"Living on a diet of chocolate and cigarettes. I want to call you again." She says it to me in the slow tone to the lone piano. Lili. She sings the whole song, that dreary number of self-reliance by Angus and Julia Stone. She hums it with the morning's first cigarette, striking a match for light and sticking her head out the tiny servant's quarter's window. When it's done, the song, she tells me to play it again and I oblige her and roll myself a spliff.
Light on the weed and heavy on the Lucky Strike. I'm not in California anymore. There's no marijuana by the mason jar-full here in Paris, not for me anyways. But I make do. A tiny pinch, barely a bowl's worth at a time. It makes for a spicy spliff, and a terribly wonderful headbuzz, especially when I roll it sans filter. I usually do and today's no different. It's a good morning.
One rife with possibility because today, like most every other day I wake up on Lili's floor, is all mine. Free and clear with nothing planned and anything to do. So I crack a pair of eggs and scramble them and butter a slice of bread with Lili's awesome salted butter that puts all that bland American butter to shame. It's a proper breakfast with a bowl of chocolaty Carrefour cereal and a tiny cup of espresso from our new Italian espresso maker. Yum.
It's a Wednesday. Lili's got school, but her phone's not charging so we make plans to meet at the Combes building where her class is because I need the keys to make a grocery run while she's gone. So she goes to school, and I get to writing with some Cotton Jones playing in my headphones.
The words slide out to the drawl. It's a chug-chugging away like a slow locomotive through the day and all the days past that I'm trying to recall. Focus. Close your eyes you, and take a deep breath and focus. Where am I?
I'm in Paris. No, I'm in the Berlin forests. I'm in the Catalan mountains. I'm in the Med south of France. I'm wherever I want to be, just make sure you remember it, you. Remember everything and write it down. And put some chocolate in your espresso.
[time for work]
For so many, the ideal is to write for a living. But this is not a living I've hashed out for myself here. I'm sleeping on my friend's floor in Paris lest we forget. Hardly a living if you ask me, and so my parents keep reminding me. I've gotten it all mixed up, I'm afraid. Simply living to write, not writing to live right now. It's a sad and strangely desperate state when you realize you're not writing to live a little more, but instead living to write a little more. It's quite the opposite when you think about it. It's not fantasy or fiction then, it's cold reality on your neck hairs, and it's letting go. Hopefully not of everything though. One mustn't lose his grip. No, one just let's slide through the fingers all the things he doesn't need anymore to the best of his knowledge. The only problem is that I don't know everything. Everything I should anyways.
I'm not even close, and so the things I let slide and fall through the cracks, some of them aren't so marginal as I'd imagined. I might be lost in a lurch soon. But oh well. As the pretentious French put it, c'est la vie. My fingers find a place to stop, and I run down the stairs and off to Lili.
[stop]
At Combes, all Erin's work is up in the lobby still, and Victor's sitting at the couch so I sit in a chair across the low table from him. We make small talk about forgettable nothings, and I try not to dwell too much on last night. Just the standard admissible, "
Woo, I think maybe I drank too much last night."
"Yeah, last night got pretty crazy," says Victor with the hangover hurt still showing. "Erin said she didn't remember a thing." Of course she didn't, Victor. For my sake though, I wish I hadn't either. Unfortunately, it takes a bit more for me to blackout. A substantial bit more, and I'd woken up next to the toilet on the bathroom floor.
Lili's out of class before too long, and she takes up a seat on the couch next to Victor. Students are flooding into the lobby from the stairwell behind me now, and pretty soon Lindsay's standing next to me. "Oh hey," I say with a smile. I like smiling. "Thanks for the writing class invite, lame-o."
She smiles back, "Oh... oopsies! I actually just got out of that class. What are you even doing here?"
"Meeting up with Lili. Her phone's dead," I explain. "Wait... was she there?"
"Uhm..." She glances back at the staircase, and I crank my neck around to see.
