She turns over. "What's my name officer?"
How does she do that? How does she break through with such crassness? Such green eye and freckles and French theatrics. They are, the lot of them, non but fair-eyed fairies, committed to their art with such aloof passion and tenacity. There's a certain beautiful complex to them that stretches beyond physical attraction. She says things in French-English like, "I think the beard is manly... it looks sexy... but it tickles my face," and she giggles with high French inflections when I run it down the hourglass length of her. A definitive of that form with big red hair. But more a reddish light brown to be honest. With city-living disparity. Maybe that's the wrong word. Maybe it's humble comfort. Humble comfort and somewhat nonchalant. "I'm never going to see you again, but I'm just, em, curious if you want me to shave," she says.
"What's that, your legs?"
"Everything." So French and so straight into my eyes.
"Well, let's see..." and I test her left leg running my beard down the outside and my hand down the inside. She squirms in a tickled French belle, a young mademoiselle frenzy of accented pleasure. "No, that's just fine," I say.
It's a little prickle but it's soft and sparse, and they tickle back, and she pulls me in. "You can't tell Erin," she says. "I think she really likes you."
"So?"
"So I'm pretty sure she likes you!" she's adamant. "And I work with her at the admin building."
"Really? When?"
"In two days," she says.
"Oh..." and I look at her neck, "Those are definitely still going to be there."
"What?" So lightly said. She speaks the softest a girl can without whispering and it's adorable. "Oh, no!" She sounds like a princess laughing, one hand finger-raking her neck ever so daintily, the other holding my hip. Her body moves like she's dancing to the beat of the sheets. To the tone of her sweet, sweet, so petite moans.
She kisses like French girls ought to kiss. "You don't like her though? Erin? Personally, I don't care. I barely even know her really, just from work... But she's cool. And she's pretty, non?"
"Yes. Yes, she is," I say, and I'm tired so I reach half-heartedly. "I like her as a friend? She is cool, I'm just not attracted to her?"
"You're not attracted to her?"
"Not particularly. And well, I'm never going to see you again you say, so I feel like I can tell you this. I'm actually head or heels for her friend."
Her ears prick inquisitive, "Oh, really?" Eyes spark green curiosity. "Who is she? Which one? I think I know-"
"It's Rachel."
"The tall blonde one that always works the bar at the vernissage a Combes?"
"Yes, please." I'm wasted, but she's wasted too and we both don't care. "She's everything I could ever think I wanted. She's my type, I suppose."
"Was she there tonight?"
Sigh, "No."
She turns somber. Dramatic French somber and oh, so airy. "So you're not attracted to me? You like her friend..."
"Oh, but I am. Are you not attracted to me?" I ask.
She laughs, "Of course I am." And she brings her hands down my chest to grab my hips. "You're so sexy."
"Ha! It's just the Louis Vuitton chonies. Let's not lose those okay?"
"I wanted to kiss you when I first saw you in Erin's room," she says serious, doe-eyeing me.
"I did too." And that's the truth.
"But you like her friend, the tall pretty one."
"Doesn't mean I don't think you're pretty too, and didn't think you were seductive-adorable when you were laying on her bed."
She smiles small, trying not to crack a big one. "I'm not sure I believe you," she says.
"I'm in your bed, aren't I?" And I kiss the baby-soft tinkerbell-light skin on her collar and breast.
She pushes her hips to flip me and takes me, and I pull myself up to meet her. A French belle that rides with a back arch, and both ways and her hair crashes like the tides on her biting lower lip in the moonlight.
"I'm never going to see you again, am I?"
"Mais non, but I'm glad you came. You're wild and... and you're crazy and I like it." She runs her fingers through my hair, and it pulls my head back. "And I like what you do with your fingers," she says.
"And I like how necessary a scarf's going to be to your wardrobe the next couple days," I say smiling, and I kiss her neck once more for good measure.
She breathes deep at the sensation and whispers in my ear, "This is France. I always wear a scarf."
[stop]
Birthday Weekend
It's Lili's birthday this weekend. "Oh! I can't wait!"
School's been tough this week, or so I'm assuming. She seemed a little more stressed out than usual. Another paper she waited forever to start, but I think we've all been guilty of that at some time or another. She's excited though, and with good reason. She's going to London for the weekend. "Well, you deserve it," I say. "Did you finish that paper?"
She's dampered a bit. "Almost. I'll work on it over there," she says. To which I tut or chort or whatever you call a smug quick laugh that says, "Yeah right, sure you will." She looks up from her packing. "What."
"Sure you will."
"I will." She gives the clothes in the bag a particularly hard smack to push them down before she's back to folding again. "And I don't want you to have anyone over here while I'm gone, ya hear me?"
"Loud and clear. Quick question."
"What."
I keep a straight face. "If I have sex in your bed, should I wash the sheets after? Should I even bother? I'm not very messy."
