by Tim Sandlin
"I'm the frigging avenging angel if he doesn't hand over an address."
Mustache picked up the phone.
Michael sighed. "What did I tell you about assuming they speak English?"
I gave the cowboy's refrain. "Yeah, yeah."
"Security is on the way."
The file cabinet he'd been digging in was across a counter and against a wall. I could leap over the counter, stiff-arm the mustache, fling open the file, but then what? No doubt the file was in French. Whatever information I might find wasn't worth a stun-gun situation.
"Is there enough time to break his furniture?"
Michael ran his hand through his blond hair. "It would jeopardize my fellowship at the university."
Two men in avocado-colored uniforms ran through the door and stopped. The one came across as a student working his way through law school, but the other emitted the aura of professional roller derby. His neck muscles throbbed. He had the haircut preferred by lesbians and Toby Keith fans.
Michael said, "Please don't do anything that might get me deported."
Mustache spoke to the security guards. The skater thug smiled and wet his lip, not unlike the cute secretary.
"Okay," I said. "For you, because you helped me."
"Awfully nice of you," Michael said.
"You know a place where we could get a cup of coffee? I haven't had coffee all morning."
12.
Crepes a Go Go had outdoor seating and three kinds of sugar, none of it artificial. Three kinds of real sugar! How bizarre can a country get? We sat at an iron table with a view across the plaza of stone steps going up to double doors into the university. A stream of students wearing black and carrying books and bags flowed into and out of the building. Scarves galore. No berets. No laughs. Fanatics of every sort stood on the steps, trying to pass out tracts, but hardly any students would touch the pages thrust in their face. They acted blind. It was like walking down the Strip in Vegas, pretending not to see the waifs passing out whore flyers.
"You think they'll use that door?"
Michael glanced up from a paperback book he was reading. The moment we sat down, he had pulled the book from his daypack. The cover was pastel, all words, no art. I couldn't read the title because it was in French.
"The university has many doors, but that's the one closest to philosophy," he said.
A waiter in a white shirt and an ironed apron hovered over our table, not saying anything. In the States, his haircut would have proclaimed him either gay or a missionary. In France, it probably meant guy.
Michael said, "Bonjour."
The waiter said, "Bonjour."
Michael said something and the waiter looked at me.
I said, "I'll take a cup of coffee. Black."
Michael said something more in French and the waiter walked off.
"You forgot to say 'Bonjour,'" Michael said.
"I didn't forget. I tried it in my mind and it sounded silly."
"They would rather you try and sound silly than not try at all." Then Michael launched into this discussion of the difference between French and American mentalities. Over the next couple of days, I was to discover most everyone you meet in Paris is itching to tell you the difference between French and American mentalities.
"The French are suspicious, reserved, and big-hearted," Michael said.
"Like New Yorkers," I said.
"That's right. Imagine an entire nation of people from Brooklyn."
Michael's theory was that Americans are romantic pragmatists and French are pragmatic romantics. Odette had used that word pragmatic, too, and I didn't know what it meant when she said it, either.
"Does that explain no fake sugar and three kinds of real?" I asked.
"Exactly."
The waiter whose mother would have been proud of his posture returned with a ceramic mug of coffee and cream for Michael and a little girl's tea party-sized cup of what appeared to be coal mine runoff for me.
I forgot the part about being an ambassador. "What the hell is this?"
"Your coffee," the waiter said.
"I don't want a shot, I want a whole cup."
Michael gave his superior blond-god smile that was beginning to grate. "It's espresso."
The waiter turned and left. He didn't care.
"I don't want espresso. I want coffee."
"That's what coffee is in France." Michael explained the workings of an espresso machine — hot water under pressure forced through packed grounds or some such hooey. "Be glad you aren't in Greece. They use half the water and leave the grounds in, in Greece."
I tried a sip. It tasted like coal mine runoff, too. "I can't get by without my coffee."
Michael sipped his. I swear, he did the thing where his little finger stuck out, away from the cup. "This is the best coffee in the world."
