Lili's mad at me. Why? Well, because she was at school all day, so I'd taken her keys. Why? So I could go to the market. I would run down the six flights of stairs and let her in when she'd return in the late afternoon. The only problem with the plan was that I wasn't home when she came back. I was out of place, off gallivanting with sweet-pretty cool-quirky Rachel.
We meet, Rachel and I, on Rue Clare, which is clogged with people and tents and antiques for the vintage market this weekend. There's everything there that one could ever imagine to be at a Parisian vintage market. And then some, and it's all super old. Old carries a different weight over here in France. Some of this stuff predates my own young country.
She sees me before I see her so when I turn and find her eyes, they're right there looking back at me. She throws silly awkward surprise on her face with raised eyebrows and wizard's air and I can't hold back the smile of warmth that she brings me. "Oh, hey there," I say.
"Why, hello," says she. Her disposition's sultry. She says it low and with pouted lips after. But there's a giggle in her eyes, and her long hair's down half covering her face, half flowing over her bright red wool coat. Whenever I see red wool I will always think of Rachel.
"You finish that paper finally?" I ask her.
"Ugh, finally. It's good to be done. And what did you do today, sir?"
"Me? Well, I just romped around and rambled into this awesome antiques fair. It's pretty sick actually. There's some old-ass stuff here."
"Yeah," she says with a lean-back, taking in the setting. "Super old. I love it."
"Ah, moi aussi." I always put on a deep gentlemen's tone with my French accent. I don't know why. And it's not even always really. Just with the people I know because it's sarcastic. Clearly. And the French are smart, see. And I'm afraid they'd pick up on it like that, and what's more, I don't think they'd take too kindly to it. Especially not from the likes of me. But enough of that. "So," I say. "Spliff time?"
Her eyes widen with a flare for a second, "Mmm. Most definitely." We head off towards chez Rachel between the tented rows of old antiquities. Through the everything old. Old clothes, old shoes. Old guns, old mirrors. Old china and glassware. Old postcards, old paintings. Old cupboard knobs, old jewelry. Old everything.
We finger through the postcards for a spell, all yellow and faded as they are. Black and whites, mostly from the 1800s. They're only one or two euro each, and I think about buying one for Lili, but I can't find one at L'Opera. There's hundreds of them, maybe thousands, and they're only sort of sorted. No dice.
We pass a tent selling solely old bottle openers. Some of them are displayed in glass-topped cases. "Ooo, how much?" I say in Borat English. The tent's patron doesn't even acknowledge me. The openers are intriguing, so we stop to peruse, picking up old corkscrews of all shapes and sizes.
"Say what," says Rachel holding up a metal, screwed contraption supposedly designed to open wine bottles way back when. I can't imagine how though, no matter which way we turn it. "This one's forty euros."
"That's redunkulous."
"Ha, speaking of redunkulous, how was the jazz bar last night, hmm?" She asks with a nudge of the shoulder. "Real jazzy, was it?"
"Argh! I wish I knew! Didn't end up going actually." Olivia never rang. Must've been a long night of paper-writing I assume. "Just stayed home and watched a movie with Lili," I say.
"Aww, how adorable. That's exactly what I did, except not with Lili. Obviously. What movie was it?"
"Oh, just a little diddy called Melancholia."
"Huh. Sounds cheeky and fun, haha! How was it?" She asks it airily with space between her words to breath.
"Well, it was beautiful," I say. "It just so happened to be about the end of the world, that's all."
"Nice!"
"Right?" I lay on the exaggeration. "What'd you watch smarty-pants?"
"Oh, this small whatever film, Winter Passing."
"Nice! How was it?!"
"Shut-up. It was all right. Decent. One of those slow, sad melodramas of life and love," she says, smiling at her own hypocrisy. "And stop smiling!"
"Sorry, no smiling," I smile, and then I put on a stiff lip and a tight jaw. And inside I just keep falling.
"I like those kind of movies," she continues. "I kind of got a soft spot for them. Like those Eternal Sunshine-y ones."
"You ever see Synecoche, NY? That's a damned sad one for sure," I say.
"Are you kidding? I love that one. It's Phillip Seymour Hoffman isn't it?"
"The Hoff! Yup." And I laugh at the recall. "That song from it was just playing on the ole' iPod before you got here."
