Thirst Read Free

turned to the children, and briskly told them, “Let’s go.”
    Melanie danced away from under her arm. She joined her sister to stare into the next display case, their
faces pressed against it. The idea of the dirt squeezing into the pores of the girls’ skin disgusted Nula. She glanced inside the case. It contained a variety of devices, accompanied by a text and diagrams that described their uses. She didn’t recognize a single one.
    “Look, here’s a playground!” she said desperately, glimpsing a patch of green outside an open door around the corner. “Don’t you want to play?”
    The two girls ignored her. Nula cooed, pleaded, and demanded—and finally bribed them outside with the promise of a bag of chestnuts. They held out for ice cream, and even then had to be shoved out the door. As they left, the Algerian winked at her.
     
    In the small park and sculpture garden adjacent to the museum, old men sitting on weathered benches gazed at the statuary; couples strolled arm and arm along the park’s paths. Nula bought the girls two chocolate esquimaux from a vendor. “We have a half hour,” she told them. “Have fun.”
    She might as well have told them to do the following week’s homework. “Play,” she said, and finally they sulked off down a tightly manicured row of rose hedges, ice cream already dripping to their fists.
    Nula was glad to be free of them for the moment. She could find a bench and relax, and perhaps enjoy an ice cream herself. The park was lovely. The flowers were in bloom, the day had turned fair. She wished they had come here from the start. The girls were too young for science.
    “Canadienne?”

    She turned and glared at the Algerian standing beside her. He grinned.
    “You’re a terrible man to fill their ears with such filth,” she told him.
    “Filth?”
    “The way you talk and they’re so young.”
    “But sex is part of life.”
    “I won’t have it,” Nula said, her temper rising.
    “There’s a proper age for everything, and a proper way of learning about this.”
    “What age, what way did you learn it?”
    “Sexology. I don’t believe there is such a thing.”
    “Are you a virgin?”
    “Yes, I am,” she said.
    The defiant admission made her flush. She had never told anyone this before. Yet she did not regret the confession: She enjoyed its recklessness. She had told the truth as if it didn’t matter.
    The Algerian merely nodded his head in a professional manner.
    “Have you a boyfriend?”
    “Go away.”
    “It is best,” he said pleasantly, “that the first time be with someone who understands the necessary gentleness and is also very expert.”
    “The first time will be with someone I love.”
    The Algerian’s shrug was nearly Gallic. “Why begin love with anxiety and frustration?”
    “Where I come from, people look for romance. You don’t study that, do you?”
    “On the contrary—”

    “If you don’t go I’m calling the police. There’s a guard over there. Are your residency papers in order?”
    Nula was looking directly into the Algerian’s face as she said this, but she missed the moment his expression changed. He still wore a smile, but his face had hardened around it, leaving his smile not too far from a grimace. The transformation revealed that he was hardly older than she was. The ridiculous cap on his head now looked like something he had to wear because he didn’t own another. The youth started to speak—a retort, a challenge, something fierce—but he interrupted himself to say, “I’m very regretful to have made a disturbance.”
    He abruptly turned, passed through the door into the museum, and disappeared around an exhibit devoted to venereal disease.
     
    The au pair strolled alone through the labyrinth of hedges and abstract statuary. She was angry at herself and embarrassed by her shrillness. She wished she hadn’t made the remark about the Algerian’s residence permit. There were many people in Paris who didn’t have