Free The Origin of Species by Nino Ricci Page A

Berlitz?”
    He was taken off guard.
    “It’s not so bad,” he said, not knowing if he was allowed to reveal such things. But when he named the amount, Félix whistled through his teeth.
    “Not bad for
them
, I suppose. We pay them three times as much.”
    Alex would never have guessed the markup was so high. Who would pay such sums, for the likes of him? He felt devalued in Félix’s eyes, revealed for the Berlitz cog he truly was.
    Félix had yet to touch his beer.
    “Can’t you make more on your own?”
    “I suppose. I’d have to find the students.”
    “Ah.”
    It wasn’t like Félix, this sort of familiarity.
    “I have a proposition,” he said. “Feel free to refuse it.”
    Alex felt the thump again.
    “It’s very simple. We continue our lessons, the same as before, except I pay you directly. Just that.”
    Alex wasn’t sure what he was hearing. This, at bottom, was why Mme Hertz ringed her people around with proscriptions, to prevent the formation of exactly these sorts of cabals.
    The alarm bells were going off in his head: if he was found out, he’d be dumped at once. But what was in it for Félix? Just saving a few bucks?
    “I’d give the same fee, of course,” Félix added.
    “You mean what I get now?”
    “No. What we pay.”
    It took Alex an instant to digest this.
    “That seems a lot.”
    Félix shrugged.
    “It’s what we pay them, why should it be less? Then for me it means to get away from that awful place. From that woman.”
    Alex’s greed had already reared up to shoulder his doubts aside. It didn’t make any sense, really, that kind of cash, just to sit parsing phrases like
pie in the sky
and
let the cat out of the bag
. But all he could see were those dollars piling up, hour after hour.
    “It’s very generous of you,” he said warily.
    “Not so generous. It’s the company that pays.”
    Alex was on eggshells after that, afraid of saying anything to compromise Félix’s misplaced faith in him. They worked out the details, arranging to meet at Félix’s home in Outremont. Twice a week; two hours a session. Alex would be making from Félix alone as much as all his Berlitz hours combined, enough to cover the whole of his rent.
    “We’ll say nothing to the school, of course,” Félix said. “Just between us.”
    The clouds of the morning had returned by the time they left the pub and a light drizzle had started up.
Chernobyl
, Alex thought, but thatseemed far from him now. The lights of the traffic on St. Catherine and the neon of the shops lustered against the wet.
    They ducked under an awning at the corner to say their goodbyes.
    “So you have the summer to relax now, I suppose,” Félix said. “From your studies, I mean.”
    But all Alex saw was his dissertation looming before him like the wall of a cliff.
    “I’ve finished my classes, at least. I’m having a party tomorrow to celebrate.”
    “Ah.
Bonne fête, alors
.”
    There was a touch of embarrassment in Félix’s voice, as if he felt it unseemly to speak of a pleasure he was excluded from.
    “You could come, if you wanted. I mean, it’s just other students and so on.”
    He felt foolish. He hoped he hadn’t insulted the man with his presumption.
    “It’s very kind of you,” Félix said. The awkwardness between them was palpable. “Of course, if you wish it. If it’s not any trouble.”
    Alex had assumed he would simply make his excuses—surely he had his own life to attend to. It seemed they had fallen into another of those protocols he didn’t know the rules of, and he was stuck giving a time, directions, an address.
    “Until tomorrow, then,” Félix said, his hand wet from the rain when it took Alex’s.
    Alex waited until Félix had disappeared around the corner toward the metro and lit up a cigarette. For some reason his heart was racing, as if he had embarked on some quest or joined the Resistance rather than simply signing up for a bit of under-the-table teaching work. He caught a smell in