"Ew! No! I mean - wait. No! If you have sex in my bed I will kill you!" She gets up and throws a pillow from the couch at me. "I'm serious!" She says it because I'm laughing and air humping by her bed, and she's laughing too.
I stop and consider it for a second before I shrug. "Eh. That's okay, I guess. I'm already dead inside."
There's a pause, not a long one. "I know you are." She stops laughing, but she's grinning still and throws another pillow for the hell of it. "And what's this (in reference to the music playing)? Beach House? Change it. I need something happy." Then she looks around quick like she's lost something. "And I need a cigarette."
"Happy, huh?"
"Yes. But none of that techno dancy shit."
"Easy tiger. I've got something for you." I don't really, and I panic and I put on Bo Diddley. She seems to like it, I think, because she doesn't say anything and lights her No. 27 by the window.
"So what are you going to do out there anyway?" I ask. Half of me's interested. The other half's sensed a sudden sadness in her and wants that to change. Sometimes a question's all it takes, and today's no different. Girls are a little tricky though. You have to know what to ask.
"Oh! I have it all planned out."
"Of course you do."
"Yeah. I do." She's snarky again. "You ready?"
"Let's have it."
"Okay. So. My train leaves Gare du Nord at 11:45 which means I need to leave here around 11:00 or so. And oh! You're making me breakfast 'cause it's my birthday."
"Roger that," I say with a salute. "I hope you like eggs and toast. And let me get a drag."
She passes it. "I love it. Wait. Where was I... Oh yes, so the train under the Channel's whatever, like three hours, then I'm in London! Then I'm going straight to my favorite bar - you'd love it. It's tucked away under this bridge by the Thames. It's called [that bar] and there I'll have a super nice meal and a glass of wine, and then after that have a few beers prob'ly because they have great beers too."
[stop]
Linsanity Wails
"What's it called again?"
"It's a stag party," she tells me. "You've never been to a stag party?"
"Well, I don't know. What the hell's a stag party?"
Lindsay looks at me the way that she does, with a roll of her eyes, like I'm some kind of idiot. But really, I think, she's trying to word it out. "You know... a stag party. All the boys play poker dressed up with suspenders or whatever, and all the girls serve drinks with red lipstick and old flappers like the '40s."
"I don't have suspenders."
"You don't need suspenders. Just wear one of those button downs. The nice one. C'mon, it'll be fun! And I need some fun right now. Let's go!"
"I do enjoy a good hand of poker... Okay, let me finish this wine and we'll go," I say, and then in faux seriousness, "This better not be lame."
She sucks her lips in with a pause. "Uhm... I can't promise that. Just come on. There's cheap drinks, and if it sucks we'll leave."
My kryptonite. I tip my glass empty and pull a scarf around. "Where is it?"
"At the AUP bar." (there's a name for it)
We get there and it's mostly the same. There's no extravagant decor, no streamers from the rafters or anything like that. The stage is cleared and clean and alone and some six tables in front of the bar are squished into two long ones, and at one table, the one less central an more hugging the wall, there's some six patrons, five guys and one girl, set down and playing cards on the laid down green table cloth The pot of chips in the center's small. It's early. With a smile and a wave, Lindsay leaves my side and is off talking to some friend so me, I take a lean on the bar facing out with a look of absent mind that says, "Lord, I hope the bartender don't come up to me." He doesn't. He's busy with the girls in excited garb and flashy eyes, supposedly cocktail waiting, but everyone's served up. It's early, and I'm probably the only one in the room that nobody knows. Save for Lindsay, of course. Stuck in a room, well, a windowless bar, not big, but comfortably easy to move about. At least at the moment.
I'm a stranger. I'm Albert Camus to two handfuls of American grad students trapped in a self-imposed period piece of poor production. But that's not it. Theme parties are about novelty and a change of pace, an escape from the present dreary reality. Party on, grads. Salut to you, I'll have a drink soon. For now, I watch with a moving eye trying not to make eye contact.
Americans in Paris are a peculiar breed.
Especially when they're graduate students. To make mastery of a subject in a foreign land. I imagine asking them, "Why Paris?" As I see their chest or bosom fill with pride, "Why not London where the language suits you? Why not Barcelona where the weather's well? Why not Berlin where the price is fair and nobody cares? Why not here or there... Why Paris?"
Ah, there's the intellectual. Sue-sue-pseudio. "I want to learn in the greatest city in the world! The art, the culture, the city itself, l'histoire, it all calls to me!" Hand over heart or at horn-rimmed glasses.
There's the book-wise brute with money-drive and success, expensive clothes, and hotel suites on the horizon. "I like French girls." Which means ore bluntly, "I like girls with an eye for a nice coat, with class. Anyone will do really. Probably not even a French girl, but one from the States more (all the talk in French would be a chore) and this city will be my charm. That's what they like, right? Charm..." Maybe not so blunt, but you get the idea, dear reader.
