Free Juliet Was a Surprise by Gaston Bill Page A

Mrs. Robertson” with a sadly knowing tilt of the head. At first she thought it kind when Bill’s colleagues insisted they take on his probate, assuring her they knew estate law, they were not just entertainment law, God no, they did that only because it was lucrative and, well, entertaining. Bill called it contract law, because that is what it was; they specialized in media, which meant music and films and television. At that party upstairs he said, “Weather Girl, meet Entertainment Lawyer. Nonsense, meet Oxymoron,” even as they shook hands. She did not understand what he had said until later. By then she saw his endless cynicism, and how it was excused by all because he was just as cynical about himself.
    The elevator is empty and Chantal presses the silly 14 that should be 13. At that same party Bill talked her out of becoming a “meteorologist,” the label her station was adopting. Talked her out of it while seducing her at the same time. First he asked if they still said vachement all the time in France. Shesaid not so much as her parents’ generation had, a gentle dig at his age. Too bad, he said. I mean, it means “cow-size.” It’s the best expression I’ve ever heard. It’s vachement fou , non ? Then he told her she could not be a meteorologist. Everybody already knows the term is fake. That same stupid weatherman is suddenly a meteorologist? It’s worse for you, he said. It’s an insult. You’re there reading the weather because you’re exactly the person everybody wants to look at and wants to hear. You’re there because you’re perfect. He said this with a small shrug. Pretending you’re a scientist is demeaning. Insist against it, he said, adding, It’s cow-size stupid. He walked off with both their glasses to get them fresh drinks, assuming she had not had enough of him. She watched Bill go and watched him at the bar, wondering at his odd ugliness and large grace and if maybe he were gay. She found out when he came on to her ten minutes later, right after his twenty-second sketch of a dead marriage played out with his hands as if they were puppets. One of the hands was lying there dead and the other was humping all over it. Bill never smiled once. He did not care what you thought of him. No, that was not it—he would care deeply if you stopped liking him, but it would never make him change anything he said or did. He asked if she wanted to “take in some gourmet air” out on the balcony. When she saw his humble regard for the vista of city lights, which he seemed to find enigmatic and which of course was his only mystical firmament, she thought she could make this man content. And she was partly right. She did fight successfully against becoming a meteorologist for another two years. Her segment stayed, simply, “The Weather, with Chantal.”
    At number 14 she departs the elevator with her heart in her throat and a piano version of a Beatles song tinkling behind her. “Michelle,” their French one. Bill once told her that elevator music was the true white heart of North American culture. She continues to hear too clearly so much of what he said to her.
    And continues to hear him fall down and die.
    SO SHE MUST UNDERSTAND HIM . It is funny that she does not know if he was funny . “Funny” being such a funny word. Maybe he was funny spelled w-e-i-r-d. Maybe she still does not know what funny is over here. Sometimes Bill’s small remark would make everyone laugh except her, or sometimes she was the only one to laugh. Maybe it was a French truc . In fact he often could remind her of a Frenchman. An old, typically clear-headed yet twisted man, a philosopher in the way all old Frenchmen are, islands unto themselves and always right despite the ocean of evidence to the contrary. It is true, his irony could grate. Once he quoted to her, “Irony is the sound of a bird in love with its cage,”