by J. D. Fox
Olivier smiled to himself at the thought of his daughter, all grown up, having no real idea of what her father had ever done. Once he finished up the deal, he would be able to spend much more time with the girl, and the idea of giving her a plenitude of memories with her father, a strong foundation for her future relationships—as well as a funding base—was more than enough to justify the risks he knew he was taking. He’d heard about the job through the usual channels, and the only aspect of it that was different from his usual work was that it was a company based in the US that he was working with.
He had given some thought to the possibility of moving to the US once the deal was concluded, but Olivier hadn’t come to any conclusions yet. His au pair, Genevieve, would likely give him some input on that decision later on once she was a little more incorporated into the family.
Olivier glanced at the clock again. It was almost time for the call he had to make, to start the process. He felt the familiar sensation of his heart beating just a bit faster, anticipating the challenge of the work ahead of him. Olivier had begun thinking about retirement when his wife had become pregnant with their daughter; after she had passed away, though, he’d focused on his work to get him through the grief—that and their daughter had been the only things he’d had to hold onto.
But he was intelligent enough to recognize that in the line of work he was in, the risks only got bigger, never smaller. He would have to retire from the field at some point or risk disgracing himself and losing his daughter everything. Olivier sipped from a glass of Salvetat and checked that his internet connection was strong. He had to make the call over Skype— not only because it was to the US, but also because he didn’t especially want the added risk of anyone in the French government having easy means to retrieve what he was talking about.
The odd, digital chiming came over the speakers, announcing that the call was coming in, and Olivier clicked to accept it. “Hello,” he said, as soon as the screen showed that the call had connected.
“Good afternoon,” the man on the other end of the line said. “I trust that you’ve had an opportunity to review the paperwork I sent you?” Olivier took a moment to make sure he understood what the man, with his slightly odd accent, had said.
“Yes, I have looked at them,” Olivier said.
“Do you think you’ll be able to do the job?” Olivier considered that for the last time. He could still—in theory—back out. He knew enough to understand that if he went any deeper, he wouldn’t be able to back out and until the man on the other end of the call had asked the question, he’d been more or less certain he would go through with it. It wasn’t a question of ability; it was merely the risk involved.
“Yes, I believe I can do the job well,” Olivier said, thinking about the killing he stood to make from the deal that he was committing to. More than enough to ensure that his daughter had everything she could ever want and need during her childhood and into adulthood, enough to leave him with a comfortable living after she’d established herself. He was already wealthy—this would just make sure that there was nothing that could shake that wealth.
“I am glad we have an agreement on this,” the man said. “With your agreement, I can send you the paperwork outlining more details of the deal.” Olivier puzzled through that phrasing for a moment, checking it against the words and phrases he knew in English. He’d begun brushing up long before Genevieve had arrived, intent on improving from what he could remember from school, but the language was so slippery.
“I would like to see the further documents,” Olivier said, parsing through the meaning of what the man had said to the basic sense of it. He would have to talk to Genevieve soon about more English lessons—it was clear to him that his knowledge of the language wasn’t as strong as it would need to be to pull off the job he had in mind, much less what he intended for afterward.
“I am sending them now,” the man told him. “I’ll check in with you in a few days, and we’ll begin planning.”
“That sounds reasonable,” Olivier said. His computer pinged to let him know that an email had come in. He switched away from Skype to check that it was the email in question and saw the blocked email address, the urgent marker, and the attachments. His computer security would be able to handle any possible viruses or keyloggers—anything that might point to the job being a scam on him—so there was not much to worry about on that score. “I will review the information and speak again soon.”
“I sent my phone number in the email,” the man explained. “It’s an untraceable phone, secure line and all that. Send an email to set a time for us to call—I don’t like to be caught unawares.”
“I can do that,” Olivier said, enunciating the “th” sound carefully. He knew, all too well, that he had the same tendency that most French people had to pronounce that strange sound as a Z. “I will be in touch.” The call ended shortly afterward, with no discussion of the material that Olivier had so far looked over; he hadn’t suspected that there would be.
He opened up the documents that the man had sent him in the new email and waited for his security systems to scan them all before getting into the meat of them. Olivier had taught himself some of the complicated financial terminology that existed in English, but he pulled up his French-to-English dictionary on his computer just in case, to make sure he understood all of what he was reading.
After a few minutes’ perusal, he knew that it just wasn’t going to be possible to be entirely sure he understood. The legalese was too complicated; he was reasonably sure that it would be difficult even for a native English speaker to understand, much less someone coming to the language as a second one. Olivier sighed and thought about the American woman he had hired. How much could he afford to trust her? He was paying her generously, and had housed her in better luxury than almost any au pair would ever expect--but the situation was delicate, and if he let her read too much into his affairs, she might go to the government--either of her own country, or of France--with what she knew. She might use it to blackmail him, even.
