Beginner's Greek

by James Collins

  This news startled Peter.

  “You didn’t know that, did you? Yeah. It’ll be out in a day or two. So when you try to run to Mommy or Daddy, there ain’t gonna be no Mommy or Daddy.”

  Peter looked glum.

  “Poor little Peter Russell,” Thropp said. “His ass is grass, and I’m the cow.” This didn’t sound quite the way Thropp had wanted, and he paused quizzically before continuing.

  “Now, Russell, here’s the situation. I can’t get rid of you right away because I do have to cover my rear, and anyway the damn lawyers will say I’ve gotta have cause. So I need to make you look so bad, like such an idiot, that the only question people will ask is why I let you last so long. It’ll take some time, but the nice thing is that I’ll get to watch you suffer.” Thropp allowed for a dramatic pause. “I’ve come up with a little plan that, if I do say so myself, is brilliant. I’m going to give you a new assignment.” He paused again, smiling malevolently. “I’m sending you off to work for Mac McClernand.” Enjoying himself, he watched as this news sank in.

  Mac McClernand. Oh no, not Mac McClernand.

  McClernand was a burnt-out case whose continued employment at Beeche and Company was a mystery. Working for him was career death: you would either be lost in one of his labyrinthine schemes, never to reappear, or the association would so damage your reputation that you would be forced to leave.

  Peter began to speak, but Thropp raised his hand.

  “Nothing to say about it, my friend. Sent the memo already. Mac’s expecting you to report for duty today. He’s tickled pink about it. That’s exactly what he said, ‘I’m tickled pink.’ ” Thropp chortled. “Oh, this is going to be fun!”

  Peter indulged Thropp’s laughing for a moment or two, then spoke. “Congratulations, Gregg. It’s a plan of such diabolical genius that only you could have devised it. The world has never known such villainy! Yes, Gregg, it’s a clever plan, very clever. Unfortunately, it contains one fatal flaw.”

  “Oh, yeah? What’s that?”

  “I actually haven’t figured it out yet, but it’ll come to me.”

  Thropp laughed with still greater hysterics.

  “Is that all?” Peter asked.

  “Not quite. Have you seen this?” Thropp held the walnuts, one between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, displaying them to Peter like a magician. He put the nuts on the desk, rubbed his hands, then picked one up, interlaced his fingers, and worked the nut so that it was between the heels of both his palms. He squeezed, cracking the shell, and then burst out laughing again.

  “How do you like that?” Thropp greedily picked some meat out of the walnut and ate it. Slivers of shell stuck to his chin.

  Peter turned and began to leave.

  “Hold on! Got to do the other one!” Thropp called after him. The sound of his laughter followed Peter far down the corridor.

  It was a long walk back to Peter’s office. His mind raged with emotion and competing impulses. He would go above Thropp. But to whom? He would annihilate the bastard. But how? He would quit. But he had an employment contract; and besides, Beeche was the only place he wanted to work. And in two weeks, he was getting married.

  Peter reached his office. Various numbers blinked on his big screen as indexes and rates changed around the world. On his computer monitor, he saw that he had a dozen e-mails. He pushed a button and they all came up, tiled one under the other. Then he noticed the large black diamond on the display of his phone: he had messages. He looked at the clock and saw that it was nearing ten o’clock. At exactly two minutes to ten, it was crucial that he be on the line to Frankfurt.

  The phone rang; he could tell by the ID that it was his fiancée, Charlotte Montague.

  He picked up the phone and said, “Hi there.”

  “Hi, Peter!” said Charlotte. “How are you?”

  “Oh . . . uh . . . I’m okay.” Peter didn’t feel like talking about his presentation, and he could already tell that Charlotte must be preoccupied with a wedding crisis, so this wasn’t the moment anyway. “How are you doing?”

  “Well,” said Charlotte, “I’m fine. But the reason I called was that Mother is being completely unreasonable about the cheese. The French people just won’t understand about serving it before dinner.”

