he’d feel his gag reflex kick in.
I guess it happens, doesn’t it, one bad experience and it puts you off a thing for life
.
Well, Peter, I’m not sure “bad experience” really captures the magnitude of the matter
.
He popped up to his apartment again to change and get his Berlitz book, not daring to risk the wrath of Fräulein Hertz if he showed up without it. From there it was a quick dash over to University to Berlitz’s beautifully corporate offices. Alex had always thought of Berlitz as some fusty Old World holdover, but politics had served it well in Quebec, where it did a brisk trade among anglophones getting francisized under the hated Bill 101 and among francophones who’d thumbed their noses at English in their youth and now couldn’t get by without it. Alex had been hired at breakneck speed: three days of training and then plopped in a tony classroom at the princely sum of eight seventy-three an hour before a select handful of students toting their combination-lock briefcases and Chanel handbags stuffed with Berlitz workbooks and pads and complimentary pens.
He had to suppress a thrill of pleasure whenever he entered the Berlitz offices. The hush; the smell of the air; the sense of having penetrated, however obliquely and under whatever false pretenses, the inner sanctum. He breezed past reception to avoid a sighting of Mme Hertz and toward the warren of classrooms. Through closed doors he caught the reassuring patter of the Method: question and response, the Berlitz catechism. The order of it, the mindlessness, was a balm after the chaos of St. Bart’s. A gulf divided this place from St. Bart’s and yet he knew that in his toady’s heart this was the work he took more seriously, as if St. Bart’s was just slumming, a time-waster, a sop.
Félix was already waiting for him in one of the big leather armchairs set out in the special room reserved for executive one-on-ones. He rose to take Alex’s hand as he came in, towering over him like a rebuke.
“I suppose today you give me the
coup de grâce
,” he said, with the undertone of deference that always put Alex on edge, so little had he done to earn it. Alex felt the flush of conflicted emotion rise up in him that Félix always stirred, a strange mix of attraction and its denial. He was only a businessman, after all, patrician and gray, always in those suits of his carefully styled to give a hint of the casual but which probably cost three times as much as the stereo Alex had begrudged Miguel.
He wasn’t wearing one today, though.
“Ah, yes, I’ve just come from home,” he said, as if to excuse himself, though he was dressed in a cashmere pullover and plush cords that still gave him the air of the scion of some old seigneurial line.
Six weeks now, Alex had been meeting with Félix, as often as three times a week. From the outset he’d decided Félix was exactly the sort of smug, chip-on-his-shoulder Quebecois that everyone west of Cornwall thought was the norm here: it was that Gallic manner of his, like a sudden chill in the room, as if it fell to Alex somehow to carry the full blame for their coming together. Alex had started their first class with his standard opener in these one-on-ones, asking about Félix’s work.
“I don’t want to talk about that, it’s very technical,” Félix had said tersely, and right off the tone between them had been set, and Alex had seen his entire lesson suddenly give way to empty space.
All through their early sessions there had been this strange tussle of foray and resistance, as if Alex were some student wasting Félix’s time for a school project. They’d chance onto a subject that showed promise, but then just when they’d reached a certain momentum Alex would manage to derail things with an ill-considered question or found himself floundering in the vast bogs of his own ignorance. Félix would grunt, he’d stare at his hands, then lapse into silence.
“Ah, well, yes,” he’d say
I guess it happens, doesn’t it, one bad experience and it puts you off a thing for life
.
Well, Peter, I’m not sure “bad experience” really captures the magnitude of the matter
.
He popped up to his apartment again to change and get his Berlitz book, not daring to risk the wrath of Fräulein Hertz if he showed up without it. From there it was a quick dash over to University to Berlitz’s beautifully corporate offices. Alex had always thought of Berlitz as some fusty Old World holdover, but politics had served it well in Quebec, where it did a brisk trade among anglophones getting francisized under the hated Bill 101 and among francophones who’d thumbed their noses at English in their youth and now couldn’t get by without it. Alex had been hired at breakneck speed: three days of training and then plopped in a tony classroom at the princely sum of eight seventy-three an hour before a select handful of students toting their combination-lock briefcases and Chanel handbags stuffed with Berlitz workbooks and pads and complimentary pens.
He had to suppress a thrill of pleasure whenever he entered the Berlitz offices. The hush; the smell of the air; the sense of having penetrated, however obliquely and under whatever false pretenses, the inner sanctum. He breezed past reception to avoid a sighting of Mme Hertz and toward the warren of classrooms. Through closed doors he caught the reassuring patter of the Method: question and response, the Berlitz catechism. The order of it, the mindlessness, was a balm after the chaos of St. Bart’s. A gulf divided this place from St. Bart’s and yet he knew that in his toady’s heart this was the work he took more seriously, as if St. Bart’s was just slumming, a time-waster, a sop.
Félix was already waiting for him in one of the big leather armchairs set out in the special room reserved for executive one-on-ones. He rose to take Alex’s hand as he came in, towering over him like a rebuke.
“I suppose today you give me the
coup de grâce
,” he said, with the undertone of deference that always put Alex on edge, so little had he done to earn it. Alex felt the flush of conflicted emotion rise up in him that Félix always stirred, a strange mix of attraction and its denial. He was only a businessman, after all, patrician and gray, always in those suits of his carefully styled to give a hint of the casual but which probably cost three times as much as the stereo Alex had begrudged Miguel.
He wasn’t wearing one today, though.
“Ah, yes, I’ve just come from home,” he said, as if to excuse himself, though he was dressed in a cashmere pullover and plush cords that still gave him the air of the scion of some old seigneurial line.
Six weeks now, Alex had been meeting with Félix, as often as three times a week. From the outset he’d decided Félix was exactly the sort of smug, chip-on-his-shoulder Quebecois that everyone west of Cornwall thought was the norm here: it was that Gallic manner of his, like a sudden chill in the room, as if it fell to Alex somehow to carry the full blame for their coming together. Alex had started their first class with his standard opener in these one-on-ones, asking about Félix’s work.
“I don’t want to talk about that, it’s very technical,” Félix had said tersely, and right off the tone between them had been set, and Alex had seen his entire lesson suddenly give way to empty space.
All through their early sessions there had been this strange tussle of foray and resistance, as if Alex were some student wasting Félix’s time for a school project. They’d chance onto a subject that showed promise, but then just when they’d reached a certain momentum Alex would manage to derail things with an ill-considered question or found himself floundering in the vast bogs of his own ignorance. Félix would grunt, he’d stare at his hands, then lapse into silence.
“Ah, well, yes,” he’d say
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