Beautiful Revolutionary

by Laura Elizabeth Woollett

  They will receive an invitation to Che and Flora’s wedding, but they won’t go, as they won’t when Tish and Eric invite them to spend a weekend near Lake Geneva. They will have a desire to hunker down in their apartment, Cold War-style.

  Their differences will chafe. He will find her blond hairs in his clothes, hear her singing ‘Willow’s Song’ off-key, and wonder how he could ever be attracted to someone so white. She will see him frowning at her half-read novels, and his lack of imagination will seem like a male thing, boxing her in.

  She will cheat. He will freeze. They will end, and it won’t be long before they’re only phases to each other: that time she dated a guy, that time he dated a white girl.

  He will marry the first cute sister with an appreciation for differential calculus that he meets. He will anchor. She will drift. She will spend time in Spokane with Darl and Hedy, their baby Forrest, who is the color of a palomino, freckles on his cheeks. She will, without meaning to, crawl back to the Bay Area, and feel her pulse quicken when she sees the Temple Greyhound buses.

  She will be living with her first serious girlfriend when she calls him on the number Hedy gives her. He will be pleasantly surprised to hear her voice, and they will talk into the night, about the Temple buses, her girlfriend Marina, his wife Kathy, his students. After that night, there will be nights when they can’t deal with all the space around them, the time passing, the schizophrenic burr of Father’s voice in their brains. Nights in the years to come, when their stories are no longer theirs, and they can barely hear each other over the screaming headlines. Nights after everything’s gone to shit and their dreams are decaying bodies in a distant place. Nights when their voices are the only thing to remind each other that the good things, love, beauty, family, still exist; that the night, endless as it seems, cannot undo their progress.

  International Woman of Mystery

  1.

  ‘Bon anniversaire, madame.’

  The customs officer at Charles de Gaulle raises an eyebrow at Evelyn from over her passport, and she raises an eyebrow back. Gives him a taut smile.

  ‘Vous êtes très gentil, monsieur.’ You’re very kind.

  The officer looks from Evelyn to Terra and Frida, both giggling and tossing their hair at more men in uniform. He asks, ‘Vous fêterez à Paris avec vos amies? ’

  Evelyn glances over her shoulder, feeling nothing but the coldness of cash strapped to her body. She says, ‘Elles sont mes sœurs.’ They are my sisters.

  ‘Elles sont belles.’ The officer stamps Evelyn’s passport.

  His fingers brush Evelyn’s as he returns the passport. But he’s staring at Terra and Frida.

  Evelyn marches ahead with her suitcase, comparing the D.O.B. under her passport photo with the fresh date stamp:

  July 22, 1975.

  She is thirty years old today.

  They take a room at a small hotel in the Latin Quarter. A queen bed with a striped coverlet and a matching sofa. ‘I can take the sofa,’ Terra offers, eyes shining sanctimoniously.

  Frida looks from Terra to Evelyn, chin squared, arms crossed. Most likely, Frida would’ve made the same offer, if Terra hadn’t beat her to it.

  ‘I’ll take it. I’m shortest.’ Evelyn places her suitcase on the sofa, starts slipping off her sandals. ‘Frida, you can have the first shower. Terra, why don’t you get us some maps from reception?’

  Once Terra is gone and water is rushing behind the bathroom door, Evelyn unlatches her suitcase, hunts among the precious Tampax boxes for her tape recorder. She slips in a new tape, switches it on, sticks it inside her leather tote. Sets her tote on a spindly table midway between the bed and the sofa.

  The early evening light tumbles through the curtains, dusty and yellow as apricots.

  ‘I got us some maps of the city and a map of the Mee-tro.’ Terra bursts in, brandishing the maps like a winning hand of cards. ‘I don’t know, are we gonna use the Mee-tro?’

  ‘Métro,’ Evelyn corrects. ‘We’re only here for the night.’

  This is news to Terra, but she doesn’t ask questions, just bounces over to the window. ‘Mind if I open this?’

  Evelyn shakes her head. Terra pushes aside the curtains, hoists up the window and, with a sigh, leans outside it. After a while, she asks, ‘Do you hear music? Like, harmonicas or something?’

  Evelyn looks up from the map, spread napkin-style across her lap. She listens.

  ‘“Le Chant de Partisans”, I think. Yes.’

