Judy Greer

The Anniversary Trip.

They are sitting in a cafe on the Boulevard Saint-Germain, not far from the Odeon metro stop, three of them sitting, the wife with her husband, the husband with his mother, not inside the cafe, but at one of the tables on the sidewalk where the prices are exorbitant, but the view of the passing crowd is almost enough to counter this.

It is November, and Paris should be cold, damp, the sky a low gray sheet, but instead it has been sunny and too warm for the cashmere and corduroy they packed.

Their collapsible umbrellas have been useless.

The wife, Monica, is damp with an unpleasant sweat most of the time, wet skin cooling at the small of her back and between her breasts every time she stops moving.

it is close to four in the afternoon and they are drinking red wine vin rouge monica thinks corrects herself for elizabeth the mother un express for her son martin she herself is sipping an avion though what she really wants is a bourbon and soda jack daniels please but she is in no way brave enough to order such a thing such a crass american drink

at one of these cafes, in the presence of her husband's mother, Elizabeth.

The older woman finishes her wine and lights a cigarette, gestures to the waiter, "'Encore,' she says, smiling, lifting her empty glass for him.

He takes it and rushes off."

Elizabeth is angular, her cheekbones jutting, her mouth wide, lips glossy red and thin.

She wears her silver hair in a neat bob, pulls it up and off her face, her cheekbones with enameled combs.

She is more beautiful now in her 60s than her son's wife has ever been, will ever be.

Monica recognizes this and accepts it.

Her husband does not notice, or noticing does not comment, or at least has not commented, not in the five years they've been married or the five on-again, off-again dating before that.

Monica has never quite been able to think of Elizabeth as a mother-in-law, as someone for whom birthday greeting cards are designed with stamped gilded roses and unctuous sentiments in pastel script.

"'I should have ordered a half carafe instead,' Elizabeth says as the waiter returns with another small glass and a new ticket he slides under her ashtray.

"'You would have had a glass, Martin?'

He shrugs, eyes his wife's bottle of Evian.

Are you sure you don't want anything else, he says, and she shakes her head.

Maybe I'll stop on the way back to the hotel for some wine to keep in the room, he says to his mother.