by Tim Sandlin
"What is the bull like?" I swished sweet wine around my mouth and tried to think of an answer that wasn't smart-ass. "For eight seconds, life is pure."
If Odette treated my inner exposure as lovable but silly the romance would go right back to straight sex. But her eyes weren't ironic or superior or anything women use when men speak with enthusiasm. She was interested, so far as I could tell. I took a chance and went on.
"There's no ego. No self. Busted marriages don't exist. Disappointed mothers. Dead dads who were never alive in the first place. Sons growing up thinking Daddy is a deadbeat. Child support. It's not that those things don't matter, they don't even exist. And no man is bigger than me when I climb on a bull, because those who think they are would not be able to do it."
"Is that the reason many of the bull riders we observed in Colorado were short?"
I let that comment sail right on over my head. The French invented the Napoleon complex, for God's sake. And, besides, how should I know what short men think?
"Knowing sooner or later you'll get hurt doesn't mean squat once the chute blows open. It's the only time between starting out and ending up where I'm completely alive, and you damn well can't tell me the female orgasm is the same."
"Why not?"
"Little death as a term for orgasm sounds good, but with a bull, it's more than a figure of speech. It's a possible outcome."
Odette slid her empty sundae glass to the side and cupped her wine with both hands. She stared into the wine the way I stare into coffee, as if it held the answers.
"It can be real. I can forget the past and future and everything outside myself, which is what happens when you are completely alive. Or dead." Odette's eyes drifted into a glaze of memory. "Not the five seconds leading up to the climax, of course, and definitely not the sparkly time after. Having had sex comes with too many strings for it to be pure."
"Such as?"
"Pregnancy. Disease. Do I want the partner long-term? Will he become a nuisance? What am I going to wear later? Afterglow is complicated no matter how glorious it feels, but right there, when I am in the climactic heat, I understand the part about nothing outside matters."
I couldn't help but stick in a needle. "Was it like that with Giselle the other night?"
Odette reached across the table and thumped me on the chest. "I faked that one."
"No."
"I was sleepy. She would have been at me all night if I hadn't falsified the orgasm."
That was the best thing I'd heard since the Klaxon Sunday. "I can't wait to tell her." A green bus with what looked like an accordion bellows in its midsection pulled up across the street and Remi stepped out. He walked toward us. "Isn't that one of your urban army pals there?"
Remi walked fast, directly toward us. He had something oval in his hand, like one of those bottles of wine that comes in its own basket.
Odette said, "Remi."
"What's he carrying?"
Odette yelled, "Rowdy! Attention!"She jumped from her seat and grabbed me by the shoulders, pulling me from my chair. I fell on the floor, but she yanked me up, away from the window. I looked back to see Remi haul off and hurl whatever he was carrying through the glass. The window imploded. The bottle slid across the floor, then it blew up, in a huge puff of smoke.
Repercussions were about what you would expect. People screaming, running into each other in their rush to get out of the way. Tables going over. Chairs cracking. A kid who must have been fourteen jumped across the bar and started stealing booze.
"Come on!" Odette shouted.
"That's one of the bastards has my buckle."
I tore her hand off my arm and ran back into the smoke to get my hat.
Behind me, Odette shouted, "Rowdy."
I jumped through the hole where the glass had been.
27.
If anything, outside T.G.I. Friday's was more chaotic than inside. Inside, at least, the stampede went one direction. Outside, as many people were flooding toward the trouble as away. The air was filled with a goddamn cacophony of those double-tone European sirens that are so much more irritating than ours. Eeee-Oooo. Eeee-Oooo. The whole deal was a lot of commotion for a smoke bomb. I set one off in the GroVont Middle School cafeteria once and they didn't even cancel lunch. The world is so skittish these days, what used to be a childhood prank is now terrorism.
Remi the snake had crossed the avenue there and was quick-limping toward a park gate, the limp caused, no doubt, from where I bit a chunk out of his ankle this morning. When he glanced back I saw a blue-green bruise under his left eye. For an instant, the sight of me puzzled him, then I made him nervous, especially when he realized I wasn't done.
