by Tim Sandlin
Odette undid the front clasp on her bra and let it drop to the floor.
"So, where's my buckle?" I asked.
She opened the closet door and took an ankle-length cotton nightgown off a nail. "Giselle kept it. She's the one who stole it in the first place. For a souvenir of our adventure. We didn't know it was important to you."
"It said BULL RIDING CHAMPION right on the front. How could you think it wasn't important?"
Odette stepped out of her panties and pulled the nightgown on over her head. The hem caught on her nipple hoop for a moment before it dropped to her ankles. She was remarkably unself-conscious about her body. Even at the height of our compatibility Mica would have pulled on the nightgown first before dropping the panties.
"We figured you had dozens," Odette said.
"That's an understandable mistake," I said. "Knowing me."
She walked on into the bathroom and I followed. Robert stayed curled on the pile where her bra had landed. Odette loaded her toothbrush with this French toothpaste — a red gel.
I sat on the side of the tub. I'd expected to find a bidet because I'd seen one in a movie, but the bathroom was basically American, all except the flusher hung on a chain up by the ceiling and the tub had a two-foot rubber hose clamped on the nozzle. "It doesn't make any difference. You wouldn't ball an actor and rip off his Oscar, just because he had two."
She looked at me in the mirror. "Giselle might."
After brushing, Odette cleaned her face with a circular pad thing. She was quite thorough. She leaned close to the mirror and concentrated on her skin with an intensity men don't give to details. I enjoyed watching.
"Where is Giselle now?"
Odette rubbed cream on her neck and thighs. "I do not know."
"Where does she live?"
"She won't be home tonight. She is at a meeting."
I didn't believe that for a minute. It was two A.M., for Christ's sake. Nobody goes to a meeting at two A.M. Not even AA.
Odette hitched up her nightgown and sat on the toilet. "She will probably be at the Pléiade Cafe in the morning. She usually is. We could go there and search for her. In the morning."
I found myself staring down at the LOVE ME tattooed in French across her toes. It seemed an odd message to permanently affix to your body, as if Odette needed more attention than the rest of us. She reached for the toilet paper and front wiped. I hadn't heard any pee striking water, so the toilet must have been designed for female rim shots.
"Do you have a location from which to sleep?" she asked.
"I'll bunk on the couch out there, where I can keep an eye on you."
"You no longer trust me?"
"Let's say I know which drawer you keep the knives in."
She stood and let her nightgown settle. "Rowdy, you are the most suspicious person I ever met. You must be terribly unhappy."
18.
Odette loaned me a well-used quilt — alternating squares of chickens and sheep. I finished off the dregs of my Beam, then stuck my boots under the legs of her chair there, by the couch, so she'd be less likely to steal them. My folded-up clothes, all except the undershorts I slept in, went on the chair with my hat, brim up, on top. I used the saddlebag for a pillow.
I've never been one to have trouble sleeping, but that night I got to worrying over Tyson. I thought about what it would have been like to grow up with my dad around, and, frankly, I think it would have been nice. I might be a normal guy now, happy with backyard barbecues and televised sports. I'd own two guns and a dog. If Dad hadn't died, I would probably have a 401(k). Even when he was alive, I didn't see so much of him. Dad worked for county electric all day and spent his evenings at the Elks Club, except in winter, when he plowed most nights. That's how he died, from plowing. Avalanche took him out. Mom woke me at dawn and told me Dad had gone to a better place. I thought she meant San Francisco.
Now Tyson was growing up, not just without me to show him how to throw a rope or drive a truck on ice, but with a woman whose voice oozed bile at the mention of my name. Ty was pretty much the only good thing I'd done so far with my time. It seems a shame for the only good thing a man does to think of him as a clown.
Odette's door opened. She padded into the living room, barefoot, lifted the quilt, and slipped in next to me. We spooned on our sides, with my back to the back of the couch, one arm under her head and the other across her shoulder. The couch was plenty wide for two. It didn't take me long to fall asleep.