"Oh! 'I'm just a little person...'" she softly sings it, eyes closed, in perfect tune before she forgets the lyrics and hums the slow melody. "dum dum dum dum duh-dum... That one?"
"That's the one," I say. We've left the corkscrews behind, and we're walking down St. Germaine now. To Rachel's place. She tells me about the paper she wrote and the trials of her day, and I listen thoughtfully because why wouldn't I? And I tell her of all the nothings I've been up to (well, maybe not all of them), and all the while that sweet-voiced song from the movie sings along in my head for only me to hear:
I know you
You're the one
I've waited for.
Let's have some fun.
[stop]
"I think I'll just do this," I tell her from the bed.
She's up to pour more 2,00 euro wine into her coffee mug, but she looks up at me when I say it. "What's that?"
"This. Picking up and going. Traveling when I can and fuck all the rest. I don't need it." Or maybe it's just that I don't have it yet. And in my lacking I have this freedom. Not grandiose, romantic freedom, like some great bald eagle flying off with it's olive branch and arrows. Just a bitter, holistic one that pushes one to wander because there's no one and nothing pulling me back. No other half to account for. No one to lay my stresses on, so they pile up inside. And no job, no career, nothing that requires commitment anyways. No one telling me what to do except the old patriarch at home. He just wants the best, I guess. He wants to see success in his treelings. A success like his.
There's more successes out there than I think he realizes or maybe cares for I think. And our lives are not the same. I'm at the point in the road where I fork off, heeding Frost's words and taking that road less traveled. The unpaved one. He raised us well though, my sister and I. We're quick minded. We're calculating. We're independent, a bit more than he wished for perhaps. That's what you get though when you raise kids tough, and when when I look back I'm glad of it. And I think now he knows we came out all right, with humble heads on our shoulders. A couple of self-thinkers off in worldly locales that his own eyes haven't ever had the pleasure to take in personally. A home body, he was. He never flew to Paris on a whim. He never found himself in a tiny servants' quarters flat off Rue de l'Universite with a beautifully cool breeze of a girl, high, and falling in love. And he never will, so I don't think he'll ever understand. Not fully, and maybe not at all. But it's okay because I love him. Dearly so, so I smile.
She looks at me funny and smiles too. "Mmm, that sounds nice," she says.
"You sound nice." We're so high.
[stop]
"I'll be there," I'd said.
"Okay."
It's cold outside, not by Paris standards mind you, but brisk. And hardly in the habit of waiting outside. I'd left her there. Not on purpose really. I mean I'm spliff high, alone with the prettiest, most beautiful excuse for a soul-mate I can think of. In her tiny servants' quarters flat in the 7th, not more than three blocks from Lili's. Oh, her tiny servants' quarters bed and sink and stove-top; all in one room. Inside her life, and that young adolescent in me thinks I can stay here forever because, why, wouldn't that be so perfect and heavenly? But that's always how it is when reality strikes, and I'm up and away, and I don't even kiss her, except on both cheeks when I say good-bye because that's all I have time for before I'm off down the stairs.
So I'm late, and Lili's left waiting at her door until I come panting up. Apologetic as possible, tail between legs. High tail. There's a deep grief building up as well, because something said in me that that'd be the last time I'd see her, ever. And it was.
Lili's mad at me. "Give me the keys," she says stone-faced and I give them to her. "I'm going to need some time alone," she says, and she says nothing else.
"Okay," I say. "Let me just get my baguette and my journal." Whatever. She's pissed, and I'm kicked out, on the streets with half a baguette and a black, leather-bound notebook with black elastic to strap it shut. Oh, and a pencil, duh.
[stop]
Olivia. I call her on my trusty pay-as-you-go phone, and she picks up after a pair of rings and answers in a light angel voice. In American English with a French demure. "Hello," she says.
"Hi! How are you?"
"Just fabulous. And you?"
"Samesies. So... Shall we dinner tonight?"
"Oh! Yes, let's. That sounds perfect," she says, and there's a hint of excitement floating wispy through the phone on her words. "Where are you?"
"In the seventh," I say.
"Oh, no! I just left the seventh! I'm on the metro heading home."
"Well, let's just eat by you then."
"Really?"
"Yes, of course. Where is it that you live?" I inquire.
"In the Marais. Do you know where that is? It isn't close really."
