La Langue Francaise

Le Robert Micro Langue Francaise had lain dormant for so long on the bookshelf that, when Amanda took it out to keep on the desk - only to put it under the desk lamp so as to position it higher – she checked the pages. They stuck together. She had studied French in high school for three years and then in college, but everything caught up with her in her third year at university and she dropped French. Amanda pulled the beige and gold blanket around her. She had left mid-way through her fourth year at USD and moved to L.A.

She looked at the mail. A speeding ticket for fifty dollars had just arrived. It was a new solicitation for an infraction from 2017 that she had never paid. The late fee was a hundred and twenty dollars. She had not had the money then and she did not have the money now. Acting looked like it might pay off after about eighteen months into her move to the City of Angels and the decision to leave college. There were t.v. commercials to keep her afloat while she worked at “her craft.” Later it was only t.v. commercials. Amanda knew it was better not to think about it. She pushed the ticket to the bottom of the pile. Hanging on the wall in front of her, from where she sat at the desk was a list of affirmations – I am patient, the first line said– she had wanted to remind herself of that, in case, at any point, she might forget. She had been patient. Maybe the time had come to change that.

She opened the drawer of her desk, on a whim. Or out of boredom. Part distraction, part inspiration. She found a shiny green library card with a flower sticker on it. How long had it been since she had held a book? Read a story for the pleasure of the way it filled her head with a life she could believe in, a foreign place where she could imagine herself, while she witnessed the characters in the book making their own mistakes and shedding their troubles by creating even more complicated lives for themselves. She had loved losing herself in a story. Reading made her think of writing. She had loved to write as much as she had loved the idea of speaking French to a Frenchman someday. Amanda sighed and put the card away. The laundry, clean and folded, was waiting to be put away first.