by Joan Silber
It was perfectly natural to go home to Liliane’s. She lived in an ill-lit and probably crummy neighborhood (where were we?) in the tiniest apartment I’d ever seen, a closet with one window and a hot plate. “Welcome, Mr. America,” Liliane said. The bed was soft, a pale grove of softness, and I passed out before we did very much.
I was in better shape in the morning. As a lover, Liliane was playful and poised—well, I might have guessed that. Was she freer than American women? Maybe a little. She was, I would say, less serious, less stagy, and less afraid to walk around without her clothes. “You are happy?” she said to me, as we sat up in bed, sharing a bottle of water. It was not an intelligent question, but I didn’t mind it, I didn’t mind anything.
“Sure,” I said.
It was not a lie, not at all, but a few other things I said were. I told her my family had a hotel in Algiers and one in Vienna. I told her I’d gone to Yale, which she’d never heard of. Why did I think my freedom was in making things up? I enjoyed my own stories. Liliane probably didn’t believe everything either. The fire that burned the hotel in Palm Beach to the ground, the crazy wife of mine who pitched a diamond necklace into the Atlantic Ocean—“Mon dieu!” Liliane said, but not convincingly.
And was she really in school? Sort of. She said she was reading for exams without going to classes anymore. This gave her plenty of time to lie in bed listening to the radio after we made love, and she was free all that week to drink aperitifs in the lobby of my hotel or in cafés where she knew people. Her friends were perky waifs of women (they bubbled at me in what English they had) and two or three males who looked a little too amused by me.
It was a few days before I remembered to check at American Express for any word from my parents. Indeed there was a telegram waiting with my name on it. ASHAMED AND DISAPPOINTED. LETTER TO FOLLOW. MOM DAD.
I had not expected such a violent response and this suggested—strongly—that they had discovered the thefts, which I really had not thought they would do. A wave of horrified surprise came over me, as I walked outside clutching my piece of yellow paper. What made me think I could fool anyone ever? What wool did I think I’d pulled over the eyes of my parents, of all people? Then a Frenchman whose way I was blocking said something brusque to me and I said, “Je m’excuse,” not nicely, and the sound of my own voice made me remember: Well, I’m here and they’re there.
Liliane was waiting when I got home, and in bed I was a little more reckless that day. I moved in a trance of interesting suggestions, which she fell right into, laughing and expressing what I hoped was gasping admiration. The room was dark by the time we were done. Out the window I could see a strip of purple dusk. Liliane said, “My crazy boy. Wake up. Don’t sleep now.” She got up and made us what I called cowboy coffee, boiled in a saucepan and poured through a strainer. It made a streaky mess in her chipped sink but it smelled delicious. It was the first time she had done anything domestic.
It reminded me I wasn’t going home to America anytime soon. I wasn’t about to live with Liliane—it was too hard to imagine ever truly getting to know her—but I might settle in one of those hotels people stayed in for years. Some place homey and reasonable, where nobody minded if I had guests. Maybe Liliane knew of such a place?
“Ooof,” Liliane said, making faces at her own coffee. “Too burnt. Yes, many, many places. Only you to tell me when you are ready.”
That night we went out late to meet her friends, and she reintroduced me as the new Parisian, fresh citizen of the world’s greatest city.
“How long you stay?” someone asked.
“Forever,” I said. “I’m going to cash in my ticket.” I thought of this just then.
They all applauded. “A beautiful thing,” Liliane said. I had not expected that—a table of people clapping for me. They told me I’d get good money for the ticket on the black market, better than any refund. One of the women knew a guy who would help. They toasted—squat tumblers of wine held before their faces. Paris forever. Sometimes, I thought, things fall into place very easily.
And Liliane took me to a hotel I liked right away, or pretty much liked, a place in Montparnasse that had very good rates by the month. The room had yellowing wallpaper and a sorry-looking bidet in the corner, but I was charmed (I could be charmed) by the old dark wooden bed and a beautiful little writing desk, and the window opened to what felt like a secret courtyard. Liliane helped me move—we stacked my two valises in a taxi, along with a huge rubber plant I’d bought in a moment of alcoholic enthusiasm. One of the valises was actually full of cash, since I’d brought over my funds in the most literal, bulky way. I carried my clarinet on my lap. “You are Mr. Benny Goodman?” Liliane said.