"Ha! I was just there yesterday in fact," I say because I was. Skipping between this art gallery and that with dear sweet Rachel. Dammit! I'm never going to see her again.
"You weren't."
"I was indeed. Checkin' out some galleries."
"Oh, no!"
"I know!" I say sounding like a giddy high school girl. What a perfect pair we are, never in the same place at the same time. "Don't worry though, it's a straight shot on the 6 isn't it?"
"Yes! The exit's Filles de Cavalrie. I'll text you directions from there. I live super close."
"Lovely."
"Or just call me when you get there. Let's say around... 10:30? I still need to take a shower and freshen up."
"10:30 it is," I say. "I'll see you then."
"A bientot!"
"A bientot!" Click. I hate talking on the phone.
Fuck, it's only 9:00. So I stroll on down to the Chinois place just past Cafe Constant. "Pour cinq euros," I say pointing to the fried rice and the chicken kebobs.
The squinty middle-aged man behind the counter looks at me queerly. "Cinq euros?" he asks, confirming.
"Oui, cinq euros pour le rice et le... um, ca!" I say pointing again. "Le poulet."
The man's wife is in the corner folding napkins and shoots me a look of what I really hope isn't disdain, but if sure as hell looks like it. Then she shoots one at her husband as well. Whatever. I'm the only one in the joint. "Et d'eau, s'il vous plait."
After microwaving everything (because that's how the Chinois rolls in the Paris), he brings the food out to me on cheap china with a pitcher of water. "Merci beaucoup," I say, and when the husband and wife start yelling at each other in Mandarin, I just put my headphones in and The Keys Noir croon me through my meal. Five euros doesn't buy much in Paris, even at a Chinois, so when I'm finished, why, I just open my trusty leather-bound and word-vom onto paper in pencil until 10:00, then I high-tail it out of there to the metro stop at Tour Mahbourg. It's a twenty-five minute ride to Filles de Cavalrie. A nothing ride lost to my thoughts.
[stop]
Just a young California man waiting for a girl on a late-night Parisian street corner. In the Marais. I shuffle back and forth, pacing because it's so cold in early December. My cheap aviator jacket only keeps me so warm (I wish the fur on the collar was real), and my scarf's a joke novelty thing from the surf shop back home. No one wears scarves in LA, no guys anyways. Mainly because one never needs to, and if I don't need to, well, why would I? They tickle my neck, and they're a bother, and I don't know, it's just hard to be serious in LA with a scarf on. It's like wearing a fedora, only not so much so.
Not here in Paris though. Scarves are dead serious here, and with good reason. As I'm set pacing, I dip my shivering chin low into the all-too-thin folds of such a sorry excuse, and I try not to gawk at the big, bundley woven ones and cashmere ones that come walking by. It's fucking freezing out here. Thank god I put my long undies on today.
She catches me first. I know it because as I turn yet again to pace in the other direction, my eyes come up and there's sleek boots and long, elegant fur (the real kind), plush lips, and beautiful brown doe eyes looking me straight, coming at me with a garish walk of determined sophistication and she smiles. I always remember the smiles. Hell, what's better to remember? It's a smile a intrigue and devilish charm that pulls to one side, and I might as well be hers. "Hello," she says.
"Hi!" And I have to smile back because I just can't help it. "How are you?" I ask dumbly.
"Oh, just fine." She carries herself like a French woman, quite upright and interesting, and she speaks like one too. But her English is accented American from her years of living in the States, in Florida and the Valley just north of LA. "And I'm sorry, I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long."
The polite concern melts me. If only my feet felt so warm. I wish I had wool socks and not these thin stupid gold-toes. "Psh, never," I say. "I actually got lost a little anyways (I hadn't), so I just got here. To this corner, that is." Stop being a timid little bitch, Brian. You don't really care remember? That's right. I don't. After all, it's too cold to care, and there's much too much lonesome dreary world out there to get caught up in it all.
"Ha! Well, that's um... good, I guess. Right? It is a bit chilly out tonight." And she pulls her fur close.
Meanwhile, I'm just trying not to shake visibly from the shivers. "It is," I say, and we start walking. A brisk walk, but not too fast for talking.
"Oh, but this is nothing, trust me," she says seriously. "It's usually much colder this time of year."
