It was a terribly familiar scene, sitting on to the left of him in the dark, crumpled and clinging to his shoulder, a heat source...but this time we stared into phantom fog and descending night, instead of an altar and rosebushes. The tension was there absolutely.

"I love speaking French," I said.

"Yea?"

"Yea." I tried to focus on the little barn in front of us. "Nobody understands me; I wish someone did."

The silence was deep and radiating. Even the motion and sounds of the windy tree tops stopped. "You mean," he began cautiously, "In general, or in French?"

I paused. Only after it had escaped my lips I'd realized how strange a statement it was. Both, I realized in my mind. "In French," I said aloud.

"Oh."

"Maybe I should move to Montreal..."

"Nobody would understand you there either," he said, his tone ominously ambiguous.