by Rozsa Gaston
“I’m going to Thailand on assignment.”
“You’re what?” What had he just said?
“I’m leaving for Thailand tomorrow to cover a story there.”
“Did you mention this before?” Stunned, I could feel my blood pressure rising. We hadn’t spoken about mundane things such as work or careers. We hadn’t gone near those all-too-American type topics. Now, I wished we had.
“No, ma belle. I didn’t want to speak of it. I wanted to be with you, that’s all.”
“But we, but we just –”
“Yes. We did.” He put one finger on my mouth to stop me from saying more. “And we will again. As soon as I’m back.”
I removed his finger.
“It’s just a bit of a surprise.” A shock is what I meant.
“Ava, I’m a foreign correspondent. It’s what I do for a living.”
“So – you write news stories about places around the world?”
“Yes.”
“And you go to those places to write them?”
“Précisement.”
My heart sank. I knew enough about his profession to know that it encouraged the same kind of loose living lifestyle being a performer or airline pilot did – a woman in every port, worst case scenario. On assignment for three months somewhere, back home for two weeks, next assignment six weeks somewhere else, and home for Christmas if no earth-shaking event occurred anywhere else. It was a peripatetic existence. Not music to the ears of an equally peripatetic musician who entertained occasional thoughts of settling down. Or did I want to settle down? I wasn’t exactly sure of what that entailed, but I knew I was fed up with playing piano in restaurants for less money than the waiters were making.
“When will you be back from Thailand?” I didn’t want to ask, but the words popped out regardless.
“In ten days. Two weeks at the most. It’s a short project.” He looked at me, his eyebrows arched into question marks.
Hell. That implied a long project might last a month or more. Did this work for me?
Non.
Would I finish things here and now between us?
Non. Impossible.
“Bahhh…” I used the famous French expression to hedge my response, unable to think beyond ‘information rejected – rewind tape’.
“I’ll call you, Ava. The minute I get back.”
Great. He wouldn’t even call while he was gone. It was unfair. How could we have been so close and now this? He would disappear, making me wait for ten long days, wondering if he would reappear in my life again. Shades of horrid Manhattan dating encounters danced through my head. Hadn’t I left all that behind? Or was this some sort of modern-day phenomenon – the unavailable male available just long enough to get laid then pushing off into the sunset? Bastard.
“Do you have a girlfriend in Thailand?” I couldn’t help myself.
“No. I have no girlfriend anywhere. My work doesn’t permit me.”
“Well now you do.” There. I’d really gone out on a limb.
“Ava,” he pulled me into his arms, practically impaling me over the stick shift.
I squirmed, trying to get away.
“Will you be the girlfriend of a guy like me?”
“What exactly is a guy like you, Arnaud? The guy you were this weekend? Or the guy you’ll be tomorrow when you get on the plane?” I hoped there wasn’t a difference, but I’d worked as a musician long enough to know there probably was one. From what I’d seen, when adult men and women went on the road alone, they didn’t stay alone for long.
“Like the guy I am in both places.”
“I can only know the guy you are here with me.”
“Is that good enough for you?”
“Is it good enough for you to be with me now and not with anyone anywhere else?” I was getting ahead of myself. This was a conversation for down the road, not at the onset of a relationship. But he was leaving the next day. For a country filled with slim, dark gorgeous women with more manageable hair than mine.
“You’re too good for me,” he replied, not exactly answering my question.
“Great. I’ve heard that before.” Why did that old, tired line always come up when a relationship was about to go bust? We’d just begun something glorious. I wasn’t about to let whatever we had go up in smoke by engaging in a premature discussion.
“Will you wait for me?” he asked. Unfairly, I thought.
“Ça dépend, Arnaud.” Nor would I promise him anything at that moment. ‘It depends’ was all he was getting from me. It wasn’t a response from the heart, but my heart had gone into hiding from the moment he’d mentioned leaving for Thailand.
“Ça dépend de quoi?” he demanded.
“It depends on you.”
He looked confused, exactly how I wanted to leave things with him – unsure and wanting more. Without a word more, I got out of the car then slammed the door shut.
Arnaud jumped out the driver’s side, slamming his door with equal force.
“Qu’est-ce que tu as, cherie? What’s the matter with you?” he asked. I knew that question from time spent with Jean-Michel.
“You know what’s wrong, Arnaud. Could you open the trunk please?” I didn’t mean to be upset, but him leaving for Asia for the next two weeks had not been on my radar screen of foreseeable events. At least, he hadn’t said two months.
He complied, pulling my two bags out and placing them on the sidewalk. Then, he put an arm on either side of me and backed me up against the side of his Peugeot. All I needed now was for Henri or Marceline to show up. They were probably at the living room window that very moment, taking in the whole scene.
“I’ll be back in ten days, two weeks at the most. Tu me manqueras. You will miss me.”
What was that – a command? Had he just said I would miss him?
“No, Arnaud. You will miss me,” I shot back, incensed by his incredible cheek.
“That’s what I said, cherie. Tu me manquera énormément.”
