Shut up and write, bitch.
What the hell is this? It's mornings when you wake up in a bed next to a cute freckly French girl batting green eyes. And it coaxes a laugh after I kiss her "Good-bye," and "Good morning," and I'm stumbling down the stairs, five flights, into the bright, high-sunned, pre-noon Paris. Well, that was nice. Where the hell am I.
Yesterday's such an old memory, it seems. A day after a night of stunning masters students of theater from all over, Oregon, London, Sweden, Algeria. Their French is animated so it's easier to understand or, at least, to follow the conversation. They're talking projection projects of the body like a hurricane, and it's all so fascinating. And French theater-like. The spliff and glass after glass of red wine help. They sit and still move with a rhythm and telling hands and quick-wit expressions on their faces. The Swedes talk in English, and I think they're my favorite. Two sisters, one visiting the other from Stockholm with her boyfriend. Like porcelain dolls with red lipstick and short, brown haircuts. The sisters go on about their father, the clown, in the most delightful way. Such a standard Swedish disposition, to be awash with delight and sarcasm. And toting liter bottles of Heineken. The boyfriend tell me he skates. I tell him about the park on the beach in Venice. He tells me about Terje and the epic snow they get in the mountains of Sweden. I tell him of the times I went surfing in the morning and snowboarding in the afternoon back in Los Angeles, the shop, the sun, the weeds. And it goes on into a night of fast talk talked smartly on silly subjects and living. What a girl, this Elizabeth, for letting me sleep here on her couch.
And when I wake it's without the aches and hip-pains of floor sleeping. It's refreshing, as is the coffee. And the bread and the butter and the jam. And nutella, of course. A small breakfast, but that's Paris. What're you gonna do, except scarf it down and smoke a spliff, grab a notebook, and flush downstairs with Elizabeth in a sweater that's almost too thin for this day-cold in the sun. I'm off to some old-timey English bookstore, cramped quarters and shelves stuffed and table-space piled high with dusty volumes and big photo-books and every kind of thing written in English, both new and old. Shakespeare and Company it's called and lovely Elizabeth tells me they let writers live there for free, and I still gots like three more weeks here, so why not.
But what's this, Elizabeth? Your going to a chicken farm outside the city to look at an apartment? Why of course, I'd love to come. The bookstore can wait. I want to smell fresh, country air, desperately, because it's been too long since that sweet breath of Santa Cruz. And I love chickens. So I hop on the metro with my new theater friend and we screech off to the fourteenth arrondissement to meet up with the landlord. He's a jolly, middle-aged Asian man and he's driving us out to the farm with his six-year-old daughter in tow. My French still sucks, and I'm high so I just sit in the back seat across from the shy-looking little girl and listen to Elizabeth and Mr. Landlord ramble away in French down the highway. Try as I might, I only really pick up a few words and phrases, and by the time I've finally managed to figure one out, it's forgotten as I try to decipher the next. And so it carries for forty-five minutes. The sky's gone gray now, and the city's all but slid away. It's the suburbs, but not in the way I usually picture the word. It's not Westchester, or the Valley even. These suburbs are old and European and eveything's got a look of chipped stucco and something that used to be nicer. There's traffic Mr. Landlord takes his time shifting between first and neutral. Crawling. It crawls right by some small mansion of regality led astray, An old thing shoved between two other buildings with a worn wall and a rusted metal gate. Past the gate, two sets of stairs split off to either side as the ancient house were higher up, about level with the top of the wall.
[stop]
"Don't got a lotta time, don't got a lotta time,'
Don't got a lotta time, don't got a lotta time,'
We came into the light, we were older than we've ever been."
Ah, the days, a month through and counting. And fuck, what've I got to show for it? Some handful of dreary pages? Nothing's finished, but then again, when's it ever going to finish? Not until that grand finale when the cymbals crash and the heavy curtain pulls. When everything unfinished is left untouched because no one else is especially adequate to touch it and those hands a' mine won't be touching anything except that cotton breast pocket on my best suit. While my eyes play behind closed doors in that eternal dream.
