On the ride back home, Jodie thought out loud as she went over mental checklists. Victor wasn’t due to be home until the next evening, so she had plenty of time to decorate the school and catch anything else that they may have missed.

“I kinda want to make this a welcome party for Avi as well,” Jodie mentioned. “Should I get him his own cake? Like grab a fancy cupcake from the overpriced bakery downtown? What flavors do you think he likes?”

“No idea,” Mitch shrugged with his good shoulder, not liking where this was headed.

“Well, could you find out? For me?” The insistence in her voice and her furrowed brow suggested that she was entirely serious with the request.

“What? No, I barely know the guy,” scoffed Mitch. “Also, that’s kind of gay.”

“So get to know him, Mitch,” Jodie tonematched with a scoff of her own, forcing Mitch into an internal debate about whether or not he should open the car door and eject himself onto Rt. 2. Maybe he wouldn’t die. “And I’m sorry, ‘kind of gay’? Do you no longer suck dick? I didn’t get that memo.”

“Yeah, that’s the real reason that Calvin broke up with me.” He snorted. “Iunno. There’s no way to casually get that sorta information without alerting the other person that something’s up.”

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“Just figure it out? Please?” After a few more pleases, Mitch surrendered to the pressure and promised to find a way to bring it up. She smiled smugly, all cat with a canary, then changed the topic when they crossed into the Frenchtown neighborhood. “How do you pronounce that?” she asked and pointed to various street signs that’d been presumably named after former residents of Monument; those surnames painted on metal were some people’s only remaining legacy on this mortal coil.

“It’s Quebecois, not ‘real’ French,” he half-jokingly reminded her, and obliged. The little exercise gave him a chance to revisit something he rarely used these days, but still felt nostalgic for, a bit like visiting home. “Y’know,” he started as Jodie’s house came into view, a modest duplex amongst several tiny single families and towering triple deckers. “I wonder if I’ll eventually forget how to speak it. Like after my mom and my uncle pass away, and there isn’t anyone left in my life to hold a conversation with.”

She parked in the driveway, then offered, “I heard there’s a French-speaking mass at St. Jude’s. Maybe check that out sometime?”

“Eh, I don’t think that the Catholic church would be too interested in having me around.”

“Why’s that? Didn’t you just say that you stopped sucking dick?”

“Shit, you’re right! I’m reformed now!” Mitch shouted, making Jodie snicker; however, the sound of a door slamming drew her attention elsewhere, and her eyes shifted up to the rearview mirror.

“Guess it’s hunk o’clock.” Unbuckling her seatbelt, she exited the car, and Mitch’s head swiveled backwards when she shouted, “Aviii!”