The romantic simply says, "I love this city." And that's that. C'est la Ville d'Amour, the City of Love, and it comes in all shades and colors (the love, that is; the city's mostly off-white with grey-blue roofs).
They're all present, mingling. And amidst the haze of thought, there's Lindsay. Sweet fragile Lindsay. She's in good spirits here, dressed more like the boys than the girls, like me, in long sleeves and pants and buttons down her chest. Smiles and excitement and that makes me happy. I come back to reality.
"The drinks are only two, and it's ten to buy in," she says.
"Ten? C'est merde," I say. It's not that I don't like gambling, I just never have the money for it, and it's almost always a lost cause financially. "Do I have to play?"
"Oh my god, come on. I'll spot you."
"Fine. Are you going to play too?" None of the other girls were (except the one), but they also all had on flappers. Lindsay's one of the boys more like. "Do you even know how to play?"
"Nope, you're going to teach me, darling," she says hooking my arm and leading me to the far end of the one playing table. "Well, I've played before actually, I just don't remember, that's all."
"Ha! You know what they say about someone like you?"
"What's that?"
"You're the best person to play cards with. There's always a seat for you, especially if money's involved."
"Shut-up. That's why you're playing first. Try not to lose it all."
A flapper hands me a stack and a beer - Lindsay takes a wine - and I ante up. "Deal me in boys." It's Texas Hold 'em.
[stop]
A Tale of Texas Hold 'em
Turns out most these guys are suckers. With all the apparent smarts around the table, all the pedigree and degrees, not one of them has the wits for a decent poker run. Or maybe I've just seen Rounders too many times. Lindsay loves it and as she watches, watches my chips grow, sees the bluff, sees the bait, I don't know if she's actually fully wrapped herself around the game, but she tells me she gets it and wants in.
"Looks easy enough," she says. "C'mon let me play! Put me in coach!"
"Okay..." I look at her slyly and slide her a stack of chips off my pile. "But there's no looking."
She just stares at me with a look of incredulity like as to say, "Me? I would never do such a thing!"
I pull my cards extra close now, for the moment, "No cheatin' now! I'm watching' you."
She brushes me off. "Oh, please." And we get to it. The drinks keep coming. I'd started with a beer, but after two of those I switch to wine because well, why not. It's Paris. I've been drinking cheap wine like water for about the last month and a half or so and hell, it just feels right. And if we're drinking-drinking, and tonight we are (Lindsay's putting them down) I'd rather be drunk than full, no pussy-footing about. It's only leisure drinking for the leisurely, and I don't have the mind for leisure. For that certain comfortability. This ain't no little night cap, and after the girls (not Lindsay, of course) put on some quasi-risque show for the boys on stage, I give all my chips to Lindsay with a kiss on the forehead, and make towards the street for a smoke to clear my head and breathe in a crisp breath. The place is packed now, and I have to shuffle sideways between warmly dressed cohorts to get by, but when I look back Lindsay's all grins and cheer and sly looks around the table, raking in another pot, and I feel good. I'm glad she's happy and has her mind off things. Sometimes you need that. If you're in your head in a bad way you need to get out. Don't stay somewhere trapped with your thoughts. Find friends. Be near them. Lindsay's a smart girl. She knows there things, she can handle herself, and she knows when she needs someone. She's on top of things now, in control. But sometimes life throws a grenade fastball straight down the chute and the pin's already been pulled for three seconds.
That's neither here nor there though. Just a bastard's thought of the worst at the best of times. It's probably just the weary ho-hum of having to face the smoking crowd outside with neither cigarette nor lighter.
There are smokers in this world that always have a pack on them, hell a fresh pack even! Then there's smokers like me, the bums. It is what it is. I will only under the rarest and most desperate situations buy a pack of cigarettes, and if I did, I almost never bring it anywhere because honestly I'm afraid of the consequences, the absence of self-control. In polite company, even in something less than so, I'll never bring myself to bum more than two cigarettes (maybe three). I can't bring myself to insist on any more. But with a pack in hand, who knows. Oh, and I don't have a problem asking. Some people do, I don't. It's nothing.
It takes two tries tonight. Two "excuses-moi, ehm, uh, vous avez une autre cigarette?" One "un bliquet, s'il vous plait?" And two "merci beaucoup"s. There's no pride here. Just a strong sense of self and a will for what's needed. And I mix words and charm into an excellent small talk. Then most girls, and some guys, are only too happy to part with another. Is that fiend mentality? I don't know. Does it matter? There's always good conversation to be had in front of bars in Paris, especially if everyone's American. A bit high-brow sure, it's to be expected, and there's a few true Parisians mixed in too so all the more, but hey, that's the fun of it. Chameleoning. It's the same talk I've heard before. "I feel like the French don't take too kind to me here."
As opposed to where? America? Gee, I wonder...
"Do you speak French to them?"
"No, my French isn't that good."
