On INTERNET CAFE

February 23rd
On INTERNET CAFÉ

In Paris in the 1990s, Internet cafes were new and exciting. That was how Ms. Rattigan remembered it. As she was pretending to read her novel in the staff room, a wet floppy tear landed on the word ‘chest’, and she remembered the chest of the English man she had met in a Parisian internet café. His chest was very thin, and concave in the sternum. She remembered it bobbing up and down as they had made love in her tiny garret, he guzzling a mike’s hard lemonade and she wide-eyed, taking in the romantic power of the moment, feeling deliciously used by this slight Brit.
She had been drinking coffee, wearing sunglasses and looking up salon.com (there was a great article: ‘Why can’t a woman write the great American novel?’) in the internet café when the ‘bloke’ arrived, wearing a Union Jack t-shirt, no less, with a bunch of other ‘football’ hooligans. Ms. Rattigan had been 28 years old, having graduated from teachers’ college and teaching for several years, saving up for this trip to the capital of France.
The shouting Englishmen were on their way to a footy match, and were taking joy in the newness of the internet by yelling their email addresses at each other, so they could send each other electronic mail between terminals a few feet away from each other. They thought that no one else understood English, but Ms. Rattigan acted fast, memorizing the skinny lad’s email and sending him a flirtatious email. One thing led to another, and that evening, after watching England lose, the young Angle made love to her as consolation.
The rush of memories faded away and Ms. Rattigan returned to the fluorescent cinder-block humdrum staff room. This was the most far away place in the world from Paris, especially when she was forced to listen to two grown men argue about the pronunciation of the name of a whale.
As usual, no one noticed her tears. Mr. Hendrickson threw the textbook across the room and she screamed in terror. She had never seen Mr. Hendrickson this emotional. He loosened his tie, and his eyes were getting a little watery.
“That’s impossible! That means that every time I’ve read the word ‘Humpback’, my brain must have been correcting it to ‘Hunchback’” he yelled, “Why would I do that to myself?”
Mr. Garrow sat down and picked up his mug of coffee. After provoking him, he was now acting as if the entire thing was no big deal, making Mr. Hendrickson look even more ridiculous.
“Relax, Eddie,” he said, “those kids probably weren’t even listening to you anyway. They’re just here to fill time until they can finally leave.”
Ms. Rattigan audibly gasped. Was this really what Mr. Garrow thought? He was even more of a cancerous presence than she had thought.
“How can you say that?” she asked.
“What?” he replied, “How many of your kids are gonna say a word of French once they get out of here? The only reason they take French is to keep their parents happy. No one likes French.”
“I like French!’ she declared, tears running down her face, her jowls wobbling, “And if you had ever travelled to Europe, you would see why. You’ve probably never even been outside of Ontario.”