"How come yours is regular sized?"
"Mine is café au lait — espresso with steamed milk."
"I want what you have, only without the milk."
"What I have without the milk is the same as what you have."
I gave the coffee another chance. It wasn't so awful the second go, tasted kind of like campfire coffee where you boil the holy beJesus out of grounds and throw in an eggshell. "Yours is nothing but a tiny amount of coffee and a large amount of milk?"
He nodded.
"Might as well drink dirty milk." I downed what was left of my shot in a gulp, then chewed on loose grounds from the bottom. I'm not big on chewy coffee. Back in high school, on camping trips, I stuffed my grounds in a sock before boiling them. That eggshell trick works better in stories than real life.
"Do they charge for warm-ups? I won't go to Starbucks except for emergencies because they charge for warm-ups."
Michael's superior smile spread into a superior grin. To him, I was an inexperienced hick. I'd like to throw him on the back of a bull and see which of us is inexperienced. People always think other people who don't know local stuff are stupid.
"The concept of a free refill is beyond the French mind," he said.
"Jesus, what kind of country is this?" I signaled to the waiter, who ignored me. Michael signaled to the waiter and he came over.
"Listen, bud," I said. "Bring me four of those mini-coffees and an empty mug like his. I'll pour them all together."
"The espresso is three euros fifty, a cup," Michael said. "Plus, each espresso carries more caffeine than a grande of American Starbucks."
"What's your point?"
The upside of spending twenty dollars before ingesting a reasonable amount of caffeine is that you can stay there all day if you feel like it. None of this "spend money at least once an hour or move along" attitude you get in American coffee shops. And the weather was nice. I have to give Paris that much. That morning was blue and just far enough above room temperature that you noticed the way the sun warmed up your skin. There were fountains in the plaza. Young people dressed Goth sat on the sides of the fountains, necking. Others ate and still others read books. Some people ate and read at the same time. Except for me, everyone who wasn't necking ignored everyone who was.
My translator proved nosy. "These girls you're looking for, Odette and Giselle, why do you want them so much?"
"They took my property," I said.
"Must be valuable property to cause you to jump on a plane and fly to France."
I chose not to go there. I had enough to keep up with watching the university doors and the social scene around the fountains. I saw no reason to justify myself to a tall person.
Michael leaned my way with the book between his knees. It was a prop. He didn't read a page the whole time we sat there. "Did you sleep with one of them?"
I looked over at his pink face, that permanent sunburn you see on womanizers at ski resorts. "What kind of question is that?"
He wet his chapped lips and stared at me closely. "Here's what I'm thinking. This isn't about property. Believe me, Slick, these French women know how to drive a man insane."<
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"That's your excuse, not mine."
"They get off on the power. Whichever one of these twats you slept with will treat you like you're a dead corpse — if you pull off a miracle and find her — but secretly, she'll be delighted. French women keep score."
Sounded like crapola to me. "Is that why you're in Paris?"
"I'm in Paris to research André Gide. Now there's a winner in the game between the sexes."
"Bicycle rider, right?"
"The greatest French novelist ever. Gide puts Flaubert and Proust to shame." Michael ripped into an extended rave about some writer I never heard of. I mean, French writers weren't covered in the class I passed at Casper College, so I hadn't heard of any of them, except the guy who wrote Count of Monte Cristo, and I forget his name. I saw the Disney Hunchback of Notre Dame with Ty, but I suspect Disney screwed with the story. Gargoyles didn't sing in the French book.
Michael was hot on Gide, even hotter than Odette had been for William James. When Odette went on about her dead guy, she was interesting. Michael was just another bore, but then I'd been waiting to take Odette's clothes off. Self-evident Truth #3: Foreplay changes the nature of interesting. In hopes of shutting Michael up, I tipped my hat way down over my face and propped my feet on a chair, in nap mode.
He didn't take the hint. "Gide created the myth of the modern French female. Because of Gide, every girl in Paris feels compelled to flaunt her sexuality."
