Sex as a Second Language

by Alisa Kwitney

  “Really? Even a penny?” Galina adjusted the silk scarf that had been elaborately wrapped and knotted around her neck. “Good to know.”

  Just when Kat thought she had pulled it off, and was going to sail through this day as both superteacher and supermom, Nabil raised his hand. The cuff of his threadbare white shirt did not quite reach the bony knob of his wrist, but there was something about Nabil that commanded respect, not pity.

  “Yes, Nabil, what is it?” Meeting the gentle, intelligent gaze under the heavy grizzled eyebrows, Kat felt obscurely guilty. Nabil had been a professor of English literature back in Cairo. Now he couldn’t even get a job teaching in high school, and Kat wasn’t sure that her class was going to help him. Even if his spoken English became less stilted and formal, she had a feeling no one was going to hire a guy with a two-foot-long white beard to teach Shakespeare to a bunch of savvy urban preteens.

  “Forgive me for asking,” said Nabil, “but what exactly is the intended purpose of this trip?”

  To rescue my son. “You’ve all been doing so well in class,” Kat temporized, “but I’d like to see you all practice your language skills out in the world. Think of it as a reality quiz. Each of you will have to approach a stranger and find out something about him or her.” This was actually a variation on an acting exercise she’d once been given.

  “What sort of something?” Luc walked in the door, once again wearing a black trench coat, motorcycle boots, and a coolly amused expression. How cute, Kat thought, he has a look. Keanu Reeves’s look, to be specific.

  “I’ll leave that up to you. By the way, you’re late again.”

  Luc cocked his head like a puppy trying to make sense of some new human eccentricity. “True, but surely I am not so late I miss the whole class. Why is everyone putting on their jackets?”

  Kat fished her ponytail out of her collar. “In America, when you’re late, you’re supposed to apologize.”

  “But how can anyone be on time in a city that doesn’t permit indoor smoking? Anywhere I go, I must waste time finishing a cigarette, because it is certain I am not allowed to smoke when I reach my destination.”

  “Luc, I can’t teach you how to get by in America if you’re not willing to learn.”

  Luc threw out his hands in protest. “I am willing! Look at me, I am very excited to go wherever we are going and do whatever it is we are doing. What is it we are doing together?”

  Kat bit her lip to keep from smiling. The last thing on earth Luc needed was more confirmation that he was charming. “Maria, you tell him.”

  “We are going in a field trip,” Maria interjected as she struggled to zip her nylon jacket shut over her belly. She didn’t sound happy about it. In fact, Kat realized, no one seemed particularly pleased at the prospect of an outing.

  Maybe that’s why I like being around foreign-language students, Kat thought: They tend to approach life with a certain base level of suspicion. After months of enduring her friends’ relentless optimism, it was comforting to be around people who assumed that any plan of action would lead to some unforeseen complication.

  Kat was less than comforted by the sight of Arabella Simms, the new regional supervisor, walking down the hallway.

  “Well, where are you all headed at once? Coffee break?” A youthful thirty-five, Arabella was fresh from London headquarters. Like Maria, Arabella was seven months pregnant, but unlike the petite Mexican woman, Kat’s boss was dressed in a crisp navy blue maternity dress and matching low-heeled pumps. She also wore a blue Alice band in her shoulder length, dark blond hair, which made her look a bit like a knocked-up schoolgirl.

  “No, we have a field trip,” said Nabil. “We are going to the Metropolitan Museum to practice our English outside of the classroom.”

  “I see,” said Arabella, sounding a little too chipper. “Well! How marvelous! You are so inventive, Kat. And how ambitious of you to take everyone all the way uptown and then bring them all back before dismissal.”

  “Oh, well, I thought it made more sense to let everyone leave from the museum,” said Kat.

  “I’m sorry, Katherine, but if you review our handbook, you’ll see that we always dismiss students from the institute.”

  Kat made a quick mental calculation. If the subway trip took them forty minutes each way, that still left her an hour to spend at the museum, with time left over to hand out the next day’s assignments. “That still leaves us enough time. We should be fine.”

