by Richard Ford
A waiter offered champagne, which was free and tasted vinegary. There was really nothing to do. He and Nelli were pressed against a wall that was all mirrors with gold fittings. Though he was happy to be here, to be with this woman. She stood stiffly in her red dress, her chin raised as if someone were watching. Her eyes were almost black, and in the room caught the light, her thin lips very red and smooth. Red was her color. Her face and its length was her best feature. Unusual. In someone else it wouldn’t be.
“Which one do you love to win?” Nelli said through the din. She was staring at a TV where the face of the Democrat and the smiling, older face of the Republican were on a screen together. The results in New York were going to be announced shortly. The young cigar-chomping businessmen were beginning to boo disapproval at what they expected to be the wrong outcome.
“I used to like the Democrats,” Jimmy Green said.
“Oh my god,” Nelli said, and looked shocked, her hand over her half-open mouth. She then jauntily raised her chin to reproach him. “You’re a wacko.”
“Sure,” he said. He didn’t care. Why did he have to now?
“Neexon,” she said. “I loved him.” Nixon’s big, trustless sagging face and lightless eyes re-formulated for a moment in his mind. His father had detested Nixon. “A born Jew hater.” It was the only time he’d said such a thing. They’d all watched the funeral on TV and felt solemn.
“Neexon wass so funny,” Nelli said. “He wass like a French politician, you know?” She expanded her cheeks and made a grotesque face. How old could she have been when Nixon was president? Living in L.A. with the other husband. Twenty years ago.
Holding his glass and finding it difficult to speak, he started to say how wrong it was to love Nixon. But stopped.
“Eees not so different now,” she said. “You think so, but it’s not.” He didn’t understand what she was talking about. She’d thought he’d said something he hadn’t.
He watched the square handsome Technicolor face of the Democrat consume the TV above the flashing word WINNER. The Republicans staring from below booed and cursed and threw their cigars at the screen.
IN A WHILE, NELLI PICKED OUT SOMEONE SHE KNEW, A YOUNG, FAT-cheeked, pink-fleshed man with a pink balding round head and wire glasses. Like the others, he was smoking a cigar and wearing red suspenders over a starched white shirt his belly urged against. She went to speak to him at the bar, and the man instantly became animated, though he glanced at Jimmy as he hugged her. She patted his round cheek and laughed. She knew people here.
Jimmy scanned around for the Irishman Magee, who was a lawyer for Texaco, but didn’t find him. You could barely see through the crowd. No one was speaking French, not even the waiters. It was after one. He felt more dizzy and not entirely well.
In a moment, Nelli had brought over the fat, pink-cheeked young man, who pronounced his name to be Willard B. Burton of St. Johnsbury, Vermont. The name seemed too old for him, like a name he’d made up. Willard B. Burton said he worked “down at Lowndes, Rancliffe in the First.” He was a growth fund something-something. His chief claim tonight, though, was to be head of the Young Republicans. He was everybody’s host, and soon, he said, when the southern and western states closed, there’d be a reckoning. A “different song’ll be playing then” was how he put it.
Willard B. Burton had the palest blue eyes with pink irritated-looking flesh around them, and a fleshy mouth. Someone could’ve boiled him. He also possessed enormously long feet, encased in shining black wingtips. He was drinking whiskey and weaving slightly.
“Who are we supporting, Mr. White,” Willard B. Burton asked, smiling.
Nelli piped up annoyingly. “He likes the pretty one.”
Burton narrowed his pale eyes. People were swarming all around. More booing was commencing. More unhappy news.
“Seriously?” Willard B. Burton said.
“It doesn’t matter,” Jimmy said.
“Well, it does matter. I oughta order you out of here. And don’t I hear old Dixie in your voice? You should be ashamed.” Willard B. Burton lowered his fleshy chin in theatrical displeasure. His plenteous lips had become damp.
“I’m not ashamed. But you can order me out,” Jimmy said. “It’s all right. We’ll go.”
“No. Really,” Willard B. Burton said. “We have to put you into a clinic. You’re deranged.” He weaved a bit forward, fisting his drink, his cigar in his other hand. His lower lip rode up over his upper one so as to express resolve for the clinic idea. This was the expression people at Lowndes, Rancliffe laughed about when he wasn’t present.
