It's noon and Lili's still in bed and there's still colored feathers all over the damned place. I'm eating quietly in silence, but every noise, every shift of weight on the metal chair, every scoot on the wood floors, every chomp of milked cereal brings a ruffle of disgust from the princess. "Silence!" she says. "Be quiet." The pea was a bother in the night, I suppose, and like a little green pea I pack my bag, finish my cereal and roll on out of there.
"Bye Lil," and I softly slam the door, not from spite, but because with these doors there needs to be some power behind the pull for it to close. Still, I wonder how she took it. Well I hope.
Where to now. Where to indeed. A lovely girl by the name of Elizabeth has humbly offered her couch for me to sleep on for a few days. Now I just need to get to her. I haven't met her yet mind you, but I know she's from Oregon and that already impresses me. Maybe Rachel has something to do with that, but whatever. Elizabeth is in the 10th, which is an arrondissement I'm none too familiar with so after I curtly hop over the turnstile and turn the corner I pause for a moment at the metro map.
"The tenth... the tenth... Ou est la tenth," I whisper to no one. She said her exit was Strasbourg-Saint-Denis on the 4 line. And it's there, right in the middle. I see it. I whisper again, "Up one on the 8 to Invalides, then the 13 towards Chatillon to Montparnasse, then the 4 towards Clignancourt to Strasbourg-Saint-Denis. Got it." I take to the right towards Creteil. It's so easy. And it goes fast in a blur of French urbanites and Bo Diddley through all the transfers and the trek through Montparnasse plaza.
[stop]
She's a dancer. A performer. A Portland whistle on a French wind in the 10th. Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis. There's a grand stone archway by the metro stop, and not just one. I see two and I take a street that one of them arches. She said to meet her at this bar, "Le Mauri Sept" she said on the phone. A few blocks down and I step in after one or two oblivious walk-bys. The street's choked with storefronts and restaurants and doner joints all jockeying for attention as the throngs of Paris are smashing by at a rate like everyone has someplace to go, and maybe they do. It's mid-day. There's no leisure here, not on the streets anyway, not now, not on this Rue du Faubourg. It's a street of workers and dreamers. Of those restless with a lust for something more. There's no looks of grand satisfaction on the faces around me. Everyone is temporary and in-between here. It's not bad, but it's always more contentment to be had.
Inside, the place is a dim den of that, which stretches back with scattered black tables and tobacco smoke from hand-rolled cigarettes. It's not a packed house this afternoon, but at the same time it's certainly not empty. Young adolescents sit in thick cliques here and there and they're posturing, some more than others, with great animation. They all talk in a French mixture of excitement, interest, and a gaudy Parisian fleur-de-lis cool. Everyone's young and student-looking so I don't stick out too much with only a backpack over my shoulders. I look tired (which I am). Studiously so, one might think given the context. I stick out enough though because I hear my name beckoned and when I turn, there's a slim pixie-haired girl smiling at me with a cigarette in her hand that she no doubt rolled herself.
I sit down at the table next to her, and the backpack slides off my shoulders. It's a fast talking crowd here, fueled by tobacco and espresso, talking as much with their chins and eyebrows and shoulders and cigarette hands as with their tongues, and it seems to me that Elizabeth is the queen bee of this hive. She takes me under her wing. "This is Brian, the boy I was telling you about. The writer. He's staying with me a few days, isn't that right. How long did you say?"
"How many days? Oh, no more than a handful at the most," I say taking in this arc of theatrical learners around me, and thin smoke and this proper straight-shouldered fairy who was to be my host. This was going to be interesting. Intriguing for sure, which is always my fave. There's polite intros, polite everything for that matter, but it's all quick and ever changing in conversation and language and I just try to keep up.
