Sex as a Second Language

by Alisa Kwitney

  Magnus figured there would probably be about an hour’s worth of useful information stretched out over a month of lessons, but was willing to be wrong. God knows he’d certainly missed a few subtle social cues on his last job.

  The door opened, and a well-upholstered lady of around sixty walked in, her light brown wig a perfect match for the mink collar on her wool suit. She sat down across from Magnus, fixing him with her sharp, dark gaze. “You are joining the class?” Her accent was Russian.

  “Yes.”

  Magnus didn’t think she seemed thrilled by the news, but had no idea why that should be the case. Since the advanced English class was geared for proficient speakers, the institute had a rolling admissions policy, meaning that students could join at any time. The woman Magnus had spoken to on the phone had added that this class was supposed to be more informal and social that the other levels, with the clear implication that this was the kind of class where friendships flourished and romances bloomed.

  “So,” said the Russian woman, “you are here on a student visa?”

  “No, I am here to work,” said Magnus, leaning back in his chair and allowing his legs to fall open. The Russian woman pursed her mouth in disapproval, but Magnus ignored her, taking out his Persky Speaks English textbook and examining it. Having spent time in the military, he wouldn’t ordinarily allow himself to sit like this, but right now he was too damn uncomfortable to care. The Office of Technical Services had bought him a new wardrobe for this assignment, and while he didn’t mind wearing the pale blue oxford shirts and pricey urban hiking boots, he had yet to figure out how to get comfortable in snugly fitted jeans. He’d always thought that the OTS provided agents with latex masks and cleverly disguised guns, not fashion makeovers, but then, he was new to this.

  The next two students came in together. The hawk-nosed man with the long white beard and the heavy eyebrows reminded him of Gandalf the wizard; the short, extremely pregnant Mexican woman was unremarkable until Magnus looked more closely and saw the fierce intelligence in her eyes.

  A sudden burst of Mozart in the small room made the Mexican woman jump.

  “I am so sorry,” said the Japanese girl, pulling her cell phone out of her trendy leather backpack. “I am turning it off right away.”

  “It’s okay, I’m just tired.” The Mexican woman rubbed her forehead, and Magnus could see that her knuckles were cracked and bleeding. “I began work at nine yesterday morning and didn’t stop until nine in the evening.” Over her head there was a poster of the Statue of Liberty silhouetted against a brilliant blue sky with the words “Persky Language Schools Give You the World!”

  “I began working,” said the Russian woman, her deep voice only marginally less harsh than it had been with Magnus.

  “I began working at nine,” the Mexican woman repeated.

  “Forgive my interruption, but I believe that both are correct,” said the wizard. His accent was Middle Eastern, his pronunciation British.

  Wherever the man was from, the Russian woman didn’t seem to like him any better than she liked Magnus. “We will have to ask the teacher.”

  Where was their teacher, anyway? Magnus checked his watch: 0900. Clearly, their instructor was the kind of person who would arrive just on time or late to teach a class. Not that it mattered: The class was three hours long, and a few minutes here or there hardly mattered. But Fred had said that this was the kind of thing to look out for. Human intelligence was all about understanding how people’s minds worked. What mattered to them. What motivated them. What kept them up at night.

  Magnus glanced up and noticed that a dry board had been wiped almost clean, although the words “lie, lay, lain, laid,” were still legible, written in green ink.

  Well, Magnus thought, that was one thing he wouldn’t have to pretend not to know. There was only one usage of laid that he was sure of, and that was the one he hadn’t used in quite some time.

  “Good morning, class.”

  Magnus turned to the door, instantly recognizing Katherine Miner, despite the fact that she was at least ten years older than she’d been in the publicity photographs he’d seen.

  “How was everybody’s weekend?” Katherine moved to a seat near the middle of the table, forcing everyone else to move in closer together. “Did you visit your brother in Connecticut, Galina?”

  As the Russian woman launched into a long-winded response, Magnus thought that if anything, Katherine Miner was better-looking now than she had been in her late twenties. The contrast between her dark hair and pale gray eyes was just as striking, but she seemed in some subtle way softer now, more approachable.