I said, "Yada, yada."
That's something I picked up from TV. It's a short and meaningless response to a long and meaningless statement. I've been told it's Yiddish for whatever. Michael said more but I tuned him out by watching the neckers. Tuning out wasn't that hard. The weird coffee had my ears ringing.
The neckers were interesting. They stared intently into each other's eyes between hugs and kisses, which for the most part were not the openmouthed, tongue-on-tongue variety. They weren't French kisses, more like movie kisses. I noticed that with each couple, one person was more possessive than the other. And one person — not necessarily the more or less possessive one — was happier to embrace while the other pushed for aggressive kissing. The timing was slightly off, all around the fountain. I couldn't recall the last time I necked in public. Or necked anywhere, for that matter. In America, when nailing regularity goes up, kissing regularity goes down the tubes.
One of the neckers was a pretty girl with brown hair streaked blond where it framed her face. I couldn't see the boy's face, only the oily back of his head, but between smooches, the girl looked over his shoulder at us and smiled. I got the idea the boy was being played for a sucker.
"That's Isa," Michael said.
"She's paying more attention to you than her date."
"Isa's a good kid. I could arrange for you to fuck her, if you want."
"You're a pimp?"
Michael laughed. "Of course not, Slick. I'd see it as a favor for a fellow American. We don't want your trip to France to be a total waste."
"Tell you what, bub. You call me Slick one more time and we're going to show these folks what a violent country the United States is."
Michael closed his book with a snap and blinked rapidly. "I was only trying to be friendly," he said.
"You failed."
The thing is he had touched a sore spot. Bull riders pull that giving-girls-to-each-other number all the time. If they aren't outright loaning a bunny to a friend, they're selling her for a six-pack. Mostly it's bluster and if the girl found out she'd slap the both of them, but it still pisses me off. Men should not arrange other men's lays.
"You don't have to go all huffy on me," Michael said.
"I'll go as huffy as I want."
The pretty girl ducked her face back into the boy's shoulder. She seemed nice. Had Michael said, "I'll introduce you," instead of "I'll arrange it," we might have hit it off. But now the relationship was ruined before she even knew we'd had one. After that, I ignored the son of a bitch, although it made me feel like I wasn't doing all I could to express my disapproval. Self-evident Truth #4: You can't hit every asshole you run into.
13.
Students, artificial students, tourists of various nationalities and religions, men in coveralls with green plastic brooms — the lunch rush came and went like the tide. They ate and smoked at the same time, stubbing their butts out on half-eaten sandwiches. A professor-looking guy with a beagle on his lap pontificated to a couple girls in black sweaters and matching book bags. I say he was a professor because he wore corduroy pants.
Michael ordered this thing looked like pigs in a blanket. I was hungry but damned if I would order off a French menu while he sat next to me, willing to help. I knocked down a couple more mini-coffees instead. The cafe had alcohol, but I was in Paris on business. It wasn't the time or place for recreation.
I kicked my saddlebag under the table so it'd be less of a temptation and stood up as the waiter came outside carrying a pink drink on a tray. He took the drink to a man wearing a parka even though it wasn't cold.
"You got a men's room?" I asked.
Mr. Braille himself could not have read the waiter's face.
I said, "Bathroom?"
Blank stare.
"Restroom? Comfort station?"
Michael chuckled and I knew he was waiting for me to ask him to step in, but I wasn't about to. Michael was an idiot.
I tried again. "Toilet?"
The waiter woke up. "Toilette."
"Yeah, toilette."
He led me inside and nodded toward spiral steps that corkscrewed down a hole no wider than a well. I truly hate being in wells or coffins or any other form of underground, and this didn't look like any place for a can. It was worse than an outhouse hole without the outhouse. But the waiter must have known what I was asking. Giselle had used that toilette pronunciation, too. Nothing less than a deep need to pee could have taken me down those steps.