I should finish what I can. I owe the great trial that much at least, because I'd hate to think of what's to become of me if it's not given my all.
What would the German Shepard think, peering over the wall from his perch on the high, fortress yard, with the two lonely trees dying on either side, leafless in that French winter coming. As he's watching all the lives crawl by between first and neutral down the old ville streets. They say he doesn't see in color, but maybe he sees in something else, not so black and white. A vision of the spirit, I think, because his kind is always so reciprocal with their emotions, and always so revealing. The sly ones anyways. Like Marlee the tough mustached sea rat. And maybe even that stupid Golden, Lizzie. She's so pretty though, and such a whore.
The German is neither. No so much pretty, but rather statuesque, and gravely so. Much too grave for whoring. And for a second right when he catches my sight, I see him not as the dog German, but as the vision of that ancient king, that Charlemagne framed so sadly between two dead trees, above a high, rust-iron gate, under a somber mid-day sky that casts no shadows. I wonder it he looks at the ground on day s like this and forgets he exists, with no mirrored shadow to follow him around in acknowledgement. Locked away in his dreary castle, with no one and nothing else but to read those spirits trudging by on the walk, and wonder at those closed souls on the road.
He doesn't see me, and maybe that's better because I'm afraid of what those eyes might tell him now. A desperate spirit to gawk at, wrought tired with determination, and perpetually bag-eyed.
But I see him, maybe imagined now, but I'm quite certain he was there. "An omen," some Alchemist character would say, but good or bad, in the details of such a thing I'm... what's the word... oh right, lost, as always.
Just keep swimming. Who needs a boring old shepard-boy Alchemist to tell you how to sort it all out when you've got a talking clown fish to guide you.
[stop]
The chicken farm's lovely. A little cabin with two rooms upstairs at the peak, squashed low in the corners by the sloping roof. Downstairs there's a bathroom and a kitchen with windows looking back at an old garage. And behind that, the chickens roamed free on a skinny stretch that stretched back for a ways, with a trampoline and a garden, and a little fort with a tree swing. The four chickens flock, clucking, and the little girl throws seeds and old food from her city home about them on the damp ground littered thick with dead leaves. It's frigid out. Abysmal. "I bet this place shine's in the summer, though," says Elizabeth. I agree. and we take some time on the trampoline to jump out the day, all of it. What's been, and what's to come.
There's another girl living in the place right now. And it's far as fuck from the city. One and a half hours far by the RER. Elizabeth tell Monsieur Landlord, she'll have to think about it. But she loves it, I can tell. She loves how it smells of wet leaves and forest air. She loves the garden and the yard that reaches out forever. And the chickens. And the man's daughter throwing seeds and swinging from trees. And the work-space is perfect. It's just far.
She tell's him, en francais, that we want to take the train back, and he drops us at the station, "Au 'voir!" "Au 'voir!" The little girl waves shyly before the door's shut and the two, father and daughter, shuttle into the darkening afternoon back to Paris.
The trains. But first, where's the fucking boulangerie. Because my tummy's growling objections at it's neglect. I don't think I've got another hour of traveling in me. So we turn down the empty main street, and the town's a slow-paced old lady of a place. A one boulangerie town and we find it in due time. It's a short wait in line, all the time eyeballing pastries and tartes and sandys with wolf hunger. "The apple ones," I whisper to Elizabeth in English and she orders. We walk out chomping some pomme-filled pastries, lightly toasted to a dark brown on the top. We're half-way to the train station, and we look at each other and nod agreement, and turn back to the bakery for some chocolate croissants because hell, we're starving, and that coffee, buttered bread, jam, and nutella breakfast is laughing us in the face. The baker smiles amusement at our return. It's a small-town wholesome amusement, endearing like my mother's.