  “And I see we have two new students. Let’s see,” she said, turning her full attention on Magnus. “You’re either Luc Marchant or Magnet Grimmson?”

  “Magnus.”

  “Sorry.” Katherine made a correction in her book. “And you’re from…?”

  “Reykjavik. Iceland.”

  “Really.” She regarded him with interest. “Someone I know was just telling me she’s going there in November. She said that Iceland was actually very green and Greenland was completely icy.”

  “Well. In summer Iceland is green. In winter…” He shrugged. “It is cold and dark. But it is beautiful and there is a very active nightlife.” Christ, he sounded like a travel brochure.

  “With four months of night,” Katherine said in a dry voice, “I can imagine you’d have to find some way to occupy yourselves.”

  The Japanese girl tittered. Had Katherine made a double entendre, or was Iceland just an inherently amusing country? And why the hell had Fred thought he might be appropriate for this assignment? He had fewer people skills than anyone he knew.

  Katherine seemed to be expecting him to say something. Before Magnus had a chance to think of a response, the classroom door swung open, banging loudly against the wall.

  “Merde.” The newcomer was a lean, angular, shaggy-haired type in a black trench coat and motorcycle boots. He exuded ebullient confidence and an almost overpowering smell of stale cigarette smoke. “I mean, shit,” the young man corrected himself, with more than a hint of mischief. “Only English, the Persky method, right?”

  “I take it you are Luc Marchant?”

  “Absolutely, I am in this class, if you are my teacher, Mrs. Miner.”

  “You may call me Katherine. You’ll find Americans almost always use first names, even in formal business settings. On the other hand, Americans are not informal about punctuality—anything more than fifteen minutes borders on the insulting.”

  The Frenchman, of course, was fifteen minutes late. Magnus watched as he took this rebuke in with an easy smile and a nod, and no visible trace of discomfiture.

  “Go ahead and sit down now, Luc, so we can get started.” Luc glanced around the room, his army surplus bag slung over his narrow shoulder. There were two empty seats; one to the left of Magnus, the other right near the door, next to the Russian woman. The Frenchman shrugged off his leather jacket, revealing a black T-shirt underneath. “I can sit with you?”

  “Of course.” Magnus moved over to make room.

  “Thanks, mon ami.” The Frenchman swung his jacket onto the back of the chair, smacking Magnus in the arm with the zipper.

  “Okay, class, if we’re done finding our seats, let’s get down to work. Today, we’re going to continue our work with standard American office slang. So take out your blue books and turn to page five.”

  Luc’s hand shot up. “I do not have a blue book yet.”

  “So just read along with Magnus for now.”

  “Sure.” Luc leaned in, his shoulder coming into contact with Magnus’s arm. Magnus pulled back; Luc did not seem to notice.

  “Nabil, first example. ‘You are putting me on.’ Look down at the other expressions and choose an appropriate substitute.”

  The wizard’s bushy eyebrows drew together as he stared at the page. “I am afraid I do not understand.”

  “Pick either a, b, or c. Wh
ich expression do you think can be used in place of ‘putting me on’?”

  Nabil stroked his white beard. “You are dressing me?”

  “No…”

  “Helping me out?”

  “Only one choice left, and that’s the right one, which is…”

  “Not being serious with me.”

  It was utterly ridiculous, thought Magnus as he took his notes, his elbow too close to the Frenchman’s. Why should the two tallest men in the class sit squeezed together in the corner?

  “Very good, Nabil. Okay, Maria. ‘He has to buckle down and do some work.’”

  The Mexican woman did not need to consult her book. “He has to make an effort?”

  “Excellent. Magnus, ‘I want to get married a.s.a.p.’”

  Magnus stared at Katherine for a moment. “Excuse me?” She had said it so conversationally that, for a moment, Magnus had thought she was confiding in him.

  “It’s your turn, Magnus. The third question in your book.” Katherine smiled her patient teacher’s smile while Magnus tried to recall his options. Instead, he found himself remembering his own marriage at its moment of implosion. Listen, I know we’ve had this tacit agreement that we would see other people and be discreet about it, but this time it’s different. I want to marry Dan.”