Then why are you here? I don't say that. "At least start in French. Sometimes it means all the world to them to see that at least you're trying. My French is shit too, or pretty close to it, but I'll always say, 'Je sues desolee. Mon francais set tres mauvais' the second stuff completely stops making sense, which is usually about two or three sentences in."
Then pondering and a drag. It's small groups out here, the talk's thoughtful. Mais non, more rehearsed. Lead questions. Vague interest. And someone's handed me an American Spirit and another after that. So I'm set here for a while, they're slow burning.
"How long you been here?" "What are you studying?" "What are you writing?" I play the fiddle. I guess we all do and entertain each other in the cold before I retire back inside, back to the bar hustle.
Something's wrong. Lindsay isn't playing cards anymore. I see her by the bar, jacket in hand, and I shuffle and sidestep towards her. She looks different, and maybe - well, no it's definitely the wine, but my first thought is she looks like she has to pee, but she's afraid to go for some reason.
When she sees me, there's a rush in the way she comes towards me. "There you are. We need to go. Now."
"What happened? Do you need to pee?" I ask.
"What? No! He's coming. He's coming here. Now. He texted me. That fucker's coming here right now." The change in meter's a bit hit me off kilter. I shake my head with a blink. Sobering moments tend to do that to me, especially on a nicotine buzz.
"Okay, wait... What did he say exactly."
"He's coming here. He texted me." There's an exasperation in her voice. An acute rising exasperation. "He said, 'Where are you,' and asked if I was at the stag party so I said, 'Yes,' and I told him not to come. I begged him. Begged him. I said, 'Please don't come, PLEASE' in caps.' I said, 'I can't see you right now, I just can't. Please don't come,' and then he says, he just says he's coming and that he just needs to talk to me and explain and that he's sorry. Like what? What are you sorry for? Don't come. What do you need to talk about?" Her eyes are darting across, back and forth across my chest. I don't think she sees me though. She's somewhere else. Someplace ugly and bitter with caged bars around it. "Why? Why does he have to do this to me? I can't. I just can't right now. Not now..." Her head's shaking. Not like a seize, but back and forth following her eyes.
"Hey. Hey," I say pulling her chin up with the second knuckle of my finger so she looks at me, eyes in eyes. "It's fine. We're going. We're leaving right now. We're going straight home. And hey, we'll get some ice cream on the way, okay?"
She nods and takes a deep breath, still nodding, but then she stops and her eyes flick left over my shoulder, and she sorta goes stiff in her jaw and her whole body's all of a sudden like paralysis, and I see her swallow something thick. "Go. Go now." And like lightening she's spinning me and pushes at my back. "Keep going. Straight for the door, don't stop."
So I beeline it. Now the way the building's set up isn't like most bars in the city. It's not visible from the outside, there's no street front. But it is like most buildings in Paris with a main lobby at the entrance. It's a school bar so it's in a school building behind a glass door at the back of the lobby. I make it through the glass door, and when I do there's the strange sense of a snapshot in my mind - people, a bustling lobby all looking towards a packed bar, the beefy security guard just a bit older than everyone else at his post behind the desk to the left, the two steps to the classroom stairwell landing to the right, people raised up standing on them, people standing in between, people, raised ceilings, fluorescent lights, white walls, and then in the distance that glass door to the street. It's like a snapshot flash an a recoil whine at the trigger of something missing. Something's wrong again.
There's no pressure in the small of my back, no pushing, so I turn round to Lindsay, but she's not there. She's ten paces back inside at the corner where the bar L's off and opens up. There's the bar to her side, she's pushed right up against it because there's people packed beside and behind her. Over the close shoulder of a man facing, I can see her head shaking like it had been with her eyes, back and forth, except now her eyes are closed, her arms joined in a funny way from elbow to wrist in front of her in her hands and fingers forming a sort of furled flower, furled like her brow, just below her chin. And I can in the man see by the tilt of his stupid brown cabbie hat that matched his stupid brown shirt that he's talking to her, to Lindsay right below him in what I can only guess by his manner is a soothing desperate tone. And then I can see as I look down his hands up by her elbows, if not touching then they're hovering just by.
This is all in one second's course, too fast to process in the mind, but instincts know best. The heart doesn't think, so in a flash my hand reaches for her flower, the one below her chin, and clamps to one half, and she clamps back and I pull round the man's shoulder that opens up mid-plea. I lean in as she strides beside me. "Come on, then. Let's go home."
I hear her whisper, "Go." And we go.
Go through the glass doors into the lobby and there's a snapshot flash again, the same snap, the same shot, because in a sudden her arm goes taught and her hand goes limp in my hand and slips. he's got her by the other wrist.
We're not in the bar anymore, we're in the lobby. The light's aren't dimmed, but bright fluorescent. In the air, the loud music from inside is a muffled breath, like screaming through a pillow, a soft bass backdrop. What's heard is the echoing like of young student sociability, the timeless chatter of ages.