  Oh. The cheese. This was serious. Peter didn’t mind, really. He knew what was expected of him in his role as bridegroom: listen patiently, show your interest, respond with sympathy, say “yes.” With the wedding only two weeks away, Charlotte’s nerves were frayed, naturally, as were her mother’s. Charlotte kept talking, and Peter had to admit that his mind had begun to wander, as he remembered the meeting and his encounter with Thropp, as he watched the lines skitter on the screen before him, and as he, inevitably, imagined what it would be like to be marrying the woman he really wished he were marrying.

  Charlotte talked on. “Scalloping . . . Bartók.” Bartók? Then Peter could tell from her tone that she was bringing her own remarks to a close and that he would have to comment. Experience had taught him that in these situations, it was best to leave a few brain cells behind to listen, even as the rest of his mind withdrew.

  These scouts gave their report, and Peter said, “God, Charlotte, of course you’re completely right about the cheese. I mean, I wouldn’t know, but I’d trust you on that more than your mother! Anyway . . . oh, I think that scalloping, you know, might be kind of fussy? And I really like the plan for the music, so I agree with you, we should stick with what we have. I mean, I’m sure it’s a beautiful piece —”

  “Oh, good,” said Charlotte, “I knew that you’d feel that way.”

  By carefully calibrating his responses, Peter hoped to show that he had given each issue due consideration and was not simply agreeing with Charlotte in order to humor her. The Bartók had raised a genuine concern: Charlotte was impressionable, and if one of her interesting musical friends suggested Bartók for the church, as seemed to have happened, there was a chance that it would be Bartók.

  “Well,” Charlotte was saying now, “I’d better run. I’m sorry I won’t be able to join you tonight.”

  “Me too.”

  “Duty calls.”

  “I know! Don’t worry about it. We all understand.”

  “I’ll be sorry to miss Jonathan’s reading.” Peter’s best friend, Jonathan Speedwell, was a writer, and he was giving a reading that night from his new book of stories. Peter and Charlotte had planned to go to it and have dinner with Jonathan and his wife afterward. But Charlotte had to go to an event for her work. Charlotte liked Jonathan a lot and flirted with him in a girlish, free-spirited manner with which she did nothing else. “Did you see the review today in the paper?”

  As if Peter had time to read book reviews. “No,” he said. “Was there one?”

  “Oh, yes! I’ve got it right here. Let me read it to you —”

  “Charlotte —” Charlotte, I’ve got to make a call, Peter was about to say. The flashing numbers. Frankfurt. But he was too late.

  “Let’s see,” Charlotte said. “Oh, here we are. ‘With Intaglio, his new collection of short stories, Jonathan Speedwell once again demonstrates triumphantly that he is among our most potent younger voices writing today. In luminous silverpoint prose, he deftly renders the struggle of men and women desperate to maintain their purchase on life . . .’ ”

  Deftly, Peter thought. With Jonathan it was always “deftly.”

  “ ‘. . . But if there is one quality that truly marks Mr. Speedwell as a writer of distinction,’ ” Charlotte continued, “ ‘it is his deep compassion for his characters.’ ”

  Christ. Again, the compassion-for-his-characters thing. Peter could not understand why it was such a big deal for a writer to have compassion for his characters, as opposed to, say, real people.

  “ ‘In perhaps his most finely wrought tale, “The Copse . . .” ’ Well, I won’t read you the whole thing. But isn’t it terrific?”

  “Yes.”

  “He must be ve
ry pleased. Will you congratulate him for me?”

  “Of course.” Charlotte was an earnest person whose demeanor generally was almost grave. Peter imagined what she would be like as she congratulated Jonathan — winsome, crinkling her eyes and grinning.

  “He’s still pleased about being best man, isn’t he?”

  “Sure. I told you, the only problem is, he wants to give me away.”

  “Oh.” Charlotte’s mind snagged momentarily on the word “problem.” Then she got it. “Oh! Yes. You said that. How funny.”

  “Charlotte —”

  “Uh-oh, that’s my other line. Sorry, I’d better take that. Thanks for your help. Have fun tonight. Call me.”

  “Sure, right, okay. Bye.”