At the station, Elizabeth buys a ticket and i hop over after her. It's Saturday, and the train's especially slow, and the stops seems excessively long, and the car's packed, both up above and down below, but we manage to find seats across from one another by the window. Still, my stomach's a-churning to the seconds' tick-tock, and ah, finally, after two hours we're onto the metro, and out above ground again at Cadet.
[stop]
To some cheap Lebanese sa ndwich shop by the metro stop. "Ehm... les toilettes sil vous plait?" I ask the man behind the counter. He points. Elizabeth laughs and orders for us. "Something with meat," I tell her as I hustle into a little closet with a toilet in the back and piss an Amazon into the depths of that old porcelain. It's a tingly one, with that indescribable euphoria behind my eyes after the shake.
"I got you the beef shawarma," she says, sitting at the closest table to the door. Then she sips sweet tea from a small glass, and I see there's another one on the counter, and when I look, the old Lebanese man nods and makes a vapid show of presentation with his hand.
"Shawarma sounds bomb," I say, "et merci beaucoup" to the counterman as I take a swig from the sweet tea glass. The sandwiches are done and we shoot the rest of our tea, "Au 'voir! Merci!" Nom, nom, nom, and it tastes so good.
[stop]
Back at Elizabeth's flat, we're both still chomping, and I get a slew of texts. One from the ole' Lil, how I miss her so. "Come to erin's Thanksgiving party thing. Here's the address," it says.
"Shit, that's tonight, huh," I sound off to myself. Elizabeth had invited me to a soiree of sorts, a college dance party in the south, and oh, how I love college dance parties. But I promised, and Erin texts me as well, so I tell my gracious host and she takes it graciously, with a sarcastic air of drama because, after all, she's a student of the theater. She understands. She sees the conflict in my eyes, and we cheers beers. And after she showers, we romp down to metro together and wish each other good nights. What am I getting myself into. I don't know, but I rarely do anymore, and I've come to accept the beauty of it. The wandering. The leaf in the wind of it all. And I take my line and she takes hers.
Mine takes me to Convention. In the south. In the 15th. Or the 14th. It doesn't matter, really, does it. And after some mild street finding, I'm at the address from the texts. The pleadings. And I pop in the door code and I'm in, and up three flights, and I'm there. There's a pumpkin on the door, and I burst in. Erin's there to greet me in a skinny hallway with three rooms on one side and a bathroom on the other and a kitchen at the end. "Hi."
She has that look about her. A look I only know too well. It's a thing of puppy love, and I'm scared. I hate to hurt, and I fear that hammer will come down soon enough. But first, some wine. In one of the bedrooms there's a mass of young undergrads from all over (a couple of Aussies and Frenchies, but all American girls, except for one belle francaise) and Lili's there flirting up some dashing, serious and cool, Swedish type. His name's Victor. She smiles at me, and I smile back, "Hey, is Rachel here?" That tall blonde gypsy queen. I think I love her. "Shh," she says at a tone below the party hum, and she hands me a cigarette under the muse of long lost friends (but it's only been three days), and I try to ignore those nervous side-long glances from Erin, that bright-eyed, young Midwesterner just trying to find herself in this French foreign land. I almost feel bad. But I play along, and follow the flow, and try to find that happy medium of wine-infused content amongst cigarette smoke and smoking by the chain in Parisian flats.
[stop]
I think I found it. For a second, anyways. Because by that time, I'm always just a few too over. It's always so hard to hit that nail on the head, and once I know I'm over, I think hell, I might as well go for it. Pass the wine. Another cigarette, sil vous plait. What are these, Marlboros? Perfect. I hear those are nice for a good head-buzz.