There she is. Her hair's done up in a messy bun, and a heavy bag heavy with books is slung over her shoulder and her flowy wool coat. There's a notebook in the crook of her left arm, and a pair of thin framed glasses resting high on her head. Lindsay's description ("She looks like if Kate Beckinsale and Marisa Tomei somehow mated and had a lesbian baby") is blaring in my head as she walks past, and it fits her to a tee. "Olivia." It just comes out. I don't remember meaning to say it aloud.
She stops and turns to look at me curiously. "Hi..."
"Hi," says I, and there's that split second of awkwardness from when two strangers meet. So I blurt out an introduction with a stupid grin on my face because I can't take my eyes off hers. She's beautiful. "I'm Brian, Sacha's friend."
Her eyes widen and her face turns from rigid unknowing to a contained excitement of recognition, "Oh-my-goodness,
hi." She holds out her hand, and I shake it smoothly.
"Hi. Again." I'm flustered, and I still feel a need to explain myself. "Yeah, I was um, ha..." My thoughts are all jumbled. "Well see, my friend Lindsay here told me she was in a writing class and showed me some of the stuff from it and your name set off a little light in my head. I think maybe from Sacha's blog. I'm not sure..."
"That's incredible," she says with a look of disbelief. I'm guessing it's a look that mirrored my own, and Lindsay's for that matter. "It's great to finally meet you. I've been asking around about it and - oh, professor! Professor!" An old, white-haired man following the flow of students through the lobby stops and turns to face us. He looks like a writing professor. "This is the man I was telling you about," she says glancing sideways at me.
"Ah..." And he looks me over.
I wave silly, grinning like an idiot. "Hi!" He nods vague intrigue, before he's back on his way.
Then she turns back to me. "I didn't think this sort of thing actually happened," she says.
"Ha. Yeah, me neither. It's got a bit of the whole stars aligning kind of thing about it, doesn't it?" Or some cliche like that.
But she smiles and looks down, "Yes. Yes, it does." She's a bit flustered herself, "Oh, I must be going though. Much too much work to do."
"Well, can I give you my number?"
"My phone's at the bottom of my bag. Would you mind just calling me?"
"Of course," I say fumbling for the phone in my front pocket.
"You ready?"
A bit more fumbling, the damned buttons on this cheap French phone are too small, "...Yes, ma'am." She does the digits in twos, and when I call, her bag rings.
"There it is then," she says. She looks me dead on. "It was really nice to meet you, Brian."
"Likewise, Olivia. It was a pleasure."
"Call me sometime. Or text me or whatever." She turns to go smiling, and I don't think it's directly at me. More at herself, the way one does when something funny's going through her head and no one else knows exactly what it is. Hmm. She's an interesting one, she is.
"I can't believe you," Lindsay says looking squeamish and perhaps a tad envious.
My shoulders shrug and I smile. "I'll let you know if we do anything, and
maybe you can come. Maybe. Probably not though, tehehe."
[stop]
We take the walk back to chez Lili's at a casual stroll down Rue Cler and Grenelle. It's just the three of us, Lindsay, Lili, and I, and the talk circles around Olivia and our sarcastically-so-certain plans for the future. Coffee plans. Dinner plans. Dancing plans. Everything oozing with discussions of literary things. Lindsay almost can't stand it.
"You
have to let me come," she says. "
Please. She lives such a fantasy. I just want a taste."
With a bubbly grin at my dumb luck I say, "Maybe. We'll see, hehe."
"
Ugh! I hate you!"
Lili's more cool and calculating, and she tries for a jab. "She's not going to do you, you know."
"Eh, I don't care," I say, which isn't necessarily true. In reality though, I haven't really thought it out that far. My mind's not really one for sexual conquest. Honestly, I think it's just geared more towards avoiding that normal loneliness. I can't stand it. Intriguing companionship is a treasure.