But there was no way around it; the language was just that little bit beyond his comprehension, and he would need help. Of course, Olivier reminded himself, the paperwork he had now was just for some transfers of sums into financial accounts, some business incorporation; there was nothing that Genevieve might seize on as being a problem. He set it aside and looked at the original information he’d gotten from a friend of a friend, all trusted, that had led him to the job he was about to take on.
Olivier checked the time and realized that his new nanny and his daughter would be coming back soon. He closed out the forms on his computer, made sure there was nothing hanging around on his desk that could be a risk to read, and thought about what they would do for dinner. Genevieve had said that she could cook, but thus far he hadn’t seen much of her skills—Mathilde was very easy to please, and it had only been about a week since the new nanny’s arrival. He considered some of the restaurants in town and decided he would leave it up to the woman herself whether they would dine in or eat outside of the home.
“Papa! Papa!” Olivier heard his daughter calling out from the entryway of the house and hastened his steps out of his office, brushing imaginary lint off of his pants as he stepped away from the closed door.
“Ma fille! Comment vas-tu? How are you both?” He looked from his daughter to Genevieve and felt the brief, transitory flush of heat through his body at the sight of the woman. There was no question that she was beautiful, even beyond the exotic aspect of being American. Her style was simple, elegant, professional, and Olivier wondered a bit at her background, beyond what she had put on her resume.
“We had a wonderful time,” Genevieve said. “And Mathilde has had a pain au chocolat.”
“How delicious! I wish I had had a pain au chocolat,” Olivier said, reaching down to scoop his daughter up and hold her close. “Would you rather eat at home this evening, or
at a restaurant?” Genevieve glanced at Mathilde, and then Olivier watched as she considered the question.
“I think I would like to cook something tonight,” Genevieve said. “The grocery store should be open for a while longer, shouldn’t it?”
“Grocery store?” Olivier frowned at the unfamiliar term.
“Ah...hm.” Genevieve pressed her lips together and thought for a moment. “Supermarché?”
“Ah oui! Monoprix is open until nine at night,” Olivier said. “We can get whatever you may need there.”
“Is there anything that Mathilde definitely won’t eat?” Genevieve looked at his daughter, and Olivier smiled fondly.
“Mathilde will eat anything other than escargot, or very smelly cheese,” he said.
“How does pasta sound?”
Olivier smiled again. “I would love that,” he replied.
Chapter Five
Genevieve wasn’t sure why she felt as if all the nerves in her body had taken up a low, steady kind of tingle, but she liked the feeling. As she walked through Monoprix with Olivier and Mathilde, it was almost like something out of a fantasy: a life that she would never have expected of herself in a million years, even when she’d made the choice to abandon her own life a few months before. Even in that life, with a husband-to-be, Gen had never really imagined herself as having the kind of leisure time to browse the local grocery store with her husband and child, pausing to examine the produce and checking sections that weren’t even relevant to her recipe.
Of course, Olivier wasn’t her husband, and Mathilde wasn’t her child, but there was still a feeling in the air between them of being a little family, and Gen could see that everyone around them seemed to assume it was something of that nature. Of course, the town she’d moved to was a small one, so it wasn’t unlikely that everyone knew her as Mathilde’s au pair rather than any kind of love interest of Olivier’s, but most people seemed generally approving.
Genevieve picked up and put down items, puzzling through the labels and adding little notes to herself on vocabulary. “Ah, it must be strange, seeing everything in French,” Olivier commented after she’d frowned in confusion at a label for what she eventually figured out was a canned meat product.
“Part of it is that the labels are in another language,” Genevieve explained. “Part of it is that you have some things we simply don’t have.”
“Maybe it would be a good time to work on English?” Olivier flashed a quick smile that made something inside of Genevieve almost twitch with anticipation. “You can tell us all the English words for things you know here.” Genevieve chuckled and picked up a can of tuna, glancing at the label.
“Well, ‘thon’ is tuna in English,” Genevieve said, showing both Olivier and Mathilde the label. “This one says… pointe de citron, which in English would be ‘lemon zest’ or ‘dash of lemon.'"
“Ah, oui,” Olivier said. “I remember that ‘citron’ is ‘lemon,’ but you also have the word citron in English, don’t you?”
Genevieve nodded. “If I’m remembering right, it refers to another citrus fruit.” Olivier half-frowned in confusion at the term. “Citrus--like oranges, grapefruits, lemons, limes…”
“Ah! In French, those are called ‘agrumes,’” Olivier said. Genevieve nodded. “I have always been wondering: why is it you call it ‘grapefruit’?” Genevieve smiled at that.
“Well it’s no more ridiculous a name than ‘pamplemousse,’” she countered. “I think I remember that it’s because they grow in clusters, and all hanging together they look like bunches of grapes.” Olivier nodded, looking as though he was actually interested in the information.
“Why are there different names for things?” Mathilde looked up at Genevieve with her big, dark eyes, her tiny cupid’s bow mouth not quite frowning.
