Hash Eaters Club headquarters right now. With the ghosts of Dumas and Hugo cringing over my inability to avoid crap and a world where cheese in a can exists.” I draw my hand to my heart and open my mouth in mock horror. “Sacré bleu!”
Alexandre smirks. “Congratulations. You are the first person to utter that phrase on French soil in over two hundred years.”
“I aim to please. Did Dumas do anything else, um, illicit?”
Alexandre gives me a little grin, but I catch something wistful in his eye.
“I do wonder what it must’ve been like back then. All those swashbuckling bon vivant adventurers Dumas wrote about? Some people say he could’ve been one of his own characters.”
“Your family history is definitely a lot more colorful than mine. Famous authors and their affairs, surprise children, missing paintings, a Hash Eaters Club . . .”
Maybe I’m being unfair. It’s true that my family is a little boring comparatively, but then again, I’m a child and grandchild of immigrants—and uprooting yourself and seeking out a new home in a foreign land is pretty damn brave, if you think about it.
“I’m sure there are many exciting secrets in your family’s history. Perhaps even in your life?” Alexandre gently nudges me.
I wish I could come up with a duly flirty response, but the only secret I have is concealing a broken heart over Zaid, and there’s nothing clever or coy about a fresh wound. I pivot the conversation back to Alexandre. “Is it awkward, people knowing things about your family that you haven’t told them? Or having a name that everybody knows?”
“And by people, do you mean you?” He flashes a rakish grin. “Everyone knows Dumas. Everyone studies him in school. The teasing and dumb questions I got in lycée—ridiculous. People actually ask me if The Count of Monte Cristo is based on a true story and if we have some hidden stash of gold on the old Dumas estate. No one believes me when I say I have no idea because the place isn’t even ours anymore. It’s a museum.”
“Really?” My eyes widen. “That sucks.”
I feel a pinch of guilt because when I say that, it’s not only because I feel bad for him. It’s because I wonder if it’s another missed academic opportunity for me, too.
“There’s no family treasure trove, sadly. At least none that we know of. But truthfully, I don’t know if my parents would even—” Alexandre stops short, like he’s said something he shouldn’t. Although it sounded like he was going to complain about his parents, which seems, I don’t know, normal? Then he shrugs. I can’t tell if the gesture is meant for me or for his hidden thoughts. “Besides, it could hardly be based on a true story. Dumas’s main character, Dantès, survived being thrown into the sea in a tied-up sack.”
“Another Giaour connection! I’m not sure how popular sack deaths were during the literature of the 1800s, but Leila, the woman in Byron’s poem that inspired Delacroix’s painting, was drowned in a tied-up sack.” I shudder. If two different authors were writing about that, it must have happened to real people, too.
“Except Dantès planned his as a means to escape a prison fortress and went on to find his fortune hidden in a cave. Dumas had this way of enchanting people, of making them believe in things—romance, passion, adventure—that couldn’t possibly be real. Have you read the book?”
I shake my head. “Dude. It’s, like, a thousand pages. I know the basic story, though.”
“My parents made me read it when I was twelve.”
“Ouch. As a kid of two professors, I feel your pain.”
“It’s obligatoire in our family to know about our most famous ancestor. My dad goes on and on about how it’s our duty to honor the family name. Preserve the cultural legacy of France . . .” His voice hardens. “But it’s all talk. Flowery pronouncements about honor don’t save anything, you know? We’ve already lost so much.”
I blink. “That’s hard-core.”
He relaxes his shoulders. “I love these American idioms. Isn’t that word supposed to be used for pornography?”
My mouth drops open, my cheeks