  And Magnus, just standing there, the back of his head almost vibrating with the intensity of his thoughts. We had an agreement?

  “Magnus?” Katherine’s voice was very gentle. “The sentence is, ‘I hope to get married a.s.a.p.’ So the choices are, a, sooner or later; b, right away; or c…”

  “Never.” He said it with real conviction, and for a moment, everyone in the class just stared at him.

  Katherine gave a quick, unladylike snort of laughter, surprising Magnus. Most people didn’t recognize when he was making a joke. “On a personal level, I agree with you, but the correct answer is ‘b.’ The letters a.s.a.p. stand for ‘as soon as possible’.”

  He’d made an impression just then, thought Magnus, but what kind? Fred had said that Magnus’s greatest asset was that he looked like someone you could trust. Big, solid, blue-eyed, deliberate. Sounding cynical about relationships was probably not a brilliant move.

  “Okay, Luc, your turn. ‘Jack asked me to go out with him.’ Does this mean, a, to leave the building; b, to go on a date; or c, to kiss.’”

  Luc furrowed his brow. “Is it the last one?”

  “No, the answer is ‘b, to go on a date’.”

  “Ah,” Luc said, just this side of innocence. “But to date is to kiss, no?”

  “Well,” Katherine said, “sometimes. There’s another expression for that.” Turning to the blackboard, she wrote: Make out = kiss. Go out = date. Over her shoulder, she added, “If you just stay in to tongue wrestle, I guess ‘date’ becomes a euphemism.”

  “Excuse me,” said the young Japanese woman, raising her hand.

  “Yes, Chieko?”

  “What does it mean, to tongue wrestle?”

  “Come over here,” said Luc, “and I’ll show you.” Chieko’s cheeks flushed red, but she giggled behind her hand as the rest of the class burst into laughter.

  For the next fifteen minutes, the lesson degenerated into a discussion of how dating practices differed from country to country. A year ago, Magnus would have tuned the conversation out; he’d never had much patience for aimless banter. Except he’d come to understand that there was often a hidden agenda behind such communications. Magnus thought about all the times Guthrun had talked about vacations, where she wanted to go, what she wanted to do there. And what had he said? Just plan it and I’ll show up at the airport. The look she’d given him had struck him as almost adolescent, exasperated, a little contemptuous.

  He hadn’t paid attention then. But now he knew better. There were patterns and indicators and signatures to identify in human interactions, just as there were in signal transmissions.

  For a long moment, Magnus missed the base in Keflavik, the long dark winters, the endless sun of summer, hours upon hours to go over reports and analyze findings. Eric and Jon and Peter, fish-fry Friday, Biggie the rat.

  And then he thought of Guthrun, her face flushed as she held the dish towel over her breasts. As if he were the intruder, the one with no rights to her nudity.

  “All right, class, settle down.”

  With an effort, Magnus returned his attention to Katherine, who had moved over to the blackboard. “I’m going to write down a few idioms and I’d like you to use them in a sentence.”

  “Ah, Magnus? Pardon me, but I forget to bring a pencil.”

  Magnus handed Luc one of his three sharpened pencils.

  “And paper?”

  What the hell did the man keep in his book bag? Magnus ripped a sheet out of his notebook. “Anything else?”

  “I’ll let you know.” Magnus couldn’t decide if that last comment was meant to be facetious or not. Probably not; the man was simply arrogant beyond belief.

  After the lesson, the two men stood for a moment outside Trinity Church, the ancient churchyard with its tilted gravestones a strangely European sight in the midst of the high-rise office buildings. It was only noon, and Magnus was thinking that there was a whole lot of day left to get through when Luc offered to buy him a hot dog from a stand.

  “Very American, eh, Magnus? You never see this in France, this eating on the street.”

  Magnus, who had consumed his frankfurter in two bites, nodded.

  “You want another? Ah, excuse me, sir, would you give this man another? No, no, I pay, my gift.”