“Go, go, go now, Burty,” Nelli said. “You’re being boring. You’re bothering me.”
Willard B. Burton’s eyes caught hold of Jimmy’s and grew cold with buffoonish fury. “You really have to get treatment for your mental disease, Mr. French,” he said. “You don’t know much of anything.”
“Go away someplace, Burty,” Nelli said and let her eyes wander all around, looking for someone new.
“We’ll have to fix you. And we will.” Burton was doing his best to be ominous. Jimmy thought someone could slap him, and he’d be better.
“It’s nothing to get upset about,” Jimmy said and smiled.
“Is that so?” Burton said.
“Of course.”
“Well, we’ll just see.” Nelli had Willard B. Burton’s arm where it would’ve been soft up under his starched shirt. “We’ll just see about that,” he said, then lurched around with her still holding him and careened into the crowd toward the bar.
FOR A BRIEF TIME, THEN, THEY STOOD AND DIDN’T SPEAK, THEIR backs to the shining mirrors, which in places revealed a worn black backing. They were at the beginning of a little hallway leading down to the toilets. People bumped clumsily by. When the doors opened there were the damp smells. Nelli had made no further mention of Willard B. Burton. By tomorrow he’d have forgotten much of this, possibly all. When a waiter passed, Jimmy asked for a gin.
“What makes you like to go in Paris?” she said, using the half-English way. Parees.
“Oh, it makes me feel like I could be something good if I wanted to.” Which he believed was true.
“Really?” she was not quite listening, looking around, wrinkling her nose and being a spectator. “I was born to Parees. Do you think this is the good I can be?”
“You’re wonderful,” Jimmy said. “And you’re very nice.” This was the thing he said to women he liked when he was drunk. They were wonderful. And they were very nice. He pulled her closer, his back against the mirror. She seemed to want to be kissed again. No one else was kissing.
He kissed her on the mouth and tasted the chalk of her lipstick, smelled a hint of sour baby blanket. Her face was soft, not like a girl’s taut, resilient skin. He felt her boniness again, her slightness. Her dry hair smelled of smoke and perfume. He took a grip under her bare arm, into her armpit.
“How old are you?” she spoke into his ear. Her moist breath.
“Fifty,” he said and felt drunk, as if the intense noise was the cause.
“Fifty,” she said. Some businessmen were now singing to compete with the barbershop quartet.
Beantown, oh Beantown, what a mean, mean town,
Ultimately a rather sad and obscene town
Not at all a serene or a clean town
What did it mean? Jimmy wondered. Something from Harvard, where they’d all gone.
“We should leave here, do you think?” Nelli said. What had fifty meant to her? Possibly she was forty.
“Absolutely,” he said, then wasn’t sure that he’d said that.
She kissed his ear, sent a shock into his thighs. The word WINNER was again announced on the TV, followed by great shouting.
“I think your friend’s candidate didn’t win,” he said.
“He’s not my friend.” She was looking around the room.
He peered into the large room for Willard B. Burton—to determine what he might be doing at this moment of abjec
t loss. The round, unhappy face wasn’t to be found.
ON THE WAY OUT HE SAW MAGEE AT THE COPPER BAR LOOKING DRUNK and perspiring. A tall blond girl was beside him in a skimpy silver skirt. Magee was wearing a ludicrous western suit with pockets the shape of arrows. He’d sweated through his shirt, and his trousers were half unzipped, his brown eyes red and un-focused.
“It’s become a bleedin’ wake, now,” Magee allowed.
“Just as well,” Jimmy said.
“You should stay. Some shite from your embassy’s givin’ a speech about American democracy. It’ll incite a fuckin’ riot.”
“We’re leaving,” Jimmy said. He had Nelli’s hand behind him. He smiled at Magee, who touched him lightly on the shoulder.
“Good man,” he said. “Qui est votre cocotte?” The tall blond girl turned away. Jimmy didn’t understand the last word, something Magee had got wrong. He moved Nelli toward the heavy leaded doors and the street.