I dreamed I was at my funeral. I mean, I'm not sure where the I who was dreaming was. I often have dreams that are like watching a movie in that I'm not in them. I only see them. The I I was dreaming about was in a cheap coffin at the front of the Presbyterian church there in GroVont. Ty sat on the first pew. His feet didn't touch the floor, and he had on my belt buckle. He wasn't crying but his eyes looked like maybe he had been recently. Mica was holding hands with the Pilates teacher. Mom had Fergie on her lap. Dad sat in back, smoking a Lark.
The preacher knocked on my casket three times — Knock, knock, knock — and said, "Here lies a man who never quite woke up."
The next thing I knew a key was rattling in the lock again, only this time it wasn't Odette. She had rolled over in her sleep and we were now facing each other with our foreheads touching. She had nice breath, a little sagebrushy. My arm was still across her shoulder and her knees were between mine. It would have been a pleasant way to wake up had a French crap-storm not broken out when Bernard the boyfriend found us.
He shouted something that brought Odette to. She blinked a couple times, processing the who and where, then she yelled something back and they both took off. Arguments in foreign languages sound so much more vicious than arguments in English. Maybe English isn't the language of domestic discord. My squabbles with Mica started out interesting enough, but they soon degenerated to her yelling, "Fuck you," and me yelling, "Fuck off." I can't say, not knowing the French word for fuck, but Odette and Bernard seemed more articulate. Near as I can tell, Bernard claimed they had a mutual exclusivity deal when it came to sleeping on the couch with someone, and Odette thought Bernard was a horse's ass. I imagine they were both right.
I fished in my saddlebag for my toothbrush and wandered off to the bathroom, where I took a morning leak and checked out the red gel toothpaste. It didn't taste like Crest. Had a hint of spearmint, maybe some sage, which would account for Odette's sleep breath.
I reentered the living room in time to see Odette slap the beJesus out of Bernard. Her fingerprints showed through his stubble. He reared back a fist and was on the verge of knocking her senseless when I stepped in. I touched the index and middle fingers of my right hand to Bernard's chest.
"Whoa, pard," I said, thereby using the P-word twice in two days. It felt right this time. I decided to use it whenever I could in Paris. "There's a time and place for that behavior and this isn't it."
Bernard looked confused.
Behind me, Odette said, "What?"
"Odette and I have an errand to run. You want to beat her up, come back later. Parlez-vous anglais?"
Bernard looked from me to Odette and back. He didn't know what to do. He had maybe six inches' height on me, and thirty pounds of weight, but then again I was a cowboy and he wasn't.
He barked, "Salope!" at Odette, which any idiot alive could translate as cunt — same thing an American male either thinks or says when he loses a fight with a woman. Then he left.
Odette put on her glasses. "There is a time and place for the striking of women?"
I smiled at her. "In a fair fight, you'll rip the sucker's throat out."
An hour, a shower, and two jiggers of French mud later, Odette and I walked across this park next to a castle, looking for breakfast. I think it was a castle; it might have been a palace. We don't have either in GroVont, so I'm not sure of the difference. It was one hell of a big building. Maalox-colored, with doodads around the top. The park was what used to be the castle's front yard, back when the castle was a
private house. Now, the castle was a museum or something governmental, and the front yard was a park.
There was a circle pond with concrete sides. Little boys raced screaming around the pond, poking toy sailboats with sticks so the boats would sail away across the water, only to bump against the far side where the boys with sticks waited to turn them around again. The game looked like something Ty would enjoy. I wondered why American kids never got the imagination to think of it.
About a hundred mothers and nannies stood around baby carriages, watching the boys. Black grandfather chairs had been set up two or three deep around the pond, but only a few intellectuals reading books sat in them. I saw a couple of deadly earnest journalers. In one area, by a wall, a dozen old men were smoking and playing chess. They had that concentrated posture you run into in a Texas domino parlor. I finally saw my first beret.
