Homer & Langley

They built this park in the nineteenth century, I said. Before the city was there to surround it. Nature was everywhere, who would have thought about it coming to an end?

Nobody, she said. I have been shown the underground silos in South Dakota where the missiles wait and twenty-four hours a day the military sit at their consoles ready to turn the key in the box. The people who made this park didn’t think about that either.

AND SO WE CHATTED away at what I realized was a level normal to her. How remarkable to be sitting there, as if at a sidewalk café in Paris, in conversation with a Frenchwoman with an alluring smoky voice. It was no small matter to me that she deemed me worthy of her thoughts. I said: You are looking for the secret. I don’t think you have it yet.

Maybe not, she said.

I was glad she wasn’t trying out her ideas on Langley — he wouldn’t have had the patience, he might even have been rude. But I loved hearing her talk, never mind that she had bizarre theories — Central Park was sinking, shutters were un-American — her passionate engagement with her ideas was a revelation to me. Jacqueline Roux had been all over the world. She was a published writer. I imagined how thrilling it must be living such a life, going around the world and making up things about it.

AND THEN IT was time to go.

Are you walking back? she said. I will walk with you.

We left the park and crossed Fifth Avenue, her arm in mine. In front of the house, I felt emboldened. Would you like to see the inside? I said. It is an attraction greater even than the Empire State Building.

Ah no, merci, I have appointments. But sometime, yes.

I said, Just let me get an idea of you. May I?

She had thick wavy hair cut short. A broad forehead, rounded cheekbones, a straight nose. A slight fullness under the chin. She wore glasses with wire frames. She wore no makeup. I did not think I should touch the lips.

I asked her if she was married.

No more, she said. It made no sense.

Children?

I have a son in Paris. In secondary school. So now you are interviewing me? She laughed.

She would be back in New York in a few weeks. We will have a coffee, she said.

I have no phone, I said. If I’m not in the park please knock on the door. I’m usually home. If I don’t hear from you I’ll try to get run over and there you will be.

I felt her looking at me. I hoped she was smiling.

Okay, Mr. Homer, she said, shaking my hand. Until we meet again.

WHEN LANGLEY RETURNED I told him about Jacqueline Roux. Another damn reporter, he said.

Not exactly a reporter, I said. A writer. A French lady writer.

I didn’t know it had got as far as the European papers. What were you, her man-in-the-street interview?

It wasn’t like that. We had some serious conversation. I invited her in and she refused. What reporter would do that?

It was hard trying to explain to Langley: this was another mind — not his, not mine.

She is a woman out in the world, I said. I was very impressed.

Apparently so.

She is divorced. Doesn’t believe in marriage. A son in school.

Homer, you have always been susceptible to the ladies, do you know that?

I want to get a haircut. And maybe a new suit in one of those discount places. And I need to eat more. I don’t like being this thin, I said.

HOURS LATER LANGLEY found me at the piano. She helped you across the street? he said.

Yes, and a lucky thing, I said.

Are you all right? It’s not like you to misread traffic.

Ever since they made Fifth Avenue one-way is the problem, I said. It’s a heavier, more congested sound with fewer gaps and I just have to get used to it.

Not like you at all, my brother said and left the room.