Let's Not Do That Again by Grant Ginder

Author:Grant Ginder
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Henry Holt and Co.

La Réunion

The color drains from Greta’s face, first from her forehead, and then from her thin, freckled cheeks.

“Nick,” she says. “What are you—”

“This is positively wild. Here I am, in gay Paree for a few days, and I decide to poke my head into the d’Orsay because I’ve got a free morning, and who do I find? My sister! Of all the places I could have wandered into!”

Greta’s eyes are steel.

“Yes,” she says. “Of all the places.”

Next to her, Xavier clears his throat. Not waiting for an introduction, Nick walks across the gallery, taking hold of Xavier’s hand and gripping it until he feels two knuckles crack. He gives it a vigorous shake.

“Nick Harrison,” he says. “Real pleased to meet you.”

“I—uh. Xavier de la Marinière.” He turns to Greta, his wrist limp in Nick’s hand. “Do you know this man?”

Greta curls her lips inward, her mouth a tight, angry line.

“He’s my brother,” she says.

“Your brother! How nice.” Xavier’s voice is cold, empty—ice on a newly frozen lake. Breaking free, he rubs his wrist and takes a step back. “You didn’t tell me you had family coming to Paris, my little duck.”

“That’s because I didn’t know he was.”

Nick knocks Greta with his elbow.

“Surprise!” he says, and no one laughs.

At the other end of the gallery, a man pushes a stroller toward a bench, its wheels creaking. Muffled voices float in from an adjoining room.

“And what brings you to Paris?” Xavier asks.

“Oh, you know, work.”

Greta lifts her eyebrows.

“What,” she says, “did you find out that Joan Didion once took a shit in Sacré-Coeur?”

Nick smiles. “Different kind of work.”

For a moment the three of them are quiet, their tense bodies forming a triangle among the gallery’s frames.

“And you are a fan of Degas, as well?” Xavier says finally.

“Actually, no. My grandmother is, but I’ve always found him a bit tedious.” Nick turns toward the painting. “He was a terrible anti-Semite, you know. Kicked out a model when he found out she was Jewish. Not a good guy, as it turns out.”

Greta clasps her hands behind her back.

“Well,” she says, “surely a man is more than his beliefs.”

Nick takes a step closer to his sister. He brings his mouth closer to her ear.

He says, “Actually, Greta, I don’t think that’s true.”

The man with the stroller leaves, and once Nick can no longer hear its broken wheel, the gallery descends into another fragile silence. From the corner of his eye he sees Xavier, glancing over both his shoulders, shifting back and forth on his heels. Nick thinks of the articles he’s read about him, the videos that, in the past twenty-four hours, he has seen. Many of them he watched last night on his phone, squinting to decipher their subtitles as he drank whiskey after whiskey at the hotel bar. It was a mistake—or, if not a mistake, then unnecessary. The speeches Xavier made were the same speeches that Nick—that the world—had heard too many times before. Inevitably there would be a complaint about dark

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