[stop]
Speaking of treasure, some unknown something in my peripheral arrests my attention from across the street as we pass Rue Amelie. When I chance a quick glance, there's she walking the other way with a bag of groceries. I feel a subtle lift in my chest, and I stop, and I shout her name before I can tell myself not to. "Rachel!"
She stops too and so do Lili and Linds, and they all look at me. "Who are you yelling at?" ask Lili. But I'm not listening.
Rachel smiles, "Oh,
hi!" and crosses the street to meet us. She kisses me on each cheek, and I do the same. "Well, what are the odds," she says.
"Just good enough, I guess." I could talk to her forever, but we ain't got that kinda time. "What are you doing today?" I ask.
"Umm... Well, first I gotta drop off these groceries, then I was gonna go check out an exhibit at the Pompidou that supposed to be really good."
Maybe it was the midnight rape, or the toilet-clutching delirium I woke up to this morning, but my emotions are all out of tune and much more sensational. Each little inflection in her voice, each slight sway and shift of her hips and tip of her head melts something inside that feels so good. Good enough to keep asking questions just to hear her talk more. It a desperate sensation, but it's nice to know there's still something to melt down there. It's a feeling I'd almost forgotten. "
Ooo. What's the Pompidou?" I say.
Lili steps in though. "It's the modern art museum, you hussy. Remember?" She casts a flirtatious smile towards Rachel while talking to me. "Over by the Hotel de Ville," she says.
I knew that. "You're the hussy," I say.
Lili scoffs, "Ha! Please, as if." Then she turns back to Rachel, "So who are you going to the Pompidou with, my dear?"
"Oh, just myself. It's for one of my classes kind of. You wanna come?"
"Ugh, I can't," says Lili. "I have this paper I gotta finish. Like
tonight."
I bite my lip to stop from physically jumping at the moment. "Well, my day's wide open," I say. "I'll keep you company if you like." Yeah, like I'm doing her some favor. "I've never been to the Pompidou."
"Yay!" says Rachel. Maybe she's just glad to have the company. I mean, I'm pretty sure going to a museum with someone is almost always better than going by yourself. "It's
amazing. Trust me, you're gonna love it."
"Lovely," says I. "Should we smoke a spliff first?"
"Duh." God, I love this girl. She walks with us to Lili's so I can grab my jacket. It's supposed to rain today.
[stop]
I roll a quick spliff up when we get to the flat. Lili rolls a cigarette, and we three of us chase our respective highs blowing smoke out the small windows. Lili and one. Rachel with me at the other. It's not a big spliff so we hold in each hit meaningfully, and when I do, I look down at the thing twirling between my fingers, the red embers burning bright as it moves, and there's an affinity inside me towards that single thought. It's burning and it's restless, and when the spliff's done I turn red-eyed to my counterpart and say, "
Un musée, s'il vous plaît? I think I'm ready."
She looks back at me smiling and nods, and we both bid Lili good-day and good luck with her paper before we race down the stairs and to the metro. I don't grab her hand, but the little kid in me wants to. I'm not a hand holder though. Who needs it?
At the turnstile she swipes her pass and I just jump over behind her like the streetwise frog in the leather jacket from all the metro ads. She turns back to me with a start and a smirk, so I quickly bring my finger to my lips and smile, "Shh," and we hurry along. On the train I ask her about things. She's from Portland, and she went to NYU to study art and why it's so beautiful and now she's in Paris studying abroad. She's not obsessed with art the way pretentious people are where they hold art knowledge over your head like a golden scepter of intelligence (besides, a collection of facts can be dimed "knowledge" sure, but intelligence, in that regard, is held in a whole other hand entirely). She just enjoys looking at it and the way it makes her feel. She delights at the history of it as well. The story behind each piece, which is why I think titles are so important. A title should tell everything to the uninformed, or else the piece itself should tell the rest. Through it's color, through it's mood, it's feelings, through it's light, through it's darknesses. Hell, even it's frame may tell you something as long as you appreciate it. And we both do, I think. I tell her I don't know what I'm doing, but I say it in more words, in a roundabout way so I don't sound like the crazy boy who ran away to Paris for a month and a half with almost not enough money. It still sounds crazy, even after a bit of rationalizing.
