gesundheit

“Gesundheit, and pardon me, your gracious lady-ness.”

“Gesundheit,” said the man who accompanied her.

“Gesundheit,” the enigmatic coachman answered under his breath.

Why bother still bringing up someone’s nepo-ness whenever their name is mentioned, with both the mic-drop confidence of a gotcha and the rote formality of a gesundheit?

And that Fennell has set her marvelously wicked story in 2006 — a decade before “check your privilege” became a refrain as common as “gesundheit” — makes Felix’s early-onset empathy extraordinary.