Winslow wants you to learn this"- he waved a few sheets of stapled pages- "and that." He pointed to the book in my lap. Fifty French Conversations. It was one of our textbooks. I'd stopped at the seventeenth: Mon hamster a mange trop de fromage. Il a mal au ventre maintenant. "The rest is the Bainbridge Method."
"You have a method?"
"Patented and proven."
I waved the book. "Does it include greedy, cheese-guzzling hamsters with stomachaches?"
He nodded. "Absolutely.French conversations is nothing without rodents and cheese.Is there something shameful in your past involving either?"
"Not that I can think of off the top of my head."
"Tant pis."
"And that means...?"
"Fuhgeddaboudit," he translated, grinning.
I sighed. "Do people make Russian jokes in your presence?"
"How do you get five Russians to agree on anything?"
"How?" I asked.
"Shoot four of them."
I thought for a sec. "I'm not sure that's funny."
"No," Alex said. "People don't tell many Russian jokes in my presence."
"I should start my three things, huh?"
"Yeah.That would be good."
I did some speedy translating in my head. "Je n'ai jamais lu Huckleberry Finn, Beloved, ou Moby-Dick."
"Ella,no one has read Moby-Dick. The French was passable, but as far as revelations go,that sucked."
"Ah, but there's a part deux. All three of those books were required reading last year in my American lit class. I used SparkNotes."
"You're kidding, right?"
"See?" I daintily brushed Dorito crumbs from my fingertips. "Changes your perception of me, doesn't it?"
"No,I mean, 'That's a revelation?' You can do better than that."
"Maybe," I agreed, "but it's still early in the game.

Auteur: Melissa Jensen