When I have nothing left to say, she smiles genuine and I know it's real because her eyes squint and there's a warmth and vague recognition in the face looking back at me. It's comforting. "You're writing," she says. "That's something. I mean, it's certainly not nothing. And it's certainly not something you see everyday. Like an old Mustang in Paris."
Suddenly, I notice I'm leaning forward in my seat, so I sit back and take a long a breath and close my eyes. "You're something else," I say nodding towards her. "I think I needed someone to tell me that." I know what I'm doing. And this Rachel, she's something special. She's not just beautiful to look at, and to talk to, and to be with. She's the perfect kind of aloof.
We get off at Rambuteau in the 4th. It's sprinkling lightly outside, so Rachel brings her umbrella up with a swing of her left and with the other hand she slides up from the brown laced hook and opens the thing like a trombone long note. A silent firework, one smooth silky movement between two strides of her high rubber red rain boots. "Do you smell that?"
I sniff hard and inhale fully, full lungs on command. "Smell what?"
"I love the smell of a Paris rain," she says behind a slow blink. "It's no Oregon rain mind you, but it's still something else. I love it. So fresh and old at the same time."
One more sniff, and I shrug. It smells like a wet city dog. This girl's my perfect kind of crazy. Smiling, "Whatever you say."
We walk south the one block to the Pompidou shoulder-to-shoulder. Nearly touching, but not quite. Just close enough to stay dry. I pace her steps. The rain pitter-patters above us, and when I look up at what's stopping it, I laugh with intrigue.
"My mother bought it for me when she came to visit. It's from the Louvre gift shop," she says mirroring my smile. On the umbrella canvas is a copy of some painted piece by Rembrandt or Renoir. Or one of those other painters, probably French, whose name begins with r. It's a portrait, not so close up, of a few women in a garden with exposed breasts. "It's my titty umbrella," she says.
"It's probably the best umbrella I've ever seen," I laugh. "I love it. Don't ever loose this thing."
"Oh, I'm not planning to. I already can't wait to be fifty, and be that old lady in the rain with the titties on her umbrella."
"That's the best thing I've heard all day, I think." We walk carefully so as not to slip on the wet concrete courtyard incline before the entrance. Centre Georges Pompidou, it's a pleasure. All five or six or who knows how many stories of glass and clean silver steel and color coded green pipes and blue ducts. The facade looks a little like construction scaffolding and there's a windowed escalator crawling up the outside like a great glass caterpillar with a red underbelly. It's simple and strange, but at the same time compelling, especially on a spliff high. And I guess that's modern art. It makes me step back a little as we approach, to take it all in as it gets closer, and I slip a little, but Rachel's got rain-boots on so it's not exactly a level playing field. The canvas on my Vans is almost soaked through, and the smooth concrete's slick with a thin film of rain water. I can't wait to get inside.
[stop]
The floor inside is still concrete, but it's not so slick. Rachel brings the titty-adorned umbrella down and gives her wrist a few quick flicks to get the water off before closing it. I rufflle my bomber jacket and dig my hands deep into the pockets to hold it close because it's still cold. Drafty's more the word. The ceilings are super high and vaulted above another level that balconies the fringe. My eyes follow the heat up into the rafters and the rafters aren't really rafters at all, but a puzzle of dizzying blue and grey ceiling ducts. This Pompidou guy must've really liked color coding. It's so blatant and bold and bright. All the electrical wires are banana yellow.
"
Voila. C'est le Pompidou," says Rachel with one slow spin. "What'd'you think?"
"It's big," I say with wide red eyes. "I'm gonna follow your lead, i think. You're the leader here."
"Nice. I love leading." So she guides me through the surprising throngs of people walking this way and that to the back where the ticket booth is. There's a short line, and we stand side-by-side.