And it's like a Sex in the City episode in there. Drunk hussies and sex stories, which are inevitable whenever Megan's Law comes up. And it does for I don't know what reason. I guess law is a more intriguing subject in an international crowd, especially when it pertains to sex. America's sex laws. Our offender database. The website with the dots. Enthralling, I'm sure, but before it has a time to fizzle, our dear Lili takes the stage with a definitive, pent-up, wine-sloshed anger about the subject. "Whoa, Megan's Law? Okay, hussies. I need to tell this story..." And it's the story of the Barnes & Nobles jerker, who was jerkin' it in the bookstore, while Lili was reading down the non-fiction aisle upstairs. "Just wankin' it," and she's so animated. With the kid's books one aisle over. It's repulsive, and he's old, and he goes running downstairs, and her friend finds him on Megan's Law, with a picture and everything. She's distraught, and wound-up, and, well yeah, she's pretty drunk. She's definitely out-pacing me by a few glasses, that's for sure. But hey, I got here late, what am I supposed to do. This ain't some old college wine-chugging contest (well, I guess it was actually), not for me anyway. Silly undergrads. I used to be so naive. You drink slow, not fast, and that's how you last. And that usually works, but you can only have so many wine runs. After three, all bets are off, and it's turns to an Italian man hanging out down some street in the Roman summer. Just jerkin' it in on his motorcycle, as girls walk by. Every girl's got one, it seems. Stories of the men in India, that just grab at Western women. Everyone except the French belle. She's just got green eyes and freckles and a smile I catch smiling at me sideways while I'm talking to Sezen. "It's seven with a z," she says.
I get to thinking while she's talking. "That's strange," I say to her, "I think if it were turned around and I caught some girl gettin' all DJ down there, I mean, yeah weird. But compliment, thanks. Talk about a self-esteem bump. Sexy, kinda." And the red-bearded Kiwi (Sezen's boyfriend) to my side agrees.
"Yee, if I saw that, I wouldn't feel too bad about myself. It's not so aggressive, I think," and so, of course, we both go through the motions in our head and in the air above our crotches with our hands, laughing. "Yup," he says, "It's got a different feel for sure... Softer, I'd say." And I agree. It's the woman's touch, soft and cute, not aggressive and dark like our's. It's poking, not choking.
"Well, I suppose it is quite an aggressive posture. Not attractive in the least," says Sezen. She's a banker, a student of finance. "It's different with someone you're intimate with, though."
"Really? I mean, I come out of the shower and she's gotten started without me. I think that's much more appealing for the guy, than if it were flipped around on the girl, right? I can't imagine getting a little slap in while I'm waiting, or while she's watching even. That's weird. " And I'm drunk, glancing whenever out the window at the Paris streets below. Weird to think I'm here, really. Silly weird. Erin catches my eye for a second before I look away, and it's back to Sezen.
"Well, it depends if I know the guy."
"I should hope you know the guy," I laugh, "He's in your bed wankin' it while you're taking a shower."
"No, I mean if I'm seeing the guy, or if he's just some random," and she smiles at the Kiwi.
"True," he says. "Relationships change things."
"I'm sure they do," says I.
"Well, have you ever been in a long term relationship?" inquires Sezen. And oh, how I hate this corner I always find myself in.
"Well, no."
"You're kidding. A good-look guy like you's never had a girlfriend?" It's always a shock when a girl hears it. A surprise I don't know whether I value anymore (not the way I did in high school, anyways, when it always gave the girl a challenge). That shock's more a glare from myself now. Right in the face, as I see it.
"'fraid not," I shrug. And she slowly works at the nails in the coffin lid, always prying. Always questioning, and drunk-intrigued. I think maybe she gets me.
It's a small room. Erin's room, in fact. Just a big bed, a closet, an old bureau with a mirror, and a pair of chairs. Everyone's spread out on the floor and bed with wineglasses and ash-trays and cigarette butts and legs and limbs abound abound. Sezen and I talk sitting in the chairs by the bureau, talking passion, and she's got me going now with these damned wine refills. She's intent, probing, and when I say something she latches onto, she takes the mike, "Wait, what's wrong with girls not wanting to have sex right off the bat? I'm not sure I follow." Perhaps I've touched a nerve in my drunk ramblings. And everything sways and double-focuses as the cigarette smoke and cheap wine play tricks on my mind. I'm floating in the chair now.
