Josephine Wins Again (4)

A Story of Love and Death | Part 4

Josephine just wants to drink wine, eat cheese, and enjoy a little romance. Somehow, she always succeeds, despite the scams, evictions, violent attacks, and untimely deaths befalling the people around her.

This story is available in eBook and print here.

---

Go to: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 |Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 |

---

October 17

Okay, now I want you to close your eyes, Josephine says. She guides me to what I guess is the doorway to her room, confirmed when I hear the squeal of the hinge.

Okay, open your eyes.

What am I looking at?

You see how nice it is and like a girl’s room?

The change, as far as I can tell, is that Josephine has pushed her suitcases into a corner and stacked her shoes—ten million—in a row along the far wall.

Very nice, I say. Wonderful. Excellent. I am blown away.

Yes. Josephine nods. She gives me the tour. The useless swivel lights that stick out of the far wall have been converted into tie and belt hangers. A jumble of office boxes now holds her frilly shirts, of which she has enough to clothe an entire nation in frippery. Her remaining clothes hang in the foot-deep pseudocloset. Most impressive is the upside-down cardboard box in the center of the room, which she has turned into a table for her books.

I love that you always have a half-finished book lying by your bed when I visit, I say. I love when you tell me which are good and which are trash, and which make you think.

I grab her and kiss her, and she kisses me back. We fight each other to the floor and immediately knock over the wine glass we have both forgotten about.

Shit!

Putain. Josephine goes upstairs and comes back with a can of salt.

Salt?

She sprinkles the salt on the wine stain and spreads the grains about parsimoniously. She says, It is working on clothes, so I think it will work on this.

I don’t think so, honey.

No, I think so.

How do you get rid of the salt then?

Josephine smiles up at me and says, With wine, of course.

Hey, that reminds me. Did you ever get your security deposit back? From your old place?

No. I asked McFly but he said there wasn’t any money to pay me back.

That’s bullshit. That’s your money. And you paid rent for that last month right before getting kicked out.

I did. But then I went to the bank and canceled the check so they didn’t pay it.

So you stayed in that place for two months and didn’t pay rent?

Yes.

How do you do it? You just don’t care and you calmly float by and come out okay. I’m going to talk to McFly and try and get your security deposit back. That’s ridiculous, though.

Don’t worry. My parents were worried when I canceled the check because you can’t do that in France, and they don’t want me to have trouble.

So you finally told them you moved?

Yes, but I told them I left because I wanted to and not that I was evicted.

I pull her close and rub her back. I say, I don’t know how you do it. I just don’t know.

---

I ask McFly via text message to return Josephine’s security deposit.

I want to, he texts me. But I can’t.

Why not? I text back.

The house account is drained. Dave made off with the money. Dave has a history of doing these things. I wish I had known before I got into business with him.

People are saying you took the money. I don’t know who to believe.

It was Dave. I’ll send you a picture of my bank account. You’ll see there’s nothing in it. I’m out thousands of dollars on this. I bought so much shit for that house.

Are you the property manager or what are you? Who owns these houses?

I was renting them from Dave. Dave stopped paying the mortgage.

You know, I checked with that organic farm you said you worked for. And the sustainable food delivery startup you said you cofounded. Neither of them have ever heard of anyone named McFly.

He never texts back. The next I hear of him, he’s moved to Ohio and going by the name McAllen.

October 22

Josephine and I lie on the floor of her apartment, having failed to make it to the bed. My stomach growls, and Josephine’s stomach lets out a more elegant, refined growl. I must eat or I will die, but I am glued to the floor.

Honey, I whisper. We lie on the floor in the dark like a pair of slugs. Honey. I poke Josephine in the rib cage.

Why? she pleads.

I poke her again. Honey, what do you want for dinner?

I’m not hungry.

That’s not possible. You have to be hungry. You have to eat. You can’t survive on wine.

I can.

Should we order a pizza?

No.

Should we go out?

No.

Should we lie here until we starve to death?

Oui.

Okay. Cest bon.

I wait about three minutes. Josephine, je suis hungry. Quest quell tu ai par dinner?

What?

Josephine, je suis hungry.

J’ai faim.

Oh, you’re hungry too? What should we have for dinner?

Josephine sighs and drags herself into a sitting position. I roll up behind her and massage her back.

Do you know when we were kids, Josephine says, like when I was eight and my sister she was, like, five, we would sit around the table and we would take our knife and fork and do this—she moves her fists up and down together—and say, Nous on a faim, which means We’re hungry.

So you and your sister would pound on the table and chant, We’re hungry, we’re hungry, we’re hungry?

Yes. But then my mom would get mad.