  Throughout this conversation, Peter’s other phone lines had quietly burbled again and again. The black diamond seemed to become denser and denser and heavier and heavier with the weight of added messages. Staring at his screens, he saw more e-mails arrive and numbers blip and charts jitter. As usual, the clock in the upper right-hand corner barely seemed to change when he was staring at it, but then when he looked away and checked it again, he was shocked to see how far it had advanced. Still, Peter didn’t begrudge Charlotte this expenditure of his time at a pressing moment of his day. Those were the phone calls that brides made two weeks before the wedding, and they were ones a decent bridegroom would tolerate. It was part of life. And, he supposed, it was part of life to be screwed over in your job once in a while. It was part of life to see your best friend have undeserved success. It was part of life, also, not to get the girl.

  Just in time, he reached Frankfurt.

  Why was Peter marrying Charlotte? Why was Charlotte marrying Peter? Charlotte worked in the New York office of L’Alliance Générale et Spécifique des Pays Francophones. The AGSPF fostered economic and cultural exchange among the French-speaking peoples of the world and tried to promote the French language and Francophone civilization in all places sadly suffering from their lack. Dogged and intelligent, Charlotte had mastered the politics of Chad (Djamous, the finance minister, was on the rise, though not supported by the Quay d’Orsay) and the diplomacy of Laos. She was, it seemed, always writing a report on intra-Francophone trade. There were lots of tables. In addition to this intellectual work, Charlotte also participated in the AGSPF’s busy social life: no minor Algerian poet could pass through New York without a reception. That’s what was happening tonight. Charlotte had to attend a dinner for a Belgian economist, who had appeared in town unexpectedly.

  For a time, Charlotte’s father had worked in the Paris office of a New York law firm and the family had moved there when Charlotte was seven. With this credential, she could legitimately make France her thing, which she proceeded to do. After her parents divorced, when she was sixteen, Charlotte’s father and her stepmother bought a small property in the countryside, where they went every summer and where Charlotte would visit. Charlotte majored in French and she spent two years in Paris after college.

  There she had had the requisite love affair with a Frenchman, with lots of tears. Maximilien-François-Marie-Isidore had been thirty-seven, an incredibly ancient and sophisticated age for Charlotte, then twenty-two. He was always lurking in the background, supposedly poised to swoop in and carry Charlotte back to Paris forever. That never seemed to happen, but on a regular basis, heavy-smoking, black-whiskered French friends — Héli, Valéry, Claude, Hilaire-Germain, Alexandre-César-Léopold, Gilles — would pass through New York. They would take Charlotte and Peter to obscure rock clubs and talk endlessly about American bands and films and writers whom Peter had never heard of. Of course, they all spoke English perfectly, and from time to time one or the other would engage Peter in conversation, while making it evident that he was merely doing so out of politeness.

  One requirement for Charlotte’s job was that she speak the language well, and she did, using all sorts of slang. Nevertheless, whenever she spoke it with a Frenchman, there was always the air that she was performing, an amateur-hour talent, rather than simply talking to someone. Whenever they went to a French restaurant, she engaged the staff in long conversations, and they were delighted. Peter — who had taken AP French! — sat there smiling uncomprehendingly for the most part. Eventually his existence would edge into the consciousness of the captain, and he would turn to Peter with an expectant smile.

  “Er . . .” Peter would say. “Pour commencer, je voudrais prendre aussi les moules.” As soon as he heard Peter’s accent, the captain’s smile would disappear and he would adopt a manner of cold courtesy while Peter, losing his way grammatically, would give the rest of his order.

  “Very good, monsieur, and for the wine, shall I give you a moment to decide?” Okay, so he answered in English. Big deal. In fact, that suited Peter just fine, for somewhere deep in his Celtic-Anglo-Saxon bones, he believed that it was improper for any real man to speak French.

  Another requirement of Charlotte’s job was that she dress well despite her low pay. Charlotte did dress well, if by “well” one meant fairly expensively. Her clothes were fashionable and of good quality. Yet she did not dress well, really. There always seemed to be too many flaps or folds or layers or lappets or something. She always seemed to be reaching for an effect, an effect that was neither achieved nor worth achieving and one that, even if those conditions were met, would not show Charlotte off to her best advantage. When Peter thought about Charlotte’s clothes, her stepmother, Julia, always came to mind. She was ten years older than Charlotte and was naturally chic, but as far as Peter could tell she mostly wore a skirt, cardigan, and pearls. Charlotte had always cast Julia in the role of her guide in the ways of the world. Why not simply copy Julia’s clothes? But Charlotte, with no intuitive sense of these things, was blind to the example her mentor set for her.