But that soon turns to a hush as the congregation close slowly goes silent and stares. There's time to think now, I've lost my rhythm. Instead of my heart, it's my mind that's racing, racing burnt out tire tracks around the situation. I don't know what to do. I'm just standing here, staring with the rest of them, awestruck, because honestly I've felt a more terrible thing.
I don't know what everybody else is looking at, what they see, not knowing the deep rooted foundation below it. A lover's quarrel? Typical? I don't know, and it doesn't matter really. I saw a sky-high kerosene bonfire burning poor Lindsay down from head to weak knees, shaking back and forth, with a whisper, "No... no... no..."
"Babe. Babe, just listen. Listen to me, let me explain. Look at me. I'm sorry. Let's just talk about this, come on." I couldn't hear him in the bar, but in the hushed silence I can hear him now, stoking the flames in an almost calming rushed tone. He isn't yelling, not at all, but there's a subtle force behind the way he's saying things, like he's talking to a child. "Babe, just come on. Just talk to me, please." Urging. Maybe it's the other way around. Like a child talking, commanding a grown man's body, a grown man's degree and salary, and demanding attention as he backs her into the glass beside the bar door. "Babe stop this, come on." He reaches, pleading for her arm and she moves away, moves back, leaning into the glass now, still shaking her head, looking at the ground. "Don't do this, babe. I love you. Just talk to me."
I see all this, a foot away watching, waiting for something to happen, for someone to do something. I see the security guard behind his desk, uneasy, standing and shifting he weight. I see a girl whisper to a friend behind her hand. I see the eyes. I see the vein in his neck, this other Brian, this blasphemer of my namesake. He's shorter, a little, but sure as hell's got more thickness to him, more muscle than I, me here on my pauper's Parisian diet. His two friends behind him are the same. For a second I think to myself sadly, "Man, this trio all like like the kind of guys that don't mind punching other guys in the face. Fuck."
But two seconds more (maybe three or four) and I've had enough. She's had enough, poor Lindsay, Lord knows she's smoldering in the flames.
I put my hand on the other Brian's shoulder. He stops immediately, and I feel his shoulder tense as he turns to me. The only defense I know is to look him dead in the eye, straight, without blinking, and hopefully he don't see the fear, just the crazy.
I say, "Hey buddy, okay, that's enough try for tonight, don't you think? Look at her, she can't talk to you right now. That's gotta be obvious, right? This isn't the time, man." Lindsay's latched to my other arm at the elbow. I break Brian's confused ice gaze to look quick around the lobby. "This isn't the place either. We're gonna go now." I look back at him. He's dumbfounded. So I turn to the lobby door and start off, Lindsay on the outside of me out of reach.
I don't make it to that glass release before I hear, "Where do you think you're taking her."
Deep breath. I look around to find his eye. "I'm taking her home."
I fully expect a hard hit to the head with that, but the blow never comes and finally, we're out the door.
A block down, I look behind me. They're not following. We turn the corner and I squeeze her tight under my arm while we walk. She squeezes back. I kiss her on the forehead again and tell her, "It's gonna be fine, Linds. It's okay. We're going home now."
She doesn't look at me, "Ice cream?"
All the storefronts are dark, the late night marts too. Le Carrefour closed hours ago, and all the cafes have long booted their last patrons.
"I think it might be too late for that, dearie." There's a pause. We walk. She doesn't take her eyes off the street.
"I think Lili left some in the fridge," she says.
"Well, I don't know. What the hell's a stag party?"
Lindsay looks at me the way that she does, with a roll of her eyes, like I'm some kind of idiot. But really, I think, she's trying to word it out. "You know... a stag party. All the boys play poker dressed up with suspenders or whatever, and all the girls serve drinks with red lipstick and old flappers like the '40s."
"I don't have suspenders."
"You don't need suspenders. Just wear one of those button downs. The nice one. C'mon, it'll be fun! And I need some fun right now. Let's go!"
"I do enjoy a good hand of poker... Okay, let me finish this wine and we'll go," I say, and then in faux seriousness, "This better not be lame."
She sucks her lips in with a pause. "Uhm... I can't promise that. Just come on. There's cheap drinks, and if it sucks we'll leave."
My kryptonite. I tip my glass empty and pull a scarf around. "Where is it?"
"At the AUP bar." (there's a name for it)
We get there and it's mostly the same. There's no extravagant decor, no streamers from the rafters or anything like that. The stage is cleared and clean and alone and some six tables in front of the bar are squished into two long ones, and at one table, the one less central an more hugging the wall, there's some six patrons, five guys and one girl, set down and playing cards on the laid down green table cloth The pot of chips in the center's small. It's early. With a smile and a wave, Lindsay leaves my side and is off talking to some friend so me, I take a lean on the bar facing out with a look of absent mind that says, "Lord, I hope the bartender don't come up to me." He doesn't. He's busy with the girls in excited garb and flashy eyes, supposedly cocktail waiting, but everyone's served up. It's early, and I'm probably the only one in the room that nobody knows. Save for Lindsay, of course. Stuck in a room, well, a windowless bar, not big, but comfortably easy to move about. At least at the moment.