"Oh, there's nothing wrong with that. I respect that. It's when a relationship pivots on sex that I think is funny. Some girls are all, 'I only have sex with my boyfriend. It's something for a committed relationship. It's something special.'" I do my best dumb-betch accent.
"But it is something special," Sezen retorts.
"Okay, maybe it is special to some, but it can't be so special to everyone now can it? We're all different here and, as such, we probably all see it in a little different light," I say, and she half-nods a calculating agreement. "The problem is," says I, "is that when a girl does that, she, unwittingly or not, makes it all about sex. For the guy, anyway. Isn't she?"
"I don't know.."
"It's the end goal though isn't it? It's the carrot at the end of the stick she's holding in front of some jackass as she wraps him around her finger. And then when it all goes down, then what? That silly girl thinks that all this time this boy was falling in love with her, being ever so charming, bending head over heel, when really, he just a wanted the sexy time. And I just a need some more wine." And like that, my cup's filled again, but I can't imagine who from. I think it's Erin because her eyes are desperately trying to dance with mine. Mais non, I don't want that.
There's a vauge dawning on Sezen's face, "Ok well, that's just stupid. I'm not like that."
"Well, good."
And then a drunk French-Canadian with beard and glasses and an air of esteem about him, he tells us all the French theory of love, one hand with a wine glass, the other in his tweed jacket pocket. It has to do with Russian dolls, the kind you pull apart and pull apart, just to find another smaller one inside. "You see, to the French," (he's so haughty) "love is like a Russian doll. There will be many until we find the one. It's not romanticized like with you Americans." Meanwhile Lili's macking hard on her new undergrad beau she's been playing footsies and handsies with all night. "You see, it something that we approach knowing that it's going to end," says Frenchie. "And it goes on like this, the love doesn't last and we get bored. Until we don't anymore. And when that time comes, it is truly special. We don't try to make things work. It just does when it does. And in that tone, we're never distraught by a break-up, only lovingly surprised when things last." What a douche. But I suppose that's the way it is with me, maybe. And inside, I hold onto to what he says, even though his words sounded so arrogant. But hey, he's French. What do I expect?
Everyone chimes in with their thoughts, Sezen, the Kiwi, Erin and the French girl beside her, laying back casually on the bed with her legs crossed. It's mildly interesting, just not enough so to remember, especially with another cigarette and my glass empty and on it's side on the carpet floor. I just listen, eyes darting back and forth as the conversation continues. They pause every now and then on the freckly French girl on the bed, and she smiles and looks down her shirt at me, head cocked to the side, whenever they do.
"So then what's your type, lone ranger," and it's Sezen and she's address me once again, but I'm to silly to realize it for a second.
"Hmm? What's that?"
"Your type, your type. What kind of girls do you like?" she reiterates.
"Haha... really?" And it's funny to me because just yesterday I'd been Elizabeth had asked me the same question. And the answer had come quite easily then, although maybe at least a little misogynistic sounding. But then again, Elizabeth was a student of the theater at a cut-throat theater school, and she preferred things acute and to the point, I think. Or at least she understood things that way, which is handy because that usually how I tell things. And I don't think she saw me as a misogynist. But will Sezen? I'm not so sure, and already I'm drunkenly trying to word it just right.
"Yes, really," she says.
[stop]
"I guess to put it concisely, I like bored model types." And everybody laughs.
"Oh, really," says Sezen between drunk chuckles. "But isn't that every man's type?"
"Hmm. Well, I guess so." And I guess she's right, but is my type really everyone else's type? "When you put it like that, anyways. And what's wrong with that?"
"Um, for starters, it's a cop-out. And it's a bit lofty, don't you think? Maybe that's why you've never had a girlfriend jackass. I mean... bored models? C'mon, haha. You're ridiculous."
"Ok, ok. Maybe I shouldn't put things so concisely. What I meant was that I'm deftly attracted to bored-looking model types."
"Oh, yeah?" Still laughing.
