Alisa Kwitney

by Sex as a Second Language (lit)

  “You have a good ear for accents,” said Luc, much to Magnus’s disgust. Everyone assumed most Frenchmen were from Paris; trust Luc to find a way to turn his answer into a compliment.

  “And your family is from Morocco? Tunisia?”

  “Morocco. When I was small we lived in Israel.”

  Lia nodded her head, as if he were merely confirming her suspicions. “Our family is Jewish, too, you know, but from Italy.” Lia turned to Magnus. “Now, you I’m not so sure about. Swedish? Norwegian?”

  “I come from Iceland.” Magnus had a sinking sensation that he was losing this contest to Luc, as well. “I don’t think my family’s Jewish,” he added, trying to make a joke of it.

  Lia smiled wanly. “And you’re from Reykjavik?”

  “My mother was. My father came from a small fishing village.”

  “And where did you grow up?”

  “These days, almost everyone lives in the capital.” Magnus was trying to stick as closely as possible to his real history, omitting certain details, such as the fact that his parents had emigrated to the States in 1957, the year Magnus was born, or that he hadn’t actually spent much time in Iceland as a child. He had gone back a few times to visit his maternal grandmother while he was growing up, but his family had never bothered to travel to see his father’s relatives.

  “And which do you prefer, then—city or countryside?”

  “I like the country, but not where my father is from. It’s a bit bleak.” When he had first gotten posted to Iceland, Magnus had made the trip to the isolated, avalanche-prone West Fjords to see where his father had come from. His only surviving relative turned out to be a caterpillar-browed great-uncle named Jon, who held a cube of sugar in his mouth and sipped cup after cup of tea during Magnus’s visit.

  In between beating him at games of chess and complaining about the decline in herring, the great-uncle had talked about what a great shame it was that Magnus’s father had left. Why anyone would want to stay, however, was not exactly clear. There were no young people left, Jon complained, only auks, gulls, and eider ducks. Was Magnus aware that this was the darkest village in Iceland? No direct sunlight for four months! After spending less than a day in his house, Magnus had felt as if he’d aged twenty years.

  Lia was tapping her finger against her cheek, as if trying to add up a series of numbers in her head that wouldn’t quite come out right. “Bleak. I see. You know, your English is so good, I’m surprised you need an English class.”

  Magnus tried to look as though this were a welcome compliment. “Thank you for saying so.” God, she was scary. What must it have been like to be married to this woman? No wonder Ken Miner had disappeared.

  “Mom, everyone in my class speaks English well. It’s an advanced class.”

  “Ah.” Lia raised her eyebrows, and Magnus didn’t know whether to thank Katherine for her intercession or to feel vaguely insulted that his language skills were being disparaged.

  “I’m a scientist. I need to be able to write papers in English,” he added.

  “Really. Now, I would have said that you were in the military. You have the look of a man who guards his privacy, and men tend to get that in the army or in prison. What kind of science?”

  Jesus, this woman would have made a marvelous interrogator. “I’m a chemical oceanographer.”

  “Now, isn’t that funny,” said Lia. “I just saw a repeat of that show Seinfeld, the episode where George claims he’s a marine biologist in order to impress this girl. But then he goes to the beach and has to rescue a whale. You would know what to do if you came across a beached whale?”

  “I study the quantitative fluxes between constituent reservoirs. But if a whale beaches itself in Manhattan, I would be happy to identify its species for you.”

  Lia raised her eyebrows, and a second too late, Magnus realized that she thought he was being sarcastic. “Well, that’s good to know. In any case, I’d better leave you boys to your competition over…the maid’s room. Bye, Kat. Call me later. Nice meeting you, Luc.” She paused, infinitesimally. “Magnus.”

  Shit, shit, shit, shit. No question about which of them the mother preferred.

  chapter fifteen

  i can’t believe my mother, Kat thought as she shut the front door. First she barges in and challenges me, and then, to top it all off, she launches into the kind of third-degree questioning that says, I know you intend to do my daughter. Kat took this morning’s intrusion as a sign of her mother’s rapidly deteriorating sense of boundaries; at least, back when Logan had been around, Lia used to ring the doorbell before letting herself in.