  As with Charlotte’s clothes, so with her grooming. It was always, somehow, just a bit off. The haircut was either too severe or too full, and, in either case, had a life of its own, regardless of how determinedly brushed; the lipstick was one shade too fauvist; the nails were ragged (Julia wore clear polish on her nails and kept them shaped liked torpedoes). These superficial flaws bothered Peter much more than he thought they should. For reasons that are mysterious, some people — men and women — are always able to look well put together, stylish, suitable, whereas others, to a greater or lesser degree, fail in this. Well, so what? Some people can wiggle their ears, and other people can’t. If someone has a good heart, how can that sort of thing possibly matter? Irksomely, it did seem to matter. In a way that was more than irksome, so did Charlotte’s looks. It wasn’t a question of whether she was good-looking: she was. She had a long, rather concave face, large eyes, and a prominent nose and chin; indeed, it would not be inaccurate, and it would not be at all displeasing to Charlotte, to say that her face was “Pre-Raphaelite.” She was pretty.

  And yet. When they were at her apartment for the evening and had been reading for a while, and Peter raised his eyes from his laptop and looked at her, that action did not release the spring of delight that he hoped for. He could look at certain paintings over and over again, or certain views or buildings or other people or children, and he would always feel an aesthetic and emotional shiver. Looking at Charlotte after a half hour of reading, he had a rather dull reaction. He had known women who, strictly speaking, were less good-looking than she but whose faces charmed him. The nose might be wrong, but there was some alluring interplay between the eyes and the lips; or everything was too small, but taken together with that big smile that came out of nowhere, it made you swoon. He did not swoon when he looked at Charlotte.

  In truth he never had. They had met two years earlier at a party given by married friends, the kind who see matches everywhere. It was more or less a setup. They talked about how terrible the Dutch side of St. Martin was, especially as compared with the French side. They talked, inevitably, about France. They talked about their friends. They got along pretty well. Charlotte liked him, Peter c
ould tell. He liked her, and as he got to know her better, something about her moved him. She had a good heart, and beneath her determination lay a touching vulnerability.

  So they got along, there was some kind of emotional connection, and, also, they made sense together. In this day and age, when marriages were no longer arranged and no father would dare forbid his daughter to marry anyone, the notion of suitable matches was supposedly archaic. Yet even when there were no overt social conventions to keep lovers apart (and to inspire novels), it struck Peter how often people still married within a fairly narrow social range. Within that range, there were further delimitations; the mates tended to come out with the same overall score on a gender-adjusted index of talent, money, expectations, polish, personality, intellect. The process of weighting and calculation was far less cynical than that employed by mothers during the London Season of the nineteenth century, but it seemed to Peter that it bore a resemblance. There were still rules, and lots of people still married the people they were supposed to marry, despite all this talk of marrying for love that one has heard for the last several hundred years or so.

  Peter was an attractive fellow with a good job and a suitable background. He was presentable. Charlotte, meanwhile, was also attractive. She had the kind of job that the kind of woman whom Peter would marry would have. She had the kind of parents and friends that a woman whom Peter would marry would have. They got along. They were good, decent people. The numbers went into their supercomputers time and again, and time and again the results came out: marriage. He knew he was not in love with Charlotte, and he accepted that. But this was not because he was indifferent to love. Indeed, the opposite was the case. The reason he accepted his lack of passionate love for Charlotte was not that he did not feel love strongly but rather that he felt love much too strongly. He was capable of being deeply, passionately, heartbreakingly, searingly in love with someone. Indeed, at this very moment he was deeply, passionately, heartbreakingly, searingly in love with someone. That person just didn’t happen to be Charlotte. And that person was unavailable to him. So he had given up on love altogether.