"Yeah. I need a body that fits with mine, tall and slim, and I need a girl that's too bored to try. It's something you see in her pretty model face though. In the way she carries herself. In the way she talks to people. She's not nervous. She's not self-conscious. And she kind of looks like she's stopped caring because well... she probably has. She indulges in comfort, and she's frankly open and quirky funny and animated and there's nothing left except a pretty frame, a nonchalant confidence, and dreary eyes that casually scan a room for something to intrigue them. But things rarely do, really, so she has that polite conversation tone to carry on small-talk in the interim. I love finding that, and when I do, I desperately wish to catch their focus, as long as I don't have to try too hard, because if it doesn't come naturally, it's a bit unnatural, isn't it? Whoa, how long have I been talking..." Because I realize I've just described someone I'd just met. Well, not just met, but here in Paris. And I look around. She's friends with Erin, in fact, but she's not here.
Lili had stopped macking in the corner and was now sitting on the Erin's bed beside her. She's wasted. "You're crazy," she says.
"Yeah, well..." I shrug and I try to avoid Erin's gaze yet again. But Sezen's starring me down hard like she's trying to make sense of it all, looking over my whole face with her eyebrows furrowed for the slightest second, and I can tell the gears are grinding behind her eyes.
"I think I know what you're talking about," she says. "You really need to meet some of my friends. There's one that'd be right up your alley. She's beautiful."
"Oh, really?" says I, and I we keep up the conversation for as long as I can as Erin's eyes burn a hole in my temple. Then, "Oh my, what time is it?" And I pull out my phone and it's almost 1:30 in the morning. "Shit! I need to catch the metro! I have to go guys, it's been a pleasure. Thanks for the wine." I stand to leave, lean with one arm on the chair's back for a second and decide to take my time getting my jacket and my scarf because holy hell, I'm wasted.
The quiet French girl suddenly perks up, "I need to take the metro too! How much time do we have?" By now, everybody's getting up for good-byes, for hand-shakes and double-kisses.
"Not long," I say with a smile as I wrap my scarf around. "I'll race ya." And she laughs.
[stop]
Elena (the freckly French darling with green eyes) and I make for the door, and Lili grabs my arm, pulls me close and tells me to stay with a head tilt and a backwards eye point and Erin standing behind her. "You have to," she whispers close. Except I don't. And I don't want to.
"Are you staying?" I ask.
"Yeah," in (drunk) serious tone.
And Erin chimes in with a puppy-dog look, "There's plenty of room here to sleep."
"Oh..." sigh, "that's all right," I say with a forced smile. "I'll just catch the last metro." And I follow Elena out and we race down two-flights of stairs, laughing, with one more to go. But wait.
"Wait," says Elena, and she backs into a corner on the landing between the first and second floor. Smiling and facing our feet. With her eyes closed. Shaking her head slowly to a rhythm that her whole body followed.
Perhaps it's from the night's chain smoking. Or the barrels of wine. Or the two flights flat sprint, or all of the above. But I'm short of breath on that landing and breathing deep. When I come up to her asking, "Are you ok?" and lean down to try and meet her gaze, I get close, and the next thing I know, her arms are around me, pulling me closer, into the corner, and my arms are around her, my fingers locked in her hair, and I'm breathing from her lips with heavy inhales as she breathes in. She wraps a leg around me, and she spins me against the wall.
My phone rings. She take's it out of my front pocket, and pulls away to look at it. And with a small French gasp, "It's Erin," she says. She's nervous as she hands the phone to me, still ringing. "You can't tell her," says her whisper. "Oh, please? We work together at the school. And I think she likes you." You think? But there's a desperate, pleading look on her face, like the girl who just broke mommie's vase. Yearning for empathy.
So I smile back at her and "I promise," I say, and take the call. Erin says that she's mixed a drink for me, and it's waiting, and I have to come back up and take it. Quickly. "It's gotta be quick though, seriously. Just one. I can't miss this metro." Elena's kissing my neck ever so softly.
"Just one more for the road," says Erin. "I promise." Click.
"Your hands are so cold," Elena's holding them to her face, palm to cheek, moving them back and forth, and nuzzling my fingers with her nose.