  “Sorry about all that,” she said, turning back to the men.

  “Nothing to apologize for,” said Magnus.

  “Your mother seems very nice,” Luc added.

  “Oh, she’s wonderful. I don’t know what I’d do without her.” Not that she would ever let me find out.

  “It’s nice that she makes dinner for you,” Luc offered.

  Kat nodded, thinking, But not so nice when she does it without checking with me, as if I were still fifteen. Which left Kat in the awkward position of having to explain that she had to go to Fez for dinner tonight because she was expecting a secret message from her father. Imagining the fallout, Kat reconsidered. Maybe it would be simpler to spare her mother’s feelings and make up some other excuse.

  Out loud, she said, “Let me show you the hall bathroom. Since the bath in the maid’s room is tiny, whoever rents the bedroom can take baths or showers here.” She opened the door, and both men peeked inside.

  “That’s a very large bathtub,” said Luc admiringly. “You could fit two people in there. Maybe two and a half.”

  Kat felt herself flush, recalling the evenings early on in her pregnancy when she and Logan had stretched out together, soaping each other’s backs and making slippery plans for the future. And then, not meaning to, Kat found herself speculating about what each of the men beside her might be like, naked in the tub. Not that she had any intention of taking things there, of course. But if she did, she had the sense that Luc would be playful, energetic, uninhibited, while Magnus would be tentative at first, then deliberate, intense, focused.

  Kat realized that both men were looking at her. She cleared her throat. “Follow me and I’ll show you the rest.” Was it her imagination, or did that sound a little like the kind of offer Mae West used to make?

  The sight of her kitchen removed any lingering sense of sexual tension. It was like stepping back in time, standing on the hideous, Brady Bunch–era linoleum, surrounded by mustard yellow walls and a dark brown stove and refrigerator. Only the wicker stools by the sideboard were new; the rest remained exactly the way Lia had arranged things back when Kat was in second grade. “As you can see, I have a long to-do list. We were just about to redo everything when my marriage broke up.” Kat thought she’d managed to sound quite matter of fact, and was taken completely by surprise when Magnus covered her hand with his.

  “It’s okay,” he said. His palms were huge, enveloping hers, and the tips of his fingers were calloused. But Scandinavians never just reached out and touched people, she thought. Then, surprising her even more, Magnus stroked his thumb along the inside of her palm. The jolt that went through Kat made her reevaluate her earlier assumption about what this man would be like in bed. Should she return his caress? Yank her hand away?

  “Alors,” Luc said, a bemused expression on his face, “I do not wish to alarm you, but I think I just saw a rat.”

  “Oh, no!” Kat broke contact with Magnus. “Where was it?”

  “Over there,” Luc said, pointing to a corner. “You, ah, don’t normally have rats here, do you?”

  Kat gave a surprised gurgle of laughter. “No! No, it’s just my son’s pet gerbil.” As she said “gerbil,” the animal in question darted across the floor again, disappearing under the stove this time. My life has just turned into a screwball comedy, thought Kat. So glad I agreed to bring my students into my ho
me to witness this.

  Magnus crouched down. “It runs around loose?”

  “Not exactly. She escaped and I haven’t been able to get her back into her cage.”

  “May I move this?”

  “Please.”

  As Luc and Kat watched, Magnus shifted the stove away from the wall. There was a low, metallic groan, followed by a sharp internal bang, and a small brown rodent streaked across the room.

  Luc clapped his hands together. “I have him!”

  Kat felt a bit giddy. “Fantastic, Luc, great reflexes. Hang on to her and let’s get her back in her cage. God, I don’t know why people keep rodents as pets.”

  Magnus stood up, his right knee registering an audible protest. “In Iceland, I had a rat in my office. We called him Biggie.”