I'm a stranger. I'm Albert Camus to two handfuls of American grad students trapped in a self-imposed period piece of poor production. But that's not it. Theme parties are about novelty and a change of pace, an escape from the present dreary reality. Party on, grads. Salut to you, I'll have a drink soon. For now, I watch with a moving eye trying not to make eye contact.
Americans in Paris are a peculiar breed.
Especially when they're graduate students. To make mastery of a subject in a foreign land. I imagine asking them, "Why Paris?" As I see their chest or bosom fill with pride, "Why not London where the language suits you? Why not Barcelona where the weather's well? Why not Berlin where the price is fair and nobody cares? Why not here or there... Why Paris?"
Ah, there's the intellectual. Sue-sue-pseudio. "I want to learn in the greatest city in the world! The art, the culture, the city itself, l'histoire, it all calls to me!" Hand over heart or at horn-rimmed glasses.
There's the book-wise brute with money-drive and success, expensive clothes, and hotel suites on the horizon. "I like French girls." Which means ore bluntly, "I like girls with an eye for a nice coat, with class. Anyone will do really. Probably not even a French girl, but one from the States more (all the talk in French would be a chore) and this city will be my charm. That's what they like, right? Charm..." Maybe not so blunt, but you get the idea, dear reader.
The romantic simply says, "I love this city." And that's that. C'est la Ville d'Amour, the City of Love, and it comes in all shades and colors (the love, that is; the city's mostly off-white with grey-blue roofs).
They're all present, mingling. And amidst the haze of thought, there's Lindsay. Sweet fragile Lindsay. She's in good spirits here, dressed more like the boys than the girls, like me, in long sleeves and pants and buttons down her chest. Smiles and excitement and that makes me happy. I come back to reality.
"The drinks are only two, and it's ten to buy in," she says.
"Ten? C'est merde," I say. It's not that I don't like gambling, I just never have the money for it, and it's almost always a lost cause financially. "Do I have to play?"
"Oh my god, come on. I'll spot you."
"Fine. Are you going to play too?" None of the other girls were (except the one), but they also all had on flappers. Lindsay's one of the boys more like. "Do you even know how to play?"
"Nope, you're going to teach me, darling," she says hooking my arm and leading me to the far end of the one playing table. "Well, I've played before actually, I just don't remember, that's all."
"Ha! You know what they say about someone like you?"
"What's that?"
"You're the best person to play cards with. There's always a seat for you, especially if money's involved."
"Shut-up. That's why you're playing first. Try not to lose it all."
A flapper hands me a stack and a beer - Lindsay takes a wine - and I ante up. "Deal me in boys." It's Texas Hold 'em.
[stop]
A Tale of Texas Hold 'em
Turns out most these guys are suckers. With all the apparent smarts around the table, all the pedigree and degrees, not one of them has the wits for a decent poker run. Or maybe I've just seen Rounders too many times. Lindsay loves it and as she watches, watches my chips grow, sees the bluff, sees the bait, I don't know if she's actually fully wrapped herself around the game, but she tells me she gets it and wants in.
"Looks easy enough," she says. "C'mon let me play! Put me in coach!"
"Okay..." I look at her slyly and slide her a stack of chips off my pile. "But there's no looking."
She just stares at me with a look of incredulity like as to say, "Me? I would never do such a thing!"
I pull my cards extra close now, for the moment, "No cheatin' now! I'm watching' you."
She brushes me off. "Oh, please." And we get to it. The drinks keep coming. I'd started with a beer, but after two of those I switch to wine because well, why not. It's Paris. I've been drinking cheap wine like water for about the last month and a half or so and hell, it just feels right. And if we're drinking-drinking, and tonight we are (Lindsay's putting them down) I'd rather be drunk than full, no pussy-footing about. It's only leisure drinking for the leisurely, and I don't have the mind for leisure. For that certain comfortability. This ain't no little night cap, and after the girls (not Lindsay, of course) put on some quasi-risque show for the boys on stage, I give all my chips to Lindsay with a kiss on the forehead, and make towards the street for a smoke to clear my head and breathe in a crisp breath. The place is packed now, and I have to shuffle sideways between warmly dressed cohorts to get by, but when I look back Lindsay's all grins and cheer and sly looks around the table, raking in another pot, and I feel good. I'm glad she's happy and has her mind off things. Sometimes you need that. If you're in your head in a bad way you need to get out. Don't stay somewhere trapped with your thoughts. Find friends. Be near them. Lindsay's a smart girl. She knows there things, she can handle herself, and she knows when she needs someone. She's on top of things now, in control. But sometimes life throws a grenade fastball straight down the chute and the pin's already been pulled for three seconds.
