by Sarah Bess Jaffe

with apologies to Jean Eustache

I had some time to kill before the film screening, so I stopped at the library where my second ex-husband liked to work—not to see him, but because they had an excellent selection of foreign literature and I wanted to see how other translators had done what they did. I was working on a particularly tough volume and I couldn’t get a handle on the slang. In Mexican Spanish a strawberry means a snobby person, and in Argentinian Spanish a strawberry goes by another name entirely, so you can see how quickly things can get sticky. Especially if you want to pen a translation that folks will be reading in another hundred years, by which point I doubt anyone anywhere will have any strawberries at all, at least at the pace we’re going.

I walked into the library, a beautifully chandeliered library, with soaring arched ceilings someone took the time to detail, and polished wood shelves and gorgeous reams of paper that stunk of glue and new beginnings. My second ex-husband was always good at finding ways to surround himself with beautiful things, which is why we divorced. Beautiful things have a time and a place, but eventually I grew tired of finding them in my bed, especially the one who was also my student.

Of course, my second ex-husband was at the library because I suppose they’re both somewhat dusty and open to the public. He happened to look up as I entered the rare book atrium, and when he saw me his face lit up and he waved. I kissed my second ex-husband hello on both cheeks and told him I liked his new cologne, which was true. It smelled of bergamot! His taste has always been impeccable, even though he himself was highly peccable. The silver at his temples suited him. He invited me to sit down, but I told him I couldn’t stay long because I was on my way to meet my new boyfriend for a four-hour French film. My second ex-husband asked why and I just blinked at him. Because Ralph and I are together now, I told him, and my second ex-husband said no, he meant why would a film ever need to be that long, and I told him it was so that couples who aren’t doing so well could go out on the town without having to talk much and still want to have sex when they got home.

Before you go, said my second ex-husband, will I see you at Ethan’s graduation next month? I told him I’d be there, as I’d already promised I would, and reminded him I’d made the hotel reservations for all three of us and the dinner reservations, and ordered Ethan’s new furniture. I didn’t want our son to depend on the women in his life; I wanted him to stand on his own two feet, so I told him I’d pay his rent for a year after he got his philosophy degree, and that’s it. We were both very proud of Ethan, my second ex-husband and I.

I left the library and started walking up Broadway when I heard footsteps behind me and felt a tug on my coat. I turned to see my ex-boyfriend, looking a bit sweaty, wearing sunglasses although the weather didn’t call for them and two long silk scarves tied around his neck. I thought I’d find you here, said my ex-boyfriend. My ex-boyfriend was also my ex-student. He was twenty-five, and it was after seeing the way he lived, in that soulless apartment his mother paid for, with his mattress on the floor, that I decided my son would never live like that if I could help it. My ex-boyfriend didn’t have a couch or any chairs, and he would walk across that mattress in his motorcycle boots to put on records. He would lounge on the mattress smoking and sulking and texting his other girlfriends, and he never changed the sheets. I asked my ex-boyfriend what he was doing here and he told me he was here to win me back. He dug around in his jacket pocket and brought out a book. It was In Search of Lost Time, the book he’d been reading the entire time we were together but never seemed to finish. He told me to look inside, and there I saw an inscription that read, “To Madeleine, the woman who wakes me each night, running through my dreams.” Nightmares, more like, I told him. He asked if I had a moment to talk with him, and I told him I had to go, that I was meeting my new boyfriend for a four-hour French film and didn’t want to be late. That old fart, said my ex-boyfriend, because my new boyfriend Ralph was also my first ex-husband. I struck things back up with my first ex-husband after my ex-boyfriend stepped out on me but before we broke up, and my ex-boyfriend hadn’t taken things well at all.

My ex-boyfriend asked if he could at least walk with me, and when I didn’t answer he jogged alongside to keep stride with me and I didn’t tell him to stop. My ex-boyfriend told me that he still loved me, and that he knew I still loved him too, and that we needed to go through everything we went through so he could discover that he wanted to be with me all along. My ex-boyfriend told me he knew I didn’t love my new boyfriend, and when I assured him that I did, he told me to tell him to his face, so I looked him in the eyes through his affected little sunglasses and repeated myself. Please, my ex-boyfriend begged, can we just get a coffee and talk? There was a cafe on the corner, and I was about to sit through a four-hour French film, so I agreed. My ex-boyfriend told me he didn’t have any money, and I told him I did and I would pay. At the register he peered through his tiny sunglasses at the barista’s breasts and didn’t say thank you.

Outside with our lattes, my ex-boyfriend asked me if I would marry my new boyfriend if I loved him so much, and I told him I already had. My ex-boyfriend said he meant would I do it again, and I told him maybe. My ex-boyfriend said maybe meant I wasn’t serious, and if I wasn’t serious, he would wait for me. If I wasn’t serious about my new boyfriend, my ex-boyfriend said, he would marry me instead. I told him not to hold his breath.

When we reached the cinema, my ex-boyfriend and I embraced. He tried to kiss me, and I dipped my face away and walked inside, leaving his long scarves blowing in the breeze. Inside the theater, I watched the film and held Ralph’s hand, a wrinkled hand that had hurt me long ago and would probably hurt me again. The film was supposed to be a masterpiece. It was about an unemployed young man who had two girlfriends with jobs, and one ex-girlfriend with a job. For four hours the young man spoke and the girlfriends listened, their celluloid eyes shining. In the film, the young man refused to do dishes or answer direct questions, and the girlfriends got angry at him, but not so angry that they didn’t still want to have sex with him. Several people in the theater got up and left for the restroom or sustenance or fresh air. By the end of the film, both girlfriends threw up, but nobody told the young man to stop talking. The film was about love as a test of endurance, or perhaps a game of chicken.

Isn’t it brilliant, Ralph asked me, and I had the strangest feeling that I must have seen this film somewhere before.

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