"Do you love your wife?" Odette asked. She was wearing stretchy pants that came down to her calves and a brick-red sweater with a matching scarf. Sparkly barrettes kept the hair off her face. I was wearing what I had on yesterday.
"What kind of question is that?"
She led me off toward a grove of trees where there was a stand she said sold breakfast. "It is a simple question. The night of our tryst, you spoke of your former wife. I wonder if you love her."
We had to step off the walkway to let joggers go by. We'd only been in the park five minutes, but we'd already been passed by at least fifty joggers. Most of them ran openmouthed. Not a one met my eyes, much less said, "Hey."
"There's nothing simple about that question," I said.
Odette switched on her high-beam look. "You seem lonely."
Which is a hell of a thing to say. I was eight time zones from home where no one knew squat about bulls or the scoring system for riding one. I didn't know the language, and what these people thought of as normal was anything but normal for me. I mean, they expected you to pay to pee. Of course I was lonely. I was alone.
"Listen, Odie."
"Odie is Garfield's dog. I am Odette. My grandmother was Odette. Her grandmother was Odette."
"Odette. What we have here is basically a hostage situation. You're stuck with me until we find Giselle and my buckle. This love talk is not appropriate material for chitchat."
"Did the union result in a child?"
"Nosy question. I don't do nosy questions."
We walked on past these stubby ponies that were hooked up four abreast and pulling carts full of what I automatically assumed were brats. I always assume that at pony rides. Don't ask me why. The horses were Shetlands, although not the American strain. More like potbellied Welsh ponies with strange pinto patterns I hadn't seen on Shetlands out West. They had jumpy gaits, useless for anything more strenuous than pulling kiddie carts in city parks. Baskets were mounted off their little rear ends to catch scat.
"I have a boy. Tyson. He's seven years old now. He's a good kid."
She talked without looking at me. "Does he have his father's appearance?"
"I don't remember. I don't see much of him."
Odette made a Mmmn sound, like that explained everything, which it didn't. "Do you love your son?"
"Of course I love my son. Do college girls ask stupid questions?"
"It is not a stupid question. My father does not love me."
"How do you know?"
"He told me."
"Your father said he doesn't love you, out loud?"
She nodded. "The night I became a woman."
Took me a while to figure out what became a woman meant. In Wyoming, getting laid doesn't make you a grown-up. "He was just pissed off. He wouldn't have said that on a regular night."
"He would have thought it."
The weather had clouded up since yesterday. It still wasn't cold, even though most people we met wore coats and sweaters. Scarves galore. The business-looking men carried umbrellas, which is something you almost never see in Wyoming. We have snow and wind, but not enough rain to make an umbrella a worthwhile purchase. What I wondered was the percentage of children who grow up thinking their parents don't love them compared to the percentage of parents who don't love their children. My guess is we're talking a wide spread.
Odette stopped walking and turned to face me. "Maybe if you saw your son more you wouldn't fly halfway around the world to retrieve a clothing accessory."
The breakfast stand was more of a sheep wagon with wooden wheels, a counter, and a fifteen-inch, flat frying pan where a pretty girl with dark waves in her hair and thick eyebrows made crepes. It was interesting to watch her ladle the batter and spread it in a spiral to the very edge of the pan without any runoff. She poured on the topping — chocolate for Odette, Grand Marnier for me — then did this thing with the spatula I'd never seen done before and the crepes came out like a tortilla turned into an ice cream cone, the pointy-bottomed kind, that she put in white paper and handed across.
I couldn't understand how she got away with selling Grand Marnier in a park. "There's little kids come to her stand," I said. "Are they allowed to buy crepes soaked in Grand Marnier?"
"Of course. Why shouldn't they?"
"Does she have a liquor license?"
"You don't need a liquor license to sell crepes. You need a crepes license."
Odette didn't see the moral difference between chocolate syrup and Grand Marnier. All I know's if they sold booze-saturated pancakes in GroVont there'd be teenagers lined up down the block. Mine tasted great, although it was somewhat insubstantial for breakfast. I hadn't had any meat or potato since hitting the country. No wonder the French are skinnier than Americans.
