The Learning Curve

by Mandy Berman

  “A martini,” she said.

  “That’s not a martini.”

  “It’s an American martini.”

  He smiled, apparently charmed.

  “An American girl.”

  She nodded.

  “What are you doing in Paris, American girl?”

  “Just visiting,” she said.

  “Just visiting,” he mimicked, attempting the American accent of French. “So cute.”

  The server brought them beers, and the second friend, pint in hand, now also turned his attention to Liv.

  “Hello,” he said, smiling. He was equally unattractive, with a wiry goatee that resembled pubic hair.

  “Hi,” she said, and looked into her glass.

  “You don’t want to talk to us?” the first guy said.

  “I’m trying to enjoy my drink,” she said.

  “Why are you by yourself?” the second guy said.

  “She doesn’t want to talk to you.” Liv heard the same woman’s voice, calling over to the young men.

  Both guys smirked.

  “Mind your own business,” the first one said, eyes still on Liv.

  The woman then let out a stream of expletives, only some of which Liv recognized. They guys looked at the woman agog.

  “Such a filthy mouth for a lady,” one of them said, which had them both in hysterics. But it worked; they decidedly turned away.

  “Bitches,” the other one murmured, laughing, and they left Liv alone.

  Liv looked to the woman with gratitude. She actually, Liv realized now, appeared to be a bit drunk, her eyelids sluggish, though she was still put together, sitting tall with that sort of effortless poise that Liv wished she had herself. She always felt like she had to put in so much effort, in everything she did.

  “You like that stuff, huh,” Liv said in French, pointing to the sweet vermouth. She felt like she ought to make conversation with her now.

  “My mother adores it,” the woman responded in English. “She drank it as an aperitif. It was the first alcoholic drink I enjoyed. It reminds me of my early teenage years.” Her English was only slightly accented, mostly British with a hint of a French lilt.

  “How do you speak English so well?” Liv asked.

  “My ex-husband is American,” the woman said. “Are you visiting the city for a while?”

  “Only until Sunday.”

  “By yourself?”

  Liv nodded.

  “Traveling by yourself is really lovely,” the woman said. “You end up meeting lots of interesting people that way. More so than if you’re with a companion.” Liv didn’t feel so lucky to be alone; in fact, she felt quite the opposite. “I admire that at your age. I’m not sure I would have had the confidence.”

  “I find it lonely,” Liv allowed, the martini half-finished now and making her talkative.

  “Loneliness is a hazard of living,” the woman said. “You get used to it.”

  Maybe with age Liv would become more comfortable with loneliness, like this woman, who wore her solitude like a favorite dress.

  “What’s your name?” Liv asked the woman.

  “Simone. Yours?”

  Liv told her. “Are you Parisian by birth?” she asked.

  “I grew up here,” Simone said with some pride. “What about you?”

  “I’m from Washington, D.C.”

  “I have never been. Only to New York.”

  “I’m moving to New York soon.”

  “To do what?”

  “To be an editorial assistant at a publishing house. I start in one week.”

  “How exciting,” Simone said, with a tinge of jealousy in her voice. Liv wasn’t so sure how excited about it she was, now that living with Brandon was no longer part of the plan. She was going to sleep in the guest room in Lula’s mother’s apartment on the Upper East Side while she looked for her own place. It wasn’t ideal. And she wondered how long it would take for Fiona to regale Lula and Marley with the story of what had happened between them earlier today, if she would pit them against Liv, and if Lula would still want Liv to stay in her home afterward.

  “Maybe you can spend some more time in New York one day,” Liv suggested.

  Simone made a face.

  “I don’t think so,” she said. “Paris is home.”

  When the woman’s bill came, Liv insisted on paying it. Simone thanked her and said good night. Liv watched her walk up the Rue Vieille du Temple, lit by the ancient streetlights, her arms free and swinging.

  She was alone again. What if she didn’t want to wear her solitude like a favorite dress? She did not want to get used to it. Another pang, sharp and achy in her chest: she wished she and Fiona were still together, cigarettes dangling between their lazy fingers, matching American martinis side by side. Liv imagined an atmosphere of honesty in which she might tell Fiona everything, about her dad, about how things had ended with Brandon. Liv would say about Gabriel: “I believe you,” would not rub it in Fiona’s face that she had, last fall, been right. She would listen to her friend in turn. She would say she was sorry.

  It was a fantasy, those things being easy, tumbling from her mouth. It would never happen. But she could entertain it for now. For tonight, it would keep her company.

  25.

  FIONA GOT OFF the plane at Tegel Airport, eyes buggy with exhaustion. It was not yet nine in the morning. Out of excitement, she had not been able to sleep at all the night before, nor had she slept on the plane, what with the fluorescent overhead lights on the whole time and the vinyl seats that reclined an entire inch.

  Her flight had been filled with mostly people her age, and she waited now with similar travelers at the baggage claim. Three twentysomething French guys stood next to her, bearded and unshowered, talking about their plans for that night, pulling out packets of tobacco and rolling their cigarettes, to be smoked the minute they got outside.