That's neither here nor there though. Just a bastard's thought of the worst at the best of times. It's probably just the weary ho-hum of having to face the smoking crowd outside with neither cigarette nor lighter.
There are smokers in this world that always have a pack on them, hell a fresh pack even! Then there's smokers like me, the bums. It is what it is. I will only under the rarest and most desperate situations buy a pack of cigarettes, and if I did, I almost never bring it anywhere because honestly I'm afraid of the consequences, the absence of self-control. In polite company, even in something less than so, I'll never bring myself to bum more than two cigarettes (maybe three). I can't bring myself to insist on any more. But with a pack in hand, who knows. Oh, and I don't have a problem asking. Some people do, I don't. It's nothing.
It takes two tries tonight. Two "excuses-moi, ehm, uh, vous avez une autre cigarette?" One "un bliquet, s'il vous plait?" And two "merci beaucoup"s. There's no pride here. Just a strong sense of self and a will for what's needed. And I mix words and charm into an excellent small talk. Then most girls, and some guys, are only too happy to part with another. Is that fiend mentality? I don't know. Does it matter? There's always good conversation to be had in front of bars in Paris, especially if everyone's American. A bit high-brow sure, it's to be expected, and there's a few true Parisians mixed in too so all the more, but hey, that's the fun of it. Chameleoning. It's the same talk I've heard before. "I feel like the French don't take too kind to me here."
As opposed to where? America? Gee, I wonder...
"Do you speak French to them?"
"No, my French isn't that good."
Then why are you here? I don't say that. "At least start in French. Sometimes it means all the world to them to see that at least you're trying. My French is shit too, or pretty close to it, but I'll always say, 'Je sues desolee. Mon francais set tres mauvais' the second stuff completely stops making sense, which is usually about two or three sentences in."
Then pondering and a drag. It's small groups out here, the talk's thoughtful. Mais non, more rehearsed. Lead questions. Vague interest. And someone's handed me an American Spirit and another after that. So I'm set here for a while, they're slow burning.
"How long you been here?" "What are you studying?" "What are you writing?" I play the fiddle. I guess we all do and entertain each other in the cold before I retire back inside, back to the bar hustle.
Something's wrong. Lindsay isn't playing cards anymore. I see her by the bar, jacket in hand, and I shuffle and sidestep towards her. She looks different, and maybe - well, no it's definitely the wine, but my first thought is she looks like she has to pee, but she's afraid to go for some reason.
When she sees me, there's a rush in the way she comes towards me. "There you are. We need to go. Now."
"What happened? Do you need to pee?" I ask.
"What? No! He's coming. He's coming here. Now. He texted me. That fucker's coming here right now." The change in meter's a bit hit me off kilter. I shake my head with a blink. Sobering moments tend to do that to me, especially on a nicotine buzz.
"Okay, wait... What did he say exactly."
"He's coming here. He texted me." There's an exasperation in her voice. An acute rising exasperation. "He said, 'Where are you,' and asked if I was at the stag party so I said, 'Yes,' and I told him not to come. I begged him. Begged him. I said, 'Please don't come, PLEASE' in caps.' I said, 'I can't see you right now, I just can't. Please don't come,' and then he says, he just says he's coming and that he just needs to talk to me and explain and that he's sorry. Like what? What are you sorry for? Don't come. What do you need to talk about?" Her eyes are darting across, back and forth across my chest. I don't think she sees me though. She's somewhere else. Someplace ugly and bitter with caged bars around it. "Why? Why does he have to do this to me? I can't. I just can't right now. Not now..." Her head's shaking. Not like a seize, but back and forth following her eyes.
"Hey. Hey," I say pulling her chin up with the second knuckle of my finger so she looks at me, eyes in eyes. "It's fine. We're going. We're leaving right now. We're going straight home. And hey, we'll get some ice cream on the way, okay?"
She nods and takes a deep breath, still nodding, but then she stops and her eyes flick left over my shoulder, and she sorta goes stiff in her jaw and her whole body's all of a sudden like paralysis, and I see her swallow something thick. "Go. Go now." And like lightening she's spinning me and pushes at my back. "Keep going. Straight for the door, don't stop."
So I beeline it. Now the way the building's set up isn't like most bars in the city. It's not visible from the outside, there's no street front. But it is like most buildings in Paris with a main lobby at the entrance. It's a school bar so it's in a school building behind a glass door at the back of the lobby. I make it through the glass door, and when I do there's the strange sense of a snapshot in my mind - people, a bustling lobby all looking towards a packed bar, the beefy security guard just a bit older than everyone else at his post behind the desk to the left, the two steps to the classroom stairwell landing to the right, people raised up standing on them, people standing in between, people, raised ceilings, fluorescent lights, white walls, and then in the distance that glass door to the street. It's like a snapshot flash an a recoil whine at the trigger of something missing. Something's wrong again.
