Arrival

My public must be satisfied. So I will tell the story of our move to Geneva, Switzerland.

We took Air France so Emma, our daughter, could have the chicken. Instead, she slept all the way to Paris. She also peed all the way to Paris, and was hard to carry off the plane because she was squishy. Serena went ahead with Emma to change her, while I unlatched Emma’s car seat. I deplaned, and couldn’t find them in the airport. It’s embarrassing to ask the information desk for information about the location of your family. When you speak French poorly, “wife” is a hard gesture to make. And offspring is worse. But, I found them, and we were soon settling into a room in old Geneva that was fully furnished by IKEA.

We ate dinner at an outdoor café where I had fondue for the first time. The placemats were printed with pictures of Swiss women in short skirts who were very cold. I wanted to take one to mail to a lonely friend. Emma wasn’t paying attention to the placemats – the trees and terraces surrounding the café were hopping with sparrows and pigeons. She pointed them out like a bird dog and announced “Ko ko!” Meanwhile, I watched a gaggle of teens pass, each with a violin case slung unashamedly over their backs, and realized that Emma could someday be one of them, proud to be smart and talented. At my junior high, violins caused leprosy.

On the way back to the hotel, Emma paused to touch the stone walls and sign posts, pretty much everything that dogs had stopped for, too. She slept well after pooping in her IKEA bath.

We spent our first full day looking for cell phone credit cards, affordable food, and more birds. Restaurants are expensive, so we ate at the only Chinese place in the area, for $18 “Go Go” buffet meals. Emma stole a seat pillow from a restaurant chair and waved bye bye as she ran for an escalator. Lesson learned, Serena and I took turns eating bargain noodle and shadowing the child.

Yesterday we were walking on the sidewalk. Someone sped up behind us on a bicycle and called out. In Los Angeles, that usually means that they want you to get out of the way, yelling “Left!” or “Asswipe!”, so I jumped aside. The rider stopped, smiled, and handed me Emma’s security blanket, which she had dropped a few yards back. I wanted to hug him, and wondered if he was from Utah. He said have a nice day in French. I was immediately sold on Geneva.

And then, a few blocks later in old town, I was following Serena up a cobblestone street that looked very much like a Mastercard commercial I’d seen when I was five years old. The commercial showed an Italian street at night, with a Lamborghini passing a couple in leather pants. At age five I decided that I wanted to live in Italy. So I married an Italian woman and forced her to get a job in Europe.

Serena’s boss had a barbecue on Wednesday night. I told Serena that I could shove extra food down my pants so we could eat it the next day, and if her boss objected, I’d tell him that I had to do it because he wasn’t paying her enough. She told me no. The dinner was provided on her boss’s corner penthouse balcony, which overlooks Lake Geneva all the way to the United Nations buildings. I liked her new colleagues because they are all worldly, attractive, and thought that I was very funny. I only drank water so that I wouldn’t embarrass Serena like I did with her McKinsey boss, when we went out for karaoke and I sang “Like a Virgin” and humped the karaoke machine and sodomized myself with a doorknob. Emma and I were both very well behaved. Geneva is expensive, and we need this job, or we’ll die out here.