“Well, that’s kind of complicated,” Genevieve said. “In some cases, it’s because different groups of people with different languages discovered things at different times, and came up with different names for them. In other cases, it’s because how one language thinks something should be named is different from how another language does.” Mathilde considered that for a moment, glancing around the store idly as she processed the information.
“Sometimes I wonder where she gets these questions from,” Olivier observed as they moved to another part of the store.
“Oh, kids are great for questions, all around,” Genevieve said. “They don’t have it drilled into them yet that things are a certain way, so they just want to know why for everything.”
“This is true,” Olivier agreed. “I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we could keep that as we...comment dit? Grandir? Become adult?”
“Grow up?” Genevieve suggested.
“Something like this, yes,” Olivier agreed.
“I think some of us do,” Genevieve mused. “That is where we get our artists, is it not?” Olivier chuckled.
“That is a good point,” he agreed.
They moved on and gradually Gen accumulated the things she would need for the pasta she wanted to make. As they wandered the aisles, she and Olivier compared vocabulary, tutoring each other: Gen teaching Olivier the English words for things he wasn’t sure of, Olivier teaching Gen the meaning of some of the labels surrounding them—if, occasionally, in slightly stilted terms. Gradually, Gen gathered up what she needed, adding it to the cloth bag she’d brought with her to carry groceries in: spaghetti rigate, canned tomatoes, capers, anchovies, parmesan cheese, olives.
“We should get the bread from the boulangerie instead of here,” Olivier remarked. “Monoprix has many good things, but the bread is not as good here--and it’s more expensive.”
He bought a bottle of wine to go with their meal, and they paused in the aperitif section to pick out a few things to eat while they cooked the meal: salmon rillettes with chives and lemon, eggplant dip, and marinated octopus. Genevieve looked from the somewhat pricey pre-dinner snacks to the five-year-old and wondered if Mathilde wouldn’t rather have some cheese or grapes.
“Are you sure Mathilde will eat any of this?”
“Elle aime bien les rillettes,” Olivier said. “C’est vrai, ma petite?” The idea of a five-year-old enjoying what amounted to a classier salmon spread was a little strange to Genevieve, but Mathilde nodded eagerly.
“Yes! I like them,” Mathilde said. “I like the tasty fishes.”
“In this case, you would say ‘it,' because rillettes is not plural in English,” Genevieve reminded the girl absently. “And the plural for fish in English is...well, strangely enough, it’s fish.”
“But why?” Mathilde scowled slightly in confusion.
“That I don’t have an answer for,” Genevieve said. “It’s like how for some things in French, the only reason anyone ever gives you is ‘it sounds better that way.'" Olivier snorted in amusement at that.
“It is a thing that you understand because you learned it that way,” Olivier suggested. “Same as—ah—things being masculine or feminine in French.”
“Oh god, yes,” Genevieve agreed. “And I am fairly certain I will never get the hang of that.” Olivier chuckled.
“Every English speaker I have known has not been able to,” he said. “Do not feel bad.”
“Masculin et feminin?’ Mathilde looked from Genevieve to Olivier, her eyes questioning.
“Like we say ‘le’ and ‘la,'" Olivier explained. “Ceci n’existe pas en anglais.” Genevieve tried to imagine what English would be like with gendered nouns—and finally couldn’t. People, animals, living things could be male or female, but it was hard to imagine a table being feminine, or a jar being masculine.
“Everything except for people, or individual animals, is without gender,” Genevieve added. “It’s always the same.” Mathilde absorbed this with a little bit of confusion but eventually shrugged it off, and the three stopped in the
produce section for some fruit before finishing their grocery run.
As they stepped back out into the street to walk back to Olivier’s house, Genevieve couldn’t help but smile, glancing up at the apartments above. There was something utterly timeless about the town she had come to--and she knew from trips to Paris, Berlin, and other places in Europe when she’d been younger that this quality existed across the continent. There were places in nearby Rouen that were still marked with gunfire from World War 2, a place where a church had once stood and now only a single wall remained; but it remained, kept preserved just as much as the cathedral there, a testament to memory.
“I believe you like it here; is it not so?” Genevieve stirred herself out of her distraction and glanced at her boss.
“I do,” she said. “It’s… it’s such a cliché to say that it’s like a storybook, but you just don’t see things like this in the US.”
“Your country is much younger,” Olivier pointed out.
“Even still,” Genevieve countered. “We don’t have very many buildings that are as old as the country itself. We don’t have houses or apartments that are from that time—not really.”
“Why not?” Mathilde wanted to know.
“Because people think they’re not safe after a certain time,” Genevieve explained. “Of course, a lot of times they were built to be temporary in the first place.”
“Here, we build things more to last—or at least, that used to be the way,” Olivier mused, as they walked up the cobbled street together. Mathilde, like most children her age in France, had already been taught to follow closely without having to have her hand held constantly. On the other side of the street, Genevieve saw a mother with a stroller and another child, maybe a year or two older than her charge, following along on a scooter, only a few steps behind.