  “Excellent. And next time, let’s make sure to work out these details ahead of time, to save any unnecessary confusion, all right?”

  Kat mustered a smile. This was the problem with new bosses; they felt a constant need to establish themselves. Arabella’s predecessor had been too preoccupied with keeping his New York girlfriend away from his London wife to fuss about his teachers’ schedules. Oh, well, give Arabella some time and she’d calm down.

  As they walked toward the subway station, Galina fell into step beside her. “You know, in the Soviet Union, nobody thanked you for doing your job too well. They wanted you to be a factory worker, not a star.”

  Kat nodded absently as she checked her watch. Shit, it was already nine-fifteen, she was losing her margin of error. “Believe me, Galina,” she said, glancing back to see how Maria was doing, “being a star is the last thing I worry about.”

  chapter twelve

  i don’t understand why I must talk to strangers,” said Galina as she and Magnus waited for the rest of the class to pay their donations and receive their small yellow metal buttons. “Why will talking to strangers improve my English?”

  Magnus gave a noncommittal shrug. Like Galina, he was not entirely certain why they were here, but he didn’t want to appear disloyal to Katherine. In addition, he had formed a slight dislike for Galina, who was wearing her mink jacket, despite the fact that it had to be seventy-five degrees inside the museum. He smiled, suddenly struck with an image of the woman going home to a little hut strewn with animal carcasses, like Baba Yaga, the witch of Russian folklore.

  “What is funny about this, tell me,” Galina demanded. “Because to me, it is not funny that I am paying to talk to strangers that I could talk to on my own.”

  “On my own, I would not come here at all,” said Nabil, his tone matter of fact. “All these artifacts were stolen from my country.”

  Chieko joined them, pinching her metal button onto the collar of her black Victorian little-girl dress. “This is exciting, no?” She turned to Maria, who was reading a map of the exhibits.

  “Look at this—a whole room of costumes. I have to come back.”

  “The Frick is nice, too,” said Luc. “But much smaller, of course.”

  “All right, everyone, listen up.” Magnus moved closer to Katherine, who was wearing a short-sleeved brown turtleneck sweater and faded jeans that made her look all of twenty-nine. “We’re all going to fan out throughout the exhibit, and each of you has to strike up a conversation with a stranger and find out something about that person. Any questions?”

  “Yes,” said Maria. “What are you going to do?”

  “Spy on all of you, of course. Anyone else? No? Great. We’ll meet back here in front of the little gift shop in thirty minutes. Have fun!”

  Magnus watched as the other students fanned out slowly, like new recruits patrolling a potentially dangerous area. After a moment, Luc began talking to a pretty redhead with a young child in a stroller, and Katherine walked rapidly down the hallway of papyrus, not really taking in the ancient inventories of oxen and crops.

  She’s looking for something, Magnus thought, following Katherine as she rounded a corner. Or rather, looking for someone. He had a childish urge to flick her ponytail, which bounced as she walked, turning her head from side to side. For a moment, he thought he’d lost her, then he saw that she had gone into a dimly lit room filled with mummies, some wrapped and shrouded, some wearing elaborately painted masks. Standing off to one side, Katherine seemed to be observing three
schoolboys who were sitting in front of one of the cases. Was one of the boys her son? It was too dark to tell. Keeping himself partially blocked by a display of small animal figurines, Magnus waited to see what she intended to do next.

  “Go find someplace else to draw,” said the tallest of the boys, opening an artist’s sketchpad.

  “Yeah,” said the second boy, who was wearing glasses. “We got here first.”

  The third boy stuck out his chin. “So what? This is the only room that has mummies out of their boxes.”

  “Are you deaf or something, Dashiell the asshole? We don’t want you here.”

  “I don’t care,” said Katherine’s son, his eyes on the mummy. “I have as much right to be here as you do.”

  No way was this a coincidence, thought Magnus, fighting to contain a rising sense of excitement. Katherine must have decided to take the class to the museum because she knew her kid was going to be here, too. This was it—his second chance. All he had to do was make a good impression on her son, and how hard could that be? The boy was probably longing for a father figure, and would imprint himself on any man who showed him the least bit of interest.