I hit the street as the light changed and four lanes of rabid French drivers stomped their foot to the floor. The fella in the first lane swung left behind me but the motorcycle in the second lane knocked me down. I bounced and kept at it. The driver cursed. Every damn Frenchman out there leaned on his horn. Most, but not all, swerved to miss me. A couple would have happily killed me dead if I hadn't dodged. The only one to hit his brakes got rear-ended.
I made the sidewalk, turned left, and ran. A policeman blew his whistle but I couldn't say if it was at me or the fuss in front of T.G.I. Friday's. Whichever didn't matter. I wasn't about to stop for a damn whistle. When I first cut into the park, Remi was nowhere in sight. Didn't take long to spot him. He was the only one running, except me. Tourists with strollers and toddlers riding on their shoulders stopped to watch as we blew by, as if we were in the guidebook listed under local color. A boy wearing a Knott's Berry Farm sweatshirt pretended to shoot me. A black man in a skullcap held out a set of accordion-style postcards.
I said, "No, thanks."
If this had been any of six movies I could name featuring cowboys in Central Park in New York City I would now have conveniently found an unguarded traffic control horse, performed a spectacular rear vault mount, and galloped away, jumping over benches and bassinets. I never understood how a horse could be a broke-back nag in one shot and a steeplechaser the next. Or, more to the point, how the movie guys thought they could get away with a flying plow horse. Did the director think the audience were idiots? Heck, McCloud did it almost every week on TV. Not once did Dennis Weaver steal a horse that balked at hurdling a motorcycle.
This is immaterial because there wasn't a horse in sight and I wouldn't have stolen one if there had been. They shoot people for stealing horses. Rightly so.
Instead, I raced around a hedge and into a man wearing a three-piece suit and carrying a white dog. Those guys are as common in Paris as ski boots in Aspen. By the time I got him picked up and dusted off — with him chewing me out like it was my fault — Remi was way off down the park.
Shit-for-brains stole a Segway. A guide and a covey of tourists had gathered at a statue of a general on a Clydesdale. They'd dismounted and leaned their machines against a fence that encircled a tree. Must have been a special tree to get its own fence. And Remi ran up, grabbed one, and rode away.
When I huffed up, the tourists were yelling at each other in what I think was German. They looked German — burr haircuts, thick quadriceps, suspenders. The guide plopped himself down on a bench and held his hands up in an I'm-sick-of-this-job gesture.
I took one of the Segways by the handlebars and tried to figure out how to mount up. The youngest German made as if to stop me.
"Don't try it, Jack," I growled. It was a bluff, but he bought it. The hat gets them every time.
I stepped up on the foot platform dealies and waited. "How do you make this go?"
The guide said, "I'm not going to help you steal my machine."
I leaned forward, searching for an ignition, and the damn thing took off.
Behind me, the guide said, "Hell, take it."
Segways are weird. There's no gears, accelerator, brake, steering wheel, or anything. You lean forward and it goes forward, lean back and it stops. Turns the same way. They're like a two-wheeled horse. At first, I was all over h
eck and back. The thing required better posture than mine, but luckily Remi didn't appear any more Segway experienced than me. It took fifty yards to get it going where I wanted it to go at top speed, which I figure was maybe ten. At least I wasn't on foot. Any transportation beats running in cowboy boots.
The snake caught on to his machine about the time I got the hang of mine and soon we were weaving in and out of alarmed pedestrians. He liked to slalom benches. I almost caught the bastard by shortcutting around a fountain, but he took a hard right into a single-lane, one-way street going the wrong way. We both stayed up on the sidewalk, which was an adventure. It was kind of fun, in an urban way. I decided to get me one of these and throw it in the back of my truck. Use it for beer runs.
Remi came to a pedestrian who wouldn't back down. She looked like a fashion model, but I don't know. I don't know what fashion models look like in Paris or anyplace else. Only one I ever spoke to in person worked in a semitruck wash and twenty-four-hour massage parlor in Casper and she was wearing coveralls.
Whatever this one was, she didn't give an inch, so Remi jumped the curb into the street. I said, "Sorry," and jumped after him and fell. The woman laughed at me.
