin around her eyes.

  “Don’t worry, it’s nothing. As I said, a little puffiness.”

  “Are you kidding? It looks like I have leprosy! And this dye—does it come off?”

  “Of course, of course. I tell you, I am a professional.”

  “Oh, God, I have to shoot an infomercial in three days.” Kat kept herself from bursting into tears in front of her student, but she couldn’t manage more than a polite nod despite Galina’s continued reassurances that her skin would look wonderful by tomorrow. Or the day after.

  Walking to the subway, Kat was half-convinced that people around her were looking at her strangely. God, she really wanted to be home already.

  As she made her way along the crowd that lined the platform, Kat stepped over the painted yellow safety line and craned her neck to see if a train was coming. A squat, dark-haired woman with an infant jockeyed for position with a man in pale green surgical scrubs. Three young women stood in a phalanx by a pillar, obscuring the name of the stop.

  Peering down the dark track, Kat saw that the signal light had turned green. An instant later, she heard the familiar rattling of the train’s approach and felt somewhat reassured. She had a good half hour to make it home before Dashiell’s school bus arrived in front of her building, and as long as she got on this train, she would make it in plenty of time.

  Standing at the edge of the platform so as to be first on the train when it pulled in, Kat removed her compact from her purse and checked her eyes in the mirror. The lashes looked good, but the dye around her eyelids gave her a slightly dissolute look. Licking her finger and trying to get rid of some of the dye, she didn’t look up as the train began to clatter down the track. If my face doesn’t clear up, I’m going to lose this Rejuvenatrix job, she thought, and felt ridiculously close to crying again.

  The only bright side Kat could see was that things were about as bad as they could possibly get. Surely she was overdue for some good luck, right? And then a flash went off. For a moment, Kat thought someone had thrown a small explosive, and she cringed instinctively, but then, right before the second flash, she heard someone say, “Katherine! How do you feel about your husband’s new co-star?”

  It was an attack, all right, but not the kind that worried the police. Kat was being stalked by paparazzi.

  chapter twenty

  b y Saturday evening, Kat was fed up. It was bad enough being a has-been soap star, but turning into front-page tabloid fodder really was adding insult to injury. Hard to believe that just a few days earlier she’d thought her father was paranoid to think she was being followed. Now, she was the one who was paranoid, jumping out of her skin each time the phone rang, wearing a baseball cap and sunglasses when she left the building. Over the past twenty-four hours, Kat had received ten different emails and at least six phone calls from various tabloids, and she wasn’t even the reporters’ real object. She was simply a sidebar.

  It seemed that Logan’s high-profile return to South of Heaven, coupled with advance buzz for his new movie, had suddenly made him a prime target for the media. It felt to Kat as though it had happened overnight, but she knew that Logan’s career had reached critical mass gradually. Fame, Kat had been told by an old Hollywood movie actor turned soap villain, was like a population of cockroaches. It built steadily behind the scenes for a long time before spilling over.

  Given the choice, Kat would have preferred dealing with cockroaches. She’d explained to her doorman three different times not to simply buzz people up before checking with her, but a reporter from the Informer had shown up at her front door just as she and Dash were sitting down to dinner. Kat had told the reporter that if she did want to give her side of the story, she would call the rival paper. At that point, Kat realized that someone must have paid Pedro off, and she had threatened him with dismissal if he let anyone into the elevator without calling her on the house phone first.

  In retaliation, Pedro called Kat each and every time Magnus came into the lobby, which he had done five times yesterday as he moved into the maid’s room.

  The house phone rang, and Kat flinched. “Yes, Pedro, who is it?”

  “Lady says she is your friend.”

  “Put her on.”

  “Kat? What the hell is going on here?”

  “Sorry, Zandra. Let her up, Pedro, and if a woman named Marcy comes, she’s a friend, too.”

  “So I let her up?” Pedro sounded suspicious.

  “Yes, Pedro, you don’t have to call me when she comes. And you don’t have to call me each time Magnus comes in, either.”