At the bottom of the corkscrew I found an open room with two urinals on the right and two doors marked W.C. on the left. One W.C. had a female silhouette and the other a male. In the middle of the room, a flat-chested woman of eighty or so sat on a folding chair next to a card table crowded with paper towels and aquamarine soap and bottles of smell. She had a hand-drawn sign that read ¢40.
She said, "Bonjour, monsieur."
I said, "Bonjour."
A guy was whizzing in one of the urinals, right in front of her. It looked to me like that was the drill. Seemed odd to whiz with a woman at your back, but what the heck, in a foreign land you have to be flexible. I started for the vacant urinal and the woman cleared her throat. Made a popping sound, like a sage grouse. I looked at her and she clicked her fingernail on the ¢40 sign.
"You want me to pay to take a leak?"
She clicked her nail on the sign again. I'd assumed it was the price of cologne or whatever she was selling, but, evidently, the old girl expected cash for going. Never one to be difficult, I dug two quarters from my pocket and said, "Keep the change."
French men don't use urinals the way we do. I'd noticed it first at the airport and then in the college. They stand six inches closer than us. This guy, in black sweats, a nylon jacket, and Nikes, was hunched up almost inside the urinal, with his knees on either side of the lip. Looked like he'd bang his wanger on the porcelain, and, for certain, he was set to catch splash. Maybe it's on account of a woman nearby, only no women had been present at the other toilets I'd visited. Maybe French children are trained that way and they grow up thinking everyone does it the same. You never know what people will think is normal in different parts of the world. Makes me wonder about Wyoming.
I was standing the standard American distance out, releasing my fifty cents' worth, when the woman squawked. Without cutting flow, I turned to see what the fuss was. She held my two quarters in the palm of her hand, this horrified look on her face, as if they were poison mushrooms. The woman let loose a stream of invective in my direction. It's funny how language is not an issue when a woman
is livid. I would have known what she meant had she been saying it in Swahili. She didn't want U.S. change.
"I'm whizzing," I said, "and if you want to stop me you can come over here and try." So much for flexibility.
The Nikes man flushed and washed his hands excessively. When he went to the card table for paper towels, they exchanged a few words which I figured were about me. She had a strong opinion and he agreed with her.
I zipped it up and washed my own hands since I've been told foreign germs are worse than ours. I passed on the paper towels. Pant legs are plenty absorbent.
The woman glared, hawklike, as I headed up the corkscrew steps. She spit words — Abruti d'Américain, va. I didn't need a translation.
When I came back to the table, Michael was long gone and his place had been taken by an old man in cutoffs and a denim vest over a sleeveless T-shirt. Skinniest legs I've ever seen on a male. Flip-flops. Silver ponytail of the type worn by senior citizens in the galleries along Canyon Road in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and basically nowhere else. Cured leather tan. Confederate gray eyes set in crow's feet. The ragged-cut shorts branded him as American as much as my hat did me. At his feet, a wire-haired Scottie dog sniffed my saddlebag, but I don't know enough Scottie lore to tell if he was looking for food or a place to go. All I know about Scotties is they're fairly useless on a ranch.
"Sir, do you mind if Monty and I share your table?" the crasher said in the whiskey voice I associate with sheepherders and aging disc jockeys.
I looked around at the eight or nine empty tables in the vicinity and shrugged. "Suit yourself."
"You are quite kind." He held out his hand. "Pinto Whiteside. And this is Monty Clift."
My attention stayed under the table, unsure how the man would take it if I gave Monty Clift a nudge. Dog pee is hell on leather. "What's that?"
"In France, when we meet a stranger we give our name and shake hands. My name is Pinto Whiteside."
I studied Pinto Whiteside, deciding if this was going to be more trouble than it could possibly be worth. A cigar stuck out from the pocket on his vest. That was a bad sign, and the way he leaned forward gave me the feeling I get when someone is about to pitch a new long-distance plan. Or maybe term life insurance. He was definitely leading up to a plea for time or money or both but, let's face the truth here, I was in need of help, and in no position to go snippy on an old-timer.