  When Frida sticks her head out of the bathroom a few minutes later, she is all heat-flushed paleness, dripping hair. ‘So … either of you pack any real Tampax?’

  Before Evelyn can shake her head, Terra is crossing the room to her own handbag, beaming. ‘Our moons are in tune!’

  ‘If you need more, there’s a pharmacy on practically every Parisian street corner,’ Evelyn adds. That she has not bled in months is irrelevant. She refolds her map and looks at Frida. ‘I want a shower, too, once you’re done.’

  ‘Sure,’ says Frida. ‘Just as soon as my cunt is corked, I’ll be right out.’

  They laugh. Not just at Frida’s dirty mouth, but at the Southern drawl that crops up when she cusses — the result of a rebellious adolescence near Fort Benning.

  ‘Sure,’ Terra echoes, though nobody asked her. ‘You should have the next shower, Evelyn. I don’t mind at all.’

  In the locked bathroom, Evelyn takes off her blouse, her skirt, her money-belt. She takes off her underwear and considers her body, plastered with US dollars.

  2.

  The sky is still light when they go out to meet it. Their bodies do not know what time it is. Their eyes see everything: women with naked backs and diaphanous palazzo pants; wizened street pornographers; ragged couples melting into each other like Rodin sculptures. Evelyn leads the way, sometimes pointing out sites — the Place Saint-Michel, the Sorbonne, the Jardin de Luxembourg — but mostly leading in silence.

  Frida, an army brat who’s lived in Japan, West Germany, and perhaps ten different states, looks nonchalant. Terra gapes.

  ‘Is this where Jim Morrison’s buried?’ she asks as they pass the ivied walls of the Montparnasse Cemetery. Evelyn smiles, guides them from the green boulevard to the bustling underworld of the railway station. In line for tickets, the press of the crowd makes the girls stick to Evelyn like fabric to sweat-damp skin. They study their fingernails, their wedding rings; peer through lowered lashes at men in hats, men in glasses, men smoking, men with beards or averted faces.

  Three tickets to Zurich, departing first thing in the morning.

  ‘The lakes are beautiful in the summer.’ Evelyn recalls the brief, unhappy weeks she spent traveling through Western Europe after her broken engagement. ‘Imagine wearing a swimsuit while looking at the Alps.’

  Above ground, the evening resembles one of those multicolored cocktails: burning Grenadine topped with mimosa orange, drowning in blue Curaçao. It is past cocktail hour. It is nearing lunchtime in San Francisco. They walk down darkening rues, boulevards, past smells of ash and fried butter. They walk until they are hungry, and beyond that. At a set of traffic lights in sight of the Eiffel Tower, Frida’s grumbling stomach gives her up.

  ‘We’ll find a bistro,’ Evelyn says. ‘Somewhere with fewer tourists.’

  The place is small, dark, wood-paneled. They choose a table indoors, with views of the narrow street, people dining under ivy-green and wine-red awnings. Evelyn orders for the three of them: escargots, duck confit, tarte Tatin. A bottle of Burgundy. When the waiter comes and uncorks the bottle, they laugh. They laugh, too, when he comes again with the snails in their pretty, striped shells, swimming in green butter.

  ‘Aw,’ Terra says, eyes brimming. ‘I don’t know if I can.’

  ‘I can.’ Frida reaches gamely for her two-pronged fork.

  ‘Just pretend you’re eatin
g shellfish.’ Evelyn takes up her fork and shows them how.

  They clean their plates. The waiter whisks them away and pours out the last of the wine, asks in English if they want another bottle. ‘Oui, le Chablis encore,’ Evelyn says amiably, and notes the girls’ faces: surprised, gleeful, a little judgmental. ‘It’ll help us sleep.’ She pushes her chair back. Her face is warm, her legs boneless; it is her birthday. Snatching up her bag, she jerks her head at the FEMMES sign at the bistro’s rear. ‘I’ll be right back.’

  Bolted inside her cubicle, bidet running, Evelyn takes the tape recorder from her bag, stops it, listens to the thuds and creaks of the hotel room.

  I got us some maps of the city—

  Evelyn fast-forwards.

  Soon as my cunt is cork—

  Forward again to her own voice, so high and clear it makes her cringe:

  A cardigan will do.

