“Is that French too?”
“No, that’s Latin. And you can ask for the other guy too, the African.”
The Giant. Him I wouldn’t mind talking to, but of course, I don’t even know his name.
“You do it. You’re better at all that than me.”
“What you on about? I studied Spanish.”
“I just mean you’re better at voices, pretending.”
“I’ve seen you do Rosalind. And you spent a day playing Lulu, and you’re currently masquerading as a pre-med student to your parents.”
I look down, pick at my nail. “That just makes me a liar.”
“No it doesn’t. You’re just trying on different identities, like everyone in those Shakespeare plays. And the people we pretend at, they’re already in us. That’s why we pretend them in the first place.”
_ _ _
Kali is taking first-year French, so I ask her, as casually as possible, how one might ask for Céline or a Senegalese bartender whose brother lives in Rochester. At first she looks at me, shocked. It’s probably the first time I’ve asked her something more involved than “Are these socks yours?” since school started.
“Well, that would depend on lots of factors,” she says. “Who are these people? What is your relationship to them? French is a language of nuance.”
“Um, can’t they just be people I’m wanting to get on the phone?”
Kali narrows her eyes at me, turns back to her work. “Try an online translation program.”
I take a deep breath, sigh out a gust. “Fine. They are, respectively, a total bitchy beauty and a really nice guy I met once. They both work at some Parisian night club, and I feel like they might hold the key to my . . . my happiness. Does that help you with your nuance?”
Kali closes her textbook and turns to me. “Yes. And no.” She grabs a piece of paper and taps it against her chin. “Do you happen to know the brother from Rochester’s name?”
I shake my head. “He told it to me once, really fast. Why?”
She shrugs. “Just seems if you had it, you could track him down in Rochester and then find his brother.”
“Oh, my God, I didn’t even think of that. Maybe I can remember it and try that too. Thank you.”
“Amazing things happen when you ask for help.” She gives me a pointed look.
“Do you want to know the whole story?”
Her raised eyebrow says Do pigs like mud?
So I tell her, Kali, the unlikeliest of confidantes, a brief version of the saga.
“Oh. My. God. So that explains it.”
“Explains what?”
“Why you have been such a loner, always saying no to us. We thought you hated us.”
“What? No! I don’t hate you. I just felt like a reject and felt so bad you guys got stuck with me.”
Kali rolls her eyes. “I broke up with my boyfriend right before I got here, and Jenn split with her girlfriend. Why do you think I have so many pictures of Buster? Everyone was feeling sad and homesick. That’s why we partied so much.”
I shake my head. I didn’t know. I didn’t think to know. And then I laugh. “I’ve had the same best friend since I was seven. She’s the only girlfriend I’ve ever really hung out with, so it’s like I missed the integral years of learning how to be friends with people.”
“You missed nothing. Unless you missed kindergarten too.”
I stare at her helplessly. Of course I went to kindergarten.
“If you went to kindergarten, you learned how to make friends. It’s like the first thing they teach you.” She stares at me. “To make a friend . . .” she begins.
“You have to be a friend,” I finish, remembering the saying I was taught in Mrs. Finn’s class. Or maybe it was from Barney.
She smiles as she picks up the pen. “I think it’ll be simpler if you just ask for this Céline chick and the bartender from Senegal, leave out the brother, because how many Senegalese bartenders are there? Then if you get the bartender, you can ask if he has a brother in Rochester.”
“Roché Estair,” I correct. “That’s what he called it.”
“I can see why. It sounds much classier that way. Here.” She hands me a piece of paper. Je voudrais parler à Céline ou au barman qui vient du Senegal, s’il vous plait. She has written both the French and the phonetic translations. “That’s how you ask for them in French. If you want help making the calls, let me know. Friends do that.”
Je voudrais parler à Céline ou au barman qui vient du Senegal, s’il vous plait. One week later, I’ve uttered this phrase so many times—first to practice, then in a series of increasingly depressing phone calls—that I swear I’m saying it in my sleep. I make twenty-three phone calls. Je voudrais parler à Céline ou au barman qui vient du Senegal, s’il vous plait. . . . That’s what I say. And then one of three things happens: One, I get hung up on. Two, I get some form of non—and then hung up on. Those I cross off the list, a definitive no. But three is when the people launch into turbo-French, to which I am helpless to respond. Céline? Barman? Senegal? I repeat into the receiver, the words sinking like defective life rafts. I have no idea what these people are saying. Maybe they’re saying Céline and the Giant are at lunch but will be back soon. Or maybe they’re saying that Céline is here but she’s downstairs having sex with a tall Dutchman.
I take Kali up on her offer of help, and sometimes she can suss out that there is no Céline, no Senegalese bartender, but more often than not, she’s as baffled as I am. Meanwhile, she and Dee start Googling every potential Senegalese name in Rochester. We make a few embarrassing calls but come up empty.
After the twenty-fourth miserable phone call, I run out of nightclubs anywhere in the vicinity of Gare du Nord. Then I remember the name of the band on the T-shirt Céline had in the club, the one she gave to Willem—and me. I Google Sous ou Sur and look up all their tour dates. But if they played at Céline’s nightclub, it was a long time ago, because now they’re apparently broken up.
By this point, more than three weeks have passed since I mailed my letter, so I’m losing hope on that front too. The chances of finding him, never all that great, dim. But the strangest thing is, that feeling of rightness, it doesn’t. If anything, it grows brighter.
_ _ _
“How’s your search for Sebastian going?” Professor Glenny calls after class one day as we’re lining up to get our Cymbeline papers back. The groupies all look at me with envy. Ever since I told him about Guerrilla Will, he has a newfound respect for me. And, of course, he’s always loved Dee.
“Sort of dried up,” I tell him. “No more leads.”
He grins. “Always more leads. What is it the detectives in film always say? ‘Gotta think outside the box.’” He says the last part in a terrible New York accent. He hands me my paper. “Nice work.”