"I know, right? Okay," I say. "I just have to go and take one drink upstairs and I'll be back. And you... You just wait right here, yeah? Don't leave me, please. I'll only be a second" She nods, looking at me nervous, and biting her nails out of habit.
[stop]
Back up two flights. Goddammit. Through the door with the pumpkin, and Sezen's in the hallway. Lili's there too. "Where's Erin?" I ask.
"In the kitchen." So I walk to the end of the hall into the kitchen, and there she is.
"All right. Where's this drink at?" And I'm as chipper as possible.
"Uhm, I have to make it still," says Erin and she quickly grabs a bottle of gin and a pair of shot glasses.
"Oh... no wine?"
"Yeah, we ran out. I'm sorry."
"That's okay. I'm too drunk for gin though, and I really can't miss this metro. Maybe another time, yeah?"
"Uhm..."
"Yeah, another time," I say, and I hug her and kiss her on the forehead and turn heels and bolt back down the hall to the door.
Sezen grabs my hand first, "Wait. Where are you going? Stay." And there's urgency in her eyes.
But I laugh, "I can't." And I pull free.
Then Lili get's me just outside the door in the stairwell. "Stop. Go and kiss her. You need to go back there."
"Uh... No, I don't. Plus the French girl's downstairs waiting for me, tehe." Oops.
Her eyes widen "Are you..." I can't not smile.
"But don't tell Erin," I cut her off and turn to go, but she grabs my arm one last time.
"If you leave here tonight, you can't stay at my place anymore," she whispers close in my ear, and I don't see it as a bluff. I see it as a threat, and I'm taken aback for one second and mull it over. Really? But I don't care right now, and I call it anyway.
"That's all right," I say with a kiss on her cheek, and I'm gone.
[stop]
I fly down the stairs and Elena's waiting in the foyer, just standing in the middle of it, watching me stumble down the last flight and approach. Closer. Closer still, and then her eyes fire green and her lips part with a French gasp and we're against the wall again. Her hands up my shirt, holding me. The cold on her fingertips wakes the skin, a feeling alive after a long slumber, and my soul rustles to.
When we hear the steps on the staircase, I look up to see Lili's legs and the bottom of her blue, hussy-fur jacket descending, and we bolt like kids startled in a hide-n-seek, out the door and down this street, then that street, sprinting. Running hand in hand. On drunk legs and a brisk Paris night's air. It burns the lungs to laugh, maybe from the cold, or maybe from the cigarettes, but we can't help it. At least I can't. Running for seclusion down late Paris streets in the tow of some French belle. What am I doing.
We're not even running towards the metro. We've missed the last one anyways, so we stop at a corner on a small quiet street and she slips into personas. There was Natasha the street-walker. "You should arrest me, officer. I'm being bad. You need an officer name. Like Cliff." Then the innocent French doe, "Where am I? Who are you?" with a blase curiosity as she pulls her head back, arching her hips into mine. "What is your name?"
"Me? I'm Elena. Oh, pardon. Je m'apelle Elena," I say with a smile at the game.
"Elena...? But that is my name." It's an Audrey Hepburn innocence in her tone, like she's already thinking of breakfast. "Give it back to me..." She coaxes with persuasive neck kisses.
"Hmm. Fine, fine. You're Elena. You're Elena," because the feeling's so wonderful, and the way she accents words is exciting.
"But then what is your name?" Elle dit entre bisous. "What is your middle name?"
"Ah, well my middle name's Brian."
She pauses, "But... then what is your first name? Are you Brian Brian?" and she laughs at it.
"Oh, mais non. George Brian."
"George, mmm," she smiles and pours her eyes into mine. "I like this." Her hands move up my shirt again to my chest. "It is sexy, I think."
"Ha! George is," I'm not convinced.
"Yes."
"More than Brian?"
"Mmm, yes."
"Well, call me George then."
"I will then." Oh, the French. She grabs us a cab to her place.