"How much is it?" I ask. "
C'est combien?"
She leans over and whispers that it's ten euro. She whispers because she's in museum mode now. Even though this ground floor center is loud and bustling. The exhibit she wants to see is tucked away in a quiet corner somewhere in this modern-art maze.
[stop]
SECOND GUESS
Rachel Again, and Always Rachel
I walk beside her and behind her, and behind her more as we walk, by her guide, to that great mass Centre Pompidou. Her pace is faster than mine, which isn't to say she walks fast, no, not at all, but her legs are nearly as long as mine, and I've always been one for slow strides, especially when I'm high, and hot damn we're flying kites right now. Under the guise of it being daytime, I have my sunglasses on. Sure it's cloudy, and sure there's most always some sort of shadow cast across the whole street from the tall architecture that looms on each side, but I'd rather take these looks than the would-be ones at mine bare naked eyes, both bloodshot and reckless like a whore's rouge lips and so squinted, so nearly closed, that someone'd probably think me a strange daylight sleepwalker if it were not for this precocious eyewear.
What a pair we must seem. Two tallish types with slouched scheming shoulders and stupid grins or either slack-faced blank impressions. When we talk, we're more animated than anyone we pass, a mime's movements in us, so that the stories and conversation we share - dull, and commonplace and everyday as any others - are no slow diction of an audiobook but a fucking mad Broadway musical. As long as I'm keep up.
"C'mon Speed Racer. Any slower and we won't make the Pompidou 'til dusk and by then it'll almost be closed, and oh, how I did want to see this exhibit today." She says it with a turn and even starts to walk backward. Almost clumsy-looking, but no, instead it's just cute and unsure with each foot reaching out carefully behind the other while she pleads to me. My response is to look up with dumb shock-parted lips and raised eyebrows. I'd gotten lost in the cobblestones for a second. "Is it really that far?"
"SO far." In a rainbow arc she says it, and I have to imagine behind those vintage-chic shades of hers that her eyes are rolling.
I'd hate to keep the lady waiting. "We haven't got any time to waste then, have we." It's my best Sean Connery, and with a hop and a skip I take three quick strong strides to her side and she spins round again to face the same way and we take off together.
"We must look ridiculous in these sunglasses," I say. We're the only ones I see with anything in front of our eyes.
"Why? Do I look ridiculous?" She turns to me and shakes her head, whips about, up and down, and all around her face, and she puffs out her cheeks.
"Absolutely." I point up to the sky and look up with my eyes. "And the grey up there's so thick that there aren't even any shadows around. Sunglasses on a sunless day, eh? Oh, we are the motley fools." I half don't know what I'm saying, but that's not the case with her.
She looks down at the ground around our feet and speaks in long thoughtful drawn out words when she wants to, like a Queen's speech. She speaks royally. "Hmm... How observant of you, m'darling. Did you notice the smell as well?"
I sniff once and inhale fully, full lungs on command. "Smell what?"
"It's going to start to rain soon," she says swinging her umbrella.
"Oh, yeah? How do you fancy that?"
"Well, I checked the weather," she says, "but also you can always smell a Paris rain coming on." And with that there's a tickle on my hand. Then my brow, then another, and then on my nose. I look up instinctively, then down at my shoes, my worn grey lace-up Vans. Canvas. There's holes at the tip of each where the gold of my big toe shines through and at each heel where the seam's blown out from never unlacing, but instead holding the sole with the other foot and prying out until I was free. Ventilation I'd told myself. Great.
"And here it comes," she says smiling. One more swing and she brings the umbrella up while her other hand slides up from the brown lace hook at the base and opens the thing like a trombone long note. All one silky smooth movement between two strides of her high rubber red boots.
A silent firework, it explodes with rich reds and blue hues next to greens and the skin tones of pale pink in between, "Oh, my..." I'm quite taken aback in the most frolicking way. It's not the colors.
"Do you like it?
[stop]