"Hmm, yes. I keep hearing that. Guess I kind of lucked out then, didn't I." It sounds silly to say as my sides hold tense, trying not to quiver too much. But I can't imagine the state I'd be in if it were much colder now, so for that I'm thankful. as we small chat and half-laugh our way right into a corner cafe. The place is packed though, standing room only inside.
"This place is really good. I come here all the time," she tells me, craning her neck to look around. "So what do you think? Should we sit outside? I see a table out there by the window."
"Sure. Why not?" Idiot. "There's a heat lamp out there, yeah?"
"Uhm... yes! I see one!" And I follow her back out. Turns out the table's not all that close to the heat lamp after all, but that soon slips from thought. A part of me's still blinkingly surprised at the fair creature I'm sharing supper with. In childish intrigue, I am. In reserved awe as we tell each other our life's stories, just the best ones. The charming ones and the flattering ones. And the coincidental ones, like the one we're living through right now. Her parents are both French, and she was raised all over the place and still somehow we know more than a few of the same faces. It's a wonderfully strange feeling, coincidence, and I catch her just once staring at me in rapturous disbelief as I'm rambling on to the city wind in the street, they way you do when you're sharing a small round table, sitting next to each other and both facing the sidewalk. It's endearing to say the least, and she darts her eyes and laughs to herself when I look over.
"So..." she says.
"So," says I. "What's good here?"
"Oh! Everything. It's all delicious."
"Lovely." So I peruse the menu, la carte all in French, and choose the cheapest thing they've got that sounds like steak. "Le steak hache, s'il vous plait," I say when the server takes our order. It's all I know how to say really. Lucky for me, Olivia's French flows just as freely as her English, and all the more erudite-sounding because hey, it's French, and that shit sounds beautiful and sophisticated at the same time, especially when you don't understand it.
"Did you want anything to drink?" she asks.
"Ah! Hmm, yes." I'm not quite sure, because I can't think of any drink that'll make me feel less freezing. "Well, what are you drinking?"
"Uhm... I don't know actually. Something with vodka..."
"Screwdriver," I suggest.
"Ha! I was leaning more towards a cosmo."
"Well, naturally."
"Maybe a couple of them actually. David Lynch just opened some super exclusive club in Paris and my friend's dragging me to it. I'm just so tired though." Her brows tilt with restrained anxiety, the slightest glint, but it's a feeling that sounds familiar to me.
"Aww, poor baby," I say with a smile, and then a glance at the waiting server, "I'll just have a beer." And she tell him. En Francais, saying something to slake his waning patience so that they share a laugh before he takes leave.
"David Lynch, huh? Is he the guy that did Fight Club?"
"Mulholland Drive," she corrects me. "Fight Club was David Fincher."
"Fincher. That's right. Fuckin' ay, there's too many Davids in directing." Well, maybe not. Who cares. Maybe there's not enough Davids. Or maybe I'm just not as erudite as I thought. None of it matter though when the food comes because it's been about an hour now since I'd left the Chinois, and my stomach's once again grumbling. The beer's fine enough, but apparently ten-euro steak hache equals a cooked hamburger patty by itself on a plate. Sans bun. And fries in a cup without ketchup.
Olivia can't help but revel in my polite disappointment. She'd ordered a salad, a big bountiful French one with seared tuna on top and, presentation-wise, in striking contrast to my lonely steak hache patty. "Mmm,"she breathes it in, relishing her first bite, overtly so.
"Yeah, yeah."
She giggles, "Not quite what you were expecting?
"Well... no, not really." I'd rolled the dive and come up short, and not for the first time (don't order duck confit if you want something warm and savory and satisfying because it's not). I'm beginning to think these French dice are loaded and honestly, I wouldn't be surprised. "I was kind of hoping it'd be more steaky," I say with a frowning face. "Oh, well." And I dig in.
She laughs and I grin through the chewing. We talk about written things, things she'd written, things I'd written. What we wrote and how we wrote it. For her, it's all the dark brooding male figures, usually a little older. For me, it's all the... I don't know, tales of adventure? The curious question "why?" floats by in my mind. Why all these older brooding gentlemen? ("In every single story she'd read, arghh!" Lindsay'd said," and it's so good!") Am I so brooding and gentle in her eyes? Eh, maybe. But certainly not older. Or at least I don't think I am. I wonder what she's thinking... I hope it's pleasant.