Had he just said ‘You will miss me enormously’? Yes I would, but that wasn’t for him to say, was it? Some sort of miscommunication was going on here. I needed to get away before everything we had just begun went up in smoke and flames.
“Goodbye, Arnaud.”
“À la prochaine, Ava. See you next time.”
Not trusting myself to refrain from escalating combat further, I picked up my bags, turned and smartly walked into the building. There would be plenty of time to sort out our parting conversation later. Ten full days, in fact – perhaps fourteen.
I fumed as I made my way upstairs. Thousands of miles from New York City, and here I was again dealing with flighty man problems.
The next morning, I bumped into Marceline in the kitchen, all eight months along of her. She waddled toward the counter where I sat, coffee cup in hand.
“And how was the weekend?” she asked, looking curious.
“It was good,” I said, avoiding her eyes.
“Then why so sad?” she followed up. She was right. I was in the dumps.
It wouldn’t do to punch a pregnant woman. In any case, it was Arnaud I wanted to hit. I was still confused about our conversation curbside the evening before.
“Marceline?”
“Yes?” She looked surprised to hear me address her by name.
“What does tu me manqueras mean?”
She smiled.
“I will miss you,” she explained.
“But doesn’t it mean ‘you will miss me’?” I asked, confused. That’s what it had sounded like.
“It’s a common mistake. In English you put yourself first. But in French you put the other person first. It’s like ça me plaît.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean you say, ‘I like that’ in English, but we say ça me plaît, that pleases me.”
“So do you mean to say if I say tu me manqueras it means I’ll miss you even though it sounds like you will miss me?”
“Exactement.�
�� The grin widened on her face.
“And what does tu me manqueras énormément mean?” I asked, although it was pretty clear. I just needed a native French speaker to confirm it.
“Is that what he said to you?”
I blushed. “I’m just asking what it means.”
“Right. It means “I’ll miss you a lot – enormously.”
“Oh.” I stared into my coffee cup.
“Did he go somewhere?”
I nodded.
“For how long?”
“Ten days to two weeks.”
“Oh.” She took a deep sip of her coffee with milk. “That’s not so long.”
“It seems long to me.”
“Try waiting nine months.”
I looked at her and laughed. She had a point. “You’re almost there, Marceline. It will all be worth it in a few weeks’ time.”
“If I can wait this long, then you can wait two weeks.”
“But what if he doesn’t call?”
“That depends on you.”
“What do you mean?”
“How did you leave it with him?”
“I – uh – I was sort of mad.” I shook my head, thinking of our dust-up on the sidewalk.
“Were you mean to him?” Marceline asked enthusiastically.
“Uh – malheureusement, oui – unfortunately, yes.”
“Très bien,” she approved. “He’ll call.”
What was that supposed to mean? What if I’d been all nice and accommodating? No problem, Arnaud. Call me when you get back, whenever that might be. That would be a man’s fantasy, right? I steamed, just thinking about it.
“But I wasn’t very nice to him” I explained. “I was angry because he hadn’t said anything about going away until we got back from the weekend.”
“What were you expecting him to do? Say something before you went away and risk not having you come?”
“I guess not.”
“You have to understand his point of view. He wanted something, and he needed to make sure he was going to get it.”
“Just like a man,” I agreed, disapprovingly.
“Oui. Just like a man, naturellement.” Marceline didn’t look disapproving, just instructive. “And now it is your chance to behave just like a woman.”
“Meaning?”
“You scratch. You kick. You meow. Finally, you leave. Shut the door in his face. Bouf.” She gestured violently as if slapping someone in the face.
“Wow.” I studied Marceline with new respect. She might look like an overripe watermelon, but she had some serious moves. “What’s all that accomplish?”
“You let him know he’s just another mec.” She used the slang for “guy” in French. It had a slightly more pejorative spin.
“I do?”
“They’re a dime a dozen.” She shrugged. “He’s gone for a few weeks? Who cares? Someone else will come along to take his place. Let him know there are plenty of other fish in the sea, all ready to swim your way.”
“I like your thinking.”
“It’s only natural,” she continued. “You need to take the advantage, so he understands it’s his loss if he chooses to leave you for a few weeks. Why is he going away, anyways?”
“He’s a foreign correspondent.”
“A what?”
“An international journalist.”
She made a face, as if I’d said he was a drug-runner or something. Then, she composed herself.
“Well, good luck with that.”
“Yeah, thanks.”
We parted ways – her to work, me to my keyboard. I tried to focus with renewed zeal, but too many loose ends flapped in the wind. Would I get booked for more gigs at The Blue Cactus after my six-week run was over? Where else might I find work? And would the man I’d just slept with for the first time call when he got back? While I rehearsed my repertoire, I vowed not to think about him.
Then I broke my vows repeatedly.
Had I expected Arnaud to be an accountant? Not likely, with his fast-moving mind and cheeky delivery. Foreign correspondent would have been one of the top ten on my list, if I’d had to guess what he did for a living. I just hoped beyond hope he didn’t share the same sleazy habits many men picked up in that line of work.