  Kat opened the door to Dashiell’s room, trying to focus on what Magnus was saying. “You had a pet rat?”

  “Not exactly. But we let him alone. And then when…someone else came in to replace me, he insisted that the rat be caught. So my assistants started building rat traps. Huge, complicated rat traps.”

  “Okay, Luc, get ready.” Kat lifted the door to Ms. Nibbles’s Habitrail and Luc pushed her in. “We did it! Good work.”

  “My pleasure.”

  As they made their way back to the kitchen, Kat realized that Magnus hadn’t finished his story. “So what happened to your rat?”

  “My assistants—my former assistants—kept on building these contraptions to catch the rat, and each time, instead of the rat, there was a note.”

  Luc raised one eyerbrow. “A note?”

  “Like from a kidnapper. Letters cut out from magazines. ‘I laugh at your stupid trap,’ things like that.”

  Kat smiled. “Sounds like you had a nice bunch of people to work with. So, what happened with Biggie? Did he get caught?”

  Magnus’s face didn’t change expression, but Kat felt the shift in his mood, as if a shadow had passed over him. “I don’t know. I came here. Probably Dan used poison in the end. Dan was…very efficient about getting what he wanted.”

  “Ah.” She didn’t say anything more, sensing that Magnus hadn’t intended to reveal quite so much. But from the way Magnus talked about his old job, it was clear to her that he hadn’t chosen to leave. No wonder he lacks confidence.

  “So,” Kat said, wanting to change the subject, “there’s nothing left to show you two except for the bedroom itself.” There really wasn’t much to see, just a small room with a single bed and a tiny desk and chair. Logan had started sleeping there when Dash was a baby, because he hadn’t seen the point in being awake when Kat was the one breast-feeding the baby. And although he’d stopped sleeping there, the marriage had never really recovered its fragile, preinfant equilibrium.

  “There you are, I don’t suppose either of you is all that interested now that you’ve seen it…”

  “I am,” said Luc. “Exceedingly interested.”

  “Me, too,” said Magnus. “I love it. It’s just what I need.”

  “Well,” Kat said, “that does put me in a bit of an awkward position.”

  “No, no, I swear, not even in my imagination,” said Luc, the wry expression on his face making Kat laugh.

  “Well, I’m not sure how I should choose between you.” The last thing Kat wanted to do was alienate a student, and both men had points in their favor. On the one hand, Luc was great fun, and she knew Dashiell liked him. On the other hand, Magnus was older, quieter, more settled. More appealing on a personal level, said a little voice. Not that she intended to do anything about it.

  “Let me make it simple for you,” suggested Luc. “Choose me, and I will cook delicious French and Moroccan food for you and your son.”

  “I don’t suppose you would like Icelandic rotted shark and sheep’s head jelly,” Magnus said, “but if I’m living here, maybe I can help by fixing a few things around the house.”

  “Oh, God, I don’t know what to do. Maybe the fairest way would be to flip a coin.” Kind of like choosing beds in college, Kat thought. And then she remembered something about sharing living space. She’d had one roommate freshman year who had kept her awake night after night with her noisy lovemaking sessions. “Oh, um, one other thing, I don’t know if either of you has a steady girlfriend at the moment…”

  “Not me,” said Luc. “I am all alone, a poor, solitary comic book artist.”

  Ah, the insufferable cuteness of youth. “Well, the thing is, if you do meet someone you like, that’s fine, of course, but this being such a small room, and so close to the kitchen…” Kat left the rest of the sentence unsaid. “It’s not that I care, but because of my son…”

  Luc cocked his head to one side in mock innocence, clearly enjoying her discomfiture. “Exactly what are you saying?”

  Kat decided to begin again. “It’s not that you can’t have a girlfriend over,” she said, then hesitated, unsure how to put this politely. You just can’t have screamingly loud sex at all hours of the day and night? Magnus held up one hand.

  “With me, there would be no visitors. No girlfriends.”

  Luc’s eyebrow shot up. “Boyfriends?”