She tells me it's difficult to pursue two passions, and after we finish our last drinks inside, toasty at the bar, she asks me to walk her back to her place. But of course. Her flat is a couple blocks down. Two kisses on the cheek, a fond farewell drawn out, and she's gone. Off to prepare for her night of casual exclusivity and dancing into the early morning. I set my steps back to Filles de Cavalrie.
Ah! That why! Why did I not ask to come up? "I'm meeting a friend in an hour or so," she'd said.
"Do you want to show me your place and have a cup of tea maybe," I'd say.
"Why, yes. I'd like that."
I wish.
[stop]
It's in a daze of missed beauty that I walk back to Filles des Cavalrie. And Lili's still mad at me. I call her coming up the stairs at La Tour-Maubourg, and she's not home. "I'm out to dinner with Linds and the mama," she tells me.
"How lovely. In the seventh?"
"No."
"Oh. Well, ou est vous little lady?"
"Uhm... I forget what it's called. We're at some restaurant near Notre Dame."
"Ooo la laa. Sounds fun. Should I come out there?"
"No." She sounds short. "I think we're leaving soon anyways."
"Okay. I'll just hang around here then, I guess."
"Yeah, I'll call you when I'm back." Click.
And like that, I'm out on my own again. Alone again in the seventh on a cold autumn night. It's December, but the real winter weather hasn't quite hit yet. Or at least that's what everyone keeps telling me. The winter's coming late this year, I suppose. And the fall's hanging on. It's still cold though. Fucking frigid actually. So I bum a cigarette off a guy passing by and shuffle off to Collin's Pub in no hurry at all, one hand shoved deep in my jacket's pocket. FC Barcelona's playing tonight and the place is packed, making it only too easy to swipe one half-a-beer abandoned at the bar. I manage to slide into a seat in the back by the dartboard, and when I do, it strikes me as surprising that I still feel a little high from the spliff with Rachel way back when, when nobody was mad at me yet.
I'm not high, I just feel it a little still. And there's simply too many half-beers abandoned in the joint for it to be a bad time, my time as a wallflower flowering on the back-bar bench at an Irish pub in Paris. The crowd sways and roars with the game, like some interpretive theater art piece hinged solely on goal-scoring and missed opportunities. It's a romping good French time. I'm just too tired to do anything but sit here and watch. Silent and no one sees me. I don't know anyone here anyways, and it's packed and that's always the best time to wallflower. It can be surprisingly restive, and I wonder why I don't do it more often. I need to be alone more maybe.
[stop]
Barcelona takes the game, no surprise there. Within twenty minutes the place is sufficiently emptied, with none but a few lonely stragglers sipping their drinks slowly at the bar, and I suddenly feel much more noticeable and noticeably without beverage. So it's with a heavy sigh that I pick myself up and stroll out. Still no word from Lili.
Fuck. I'll let her alone though. No, fuck that. It's freezing out here. And everywhere's closed and it's late and it's fucking freezing. Not literally, of course. Just in that cold, late night lonesome kind of way. I lock all that away though as the phone rings, and I try to stay chipper when she picks up. "What's up, girl? Where you at?"
"We're still by Notre Dame. We watched the Barcelona game, but we're leaving soon."
There's a thick lump of disparity rising in my throat, but I swallow it down. "Oh, reary."
"Yes, reary. I'll call you when I'm off the metro."
"Okay-"
Click.
All righty then. There's nothing else to do now. Nothing else except to walk so I walk. I shuffle north. Not on the main rues, but the narrower ones. The one-ways. To some raspy gritty lost-soul Brian Jonestown Massacre. Past Rachel's, past AUP, straight to the Seine. My feet are tired, and my legs are tired too and stiff. There's a bench at the corner off St. Germaine, and I sit facing the old river so the cold night's breeze is to my back, and the Tour Eiffel's long gone dark behind me to my left some ways. No more sparkling lights and orange glow, just dark empty iron. Not a soul's on the streets now, it's too late and too cold. Bringing my jacket's collar up and fluffing the thin scarf around my neck only does so much, and so much isn't quite enough I don't think. Each breath I take puts a shiver and a seize through my chest so I breath deeper and quicker to the fast tune of the music. At least I've got my journal. Something to lose myself in, to take my mind away from its present senses. From the biting cold and the lost puppy dog soul of it all stripped bare.
At least I'm leaving tomorrow.