I said, "You try it."
By the time I made it back upright, Remi had turned a corner onto another six-way intersection. I came around the point to see him stop, step off, and hustle into a city bus. I bailed without stopping and my Segway hit the bus stop sign. The bus driver saw me, the prick. He could have let me in. It gave him great joy to shut the doors in my face.
I yelled, "Cocksucker!" and slapped the door. The driver pulled into traffic without so much as looking back, like he owned the road. Remi sat at the window, staring out at me. I flipped him the bird. He didn't care.
I felt like a failure. I hate feeling like a failure. It's a feeling I get often, whenever a bull throws me, but I have never gotten used to it. It's as if I'm not good enough to be a real cowboy.
A tall girl on a bicycle was looking down at my Segway. She had blond hair and legs so long she could sit on the bike seat with both feet on the sidewalk.
She said, "Bravo. C'était pas mal."
"You want to swap?" I nodded at the Segway. "Straight across. It's a dynamite machine, but I'll never be natural on it. You know cowboys, we can't handle anything invented after the pickup truck."
She said, "Ce n'est pas mon vélo."
"You won't regret the trade. I guarantee."
Fifteen seconds later, I was back on the road, chasing me a bus.
The only thing to be said for the bike as a mode of transportation is that it doesn't eat. I hadn't been on one since grade school, except for the time I tried to teach Tyson how to ride. I was too big for his Kmart Huffy and I broke a training wheel when my boot-cut jeans hung up in the spokes. Tyson cried and Mica blamed me, of course. That is our family pattern. I try, Ty cries, Mica blames.
The bus carrying Remi turned right into this incredibly active street with waves of traffic going both ways. There was a huge arch big as the famous one in Utah down at the end there, and that's where the bus headed. I almost caught him at a stop in front of Eddie Bauer. Fact is, I could have caught him if the driver had shown consideration, but I knew better than to think he would, so I didn't repeat the door-in-the-face routine again.
Pedaling was hard work. I couldn't figure out the gears. Maybe French bikes use a different gear system than the Monkey Ward model Dad picked up secondhand at a yard sale. As I recall, I never got that bike's gears down, either. My first lesson, I crashed into the side of the garage and Dad walked away without saying a word.
It started looking as if I would eventually catch the sucker. What then? I didn't want to land back in jail with the speed freak from Chillicothe, and jail seemed likely if I simply jumped on the bus and pounded the snot out of Remi. I knew I could take him, but could I take him off the bus? The more subtle plan — and God knows I'm subtle — would be to follow him in hopes he was headed toward Armand and the buckle. That made sense. He would want to report the success of his smoke bomb attack on T.G.I. Friday's. Even if he didn't lead me to Armand, he might go somewhere more private where pounding snot was an option.
Right before the big archway, the bus came to a God Almighty traffic circle. Cars met from every direction possible, like spokes on my bicycle, and merged together with no stoplights or signs, not even a Yield, into a six-lane racetrack. It was bizarre. They slid into the circle from the right, then jumped lane to lane as they sped around the arch until they finally spit themselves back out on the right into another street. The bus dived in. I watched, waiting for a gap that never came. Finally, I said, "Hell," and rode out into the thick of the mess.
The feeling was akin to diving into whitewater rapids. Cars zipped at me from both sides. They sped up, slowed down with no warning. Lane changes were made without a clue. Traffic flow was based on bluffing and it's tough to pull a bluff from the back of a bike when everyone else is in a car. The bike negated the hat.
Up ahead, the bus muscled its way around the circle, past five or six exits, then it took one.
Those French have an unnatural attachment to horns. The cursing and honking and fist shaking was even worse than back at the street where I jaywalked against the light. Imagine it's 1840 and you're stuck in a buffalo stampede. Riding a three-legged horse. Blind. A three-legged blind horse, with rickets.
Soon as I could, I parked myself in the exit lane and rode, nice and slow — to hell with the honkers — keeping my eye on the slot where the bus had gone. When the turn came, I pointed out my direction of travel and cut into the proper street, in time to see my bus tipping a rise.
I stopped, right boot on the curb, to catch my breath. Then I clamped my hat on tight, and pedaled.
