French Lessons

“You’re not in love. You’re a wonderful flirt, though. You can put that on your resume.”

“Isn’t it possible that it’s love?”

“What about your French tutor? Aren’t you in love with her?”

“She has Philippe. I was just a diversion.”

“But you love her. You could love her.”

“I could love you.”

“No. It’s just a foolish question. I drank too much wine. Let’s find a hair stylist. I can’t go to Provence looking like a teenager.”

Josie’s hair is long and straight. She carries a clip in her purse, and when she’s warm she twists her hair and pins it to the top of her head. When she lets it down it falls to the middle of her back, a horse’s mane of deep chestnut that swings as she walks. She has never cut her hair more than a few inches.

They walk across the esplanade des Invalides and Nico reaches up and runs his fingers through her hair. She looks at him, surprised. It’s as intimate a touch as she’s felt in weeks. It stirs her and then angers her. She doesn’t want to remember.

“It’s a nuisance,” she says, tossing her head and stepping away from his hand. “I’m done with all that.”

“A shame,” Nico says.

“Voila,” Josie calls after they’ve turned onto rue Saint-Dominique. She points across the street. “Perfect.” It’s a small salon, with a sign in the window that promises a shampooing et coupe for twenty-five euros. “On y va.”

Nico follows her. Josie has taken charge of the tour now-Nico follows a half step behind. She pushes open the door of the salon, which is all bright lights and gleaming chrome surfaces with techno music pounding, and greets the young woman at the desk. The woman’s hair is chartreuse and spiky. Maybe this isn’t the place to get a grown-up haircut after all.

“I’d like a cut,” Josie tells the woman in French. “I don’t have an appointment.”

“I can do it,” the young woman says, and Josie wonders for a brief moment if she’s really a stylist or if everyone’s out to lunch and the assistant wants to make some extra money on the side.

But soon enough Josie is draped in a robe, her hair is washed and combed, and she’s staring at herself in the mirror. She sees Nico standing behind her. The stylist asks what she wants and the music pounds in Josie’s ears.

“I want to look older and wiser,” Josie says. “I want to look like someone with a job and a boyfriend and a house in the country.”

“Non,” the woman says. “C’est pas possible.”

Josie looks at Nico as if she needs a translation. He shrugs. The woman starts cutting.

“Wait,” Josie says. “What are you going to do?”

“I will make you look like a movie star.”

“I don’t want to look like a movie star.”

All the while the woman’s fingers move at the speed of light and the click-click-click of the scissors reverberates in Josie’s ears. Hair drops to the floor in long clumps.

“Everyone wants to look like a movie star.”

“Which movie star?” Josie says weakly. She’s feeling nauseated again and this time it has nothing to do with the pregnancy.

“Where are you from?” the woman asks.

“The United States.”

“You speak French. Americans don’t speak French.”

“Some of us do.”

“There is an American movie star filming in Paris today. On the Pont des Arts in about an hour. We’re closing the shop soon. My receptionist already left to get a good spot.”

“Who is it?” Josie asks.

“Dana Hurley. She is incredibly sexy, no?”

“You’re cutting too much hair,” Nico tells the stylist.

“Who are you? The boyfriend?”

“No,” Josie says.

“Yes,” Nico says.

Josie glares at him.

“Alors,” the stylist tells Josie.

Josie closes her eyes and feels the young woman’s hands ruffle her hair. She feels light, weightless, as if she might float away.

“Does Dana Hurley have short hair?” she asks, her eyes still closed.

“Yes,” the stylist says. “Oh, I don’t know. They change their hair so often. In her last film she had a bob. It doesn’t matter what she does with her hair-she is someone I want to fuck.”

“She’s old, isn’t she?” Nico asks.

Josie hears them as if they’re far away. With her eyes closed and the snip of the scissors in her ear, the pounding of the techno-pop in her bones, the sensation of air on her neck, she feels transported somehow. Maybe she’s on her way to becoming someone else.

“Oh, she must be forty-five or so, but she is the woman we all want to be. She is sexy and passionate and good in her skin. You know what I mean?”

Bien dans sa peau. Good in her skin, Josie thinks. I haven’t been good in my skin since the last night I spent with Simon.

“I don’t know,” Nico says. “I’ve never gone for the older woman thing.”

“That’s because most older women lose something,” the stylist says. “They lose their fuckability. They stop thinking about sex all the time and they think about jobs and country houses.”

Josie opens her eyes. She sees someone else in the mirror. Her hair frames her face and her eyes look wide, her mouth looks full. She looks older and younger-she looks wild and she doesn’t look scared.

“Oui, cherie?” the stylist says, leaning close. “See what I mean? You are a movie star, no?”

She was grading papers in her cottage late at night when the doorbell rang. She opened the door and saw Simon standing there in the porch light, his hair tousled, his dress shirt untucked from his pants. He looked at her, his expression dark and unfamiliar.

“What’s wrong?” she said.

He stepped in and pulled the door closed behind him. He pushed her up against the wall and pressed his mouth on hers.

His kiss was hard and insistent. He pushed his leg between her legs and she could feel the weight of him against her.

When his mouth moved away from hers he made a noise, something low and guttural.

He took both her hands in one of his and held them above her head, pressed hard against the wall. She heard her own voice say his name. His other hand slid under the band of her pajama bottoms and rubbed against her, urgently, while his leg pushed her legs farther apart. She was wet, and when she started to say something only a noise escaped her mouth and again his mouth was on hers.

He pushed her pajamas down and they tangled at her feet. She heard his hand pull at his belt, at the fly, and he lifted her up and she wrapped her legs around him and then he was inside her. He released her hands and she wrapped them around his back while he pressed her hard against the wall, each thrust pounding her back, pushing them closer. A painting on the wall rattled. She could feel him deep inside her and she wanted even more of him.

“Don’t stop,” she managed to say when he started to come and his orgasm kept rolling and their bodies, now slick with sweat, kept pounding together against the wall.

When he was done, he held her for a moment, and their hearts beat furiously against each other. They stepped out of their pants and he carried her to the bedroom, laid her down, and buried his face between her legs. She pressed the back of his head, arched her back, and came in waves that rolled on top of one another.

And then he was inside her again. He was still hard, but he held her still and they didn’t move, their bodies wet