“I’m much hipper,” I said. And when we got to the hotel, after we ascended in that rickety cage of an elevator, I sat on the bed and played “Till There Was You” for her on the clarinet. I tried to sound like Jimmy Giuffre. It was a simple, tenderly plaintive tune and some feeling in it survived my amateurish playing.
“Is that for me?” she said. “I thank you for that.”
I was suddenly thankful to Liliane herself. Without her, where would I be? In her offhand way, she had helped me into a different life.
We drank shots of some very decent cognac, sharing the room’s one water glass. We took a nap, and woke as the light from the window was fading. A motorcycle seemed to be revving up in the courtyard right outside. Liliane said, “When I first come to Paris, I thought was so noisy. But now I don’t hear noise.” I’d always thought she was from Paris. And where did she come from? From a small town in Normandy with farms around it. “Very ugly town,” she said. I saw she must have been smart, to get herself to a Paris university, though I didn’t think of her as smart.
“Was it too boring there?” I said.
“I don’t like there,” she said.
“You won’t go back?”
“Oh, of course,” she said. “To see my family. I go sometimes.”
I remembered my own family then, whom I thought about surprisingly little. I was still waiting for the letter-to-follow, but then I hadn’t checked the American Express office since the telegram, had I? I sort of hoped they were forgetting me too. Other people could do my job—Millie in the office, or Luís, the front desk manager—my parents were nothing if not practical. What if I never went home? I would tell them where I was, I would always do that. This resolve made me feel better, insofar as I needed to feel anything.
I went to American Express the next day to send home the address at the hotel. My current digs, I said in the telegram. Write me here. And there was a letter, yes, held for me under my name. I saw the envelope with the hotel’s logo of a red palm tree. Oh, Anthony, my mother had written. They had fired Luís, a very dignified guy with many children and grandchildren, for stealing from the intake. That was before they discovered the truth. Imagine having to tell everyone what kind of son they had. What were you thinking? my mother wrote. Forget I asked. I don’t want to know. Right now I don’t want to know you. Love, Mom.
I hadn’t been thinking, not in the ordinary sense of that term. I had seen a way to proceed, through a few brief steps, and none of them had been what you’d call difficult. At the time it surprised me that I hadn’t done such a thing before. So easy. Luís had taught me to ride a bike, he’d worked at the hotel for years. No one told me they would blame you, I wanted to say. I couldn’t keep from saying it on and on in my head.
That night I told Liliane that Palm Beach was a town of beautiful houses and handsome beaches, but my family did not treat its workers very well. I’d quarreled with them over this, and that was why I left. “You are not like them, then,” she said.
“I guess not,” I said. “My sisters are more like them than I am.”
“You are more generous,” she said.
“Well, anyone is,” I said.
“They don’t have unions in America?”
“We have them.”
“Here we have big
strikes,” she said. “Some people don’t like them but I like them.”
“You just like people making trouble,” I said.
“No, no,” she said. “I am for unions.”
“A strike isn’t a party,” I said.
She gave me an insulted look. It made her mouth tight and her eyes oddly bright.
“France is not afraid of strikes,” she said. “Better than America, I think.”
“Why don’t you just go give your new coat to the workers if that’s how you feel?” I said.
“I think you are drinking too much,” she said.
I actually wanted to smack her. I’d never known I was a person who could want such a thing. Was this what I’d come all this way to learn? That notion was so depressing I couldn’t move, except to close my eyes.
“I go home and you sleep,” she said. “You can have a good sleep now.”
“You’re very clever,” I said. “Aren’t you?”
She was already up from the bed, where we had been sitting side by side against the wall. “Fais des beaux rêves,” she said. “Pas de cauchemars.” She was wishing me to sleep. And she found her too-good coat and got herself out the door.