  Once she got her suitcase, she exited the airport and found a cab. All the taxis were identical black Mercedes. She showed the driver, who didn’t speak any English, the address of Avi’s apartment, and he nodded, repeating it in German. How she’d thought the street name was pronounced and how he’d said it sounded like two entirely different words.

  They took the highway. Everything was industrial and gray, the buildings low and unremarkable. But soon they were inside the city, with its wide streets, its stylish blond women on bicycles, its green trees filtering the sun, the sidewalk dotted with morning light. Between German DJs speaking impossibly fast and the driver occasionally laughing at something they said, the radio played American songs. When Lou Reed came on, Fiona found the song to be a strangely apt pairing with the scene out her window. And when the girls went Doo doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo, the bass line picking up, Fiona felt like she was in her own movie, the heroine following a dangerous man to a foreign place, watching the new city through the window of her taxicab. They passed a giant park—more like a forest, really, it looked so dense and endless. And then they crossed the canal, passing cyclists on their way to work, and there was endless grass on the other side, and more rows of trees, and the sun kissed the water like a promise.

  Then, quite suddenly—or it seemed sudden—the driver pulled onto a quiet street, the road paved with glossy cobblestones. Tall apartment buildings, painted the palest pink, lined the block, their high windows ornamented with ornate lintels, balconies with herbs and houseplants jutting from each unit. It looked like a block where people enjoyed living.

  The driver repeated the address and pointed to the door next to the car’s passenger side: oxblood red, with a giant gold knob in the middle that appeared more ornamental than practical. She handed him thirty euros and he helped her take her suitcase out of the trunk. She thanked him in German, one of three words she knew.

  Avi had said that he and his ro
ommate would both be home, and Fiona looked down the list of last names next to the buzzers, all of them printed in a uniform font, and rang the buzzer labeled “Green/Koehl,” as she had been instructed to do.

  She heard the door click and let herself in and went up the wide stairs, carpeted in the same oxblood red as the door.

  “Fiona?” she heard an American voice call, and then she saw a man, shirtless, appear at the top of the stairs. He was stunningly beautiful, which Lula had not mentioned, Adonis-like in his height, his wide shoulders and V-shaped torso highlighted rather well by the blue jeans that cinched right atop his hips. He had a large, wide nose, and chin-length brown hair.

  “Stop there,” Avi ordered, and hopped down a level to the landing where Fiona waited. He was barefoot. “First, hi,” he said, kissing Fiona once on each cheek and then taking her into a tight, heartfelt embrace. She had had no idea how much she needed that, and she resisted the urge to let out a deep sigh. He moved his face back to take a look at her. “It is so good to meet you. Lula adores you and I adore Lula.” He lifted her bag, which she had felt was heavy, with one arm.

  “Welcome,” he said, pushing wide the cracked-open door to his apartment and ushering Fiona in first. There was a short hallway—a skinny Persian rug lining the way—which opened into a gigantic living room: potted palms and meandering vines everywhere, vintage-looking mahogany furniture, and mismatched, framed drawings over a giant, well-worn sectional couch. The French doors to the balcony were wide open, allowing in the morning sun and a slight and temperate breeze.

  “You are lucky you came this weekend and not a minute sooner. Berlin is winter nine months of the year and it just turned. Do you smoke? Let’s smoke.”

  She said it was too early for a cigarette but she would love a coffee, and he delighted in the task, insisting she settle on the balcony while he made it. She sat in one of the wrought-iron patio chairs, looking out onto the street. It was ten on a Saturday morning and the street was nearly empty, aside from a few old women walking their dogs. One bike passed, a girl around Fiona’s age transporting two sizable sacks of groceries, one in the front basket and the other strapped to a rack over the back wheel, but the girl was wearing a sundress and pedaling the bike as if it weighed nothing at all.

  Avi came out carrying two matching white mugs. “Do you take anything?” he asked. “Milk? Sugar?”

  “Black is fine,” Fiona said.

  “Good, ’cause we don’t have either.” Avi plopped down in the chair across from Fiona’s, placing a pack of Gauloises on the table. He lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply, turning his head toward the street as he let out a puff of smoke. He made smoking look admirable.

  He leaned back in the chair, crossing his legs.

  She took the first sip of her coffee. It was strong and hot and delicious. “Wow, that’s good.”

  He nodded knowingly. “So how was gay Par-ee?”

  “Oh. Sort of a mess.”

  He lifted one eyebrow.

  “I went with my other friend from college? Liv?” She hesitated to share too much, but he was listening, and she was desperate to talk. “It’s a long story, but I told her something sort of personal and she didn’t handle it well and it got messy.”

  “That happens.” Avi ashed his cigarette over the balcony. “So now, Berlin.”

  She nodded. She had only told him over text messages that she was “passing through on her way home”—though of course Berlin was not at all on the way home.

  “It’s certainly a good place to get away from things, if that’s the kind of weekend you’re looking for.”

  “I really wanted to experience it,” Fiona said. “And, you know, I had to get out of Paris.”

  Avi nodded his head emphatically. “I hate Paris.”

  “What do you do here?”

  “I’m a photographer,” Avi said. “I freelance. And I’m in art school, part-time. School is so cheap in Europe.”

