She shook her head with distaste. He wondered if he had offended her in some way.
“I don’t like that,” she said, in explanation.
He sat up, the moment over. “I have to ask you something,” he said. “Why me?”
“It’s not about you. It’s about my husband.”
“I don’t understand.”
She shook her head as if to say, Of course you don’t understand.
“Tell me,” he said.
“Non. It’s time for you to go.”
As he dressed he said, “When do I get to see you again?”
She clucked at him and shooed him out the door.
That night, Jimmy had a dream that he and his son were fishing on Rapid Creek on a bright sunny day in early fall, catching firm, colorful rainbow trout on grasshopper flies. His son was dark like him but had Sophie’s long limbs, delicate features, and full mouth. Jimmy had to put his rod down and untangle his son’s line from bushes and branches while his son chattered at him in French and Lakota but not English, and Jimmy could understand every word.
“You’re a good boy,” Jimmy said, rubbing his son’s head.
The boy said, “He tuwa Ina he?” (Who is my mother?)
“Don’t be such a dumb fuck,” the cowboy said to Jimmy before taking a long pull of red wine from a bottle and handing it to Lyle. “You don’t want to see her again. Believe me, it’s for the best.”
“Yeah,” Lyle said, accepting the bottle, “don’t be such a dumb fuck.”
It was after midnight and the stock was fed and watered and all of the customers had cleared the area although a few stragglers still wandered through the rides and exhibits. Lyle, Jimmy, and a cowboy from Montana also named Lyle sat on hay bales in the dark as a mist began to fall. They were on their third bottle.
“Believe me,” Lyle from Montana said, “I been over here going on seven years. I married into them, for Pete’s sake. I even speak pretty passable French. But I’ll never be inside. They don’t let you in. You’re either French or you ain’t. That’s what folks don’t understand.”
Lyle said, “Listen to what the cowboy says, Jimmy.”
“I mean, I sort of amuse ’em,” Lyle from Montana said, “Monique’s relatives, and all. But it ain’t like America, where you can choose to be an American and, by God, you’re an American. It don’t matter what you do here, you can never be French.”
“I don’t want to be French,” Lyle said. “I just want to fuck their women.”
Lyle was on a roll, said, “I don’t even think they like each other very much, is the goofy thing. They turn on each other like goddamned coyotes all the time. But I think the thing is they hate everybody else even more.”
Jimmy said, “I really felt something with her. I think she did, too. Especially that first time.”
Lyle moaned and rolled his eyes. Lyle from Montana looked away.
Lyle said, “She was fucking herself through you. Take it for what it’s worth.”
Lyle from Montana said, “Hell, yes.”
Jimmy didn’t want to discuss it further with either Lyle. And he certainly didn’t want to tell them about the dream he kept having.
“Maybe you should go home,” Lyle said.
“Maybe I should,” Jimmy said angrily.
“I thought you were the smart one,” Lyle said. “Guess not.”
“Boys,” the cowboy said, slapping the thighs of his Wranglers and standing up, “I think it’s time for me to hit the trail.”
Sophie and Gabrielle were at the next reception at the American embassy, this one for the states of Oklahoma and Texas, whose guests frustrated Jimmy and Lyle by bringing a few of their own Indians, Cherokees.
“We ought to take those Cherokees downstairs and kick their asses,” Lyle said, glowering. “Look. Gabrielle is flirting with one of them, the way she keeps sashaying past him, fluttering her eyes. What a cow.”
Jimmy was wearing his beaded jacket, drinking a beer (he and Lyle had decided beer was an okay drink image-wise, as long as they didn’t pour it in a glass), trying not to stare at Sophie. She refused to acknowledge him, and he was hurt and angry.
“Leave it be,” Lyle said. “You had your fun. Move on.”
“I can’t just move on.”
“The hell you can’t.”
“I can’t,” Jimmy said, putting the beer aside and striding toward her.
As he approached her, she turned her head to him, her eyes warning him off behind a frozen smile.
“Sophie…”
“Hello,” she said, reaching out to shake his hand, her eyes telling him to leave. “Nice to meet you,” she said in English. Her casual dismissal enraged him, and he squeezed sharply on her hand, but she didn’t react.
“Please meet my husband,” she said through gritted teeth, but still with the smile. “Marcel. Marcel?”
A compact, stocky, dark man turned from another guest. Jimmy let go of her hand, but not fast enough that Marcel didn’t see the hard exchange. The next second told Jimmy everything.
Marcel’s eyes flashed from Jimmy’s hand to Jimmy’s face and clothes, then to Sophie, to her stomach, then back to Jimmy — where they hardened into cold black stones.
He knew everything except who it had been, Jimmy thought. And now he knew that.
Although conversations continued, champagne was drunk, and Ambassador Bob Westgate tapped the microphone to introduce his new guests, for Jimmy the world had suddenly shrunk and become superfluous and the only people in it were Sophie, Marcel, and his son, imprisoned inside her.
Sophie looked scared, as she had when they engaged the Middle Eastern men. She put her hand on Marcel’s arm. He shook it off violently, and she recoiled.
So this was about him, Jimmy realized. A way to spite him or get his attention. It was never about Jimmy, or Jimmy and Sophie. And maybe not about the baby, either.
Marcel took a step toward Jimmy, closing the space between them. He was four inches shorter than Jimmy, but his aura of malevolence more than made up for the difference. In a guttural voice, he ripped off a stream of words in French that reminded Jimmy of canvas tearing. Jimmy didn’t know the words, but he knew he’d been threatened.
Jimmy growled back, in Lakota, “Micinksi, tapi tonikja je?” (Son, how is your liver?)
Which made Marcel flinch, step back, and glare at Jimmy with unmistakable surprise.
And Sophie turned her attention from Marcel to Jimmy to Marcel to Jimmy. She didn’t step between them, but stayed at Marcel’s side. Making her choice.
Marcel eventually worked up a kind of superior, heavy-lidded smirk, grasped Sophie’s arm, and led her out of the room. Jimmy watched, his heart thumping so hard he wouldn’t have been surprised if his breastplate rattled, hoping Sophie would look back over her shoulder at him. When she did he saw in her eyes not reassurance but a look that shocked and scared him: pity, disgust.
“Wow,” Lyle said, suddenly next to him, “I think I know who he is now. He’s some kind of famous politician or gangster. I’ve seen him on TV. And I think he said you’re a dead man. Man, she played you, didn’t she?”
“I don’t understand,” Jimmy said.
“You never will. They live in their own little world, these people. I’ve tried to tell you that, dude.”
For the next two weeks, Jimmy didn’t leave their apartment except to go to the Wild West Show with Lyle and two cowboys who picked them up. Through the window, he watched leaves pop from buds on branches like green popcorn, felt the city turn from skeletal to lush, full, and shadowed. The bite vanished from the air and was replaced by sultry warmth and Parisian light that seemed more like set design than nature.