LITMIR.BIZ

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Charlotte was saying now, “I’d better run. I’m sorry I won’t be able to join you tonight.”

      “Me too.”

      “Duty calls.”

      “I know! Don’t worry about it. We all understand.”

      “I’ll be sorry to miss Jonathan’s reading.” Peter’s best friend, Jonathan Speedwell, was a writer, and he was giving a reading that night from his new book of stories. Peter and Charlotte had planned to go to it and have dinner with Jonathan and his wife afterward. But Charlotte had to go to an event for her work. Charlotte liked Jonathan a lot and flirted with him in a girlish, free-spirited manner with which she did nothing else. “Did you see the review today in the paper?”

      As if Peter had time to read book reviews. “No,” he said. “Was there one?”

      “Oh, yes! I’ve got it right here. Let me read it to you—”

      “Charlotte—” Charlotte, I’ve got to make a call, Peter was about to say. The flashing numbers. Frankfurt. But he was too late.

      “Let’s see,” Charlotte said. “Oh, here we are. ‘With Intaglio, his new collection of short stories, Jonathan Speedwell once again demonstrates triumphantly that he is among our most potent younger voices writing today. In luminous silverpoint prose, he deftly renders the struggle of men and women desperate to maintain their purchase on life …’”

      Deftly, Peter thought. With Jonathan it was always “deftly.”

      “‘… But if there is one quality that truly marks Mr. Speedwell as a writer of distinction,’” Charlotte continued, “‘it is his deep compassion for his characters.’”

      Christ. Again, the compassion-for-his-characters thing. Peter could not understand why it was such a big deal for a writer to have compassion for his characters, as opposed to, say, real people.

      “‘In perhaps his most finely wrought tale, “The Copse …”’ Well, I won’t read you the whole thing. But isn’t it terrific?”

      “Yes.”

      “He must be very pleased. Will you congratulate him for me?”

      “Of course.” Charlotte was an earnest person whose demeanor generally was almost grave. Peter imagined what she would be like as she congratulated Jonathan—winsome, crinkling her eyes and grinning.

      “He’s still pleased about being best man, isn’t he?”

      “Sure. I told you, the only problem is, he wants to give me away.”

      “Oh.” Charlotte’s mind snagged momentarily on the word “problem.” Then she got it. “Oh! Yes. You said that. How funny.”

      “Charlotte—”

      “Uh-oh, that’s my other line. Sorry, I’d better take that. Thanks for your help. Have fun tonight. Call me.”

      “Sure, right, okay. Bye.”

      Throughout this conversation, Peter’s other phone lines had quietly burbled again and again. The black diamond seemed to become denser and denser and heavier and heavier with the weight of added messages. Staring at his screens, he saw more e-mails arrive and numbers blip and charts jitter. As usual, the clock in the upper right-hand corner barely seemed to change when he was staring at it, but then when he looked away and checked it again, he was shocked to see how far it had advanced. Still, Peter didn’t begrudge Charlotte this expenditure of his time at a pressing moment of his day. Those were the phone calls that brides made two weeks before the wedding, and they were ones a decent bridegroom would tolerate. It was part of life. And, he supposed, it was part of life to be screwed over in your job once in a while. It was part of life to see your best friend have undeserved success. It was part of life, also, not to get the girl.

      Just in time, he reached Frankfurt.

      Why was Peter marrying Charlotte? Why was Charlotte marrying Peter? Charlotte worked in the New York office of L’Alliance Générale et Spécifique des Pays Francophones. The AGSPF fostered economic and cultural exchange among the French-speaking peoples of the world and tried to promote the French language and Francophone civilization in all places sadly suffering from their lack. Dogged and intelligent, Charlotte had mastered the politics of Chad (Djamous, the finance minister, was on the rise, though not supported by the Quay d’Orsay) and the diplomacy of Laos. She was, it seemed, always writing a report on intra-Francophone trade. There were lots of tables. In addition to this intellectual work, Charlotte also participated in the AGSPF’s busy social life: no minor Algerian poet could pass through New York without a reception. That’s what was happening tonight. Charlotte had to attend a dinner for a Belgian economist, who had appeared in town unexpectedly.

      For a time, Charlotte’s father had worked in the Paris office of a New York law firm and the family had moved there when Charlotte was seven. With this credential, she could legitimately make France her thing, which she proceeded to do. After her parents divorced, when she was sixteen, Charlotte’s father and her stepmother bought a small property in the countryside, where they went every summer and where Charlotte would visit. Charlotte majored in French and she spent two years in Paris after college.

      There she had had the requisite love affair with a Frenchman, with lots of tears. Maximilien-François-Marie-Isidore had been thirty-seven, an incredibly ancient and sophisticated age for Charlotte, then twenty-two. He was always lurking in the background, supposedly poised to swoop in and carry Charlotte back to Paris forever. That never seemed to happen, but on a regular basis, heavy-smoking, black-whiskered French friends—Héli, Valéry, Claude, Hilaire-Germain, Alexandre-César-Léopold, Gilles—would pass through New York. They would take Charlotte and Peter to obscure rock clubs and talk endlessly about American bands and films and writers whom Peter had never heard of. Of course, they all spoke English perfectly, and from time to time one or the other would engage Peter in conversation, while making it evident that he was merely doing so out of politeness.

      One requirement for Charlotte’s job was that she speak the language well, and she did, using all sorts of slang. Nevertheless, whenever she spoke it with a Frenchman, there was always the air that she was performing, an amateur-hour talent, rather than simply talking to someone. Whenever they went to a French restaurant, she engaged the staff in long conversations, and they were delighted. Peter—who had taken AP French!—sat there smiling uncomprehendingly for the most part. Eventually his existence would edge into the consciousness of the captain, and he would turn to Peter with an expectant smile.

      “Er …” Peter would say. “Pour commencer, je voudrais prendre aussi les moules” As soon as he heard Peters accent, the captains smile would disappear and he would adopt a manner of cold courtesy while Peter, losing his way grammatically, would give the rest of his order.

      “Very good, monsieur, and for the wine, shall I give you a moment to decide?” Okay, so he answered in English. Big deal. In fact, that suited Peter just fine, for somewhere deep in his Celtic-Anglo-Saxon bones, he believed that it was improper for any real man to speak French.

      Another requirement of Charlotte’s job was that she dress well despite her low pay. Charlotte did dress well, if by “well” one meant fairly expensively. Her clothes were fashionable and of good quality. Yet she did not dress well, really. There always seemed to be too many flaps or folds or layers or lappets or something. She always seemed to be reaching for an effect, an effect that was neither achieved nor worth achieving and one that, even if those conditions were met, would not show Charlotte off to her best advantage. When Peter thought about Charlotte’s clothes, her stepmother, Julia, always came to mind. She was ten years older than Charlotte and was naturally chic, but as far as Peter could tell she mostly wore a skirt, cardigan, and pearls. Charlotte had always cast Julia in the role of her guide in the ways of the world. Why not simply copy Julia’s clothes? But Charlotte, with no intuitive sense of these things, was blind to the example her mentor set for her.

      As with Charlotte’s clothes, so with her grooming. It was always, somehow, just

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