Remi left the bus at a wide avenue that ran along the base of a ridge, and since I'd only seen the one hill in Paris, I figured this was the same one Mrs. Whiteside lived at the top of. The street sign, which they put on bricks in the wall there instead of signposts like any normal town would, said the street was named Pigalle. Near as I can tell, Pigalle is the French word for filthy perversion. You never saw a street like this, at least not in the Rocky Mountains. Every store sold something smutty. Arousal gear, mostly. Also paintings, photography, books, statues, and movies. Video games. A sign at one place said LIVE SEX. This was the only part of town where they had English on all the signs.
A street beggar with horrid teeth and a Janet Jackson T-shirt offered to help me find what I was looking for if I would give him five euros. What I was looking for was Remi, who had crossed the street and was hurrying by a cafe that advertised nude lesbian bartenders, so I had no need of the beggar's services. Instead, I gave him the bicycle. He seemed to appreciate the gift.
I crossed the street — with the light, for once — and followed Remi. I couldn't help stopping at the nude lesbian bartender cafe to see if the bartender was really nude. I don't know how you're supposed to tell a woman is lesbian if she's not wearing clothes. They all look the same naked. I couldn't see her snatch area because she stood behind the bar, staring at me with all the expression of a Gila monster, but the woman was topless. I can verify that much. Her hair was wet mop—colored and she stood with the posture of a redneck with knockers. She was about as sexy as a urinal cake.
She said, "Clint Eastwood."
I said, "Granny Clampett."
Remi was moving right along, not looking into the stripper bars or peep shows. He knew where he was going and I had to hustle to keep up. We passed a dance hall called Moulin Rouge. I suppose they named it after the movie. Almost everyone we walked by was carrying a camera, and that led me to believe the street was aimed at tourists, not locals. Well-dressed Asians and poorly dressed Americans. The Arabic community was well represented. No black people. Black people don't waste their time on spectator porn.
Another half block of dirty stuff later, Remi turned into the Sacré Coeur Sex Shoppe. I loitered at the door, interested in the win
dow display. They had Grand Marnier—flavored panties, furlined handcuffs, a farmer sodomizing a Holstein milk cow, and a leather halter thing that might have gone on below the waist, I wasn't sure. These silver balls hung on a cord, like a miniature double ball and chain. I didn't know how they were used. My imagination failed me.
I gave it five minutes and, when Remi didn't come out, I went in.
28.
A bell tinkled over the door as I entered, which, because it was so low-tech, I took as cool. A woman sat behind a glass display case on the right, talking French on the telephone. She reminded me of Miss Crump from The Andy Griffith Show reruns. Nice dimples.
The woman put her hand over the phone mouthpiece and said, "Bonjour, monsieur."
"Bonjour, mademoiselle." I got it out fairly well.
"Is there any item you search for in particular?"
"I'm browsing — travel presents for the family. You know how it is, you can't come home without a present."
She smiled. "Simply ask if you have a question," then she returned to her phone conversation.
The shop was a high-ceilinged room set up with inflatable girls on the left and dirty videos on the right. A middle aisle was covered by sick toys like I'd seen in the window and a remarkable display of dildos. The dildos were what caught my attention. I'd seen plenty of inflatable girls in my life. These in Paris had names like Pepette and Rosanna. Their boobs were more realistic than the bazoombas you find on American blowups. Other than that, they were your standard, off-the-shelf babes.
But the dildos! The dildos were amazingly creative, coming in a wide variety of shapes, colors, and levels of firmness, from a smallish — by dildo standards — circumcised number with a slight arcing curve to the huge meat hook I'd seen back in Giselle's bedroom. Snakes the size of a python. Insertable fence posts. A bunch had double heads, for going in both sides at once, I suppose. The concept must be uniquely French. Many of the dildos were the strap-on kind, and a couple of the inflatables had been rigged to show how the straps attached. One looked like Giselle, same Ping-Pong-ball tint to the skin, same Rottweiler eyes. I'd bet the ranch she was the model for whoever designed the doll. Her attached dildo could have poleaxed a wolf.