Gandhi's Guide to Getting By

chapter four

Petros Protopappas. Nathalie Gaucher.

These are the names of my Monday morning English as a second language students. The three of us sit in a small grey room on the second floor of the five storey building owned and occupied by Benton Valby International, the Engineering firm I work for. There is a conference table, a large poster of some project in Dubai the firm was involved with, and a window which looks onto the traffic of Fifth Avenue.

Petros tells me to call him Peter. He is twenty-seven and has a Master's degree in Enginnering which he got from some university in Athens, Greece. He speaks English fairly well, but the firm provides these lessons for free to their employees, so here he is. Besides, as he says, coming here for an hour and a half gives him a chance to catch up on his social networking.

"That's not what this class is about," I say.

"Not to worry," he says back, "Most of my social networking is in English."

"Then why not just skip this course and do your social networking the way everyone else does it, during the day?"

"Because this is the only place I don't have to, you know, focus."

"Great," I say.

He takes a split-second to look up from his screen and tells me not to take it personally.

As for Nathalie, she is the French-from-France wife of one of the senior executives so if her husband says she's an employee and therefore eligible for the English courses, then eligible employee she is. Nathalie is new. It is only her second lesson with me. So far we've covered the basics, although she seems to be well-acquainted with "conversation futile" as she calls it. "You know," she explains, "What you Americans call cocktail conversation. Les questions comme, How are you? What is your name? Are you married? Les questions typical that the men ask you." I nod so she thinks the "Are you married?" question is one I get all the time as well.

"Maybe you should ask her how she met her husband?" Peter says. He's got his phone in his hand and is updating his Facebook. "Because I'm pretty sure Paul doesn't speak French and it's clear she doesn't speak much English." He keeps his brown eyes on his phone when he says this. He laughs at something on his screen. "Tell me this isn't the rudest kid you've ever seen," he says, holding his screen towards me.

I look at the picture of a boy who can't be more than four or five years old. He has light brown hair and dark eyes and a chubby face. Also, I think he's giving whoever is taking the picture the finger.

"Is he giving the finger?"

Peter laughs at my question. "Yup," he says, "Like I said, rude. You should hear how he talks."

"Whose kid is he?" I ask.

"My nephew. He hates me so every time my sister says, Let's take a picture for Theo Peter, he gives her the finger."

I don't ask Peter why his nephew hates him. Nathalie makes a tsk tsk sound. Even her "tsk tsk" has a French accent to it. She says something about French parenting versus American parenting. Peter shrugs. His friend just sent him a picture of a woman he's been trying to set Peter up with. Peter makes a really scary face and takes a selfie which he then sends to his friend.

"What was that about?"

"That was me saying, Are you kidding," Peter says. He wants to know why everytime a guy says, You should meet my cousin, the cousin ends up looking like Frankenstein.

I tell Peter to go back to his social networking. I ask Nathalie about Paul. She smiles at the sound of her husband's name. She is twenty-seven, like Peter, with blonde hair, blue eyes, and a nice smile. "Paul?" she says.