  “Magnus?”

  “The tall man with the blond hair.”

  “But you said call you each time. You said you would fire me if I not call you each time,” said Pedro, each word dripping with malicious pleasure. “So each time, I will call you.”

  Zandra knocked on her door two minutes later. She’d brought a bottle of wine and her nine-year-old son, Nico. “What was that all about? Did you do something to piss your doorman off?”

  “You could say that,” said Kat, kissing her friend on her cheek. “You look amazing,” she said. Zandra’s curly hair had recently been hennaed a fierce shade of auburn, and she was wearing a new, ruffled Betsey Johnson dress that made her look like an MGM version of a Wild West Harlot.

  “You look great, too,” said Zandra automatically.

  “Take a closer look.” Kat leaned forward, offering her face for inspection.

  “Oh, my God, what happened to your skin? You’re all broken out.”

  “You should have seen it yesterday. This is an improvement.” Kat turned to her friend’s son. “And how are you, Nico?”

  Nico, who had inherited his mother’s bold nose and corkscrew curls but none of her vivacity, mumbled something unintelligible.

  “How’re you doing? Dash can’t wait to see you.”

  Nico shrugged, not bothering to meet her eyes. Kat thought he was a charmless toadstool of a child, and that Zandra needed to teach him some manners, but the two boys had been playing together since preschool. These days, Dashiell went to a magnet program in a nearby public school, where most of the parents were artists, writers, or actors, while Nico attended an exclusive private school at the United Nations, funded by Zandra’s wealthy parents. As far as Kat could tell, the two boys were learning essentially the same things—math, English, and the biographies of people so obscure Kat had never heard of them.

  Kat smiled at Nico, trying to muster some enthusiasm for the gormless child. “Go on ahead to Dashiell’s room, honey, he’s waiting for you.”

  Nico looked at his mother and shrugged again, looking as if he were heading off for a dental appointment. This was pretty much the only response Kat had ever received from Nico, who greeted birthday parties, trips to the zoo, comic books, and doctor’s appointments with the same stoic indifference. Yet, according to Zandra, her child was a paragon of intelligence and popularity, and in fact, whenever Dashiell asked for a playdate, Nico’s schedule seemed to be full with other friends.

  “Go on, honey, have some fun,” said Zandra, pushing Nico in the direction of Dashiell’s room. She handed Kat a bottle of merlot and a small, wrapped present.

  “Thank you, Zandra. My first present, I’ll have you know.”

  “Open it, open it, I think you’ll really love it.”

  Kat would have preferred t
o sit down and have a drink first, but Zandra was beaming at her expectantly. Unwrapping the gold-foil paper, Kat revealed a book entitled Letting Go of the Anger: The Emotional No-Fault Divorce. “Um, thanks, Zan.” Kat kissed her friend’s cheek without enthusiasm. “Looks interesting.”

  “My friend Celia swears by it.”

  Kat put the book to one side, thinking that it might just be the worst gift she’d ever received, beating out the hideous papier-mâché clock she’d gotten from Aunt Amelia as a wedding present and the monstrous deluxe foot bath that Logan had given her on their last Christmas together.

  “I have to say, Zan, I think it might be easier to let my anger go if Logan stopped doing things to enrage me. And now God only knows what version of things the tabloids are going to publish.”

  Zandra bent down, unzipping one of her black Italian boots. “Well, you know what they say: She who lives by the sword…”

  Kat stared down at the back of her friend’s head. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Zandra looked up. “You know.”

  “I don’t know.”

  Zandra unzipped her second boot. “Oh, come on, didn’t you tell me you threatened Logan with doing some tell-all for the tabloids?”

  “Did I?” Kat didn’t remember telling Zandra about that, but her mother did say that your memory begins to fail after forty. “Well, in any case, I didn’t actually contact them.”

  “Oh.” Zandra put her boots by the door, looking surprised. “Well, never mind, then. Anyway,” she said, brightening, “where have you stashed the hunky Viking?”

  “Who said he was hunky?”

