Page 10 of Under His Sheets
Alonso’s eyes shot to me and then to Ferrer and he shrugged. “No inglés.”
What the fuck?
He carried the trash can hurriedly toward his cart outside the door. Ferrer said something to him in gruff-sounding Spanish. Or was it Catalan? I was still trying to figure out the difference. Alonso kept his eyes lowered and nodded as he left the room.
“He’ll bring her, but honestly, I can’t really wait around. Do you have a phone in this classroom?”
Poor Pere was beet red in the cheeks below his mop of dark curls. He looked as if he wished he could be anywhere else.
“Sure, sure. My apologies,” I said. “I’m new and I don’t want to break with procedure. You understand, right?”
I moved over to the desk and picked up the phone to dial the front office.
“Oui monsieur?”
“Oh, um, this is?—”
“Can I help you?”
“Ah, senyor Ferrer,” Lara said as she came inside the room, saving me from the wrath of an angry, entitled parent.I apologized to Mrs. Lahlou and hung up the phone.
“Bona tarda, senyora.” He kissed her cheek and she stood stiffly as if she hated to be rude but she really hated him touching her.
“Senyor Sutter has been instructed to phone us if anyone is without ID. You understand the need for our protocols, verdad?”
“Sí,” he said, following her out the door looking annoyed.
“Goodbye Pere,” I called out as they left. The boy turned and gave me a sad wave before following his father to the office.
In the melee, Alonso had disappeared again. I trotted out to the hallway, only to see him turning the corner at the far end. If I called out it would echo and disturb anyone else still in the building.
Well, damn. If he was going to keep avoiding me, I would just find a way to leave him a gift as a thank you for the bike. It was the least I could do.
But what was that about him not speaking English? Bullshit. He spoke just fine when he was…when we were…
Oh for fuck’s sake. If he wanted to pretend like he didn’t know me, whatever. Maybe he too was trying to follow the no-fraternizing protocol. Maybe he thought, foolishly, that I’d look down on him for his job? That was ridiculous, and also pretty fucking entitled for me to even think that.
A moment later, the Ferrers left the office, Pere with his head down while his father scolded him, and they walked out the front doors of the building.
“Randall!” Lara trotted toward me, her heels clackety-clacking down the hall. “Excellent work. You did the right thing.”When she got closer, she took a deep breath. “Most of our parents are wonderful, but then there are those…”
“I understand. I got distracted though and I almost forgot to check. He’s…”
“A bit much, yeah. He’s a very big deal and the type to get people in the community stirred up, if you know what I mean.”
I figured I should be upfront. “He asked to play together. I understand there are rules…”
“Ah. Well, I’d understand if you wanted to—” She laughed when she saw me shake my head vigorously. “Or, you could tell him it’s protocol, that we don’t see families for social events outside of school.”
“I like that. Thank you. I’ll do that if it comes up again.”
She smiled knowingly at me then her eyes flared. “You are coming to our social this evening? Are you ready? You can ride with me and Max, our physical education teacher.”
I glanced around. Other than seeing Alonso, I had nothing else to do. “Let me grab my bag.”
The staff at Frederick Douglass was just as diverse as the students. There were six of us Americans, three young teachers from France, who apparently shared an apartment in the same complex where I lived, and several Catalan-speaking teachers, who corrected me when I assumed that only folks living in Catalonia spoke Catalan. Turned out there was a whole-ass country called Andorra across the border, and most of the country spoke Catalan, not to mention there were Catalan speakers in France and in other parts of Spain outside of Catalonia. They even tried to teach me the differences between Catalan and Castellano—things like greetings and where to put accents, which of course was different between the two languages even on similar words—that even with my weakSpanish, I should be able to pick up. And boy did they like to spill the tea.
“Yeah, that Ferrer is a piece of work,” Ivan said, a tall, slim guy from Brooklyn who I discovered shared a love of music. Ivan played drums for a jazz quartet back home. “He pulled that ‘hey let’s jam’ card with me, too, and when I said no, he said it was probably for the best. Didn’t want the kids to see their teacher shown up.”