As they stepped out onto the sidewalk where raining had ceased and a file of taxis was at the curb, their drivers standing outside their vehicles, chatting up the whores, he became conscious of footsteps—behind him—the sound of the bar’s doors having opened again, warm inside air brushing his neck. Some instinct said Move, stand out of someone’s way. He gripped Nelli’s hand to pull her aside.
“You’re the silly fuck who needs to have a lesson taught him?” a man’s voice said.
An American.
Jimmy turned to see a man not larger than himself, but dressed as they all were. White shirt sleeves, bright suspenders, dark hair tousled, but with his fists balled, shoulders squared, turbulent, small eyes. “Could be you’ve . . .” Jimmy said.
The man hit him, in the face two times. First in the right temple, then on the side of his other eye, almost in the same place. The blows made hollow, sucking noises inside his ears and didn’t particularly hurt. Though they were stunning blows and made his knees watery, while the young man who’d hit him—there were stars and stripes on his suspender bands—began instantly to recede, suggesting to Jimmy he himself was falling, hands reaching behind, fingers toward the pavement. Like being on a seesaw.
What he fell against was not pavement, but the yielding side of a taxi, painted to portray a zebra’s stripes. His fall was further cushioned by the hard ass of one of the prostitutes, who was in the way. “Incroyable,” he heard someone say, as he sat down more than fell onto the wet sidewalk, not feeling hurt, only very, very dizzy. Though he did feel he should get up right away.
The man who’d hit him was already walking back into the crowded bar. People were looking out at Jimmy through the open doorway. He heard music, the noise of bottles clinking, the barbershop quartet singing “Auld Lang Syne,” people laughing. At him, he supposed. Though it was really not so bad.
Nelli was kneeling beside him, they were all—the prostitute, another prostitute, a female taxi driver—helping him up. The seat of his trousers was soaked. His head was booming. His knees were uncertain. He seemed to have twisted one little finger on the taxi door.
“Cocksuckers,” Nelli said.
“It’s fine,” he said. He felt drunk, more than hurt.
The prostitutes had begun drifting away down General Leclerc, looking back warily, their patent boots shining in the car headlights. He could smell the woman driver—mealy, sweaty hotness. To vomit seemed inevitable.
Other men were now leaving the bar wearing business suits, striding into the early dark. They looked at him and smiled. Though the night was now in jeopardy of being sad. Not what he’d wanted. He’d wanted the opposite. A happy outcome. His gaze roamed the misty, yellow-black sky. Pigeons wheeled above then disappeared beyond the building tops.
TRAFFIC LIGHTS SWAM ACROSS THE TAXI CEILING LIKE FILM FRAMES. Jimmy let his head loll against the plastic seat back. This particular taxi smelled of apples. Les pommes. Getting busted up really felt not so bad—almost pleasant. His jaw, though, was swelling, both sides, the flesh tight to the bones. His skull throbbed. Possibly his little finger was broken. It could all be tolerated. He only needed to go home.
The driver, as she drove, spoke French softly to Nelli, who was directing them to a place she liked. Brasserie Grenelle. She was hungry.
“I’ll just go home,” Jimmy said.
She sat beside him, staring at the streets at one A.M., busy and attractively bright. She was not eager to touch him or address him. Some not-good quality of his had become apparent. Something that disappointed. Distance from him was needed. Their brief closeness, when he had kissed her in the bar, had been extinguished by being knocked down.
“But if you want to eat something . . .” he said. She looked over, her crisp, tinted bangs making her face heavy and serious. “I don’t want your whole night to be spoiled.” He smiled in a way that made the bones in his face be painful. She seemed not to want to pay any attention.
Outside the taxi, in front of the Brasserie Grenelle, which was closed, he vomited into the curb gutter, hands against the taxi’s side, while the driver explained to Nelli through the window that they were no longer allowed to be her passengers. “Desolé, madame, mais non, non.” Jimmy wished to say something. Take command. But when he stood the taxi departed, its roof light quickly growing dim. Nelli watched it without speaking.
“I really should go.” He was very sorry to have drunk gin, sorry to be sick for her to see, sorry she was no longer glad to be with him as earlier she had been.