My mind wandered back to the house pianist at the Watertree Crab House in lower Manhattan where I’d been a singing waitress until I’d found work as a singer/pianist hotel lounge act. I’d had a ridiculous crush on Jules. For months, I’d pined after him, until finally at the end of our shift one evening, he’d offered to walk me home. We hadn’t ended up at home but instead at one East Village bar after another, until we found ourselves back at his apartment. Never mind about all the rest.
The next morning, he mentioned over coffee that he had pretty much bedded the entire waitressing staff of the restaurant where we worked. It was then that I knew male musicians in New York City had it way too easy when it came to women.
The ratio of heterosexual men to women in the performing arts in New York City was something like one to four. It hit me like a ton of bricks that I’d just given myself to a complete sleazebag. I took the walk of shame back to my own East Village apartment, wearing my clothes and tired makeup from the night before, while I tried to squelch any aspirations I might have had for our relationship to pan out. At work in the weeks following, Jules treated me exactly the same way he had before our all-night encounter, aside from an occasional smirk or lascivious stare.
The scales fell from my eyes after that encounter. Welcome to the New York dating scene, Ava – World Headquarters for Meaningless Encounters. On occasional Friday or Saturday nights at the end of my shift, Jules would offer to hook up with me again, which absolutely drove me up the wall. I wasn’t looking for a hook up. I’d wanted a relationship, a love story. We weren’t speaking the same language. Our tryst set the wheels in motion for my exit from New York City. No way did I ever want to be a musician there again.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
L’Amour à la Folie (Crazy Love)
The next few weeks were among the most creative of my life. I was in love. I was in agony. Marceline returned home Monday evening with the news that her grandfather had suffered a stroke and she had to leave immediately to attend to him. Because of her advanced condition, Henri accompanied her, and they both took off for the grandfather’s home outside of Paris. After a day, Henri called to say they would be staying on through the weekend as the house there was cooler than our stiflingly hot, unair-conditioned flat. Blessedly, a week of solitude stretched out ahead of me. I would be alone with my music and my thoughts.
I made the most of it. At the top of my priority list was finding a performing job on my own so I could get out from under Henri’s thumb as well as his flat. There was no way I wanted him managing my career. He hadn’t known what a reverb unit was, he was about to become a first-time father, and sooner or later Marceline would come across an erotic sketch of me in Henri’s office and all hell would break loose. For all of those reasons, Henri and I needed to part ways.
Days, I rehearsed in the mornings then broke for lunch. Every afternoon, I visited different neighborhoods known for nightlife. Pariscope was my guide, Paris’s weekly entertainment listings magazine sold at every newsstand. I used the same technique I used back in New York to get a job – wandering into a place, getting the name of the manager or owner, then pretending to be my own agent as I presented head shots and a short recording of the sensational talent I represented: Ava Fodor from New York City.
My headshots were so dramatically retouched that no one associated them with the person who stood before them. I wore my glasses just in case anyone might have made the connection between me and the knockout blonde with big hair and sharp cheekbones in the photos. No one did.
By late afternoon I’d return home, just as my creative juices began to flow. Other than preparing for my Friday evening gig at The Blue Cactus, I was free to focus on songwriting. Hands down, it was my favorite
part of being a musician. The flat was more atmospheric without Henri and Marceline around. I threw open the windows, welcoming in Paris’s street sounds for inspiration.
New songs came to me almost fully-formed, like Athena springing out of Zeus’s head. The first night of my solitude I wrote Au Bord de la Seine sweet, wistful and as light as a bagatelle – a short, light-hearted piece of classical piano music.
The next night, I composed Find Me – a ballad. Thursday night, I mixed both songs. Then it was Friday, my gig. After observing male restaurant-goers salivate over my headshots in the front window of The Blue Cactus while I slipped by them unnoticed, a hard-edged tune popped into my head, Through Men’s Eyes. I put it together after midnight, upon returning home from my unremarkable performance. On Saturday evening, I wrote my opus, Scheherazade. I thought it was at least as good as Madonna’s Holiday.
Anyone other than a creative artist would find it hard to believe I could write music so quickly. But artists know too cruelly well that inspiration usually comes all at once or not at all. In my case, I was writing three-and a-half minute pop songs, not three-movement symphonies; verse, chorus - verse, chorus - bridge - verse, chorus - chorus. Et voilà. Done. It was a piece of cake, as Marie Antoinette more or less said.
By Sunday afternoon, I was lonely but exhilarated. I’d written music almost nonstop since Arnaud had left town. In a rare state of mind, I felt totally connected to my real self. Writing songs wasn’t like performing them. I was writing them for myself. Unlike performing songs for an audience, when I wrote songs I wasn’t trying to curry favor with anyone. I was just trying to express what I really felt – and I knew when I got it right – like hitting a nail on the head.
But when I performed, it was about how the audience received me. My job was to get strangers to like me – something that didn’t sit well with me. Why should I try to get strangers to like me? Not only did it seem unnatural, it didn’t seem very French at all. Not that I’d become French all of a sudden, but it seemed to me the French exhibited natural behavior in their distrust of strangers or outsiders. Why did Americans smile at total strangers anyways?