  “So work brought you here?”

  “Honestly, no,” he said. “A guy brought me here.”

  “Your…Stu?” Avi had mentioned the name in his texts to her.

  Avi laughed. “God, no. He’s not my Stu. He’s just my roommate.”

  “Oh, sorry,” Fiona said. “Maybe I was confused from the texts.”

  “Please don’t apologize. He was my Stu, for a time, but not anymore. He’s my best friend.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Asleep,” Avi said. “He’s a server at this restaurant in Mitte, right on the canal. We have to go there, maybe tonight. He’s off, I think. Anyway. It was an older guy I followed here. So clichéd to say it now. I met him in the city while I was still at NYU. I really believed we were in love.” Avi rolled his eyes. “It all worked out in the end. I came for the guy, but I stayed for me. This place is like Neverland. You’ll see.”

  “Dinner sounds fun,” Fiona said. She felt honored that Avi wanted to spend time with her; she’d assumed that he and Stu had their own things going on, that they were going to provide a couch and nothing else. “I actually have lunch plans,” Fiona said, looking at her watch. “At one. But I’m free tonight.”

  Avi raised one eyebrow again. She allowed a sly smile as she brought the coffee cup to her lips.

  * * *

  Oliver chose an Italian restaurant that was also in Mitte, in the former East. As she got off the U-Bahn, the first thing she saw was a row of clothing stores she might have found in America. Tourists carrying shopping bags spoke loudly in their own languages while they moved from store to store. She left the main drag and found rows of short white and brick buildings butted up against one another, some restaurants with patio tables out front, and cyclists moving confidently down the cobbled bike lane. There was a park on the corner; it seemed there was a park on every corner, even in the busiest parts of this city. She spotted a giant green-domed building over on the canal, shining bronzelike in the afternoon sun. She made a note to herself to find out later what it was.

  She was the first to arrive, and told the maître d’, who spoke impeccable English, that there would be two of them. The restaurant was designed with white walls and angular lines, a gleaming white barista station in the corner, and a wood-topped bar along the front window. The maître d’ seated her toward the back, beneath a wall of Italian wines. He asked her if she would like anything to drink while she was waiting.

  “I’ll take a look at the wine list,” she said.

  She looked around the restaurant, at the young family sitting next to her, at the twentysomething freelancers working on a pair of silver MacBooks. Everyone wore dark, muted colors, and long pants, like it wasn’t seventy-five degrees outside. None of the women seemed to wear dresses, as she did, and even though hers was simple, a dark cotton shift, she felt overly formal. She had wanted to look put together but also like she wasn’t trying too hard—even though she was, of course, trying too hard. How much time had she spent throughout her life, she wondered, trying to look like she wasn’t trying too hard?

  She ordered a glass of white wine—the third from the top on the list, a tactic she often used so as to seem like she knew more about wine than she did—and the waiter told her it was an excellent choice. She thanked him and watched the door. Several middle-aged men came in, some in pairs, all handsome, and each time she stopped breathing, as if any of them might be Oliver, as if his face might have changed completely.

  The wine arrived before he did, but not by much. As soon as she brought the first sip to her lips, she spotted him. He was searching the room, his face pinched with worry. When he found her, his expression turned from worry to certainty, and as he looked into her eyes a beat too long for it to be comfortable, she knew, instantly, that he understood why she had come here, and that they wanted the same thing, that they were at lunch for the very same reason.

  “Fiona,” he said, a
nd she stood to greet him. He kissed her once on each cheek. “Welcome to Berlin.”

  Her heart was beating fast and she did her best to disguise her nervousness by smiling too widely. “I hope you don’t mind I started without you.”

  “No, no,” he said as they sat. “I’m glad you did. How is it?”

  “Delicious,” she said. “Would you like to try?”

  She handed the glass to him, and he swirled the wine, stuck his nose deep inside the mouth of the glass, and sniffed the wine before drinking it.

  “Yes,” he finally decided.

  He picked up the wine list sitting on the table. “Should we get a bottle? You’re on vacation, right?”

  “Sure,” she said. He wasn’t on vacation, though, she thought. He beckoned the waiter and ordered in German.

  Over the bottle of pinot grigio, they went through pleasantries about her time in Paris, and she left out most of the details. She said she was visiting friends for the weekend in Berlin. She wondered if he knew yet that that wasn’t true. He seemed so interested in her, so ready with every follow-up question, that she never had the chance to reciprocate by asking him anything about himself. Maybe this was intentional, a tactic. As they started on their second glasses, picking at an antipasto, they began to gossip about people they both knew: professors, students. The people in their class together, the ones who could write and the ones who couldn’t.

  “I felt bad sometimes,” he said. “There were a lot of people at that school who desperately wanted to be writers. A lot of people who, throughout their whole lives, were always told yes.”

  She did not ask him if she was one of these people.

  “Will you ever come back?” she asked instead.

  “Probably not,” he said. “I need to be here.”

  She felt tipsy and daring enough that she simply blurted out her next questions.

  “Your family?”

  He nodded. “And also the book I’m working on now. It takes place in Berlin.”

  “What about your wife?”