  I wish I packed a cardigan. Terra. Velvet in summer. What was I thinking?

  You’ve been in San Francisco too long.

  More creaks, scuffles, then Frida: It’s all yours, Evelyn.

  This is what she wants. Evelyn brings the device to her ear, listens to her past self shut the bathroom door, start the shower. The girls talking in her absence.

  Paris … I can’t believe it. Terra. You know how guys always say they’ll take you to Paris?

  Guys say a lot of shit. Frida.

  Or Hawaii. I had this guy wanted to sail me to Hawaii and work on, like, a coffee plantation.

  Ha. Wonder where he is now.

  Oh, Rex was a bum. He’s probably sitting in some prison cell. Scoffs. Silence. But, like, Evelyn looks really good?

  Yeah.

  Like, really good? I thought, you know, prison … Didn’t you think she’d be more …?

  Rough?

  Giggles. Oh man. I don’t know? Like, maybe they give special treatment to gringas?

  I dated a Mexican once. He didn’t treat me special.

  Squeaks. Hisses. Street noise.

  Why’d they call this the Latin Quarter anyway? Is it, like, the Mission District?

  Uh-muh-nuh. Ask Evelyn.

  Paris! I can’t believe it.

  Thunks. Clatters. A whoosh of a door opening, and Evelyn’s own voice again, quiet and strained: Your turn, Terra.

  Hey, Evelyn, why’s it called the Latin Quarter?

  We’re close to the Sorbonne, which was built in the twelfth century. Her classroom cadence. All the students used to speak Latin, until the colleges were suppressed during the French Rev—

  Evelyn cuts herself short. Slips the tape recorder away. Looks at her pale knees with the heaviness of heart that comes from being talked about but not understood. Yet they haven’t betrayed the Cause, and this is foremost. She rises, flushes, washes. When she returns to the table, their duck has been set down.

  And that’s when she sees him.

  Through the window, standing at an outside table, talking with a group of men.

  ‘This is so crispy,’ Terra gushes, looking up from her plate to Evelyn. It is this alone that tells Evelyn that she’s been standing for an eternity, slack-jawed as a class dunce.

  She sits.

  Quite mechanically, she cracks the skin of her duck with her fork, shreds a bit of dark flesh, lifts it to her mouth, realizes she’s forgotten how to eat. She puts her fork down and takes up her wine glass, which is somehow, miraculously, full. Gulps.

  She stares.

  It’s his limbs that she recognizes: the length of them, or the way he holds them. The texture, if not the style, of his hair. He has a briefcase, but his sleeves are rolled up and his blue plaid jacket slung over his shoulder. His limbs, yes, his limbs. She spears a vegetable, she doesn’t know what kind. She chews it. ‘I’ve only ever had duck in Chinatown.’ Terra. ‘Peking Duck? That shit’s too sweet.’ Frida. Another vegetable. The food is good, but only abstractly; she couldn’t describe its taste. ‘One of my brother’s friends shot a duck with an assault rifle when we were stationed in Virginia. Phil’s friends were always sociopaths, I swear.’ Evelyn sees the man straighten, wave his arm in the direction of the street, step away from the table.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she murmurs, standing, feeling the girls’ eyes flicking to the outdoor tables, the men. ‘Eat. I’ll be back as soon as … soon.’

  Evelyn has become quite good at making herself invisible. Or perhaps it’s a skill she’s always had and merely honed, as life has demanded. Following the man with the slung blue plaid as he ambles toward Odeón Station, and she knows before it happens that she will have to buy a ticket, if she wishes for any kind of resolution. She is poised at the ticket counter when he slips through the turnstile for the westbound Métro, and her hands almost don’t tremble at all, counting her change, and she almost doesn’t rush at all, just walks briskly in his shadow. She spies him on the platform at the same moment she hears the train’s whistle, and it all has the feel of something predestined, the ease of it, the push of strangers’ bodies, allowing her to sidle into the very same compartment. She sees his knees. She sees his briefcase. She sees his jacket. She sees that he is reading but cannot see what. The train thrusts into motion, and everything is black mirrors, ghost faces, time machine flash. Everything is underworld and some dark boat ferrying her towards torture or death or rebirth. Mabillon. Sèvres — Babylone. Vaneau. It is a blessing, as more bodies pile off, to be as short as she is; to be on the plainer side of attractive; to be ten years older than the girl he once proposed to. Just before Avenue Émile Zola, Jean-Claude lowers his reading, and she sees it is only a newspaper. He picks up his briefcase. She turns her face; stares with interest at an ad for baby formula. Not until the train has come to an absolute halt and he has absolutely stepped off does she move toward the door and onto the platform.