I wasn’t proud of myself the next day. Liliane had no phone at her place—you had to leave a message with a friend down the street, not an English-speaking friend—so I’d have to go in person later to apologize. I knew perfectly well that I was drinking too much. If I started later in the day, I could cut back significantly. And use my days better. Since I wasn’t going home anytime soon and my money (though it was holding out nicely thus far) couldn’t last forever, it might be time to learn more French: Take a class? Find a tutor? And eventually I could get a job in management in one of Paris’s many, many hotels. One of the big regal places or a small adorable one. I’d be around different people then—Liliane’s friends were really quite limited—and I would settle into the city more deeply, more thoroughly.
It was cold when I finally ventured out, a blustery November afternoon with the light fading quickly. Liliane’s building, a four-story slice of soot-dusted stone, was at the end of a narrow street, near Boulevard Voltaire. From the hallway I heard voices, and when Liliane opened the door—“Allo, it’s you!”—I saw she had Jean-Pierre and Yvette with her, a couple I’d met maybe once before.
They were laughing about something that had happened to another friend. His wife had left him, which did not sound that hilarious to me. Oh, if I knew, they said, it was very funny. But they were speaking in French, and I was lost. Liliane had me sit in her one dining chair—the room was crowded with all of us in it—and then sat on my lap. I was glad and relieved to see her so friendly, so sunny.
And she was very lively all that night. We went to a restaurant that had oysters—much joking about their aphrodisiac effect (“I will cripple this man if I eat another dozen”) and much bragging about how she used to gather oysters as a girl and carry baskets home. Jean-Pierre said, “Always a strong girl,” and Liliane wanted to lift the table to show us, but we stopped her. Yvette was choking with laughter and had to be given water.
We were out very late, and when I was back in my hotel room with Liliane, I passed out in my clothes. I was dimly aware of her taking off my shoes and pants and I was touched that she was tending me. When I woke up the next day, she was gone—it was already noon and sunlight was pouring in from the courtyard. The room was underheated and I had no reason to get out from under the covers. I stayed in, eating crackers and chocolate and reading a detective novel (Mickey Spillane) and snoozing off and on until the next day.
I was up at daybreak, and the windy walk to the café on the corner for coffee convinced me that I, the famous coat-buyer, needed a new one. The Florida version of a topcoat wasn’t going to cut it here, and this gave me something to do that day. I unlocked the valise with my money in it—I was thinking camel’s-hair would be nice—and when I lifted the lid, the suitcase was empty. The piles of bills, bound with rubber bands, were not where they had been. I thought for a minute I had the wrong suitcase, but I didn’t. Had I gone and moved the money, in some drunken theory about a more secret hiding place? I forgot a lot of things I did. It was possible I’d put it under the mattress. Or I could’ve wrapped the greenbacks in plastic and hidden them in the high toilet tank. The labor of lifting the mattress—not there—and climbing above the toilet—not there either—made me sweat in the cold room. I was yelling, “Shit, shit, shit!” over and over. The cash wasn’t in the drawer of the writing desk or on any of the shelves of the big chiffonier. It wasn’t under the bathroom rug (well, I wouldn’t put it there). I was shouting all the time, and I groaned as if I were ill. I was ill, buzzing with the heat of mounting anguish.
There were two maids, a handsome old one named Mireille and a plain young one who would never tell me her name. It wasn’t the maids. Probably not, I really didn’t think so. If I asked Liliane, would she say it was the maids? I drank what was left of a bottle of marc and I went downstairs and bought a token at the desk to call Liliane from the pay phone off the lobby. Liliane’s friend said, “Pas ici! No more!” That was as much as she had ever actually spoken to me and I couldn’t get her to say anything else. “Pas ici!” Not here.