“Where are you living?” She put on her head scarf and was irritated. She’d forgotten he’d already said. Waiters were putting chairs onto tables inside the brasserie. No one was walking on this block. It had begun to be colder now that the rain had finished. Across the street a small truck with lawn mowers in back had paused at the curb. A man in green coveralls climbed into the truck bed to re-arrange things.
“Near the Sulpice. I’ll walk.” He could smell terrible breath in the air in front of him. In his dream of boxing, you didn’t lose, couldn’t possibly. You were hit but felt nothing. You rained down blows.
“You are stinking,” she said, beginning to walk away down the boulevard, much as she’d done in the gallery that afternoon. It was what she did. “But come on. I am close to here now.”
“No. I’ll walk home,” he said.
“Yes,” she said, departing. “Maybe someone won’t rob you in one minute.”
Her pumps made little detonations on the pavement. He thought again of her kissing him in the downpour, in front of her ex-husband’s building, before any of this had gone the sad little way it had. As if he’d dreamed it.
THE FLAT IN AVENUE DE LOWENDAL WAS LIGHTLESS AND SILENT. Heat had come on, the air close and stuffy. Out the windows the sky still hung yellow with mist, the little park dripping. Only two lights were on in other flats. Earlier, there must’ve been noises—voices behind walls, water falling through pipes, music, floating sounds from elsewhere. Now all was still, though the tiny birds fluttered in their wicker cage. The dog who believed he looked interesting stood in the bedroom doorway, sniffing.
Nelli became business-like. She would be going to work soon. As she moved about in the glow of a table lamp, she began to disrobe, as if no one was in the room with her. She made a call to hear messages, then entered the bedroom. He could hear her shoes drop, the scrape of hangers, the sound of talking softly to herself.
He was wet to his skin, hair slick, his body stiffening, as if there’d been a car wreck. The flat had a smell it hadn’t had. Something in a sink, or a pail, not completely disposed of.
Nelli re-entered barefoot, wearing only white underpants and a black brassiere. She was pinning her hair back for a shower, wearing glasses, as she had in the postcard picture of herself as a girl. Her body didn’t attract light, but he could see how slender and elongated were her hips, thighs, shoulders, arms—younger-appearing than he’d believed. Nothing of childbirth.
“Could you take the dog to do a pee, please?” she said, hairpins in her mouth.
She opened a coat closet and produced a leash. “When my daughter is no here . . .” She started to say more then stopped. The black dog began wagging its tail and looking at Nelli. It had assumed a position beside the door. Nelli put the leash on the table. “You can bathe when you are back. I’ll put a bed for you on the canapé.” Her face looked puzzled. “I don’t know canapé? What is it?”
Canapé meant something else.
“Okay,” he said. His feet were numb, his back and shoulders and jaw slowly seizing. The dog produced a sigh as it sat. Nelli went back to the bedroom, turned on the light, and shut the door.
IN THE GARDEN, AIR WAS FRIGID. HIS CLOTHES HAD WARMED INDOORS, but now were awful again. He couldn’t stop shivering in his coat. The dog nosed the wet grass, unhurried. In a window opposite, a man stood in the dark beside a blue-lit aquarium, peering down as if Jimmy were an intruder. Rain demarked the season’s change. Now would be the famous Paris winter commencing. He would stay longer, he thought. Perhaps he would see this woman again. All didn’t have to be ruined. Better was possible.
They were celebrating in America now. Willard B. Burton of St. J would be in his bed, doubtless alone. He, Jimmy Green, could rightfully say he’d paid the price of victory on a foreign shore. Though being here, in the freezing night, this bit of misery—he could never have imagined. Here, of course, was never precisely the point you’d attained (a view he often reminded himself). Here was a point you’d passed already but didn’t realize. Was that what optimism meant? Or was it pessimism? Seeing where you find yourself as inevitable and past? It made him recollect his partner’s young daughter. He hadn’t thought of her recently. In California—or had been. Working in TV. Patricia. None of it should’ve caused what it caused—all the calamity. The embittering loss, the disassembling of life. Though that had possibly been inevitable also. He’d even thought it at the time. It had happened before it happened.