"Why're French people so nuts for crepes?" I ate mine by sucking out the juice, then biting off the breading. "They're just pancakes without baking powder. I was in a place yesterday and it seemed like that was all anyone ate."
"Why are Americans so nuts about hot dogs?" Odette asked, as usual switching the question so I was on the defensive end of the deal.
"'Cause we like food you can put ketchup on." I didn't believe that. I only said it because that's what a French person would expect me to say. I'd been in town twenty-four hours and I was already acting more American than I acted back home. It's like I was pouring myself into a preconception. Pretty soon, I'd be saying "Yep" and "Nope" and calling cattle doggies.
We ate our crepes as we walked on down the park past another raft of joggers. Some wore Walkman headsets, but a surprising number were jogging with hands-free cell phones that must have made them pant like obscene telemarketers. Every fifty feet or so we walked by a statue on a pedestal. Olden people in states of near nudity, mostly. Lots of rape scenes. Your cowboy poets are obsessed with human and animal excretions, which is gross, but child's play compared to rape-as-art.
Odette did a handstand. The girl seemed to enjoy doing unpredictable stuff with her body. She walked five or six handsteps, then sprang back-over-front onto her feet.
She said, "Try it. You'll have a new perspective."
"I like my old perspective."
We crossed a street without getting run over and Odette took me to a building with glass brick walls, like a Southern bus station. Just past the entrance, a wide staircase went underground. "The Pléiade is in the ninth," Odette said.
I said, "Ninth what?"
Same as yesterday, when people threw numbers around, Odette thought I was kidding. "We'll take the metro."
At the top step, I balked. "I don't do well in mine shafts."
She made it two steps down the stairs before she realized I hadn't followed. "It's not a mine shaft. It's a metro, like a New York subway without the urine. You've ridden subways, no?"
"No."
She came back up and pulled me by the arm. I resisted. "Underground is where you go when you're dead. If God wanted us underground, we'd be born dead."
Odette was not entertained. "You ride the bulls and are unafraid."
"I'm plenty afraid when I mount a bull. Man would be an idiot if he wasn't."
> "But you climb up on the bull anyway. You conquer the fear." I nodded. This wasn't the place to explain adrenaline addiction and how time expands during danger.
"Why do you fear the metro?" she asked.
"I'm not afraid. I just think it'd be quicker to flag down a taxicab."
"A taxi would cost you thirty euros, if we could find an honest driver."
"I met one yesterday. He's American."
She pulled on my forearm, leading me down. "Come," Odette said. "I will protect the cowboy."
19.
Okay. I'd planned on skipping the early life nonsense — there's nothing more pitiful than writers who blame the way they are now on what happened before — but if I leave this part out, you'll take me for a shavetail and we wouldn't want that. Uncle Ed. Family Republican. Thinks truck drivers are cowboys 'cause they wear the boots. Taught his kid to swim by tossing him off the end of the dock. Pride of his life is the condition in which he keeps his knives.
"Show me a man's knives and I'll tell you all you need to know about the man." When Ed got married for the third time, he carried a Colt AR-15 rifle down the aisle.
Mom, who couldn't keep a secret if the future of America depended on it, told Uncle Ed I slept with a night-light. This was after the avalanche nailed Dad and before I climbed on my first bull. Ed decided it was shameful for a ten-year-old boy to need a night-light and he was going to cure me. He shut me up in a kindling box, padlocked the door, and threw blankets over the top so no light came through the cracks. A kindling box is no better than a coffin except it has air holes. You can't bend your knees or lift up your arms. There's spiders and centipedes. Mice. You want to warp a kid but good, lock him in a kindling box overnight. I learned how to sleep without a light, but, for me, the price was not worth the gain. That was the last time I cried, before Paris, and I never let Mom find out I was afraid of anything ever again.