There's no pressure in the small of my back, no pushing, so I turn round to Lindsay, but she's not there. She's ten paces back inside at the corner where the bar L's off and opens up. There's the bar to her side, she's pushed right up against it because there's people packed beside and behind her. Over the close shoulder of a man facing, I can see her head shaking like it had been with her eyes, back and forth, except now her eyes are closed, her arms joined in a funny way from elbow to wrist in front of her in her hands and fingers forming a sort of furled flower, furled like her brow, just below her chin. And I can in the man see by the tilt of his stupid brown cabbie hat that matched his stupid brown shirt that he's talking to her, to Lindsay right below him in what I can only guess by his manner is a soothing desperate tone. And then I can see as I look down his hands up by her elbows, if not touching then they're hovering just by.
This is all in one second's course, too fast to process in the mind, but instincts know best. The heart doesn't think, so in a flash my hand reaches for her flower, the one below her chin, and clamps to one half, and she clamps back and I pull round the man's shoulder that opens up mid-plea. I lean in as she strides beside me. "Come on, then. Let's go home."
I hear her whisper, "Go." And we go.
Go through the glass doors into the lobby and there's a snapshot flash again, the same snap, the same shot, because in a sudden her arm goes taught and her hand goes limp in my hand and slips. he's got her by the other wrist.
We're not in the bar anymore, we're in the lobby. The light's aren't dimmed, but bright fluorescent. In the air, the loud music from inside is a muffled breath, like screaming through a pillow, a soft bass backdrop. What's heard is the echoing like of young student sociability, the timeless chatter of ages.
But that soon turns to a hush as the congregation close slowly goes silent and stares. There's time to think now, I've lost my rhythm. Instead of my heart, it's my mind that's racing, racing burnt out tire tracks around the situation. I don't know what to do. I'm just standing here, staring with the rest of them, awestruck, because honestly I've felt a more terrible thing.
I don't know what everybody else is looking at, what they see, not knowing the deep rooted foundation below it. A lover's quarrel? Typical? I don't know, and it doesn't matter really. I saw a sky-high kerosene bonfire burning poor Lindsay down from head to weak knees, shaking back and forth, with a whisper, "No... no... no..."
"Babe. Babe, just listen. Listen to me, let me explain. Look at me. I'm sorry. Let's just talk about this, come on." I couldn't hear him in the bar, but in the hushed silence I can hear him now, stoking the flames in an almost calming rushed tone. He isn't yelling, not at all, but there's a subtle force behind the way he's saying things, like he's talking to a child. "Babe, just come on. Just talk to me, please." Urging. Maybe it's the other way around. Like a child talking, commanding a grown man's body, a grown man's degree and salary, and demanding attention as he backs her into the glass beside the bar door. "Babe stop this, come on." He reaches, pleading for her arm and she moves away, moves back, leaning into the glass now, still shaking her head, looking at the ground. "Don't do this, babe. I love you. Just talk to me."
I see all this, a foot away watching, waiting for something to happen, for someone to do something. I see the security guard behind his desk, uneasy, standing and shifting he weight. I see a girl whisper to a friend behind her hand. I see the eyes. I see the vein in his neck, this other Brian, this blasphemer of my namesake. He's shorter, a little, but sure as hell's got more thickness to him, more muscle than I, me here on my pauper's Parisian diet. His two friends behind him are the same. For a second I think to myself sadly, "Man, this trio all like like the kind of guys that don't mind punching other guys in the face. Fuck."
But two seconds more (maybe three or four) and I've had enough. She's had enough, poor Lindsay, Lord knows she's smoldering in the flames.
I put my hand on the other Brian's shoulder. He stops immediately, and I feel his shoulder tense as he turns to me. The only defense I know is to look him dead in the eye, straight, without blinking, and hopefully he don't see the fear, just the crazy.
I say, "Hey buddy, okay, that's enough try for tonight, don't you think? Look at her, she can't talk to you right now. That's gotta be obvious, right? This isn't the time, man." Lindsay's latched to my other arm at the elbow. I break Brian's confused ice gaze to look quick around the lobby. "This isn't the place either. We're gonna go now." I look back at him. He's dumbfounded. So I turn to the lobby door and start off, Lindsay on the outside of me out of reach.
I don't make it to that glass release before I hear, "Where do you think you're taking her."
Deep breath. I look around to find his eye. "I'm taking her home."
I fully expect a hard hit to the head with that, but the blow never comes and finally, we're out the door.
A block down, I look behind me. They're not following. We turn the corner and I squeeze her tight under my arm while we walk. She squeezes back. I kiss her on the forehead again and tell her, "It's gonna be fine, Linds. It's okay. We're going home now."
She doesn't look at me, "Ice cream?"
All the storefronts are dark, the late night marts too. Le Carrefour closed hours ago, and all the cafes have long booted their last patrons.
"I think it might be too late for that, dearie." There's a pause. We walk. She doesn't take her eyes off the street.
"I think Lili left some in the fridge," she says.