  “Marcy. She said you just happened to rent out your maid’s room to the cutest guy in your class. Have you two gotten past the hand-holding stage yet?”

  Of course, Marcy must have seen Magnus at the Institute. “We are not holding hands,” Kat said, before suddenly remembering that this wasn’t exactly true. “Come on, I’ll get us both drinks.”

  Zandra followed Kat into the kitchen. “Mmm, it smells great in here,” she said. “What’re we having?”

  “Chicken, corn, and cilantro. I made Mexican casserole.” Kat put Zandra’s wine down on the sideboard and took her corkscrew opener off its hook. When she looked up, she saw that Zandra was pointing at Magnus’s closed door.

  “Is he in there now?”

  Kat nodded. “He went out for some kind of marathon run and just got in about an hour ago. I think he might be taking a nap.”

  “Won’t we wake him up if we’re in here?”

  “It’s six o’clock on a Saturday night, Zan. I have to have a life.” Kat paused, looking at the cheap bottle of merlot in her hands. Like a lot of trust-fund babies, Zandra prided herself on having peasant tastes. “How about I make sangria for a change?”

  “Por qué no? We make fiesta.” Zandra did a little shoulder shimmy, making Kat laugh.

  “Okay, Charo, would you mind cutting up an apple for me while I peel the orange?” Kat handed Zandra a knife before decanting the merlot into a pitcher.

  Zandra began chopping the apple with practiced ease. “Tell me something,” she said without looking up, “don’t you think the man has moved pretty fast? You put up the ad Wednesday, he moves in on Friday? Either he hasn’t got a life or he has a serious case of wanting to get into your pants.”

  Kat looked up, appalled. “Jesus, Zandra, where did you learn to whisper, at a school for the hearing impaired?” She pointed at the door not six feet from where they were standing and then put her finger to her lips, indicating the need for silence.

  “Well? Do you think he has a crush on you?”

  Kat took the apple Zandra had cut up and tossed it into the pitcher. “I have no idea.”

  “I have an idea. Maybe you could work this into your next lesson,” said Zandra, ignoring her. “Now, Magnus, what does ‘get into your pants’ mean? A, to try on your trousers; b, to see if you can wear your friend’s size-four jeans; or c, to get your hand or some other body part into the personal genital region of the pants’ occupant?”

  “That would certainly get his attention. Hand me an oven mitt, will you? I want to check the dinner.”

  Zandra, who never cooked, gave Kat a dish towel. “If all this clattering around doesn’t wake him up, then I don’t see how my whispering’s going to do it. Besides,” she added, lowering her voice, “what’s wrong with him overhearing that you’re a little interested?”

  Kat closed the oven and beckoned Zandra away from Magnus’s door.

  “Because,” she said, speaking very softly, “I don’t think he’s interested in me that way. But I have to admit, if he had been, I might have considered it.” Kat held up the pitcher. “May I pour you a glass?”

  “Please.” Zandra took a sip. “So,” she said, looking up with mock innocence over the rim of the glass, “what I want to know is, what’s the protocol if you do sleep with your boarder? I mean, do you treat him like a casual boyfriend who happens to be renting, or does he automatically become a live-in lover?”

  Despite herself, Kat laughed. “Oh, neither,” she said, pouring herself a glass. “I believe the common practice is to raise the rent, after all, there ought to be surcharge for hump—oh, hello, Magnus,” Kat said, whipping her head around as the door to his room opened. “Did you just wake up? I hope we weren’t too loud.” Now, she thought, there was some badass acting for you; too bad there wasn’t an Oscar for Best Actress in an Unscripted Encounter.

  “Not at all. I didn’t want to sleep too long, anyway.” Magnus leaned against the doorjamb, looking tall and sleep-rumpled and decidedly masculine in a white T-shirt and faded army pants. Kat couldn’t tell from his expression what, if anything, he had overhead, which meant maybe he deserved an Oscar, too.