  Magnus forced himself to eat the second hot dog more slowly. He didn’t have much to say, but Luc talked enough for both of them, lighting up a strong-smelling French cigarette and flitting from topic to topic. Did he say what he was doing in New York? Despite his resolution to attend better to idle conversation, Magnus couldn’t recall a single word of it five minutes after they’d parted.

  Still, he was pretty sure he hadn’t missed anything of substance, because he was pretty sure Luc didn’t have any substance, just a misplaced assurance in his ability to charm.

  The second hot dog disagreed with Magnus for the rest of the afternoon.

  chapter four

  k at woke up to find that something quick and brown was skittering across her belly. Despite the fact that she’d been a New Yorker for the past thirty years, she screamed, because roaches were one thing, rats quite another.

  Kat scrambled up on the bed, her feet sinking into the mattress, and tore off her cotton nightgown. Her flesh was still crawling with distaste from the touch of those sharp little toes. Where was it? For a fraction of second, Kat actually missed her husband, because she really did not want to be naked and alone in her bedroom with a rat.

  Then she reconsidered, because really, one rat in the bedroom was better than two, and at least the four-legged variety wasn’t about to tell her that she shouldn’t have bothered fixing her tits, because it wasn’t her postpregnancy body that he found unattractive, it was her overly controlling personality.

  A long, whiskered nose peeked out from under the bottom of the dresser, followed by a pair of beady eyes. Expelling her breath, Kat realized that this was no rat; her intruder was Ms. Nibbles, Dashiell’s gerbil, who must have escaped yet again from her red-and-yellow Habitrail.

  Ms. Nibbles stood on her hind legs and twitched at Kat, as if to say, Ha ha, you fool, I am the rodent you willingly brought into your home.

  Still, Kat was relieved, because no matter how much she disliked her son’s pet, at least she wasn’t worried that Ms. Nibbles was going to give her rabies. Moving slowly, Kat came down off the bed just as the gerbil scrabbled under the radiator. Great.

  “Dash? Dash, where are you? Did you take Ms. Nibbles out of the cage again?” Kat suddenly recalled how Logan used to accuse her of shrieking like an Italian fishwife: Is this really the example we want to set for our son?

  Well, no. But every time Ms. Nibbles became agitated
, she ate another of her babies.

  Right after Logan had left, Dash had started asking for a dog, and Kat had finally broken down and bought her son a pair of supposedly female gerbils. It had taken them two weeks to find out that they had a breeding pair, four weeks to realize that Ms. Nibbles had a tendency toward infanticide and cannibalism, and three months to come to terms with the fact that Ms. Nibbles had become pregnant yet again, this time by one of her surviving offspring. They had given all the gerbils back to the store, except for the pregnant Ms. Nibbles, whom Dash had insisted on keeping.

  Maybe it was time to reconsider the dog idea.

  Kat pulled on a short, white, terrycloth bathrobe and went to find her son. Dashiell was in his room, hunched over his Game Boy, and Kat thought he bore a faint, disturbing resemblance to the creature Gollum from The Lord of the Rings, fixating on his precious ring. What was it about these electronic games that turned boys into obsessive compulsives?

  “Your gerbil is out, Dash. Honey, how long have you been up? Dash? Dash?” Kat raised her voice to be heard over the electronic pings and blips of the game. “Dashiell? Can you hear me?”

  The phone rang in the other room. Kat looked at her son for a moment, torn between exasperation and concern. It seemed to her that Dash had regressed recently, tuning her out more, paying less attention to people and more to games, crossword puzzles, and math riddles. It hadn’t escaped her notice that he was the exact same age that she had been when her mother had decided to leave her marriage, and that wasn’t the only similarity; just like Logan, Kat’s father had pulled a Houdini.

  Other divorced dads lavished their children with toys, trips, candy-coated guilt offerings. Kat’s father had simply vanished into some shadowy place called Europe, doing top secret work for the U.S. government. At least that was the cover story Lia had maintained for the first year or so, explaining why Ken never tried to contact his daughter.