  “No. No girlfriends or boyfriends.”

  There was a speculative gleam in Luc’s eyes. “Farm animals?”

  Magnus glared at the younger man. “No sexual partners at all. I am celibate.”

  Luc shook his head, as if scandalized. “Truly? Is it a medical condition? A psychological problem?”

  Kat pinched the Frenchman’s arm. “Thank you, Magnus, for being so honest.”

  “Are you intending to take holy orders?”

  “Shut up, Luc,” Kat said, as if she weren’t wondering the exact same thing. Turning to Magnus, she said, “The room is yours if you want it.”

  Looking Kat straight in the eye, Magnus said, “Oh, I want it, all right.”

  Luc muttered something under his breath in French that Kat couldn’t translate, but which brought a flush to the Icelander’s cheeks. “Well, that’s great. When do you want to move in?”

  “Immediately, if I may.”

  “Works for me,” said Kat, thinking, Problem solved. I’ll have the cash to pay the co-op board, I don’t have to worry about my boarder and some skank making wild barnyard noises while I’m trying to get a late-night snack, and with Magnus’s having sworn off sex, no chance that I’ll do something stupid, like get involved with a student.

  chapter sixteen

  t here were two choices of seating at Fez: the main restaurant area, which had regular tables and chairs, and the traditional section, which had low, cushioned benches and circular, hammered metal trays balanced on pedestals. Usually, young, physically demonstrative couples chose to dine in this area, because it was so dark. The far corner, in particular, offered a great deal of privacy, making it a perfect choice for lovers. Or spies.

  And there was another similarity. As Kat ran her hand under the seat cushions, she felt a rush of guilty pleasure. It was probably a testament to just how boring her life had become, but playing secret agent was the most fun she’d had in ages. She glanced across the table to see if her son had noticed anything odd about his mother’s behavior, but Dashiell continued to play his handheld electronic game, oblivious to the fact that she was poking around under the tasseled pillows.

  A young waiter in a red fez, white tunic, and embroidered black vest came by, and Kat yanked her hand out, accidentally hitting the edge of the low, circular brass table, which rang like a gong. “Sorry,” she said, sweating. Some Mata Hari she was turning out to be.

  The waiter smiled as if he were used to customers banging into things. “Would you like a drink?”

  “Sure. Thank you. A glass of house white and a Sprite.”

  Once the waiter had left, she put her hand in again, her heart pounding with excitement as she felt the edges of a note under her fingertips.

  Suddenly Dashiell looked up from his Game Boy. “Nana was really mad at you for not eating the dinner she
bought.”

  “Did that upset you? You know, even people who love each other have disagreements sometimes.”

  “Like you and Daddy used to?”

  Kat put her free hand over her son’s. “Yes, but Nana and I are never going to split up.”

  “You mean we’re always going to live across the hall from her?”

  Kat hesitated. “We’re always going to stay close and see a lot of each other. Even if we have an argument.”

  Dash went back to his Game Boy, apparently content. Then, just as Kat was fishing for the note again, her son looked up. “So your student is going to live with us?”

  “That’s right.” Kat kept her left hand, which was under her seat, very still.

  “Not the French comic book guy?”

  “No, the other one. The Icelander. You know, they both helped get Ms. Nibbles back.”

  Dashiell grunted and turned his attention back to his game, finally leaving Kat free to fish out the note. Squinting, she tried to make out her father’s message in the wavering light of the hanging copper lamp.

  Mundane excitement eventually triumphs / mediate eddies / hierophant elegance reacts egregiously / acerbic tone / synchronized impulse x-ray / post menopausal / tourettes only minion organizes reduced revenant ostrich warts.

  Oh, great, Kat thought. He’s written it in code. Or else my father’s computer has a virus. Kat looked up to find her son staring at her.

  “What’s that?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Kat said brightly. “Now, what are we going to order?”

  “Those thin beefy strips. What do you mean, nothing? Why are you hiding it?”