  “Hello,” said Zandra, gasping a little in surprise. And holding her breath a moment, so that her breasts swelled up over her dress’s low neckline. “You must be Magnus. I’m Zandra. Would you like some sangria?”

  Classic, thought Kat, shooting her friend a silent message of irritation. Zandra was one of those women who underwent a visible personality change whenever an attractive man was around. If the man were unattached as well as good-looking, Zandra could go into full girl-reporter mode, looking up with big doe-eyes and asking endless questions. Kat wasn’t sure why, but she hadn’t thought Magnus would provoke this reaction.

  Just as Kat was about to suggest that she and Zandra move into the other room, the intercom buzzed. Kat picked up the phone. “Thanks, Pedro, let her up, thanks.”

  The phone buzzed again. “A woman says she’s a friend of yours,” said Pedro, with infuriating slowness. “Name Marcy.”

  “Yes, yes, I just told you to let her up.”

  “Maybe she lie about who she is,” said Pedro, his hostility palpable even through the tinny intercom. “I put her on with you.”

  “Kat?” Marcy sounded puzzled. “Did I get the date wrong? Aren’t we getting together tonight?”

  “Of course we are. Pedro is just being an asshole.” Kat waited until her doorman came back on the phone.

  “I let her up now, okay, Missus Miner. If it is okay with you, of course.”

  “Thank you,” Kat said coldly. In the background, she could hear Pedro saying something under his breath in Spanish. I really need to do something about that man, she thought. She turned back to Zandra, who was gazing at Magnus as if she would have liked to clean him with her tongue. “Not even one glass,” she said, “to toast Kat’s birthday?”

  Magnus grinned. “I probably shouldn’t. It’s very dangerous, you know, offering Icelanders alcohol. We get very stupid, lose all our inhibitors.”

  “Inhibitions.” Kat noticed that Magnus was rubbing his right knee. “Did you hurt yourself running?”

  “No, my knee just acts up from time to time.”

  “So you must have one glass with us,” Zandra insisted.

  Magnus paused, something she had noticed he often did before responding to que
stions. Was it just unfamiliarity with the language, Kat wondered, or did he always deliberate everything like a supreme court judge?

  “Well,” he said.

  “It’s not that big a decision,” Kat said, more sharply than she’d intended. A thought occurred. “Unless you have a problem…?”

  “No, not at all,” he said. “All right. One glass. Thank you very much.”

  chapter twenty-one

  t wo glasses of sangria later, Kat realized they were all a little tipsy. She hadn’t brought out dinner, because she’d figured that Magnus would have one glass and then leave. But first Marcy had started talking to him about her upcoming trip to Iceland, and now Magnus had spotted Logan’s guitar. He turned to Kat. “Can I take a look?”

  “Be my guest.” Well, what else could she say?

  “Oh, please, play us something,” said Zandra, plunking herself down at his feet like a groupie. “What do you know?”

  “I’m not sure what I remember the words to,” Magnus said, tuning the D string. Glancing up, he added, “It’s a little scary, with two English teachers here.”

  “Don’t be silly,” said Marcy, who was looking surprisingly pretty in a pastel pink blouse and jeans. Suddenly Kat was reminded of how winsome Marcy had looked when she’d first met her fifteen years earlier, in a regional production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Kat had played the desperate, abandoned Helena to Marcy’s much-desired Hermia.

  I wonder, Kat thought, if she misses it as much as I do.

  “I’m off-duty now,” said Marcy. “Mangle language at will.”

  “All the same, I think I’ll let you sing.” He bent his head, and his thick, fair hair fell forward as his large fingers experimented with a few different chords.

  “Your hands are so big, it’s amazing how well you do that,” said Zandra, which was the final straw for Kat.

  “Can you come into the kitchen and help me with something, Zan?” Kat grabbed her friend’s hand, hauling her off the floor.

  “Back in a second,” Zandra said over her shoulder. When they’d reached the kitchen, Zandra put her hand over her mouth. “What is it? Something embarrassing? Do I have something on my teeth?” She rubbed her finger around her gums.