  “You don’t have to be right on top of us,” said the kid with the glasses. “Why don’t you go sit over there?” He indicated a spot across the room.

  The tall child smiled with malice. “Maybe he’s too scared to be all on his own with the scary, scary mummies.”

  “You’re the one who’s scared, you stupid butt-head!” Bad move, thought Magnus. You react, you show weakness. That was one lesson he had learned early on: show no emotion, particularly not anger or fear.

  The tall boy grinned, showing teeth. “If I’m so stupid, then why did you just offer me a Pokémon card to sit next to you on the bus?”

  Katherine stepped out of the shadows. “Hey, Dashiell.”

  Dashiell turned, his face brightening. “Mom! You said you couldn’t come!”

  Katherine knelt down. “I decided my class needed a field trip, too.”

  The kid with the glasses stared at her as if she’d just announced she was an undercover cop. “You’re a teacher?”

  “Yes, Riley, I teach English to adults from other countries. I brought them here to practice using their conversational skills. Sometimes my students worry that they might make a mistake and people will make fun of them.” The two boys exchanged glances.

  “Hey, Dash,” said Katherine, “did you see this small mummy over here?” She pointed to a case across the room from the other two boys. “How old do you think this guy was when he died?”

  Very clever, thought Magnus, but what is he going to do when you’re not around? Sooner or later, that kid is going to have to fight his own battles. Katherine turned and caught his eye as if she’d heard his thoughts.

  “Magnus,” she said. If she was embarrassed that he’d found her out, she hid it well. “Dash, this is one of my students.”

  The boy grunted a brief greeting. Mindful of his bad knee, Magnus lowered himself carefully down next to Katherine’s son. “So, your class is learning about mummies?”

  “About ancient Egypt.”

  “That sounds interesting.”

  The boy turned, finally meeting his eyes. “It’s not. I already read the entire Ancient Civilizations book. Now I have to waste a day drawing. I hate drawing. I’m not learning anything here.”

  Spoken like a kid who has to sit by himself. Magnus felt Katherine’s gaze on him, and knew that he was probably supposed to argue for the importance of school assignments. “Different people learn in different ways,” he said. “Maybe some of your classmates only learn when they’re drawing.”

  Dashiell looked at his sketchpad with loathing. “So let them do it, and let me stay at home.”

  Magnus scratched his jaw, trying to regroup. Getting close to Katherine’s son was not proving to be quite as easy as he’d anticipated. Maybe he should quit trying to be a good role model and just acknowledge the fact that school could be as cruel and dehumanizing as the army. But before Magnus could open his mouth, he heard a familiar voice behind him.

  “Alors, Magnus.” Luc strode into the room, looking cynically amused. Probably practiced that look in the mirror for a year. “So, what are you doing in here? Hiding?” Luc smiled as he spotted Katherine. “Ah, I see, hiding with the teacher.”

  “Actually, I am doing our assignment.” God, I sound stiff.

  Luc looked down at Dashiell. “I see.” He turned to Katherine, raising an eyebrow. “He is yours?”

  “Yes, he’s mine.” Katherine’s smile was a little rueful. Magnus didn’t think she’d expected to be found out by two of her students. “How did you know? Everyone says he looks like his dad.”

  “Then they are not looking very carefully.” Luc knelt down beside Dashiell, as agile as a cat. “Show me what you draw,” he said.

  Dashiell held out the pad. “It sucks.” He had drawn a blobby shape in the middle of the page.

  Luc made a whistling sound between his teeth. “It’s true, but you can fix it, no problem.”

  “How?”

  “If you permit me…?” Luc took the pad. “First, do not look at the paper, okay? You look at what you draw. Just there.” Luc’s hand moved rapidly over the page, making small marks. “And when you observe carefully, you begin to see how things fit together.” Luc held up the page, which now looked like a mummy.

  “Cool! How did you do that?”

  “This is my work. I draw comic books.”

  “Which ones?”

  “Right now, I do some Batman. Okay, now you draw.”