Okay. I had to go find Liliane in person. I could threaten her, I could push her against the wall. Listen to me. I could call the American Embassy! They would laugh, wouldn’t they, at another poor horny bastard duped by one of the local girls. Oh, Liliane, I thought. Had she hated me all along? Was it hate-sex we’d had? If so, I hadn’t known. She had been an eager and athletic lover but not coarse or strange. And I saw how naïve it was to think she had robbed me out of hate. No, the money had tempted her, the money had been too beautiful to resist. The golden abundance, the hanging fruit.
Had she ever seen me go into that valise? Had I left it open in front of her? I didn’t know, how could I remember such a thing? I was lucky I remembered where my shoes were in the morning. Or she might have snooped while I slept, which was not very pleasant to imagine. That lock could be pried with a bobby pin. It was too much money for someone like Liliane to ignore. Once she knew it was there, the fact of it must have burned in her mind all the time. All the time.
I got on the Métro to go to Liliane’s apartment. The subway was filled with women in angora mufflers and shining boots, men with combed hair slicked back with tonic. I was the unshaven, sullen one.
At Liliane’s building, I rang the bell over and over, and I banged on the door and yelled her name up to her window. Nobody on the street was happy about this. An old man in a woolen cap scolded me in hisses. I wrote a note on the back of an old restaurant receipt and wedged it into her mailbox. Call me now—urgent—Anthony.
Back at the hotel I sat up in bed, drinking and smoking and counting how much money I had in my wallet. Enough for five days, maybe longer, depending on what I ate and drank. My room was paid up for another two weeks. There were things I could sell. I had several books that could go to the English bookstore. The rubber plant had been bought at a street market and might be set out on the sidewalk again. I could make a sign that said for sale. EN VENTE. I knew that much French.
I hadn’t eaten for some time, and I went to the nearest grocery store to stock up on what could be downed cheaply in my room. Hard cheese, dry salami, a tin of sardines. Red wine of a kind I had not stooped to try before. When I was back in the room, chewing my foodstuffs at the writing desk, I felt less crazy and weak. I began to think more about Liliane. She used to kiss my toes, laughing! We were not done yet. If I could get her attention, I could shame her into giving the money back. She might, after all, hide it again in the room and pretend it had only been lost. Once she saw me again, once she remembered what there was to remember.
I went back to her building later that night and rang the doorbell for ten minutes. I showed up the next morning, and my message was still stuck in her mailbox. I showed up that evening too, as if it were my work in life, but this time I
walked all the way, which took an hour, including my getting lost. I wore a heavy sweater under my light wool topcoat and buttoned the collar as high as it went and kept my bare, frozen hands in my pockets. I rang and yelled her name, I rang and yelled. Liliane. Liliane. Liliane.
I was glad to come back to a bottle of wine in my room. Alcohol kept me warm and stopped most of the fear; it brought with it a spreading certainty that fear was beside the point. Not that I was deluded. I still knew what a mess I was in, but I also knew how to slip into this other understanding of the facts. I respected the wine for that.
I could scale back. I was a well-nourished person and it was not going to hurt me to live on less for a while. A fresh baguette was better than cake. Let them eat cake! I could offer Liliane a lovely wedge of crusty bread if she came back.
I didn’t have an airline ticket home anymore, did I? Her friends had probably cheated me on that too. But Liliane must have believed I had only to write home for more. (And what would I say? Dear beloved family, You’ll never guess what—that money I robbed from you has been stolen! Believe it or not.) And I knew if I had the ticket again, I’d turn it in for a refund. I wasn’t going home. That part was over.
I scared the maid when she came in. It was the young maid, a lumpy person with drooping cheeks, and it startled her to see me with a crewneck sweater over my pajamas, lying on the covers with a clarinet next to me. “Hello there,” I said, a little sloppily. She said something I didn’t understand—nothing friendly—and took to her heels. No clean towels for me.
I played “Since I Fell For You” on my clarinet and my tone was not bad. I played it over and over. The hotel manager came to knock on the door. “Silence, s’il vous plait.” He used both languages. I didn’t answer him, but I tried just fingering the notes and not blowing through the mouthpiece. Later in the day I tried stuffing a handkerchief in the bell of the clarinet to muffle it. Didn’t work.