  He is so close.

  He has put on his jacket and is walking upstairs with long, lazy strides. An Arab man with clouded eyes stands at the Métro’s mouth, shaking a can of coins and rasping. She vows to give him some change, when she is not so busy stalking. Jean-Claude’s jacket, his long limbs, making a turn further up the block. No traffic. Plane trees swish in the breeze, casting watery shadows. Apartment windows are beautiful prisons, glowing amber with ornate grilles, trite geraniums in planters. They pass a gated garden. He stops to light a cigarette, and, though her heart flares up in panic, her body stays in the shadows until he has disappeared with a curl of smoke around the next corner.

  Her mouth waters.

  He is walking with echoing insistence down the winding, narrow street; the kind of street only a local would ever have cause to walk down. They are alone. In a city of millions, they are alone, and this improbable intimacy terrifies her. She could run to him. She could call his name. She is radically free, and her freedom could express itself in any number of ways.

  She clings to obscurity, watches as he finishes his cigarette outside an apartment building and flicks it away.

  And then he is doing something with keys, dragging open the wrought-iron door with a sound like the implements of her own torture being laid out. And then he is footsteps, and then there is nothing but the street and herself; the weight of herself, too much to bear.

  The girls’ faces are shiny from drinking, their glasses empty, by the time Evelyn returns to the bistro. Her own glass is still full, her meal and dessert waiting cold and uneaten. Evelyn raises her eyebrows apologetically but doesn’t apologize as she spreads her napkin over her lap. She takes a sip of wine, eats a few bites of duck confit, a few bites of tarte Tatin. She sips again and pushes her dessert toward Terra: ‘Have some.’ Though their instinct is to refuse, it is a sin to waste food when there are starving children in the world. Terra takes a forkful, passes the plate on to Frida, who nibbles dutifully and returns it to Evelyn. The girls look at each other with round eyes, then at Evelyn, swirling her wi
ne and eyeing her food with detachment.

  ‘That dude …’ Terra leans forward, shaking her hair off her face. ‘Was he … an agent? ’

  Evelyn raises her brows again, twists her lips in a way that could mean yes or could mean nothing. She drinks. Then, opportunistically, concedes: ‘It’s too early to tell.’

  ‘He looks like the type,’ Frida hisses, eyes sparking. ‘Exactly the type.’

  3.

  ‘I trust whatever you decide,’ she speaks softly into the receiver. ‘But, given the circumstances, a change in plan seems prudent.’

  ‘Oh, Christ Almighty …’ He repeats the sentence as a mournful wheeze, ‘Oh-h, Christ Al-migh-ty …’ She waits patiently. ‘You say Terra and Frida can be trusted to travel alone?’

  ‘They’re just girls,’ Evelyn says. ‘But they understand the importance of this mission. And they’re eager to impress.’

  ‘They’ve been spending too much time together. They may already be forming an alliance.’

  ‘Their allegiance is to you. Believe me, they never miss an opportunity to remind me of how well they’ve served their Father.’ Evelyn lets the words linger, caress. ‘If it were more than a day, I’d share your concern. But Mona will be meeting them across the border, after all.’

  Mona d’Angelo: a beautiful manic-depressive from New Jersey whose ‘depressive’ Jim cured back in ’72 and whose ‘manic’ he has put to good use. Jim softens. ‘You’ll brief them tonight?’

  ‘I’ll brief them just as soon as you’ve reminded them both of their personal relationship with the Cause.’

  ‘I’m so tired of these bitches needing to be reminded.’ Jim sighs. ‘When I’m loyal, I’m loyal for life. Don’t matter how much it takes out of me; that’s who I am.’ There is nothing accusatory about his reference to loyalty. There is nothing disloyal about what she is doing. ‘Do what you gotta do to intercept this spook, honey. Find where he’s stayin’, get access to his files, I don’t care how. Use your body, if you have to. Course, it’s sooner than I’d like, but I know you’re strong, and you’re looking good. Better’n ever.’