That’s the funniest thing I’ve ever heard. That’s so cute.

So that’s you. You’re like a kid at the table doing that and saying he’s hungry.

Oui. I pound my fists lightly against Josephine’s back and chant, I’m hungry, I’m hungry, I’m hungry!

I have macaronis.

Ummm, what else do you have?

You don’t like pasta?

Not especially.

All I have is pasta.

Pasta it is! I give her a pat on the back and then rise to my feet and help her up. Aprez vouz. I bow and gesture towards the door.

---

I’ve never seen the type of noodles Josephine uses before—they look kind of like those rubber nipple things you get as a kid that you press down and then they pop up. Josephine salts the water and slathers the pasta in butter.

You made your own sauce? I ask, trying to sneak a finger into the Tupperware to try it. She slaps my hand away.

Yes, of course. How do you get your sauce?

Out of a can or a jar.

Josephine gasps. She says, That’s one of my mother’s rules. That we can never use pasta sauce out of a can.

That seems really inconvenient.

Yes, but it’s better.

We’ll see.

Josephine heats the sauce. I hunt through the chaos of the kitchen and manage to find us each a bowl. Josephine serves the pasta. We each add sauce and fresh Parmesan to taste.

Okay, I say, after the first bite. That’s pretty good.

You like it?

I do, it’s delicious. Thank you so much for making dinner.

You are welcome.

What is French cooking, actually? Like what dishes do you eat?

What do you mean?

Like here in the US, our go-to dish is a hamburger.

You think hamburger is American?

Yeah.

Hamburger is German. You just stole it and call it yours. Just like you stole our words and then call them yours. Like cul-de-sac.

Exactly. I thrust my fork forward, dislodging the speared macaroni so it belly flops into the sauce container. That’s the whole point of America. It’s the land of good ideas. If something is good, then we take it and make it ours and it becomes American. So anything that’s good anywhere in the world is American.

I don’t think so. Because you eat your sauce out of cans and you put your cheese in cans and it comes out like this weird stuff.

That’s true. That’s another thing about America. We demand things be instant. We don’t have time to sit around and have ennui all day like in France.

Oh, that’s true. Josephine nods in vigorous agreement. That’s all we do is sit around all day and complain and have ennui in France.

Right, so we don’t have that luxury here in America because everything in America needs to be instant. We have instant food that comes out of packages and jars and cans. We have pills that put us to sleep instantly or give us instant erections or make us instantly feel happy.

That’s why your food is so bad. French cooking just means we take our time with it and we care about where the food comes from and we make sure that it’s good before we eat it. That’s why everyone here is fat because your food isn’t good and so you are never satisfied so you just keep eating, but if your food was good you wouldn’t eat so much.

What are ya’ll talking about? The door next to our table swings open and Jake appears, standing in a towel. His bedroom is right off the kitchen. I have never seen him dressed in anything other than a towel, possibly because he’s always doing laundry.

We’re talking about the difference between French and American cooking, I say.

French cooking is way better, Jake says. He sashays to the cupboard and squats to retrieve a crockpot, which he places on the oven range. Amazingly, the towel stays in place. Jake takes a raw chicken out of the refrigerator and plops it into the crockpot.

You’re just going to cook a whole chicken in the crockpot? I ask.

Sure, Jake says.

Will that work?

Oh yeah, of course it’ll work, Jake says. He rummages around the kitchen, excavating various spices and dashing them over the chicken. He says, Oh shit. This is curry powder. I thought it was paprika. Whatever, it’ll still be good.

Jake inspects the network of cables and extension cords running from the only accessible outlet. He follows each cord to its source, weighing his options like the controller of a power plant. He unplugs the rice cooker so he can plug in the crockpot.

Voilà, he says. The only problem is this’ll take eight hours. But it’ll be a good late-night snack when I get back from the club.

Every night I’ve been stayed over, Jake has interrupted my sleep, drunkenly coming up the stairs in the ungodly hours of the morning, singing or humming to himself, or fighting with his boyfriend or one of his boyfriends.

Where will you go tonight? Josephine asks.

Hardies, Jake says. I’m meeting a friend of mine. He’s an older man. Enjoy your dinner.

He struts down the hallway like the towel is haute couture and enters the bathroom. We hear the water go on. He’ll be there for about an hour.

---

After dinner, in the second-floor bathroom, I notice a new roll of toilet paper, the kind you would find in an office building or a school. It’s a big deal because the toilet paper disappears from this bathroom like someone is burning it. I suspect Mike and Hannah are to blame.

I notice you have new toilet paper, I say to Josephine upon returning to her room. Did you steal this from work?

Yes. She grins. I finally got a raise.