  Mouth clenched in concentration, Dashiell began to sketch the mummy’s painted mask, using Luc’s outline.

  Magnus looked up to find Katherine standing over them. “Hey. Thank you, Luc. Dash, we have to go now.”

  “Okay.” Dashiell, engrossed in his project, did not appear distressed at this news.

  As they left the mummy room, Magnus could hear the other boys saying something to Dashiell about his drawing.

  He couldn’t make out the words, but there was no mistaking the tone; Dashiell’s social stock had just risen by about two hundred points, thanks to his encounter with a bona fide comic book artist.

  Crap. No one would ever believe that a year ago, he’d had one of the highest security clearances in the country and a job he’d been damn good at. Or, at least, he had thought he’d been good at it. Maybe the top brass had been right, and that oily, charming bastard they’d brought in over him was the better choice. No. That wasn’t right. His analysis had always panned out. He just hadn’t known how to play office politics. Hadn’t Fred said that if he just learned to read people the way he read reports, he would be the perfect field agent? In any case, it was normal to feel a little insecure when you were trying new things, Magnus reasoned. But you didn’t live up to your full potential by playing it safe.

  On the other hand, there were worse things than not living up to your potential, such as discovering that you didn’t actually have all that much potential to begin with.

  Maybe he should’ve taken that desk job at Langley.

  chapter thirteen

  o kay, so what did we learn today?” The atmosphere in the classroom had lightened considerably after their trip, and Magnus was surprised to see the usually somber Nabil chatting animatedly with Luc, while Maria and Galina were laughing at something Chieko was telling them. “Come on, guys, I’m glad you’re excited, but we only have a few minutes left and I want to hear what happened. Luc, let’s start with you.”

  “Well,” Luc said, “I talked to a woman who informs me right away that she dislikes her children and takes pills for depression—things a French person would only tell a family member or a close friend. And then, just when I start to wonder what is left to talk about next time, the woman checks her watch, says good-bye, and that is it—the end of the entire relationship!”

  Katherine laughed. “So you’re saying you don’t like American informality
?”

  “It leaves no room for seduction,” said Luc, clearly warming to his subject. “And also, I think it is false. Maybe you will hear all sorts of personal information, but no one here treats you like a friend. In France, you can use charm and the baker will give you the best loaf of bread, but here? ‘It’s all identical.’” Luc mimicked a nasal American accent. “Yes, folks, everything is regulated, pasteurized, and homogenized.” Dropping the accent, he added, “It all just makes me want to dip my unsterilized finger in and stir things up a bit.”

  I’d like to sterilize you, Magnus thought, a little surprised by his own vehemence.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” said Nabil. “I think Americans may not all be as direct as you might think. Every time I tried to approach someone, they backed away.”

  “Interesting,” said Katherine. “But I have an idea why that might have happened. Can anyone tell me how close most Americans stand while talking?” Silence. “Okay, let me see—Magnus, come stand as close to me as feels comfortable.”

  Magnus pushed his chair back and walked toward her, feeling extremely self-conscious. “Here?” He was about six feet away.

  Katherine’s face gave nothing away. “Is that where you would stand to talk to me?”

  “Yes, I think so.” Oh, great, this was some kind of cultural test. Well, given the fact that his parents were both Icelandic and he’d spent the past ten years there, he was probably more Icelandic than he was anything else. On paper, of course, he was American, but he’d grown up on military bases in Florida and Egypt, and that was its own weird culture.

  “So, everyone,” she said, “does that look right to the rest of you?”

  “He’s standing way too far away,” said Maria.

  “Is he?” Chieko shrugged. “Looks okay to me.”

  Katherine seemed pleased—this, apparently, was the response she’d expected. “North Americans, Germans, and the British tend to converse at approximately one arm’s length away. That’s their body bubble, the area around them that feels like their personal space. Scandinavians and Japanese tend to have larger body bubbles, Latins slightly smaller ones, and Middle Easterners feel comfortable talking at a much closer distance. It’s not a conscious thing, but as an actor, I was trained to be observant and become conscious of what unintentional messages I might be conveying. Look what happens when you move into somebody else’s body bubble.”