Rhode Island Red

by Charlotte Carter

  I took a long soak in the pay-per-bath room down the hall and changed into something slightly slinky. There was a fabulous wine bar on the rue du Cherche Midi that I loved. It had been the scene of two or three major flirting triumphs.

  They sold lighting fixtures there now. I stood on the pavement watching the clerk clear the register and begin to close up for the evening. I could have cried.

  I wandered down into the métro and took the train to Pont Marie, on the right bank. Surely the much more staid wine bar that a friend’s father had once taken us to would still be there. And it was. But it was obvious there would be no lighthearted seductions taking place that evening. Oh no. No sharing a steak frites with a cute translator and then a nightcap at some avant garde jazz loft. No and no. Average age of the patrons at this stately establishment: 55 by my calculations. Successful businessmen and their co-workers, or their Chanel-clad ladies. I put away two lovely glasses of Medoc and was on my way.

  I walked along the Seine in the twilight, feet hurting in my strappy heels. The magazine/postcards/junk stands on the quai were all closed now. Here and there I could hear voices down below, along the water. I had to smile. One thing you never forget, your first kiss on the banks of the Seine. I just know it’s one of those pictures that go flying across your vision as you lay dying.

  I had had nothing to eat except the breakfast croissant and a yogurt taken on the run midday. I was starving but I hated the thought of eating alone again.

  What choice did I have, though? I went to Au Pactole, a perfectly nice place on St. Germain, just the tiniest bit stuffy, up the block from a hotel I’d once lived in—the Hotel de Lima. It was almost pleasurable to behave so formally with the maître d’, like playing a role, or wearing a disguise. Hmmm—she is black and French speaking. Must be an immigrant. Spinster on vacation from the provinces, I could almost hear the young waiter thinking. Trying to dress Parisian. Not bad looking. Needs to get laid, though. I was the only solo table in the good-sized room, which was awash in fresh white flowers and skyscraper-tall candles. After an already too heavy meal, I pigged on goat cheese and a big-time dessert.

  The thing is, I mused during my meandering walk home along the quai, the main thing is: the police have to be avoided.

  If nothing happened with my search for Vivian in the next day or so, I might have to contact the American embassy. But not the French police. It was half instinctual cop-o-phobia and half worry that maybe Vivian had wandered into something not on the up and up; then there was the plain gut-clenching terror based on the Gallic mind-set. Guilty until proven innocent was not a metaphor over here, it was the law. You just did not fuck with cops in this country—not even traffic cops.

  What does a foreigner do when he or she is broke, in trouble—no friends, no resources? I didn’t know. True, I had bummed around Europe before, hitchhiked with companions, smoked dope with kids I met at discos, and so on. But I had never been anything like stranded or in trouble with the law. I always had a return ticket in my pocket, and help was a collect call away. I thought about the asshole white boys who thought they were slick enough to get away with smuggling hashish out of Turkey. I found myself shuddering.

  The Herald Tribune? What about placing an ad there—“Aunt Viv: You’re richer than you think. Call home. All is forgiven.” Something to that effect.

  Not a likely venue. Vivian had lived in Paris before. She had enough French that if she read the newspapers at all, she’d read a French one.

  I was at the Pont Neuf. Shit, I had been so lost in my thoughts that I’d overshot the hotel. I was beat, my toes crying out for release.

  Give me your tired, your poor…your Manolo Blahniks…your tart tatin.

  Not just tired now. I was slappy. Maybe I hadn’t escaped the jet lag after all. I stood on the quai for a few minutes more. Well, good night, old Notre Dame. And if it’s not too much trouble, help me find Aunt Viv before I have to go to the 19th. Amen.

  I visited at least fifteen fleabag hotels and hostels the next day. I was seeing the side of Paris they don’t print up on the picture postcards. The homeless, the druggies, the bag ladies, the nut jobs were nowhere near as numerous, as filthy, or as desperate as their New York cousins, but they did nothing for tourism either.

  Just to make myself feel less like a mendicant, I went and had lunch in an overpriced, overdecorated restaurant in Montmartre and then took the funicular up to Sacré Coeur. I looked out over the city while the shutterbugs swarmed all around me. Maybe there is a heaven, I thought, and it’s nothing more than these rooftops.

  As long as I was doing the American in Paris bit, I figured I’d go to American Express, on the very remote chance that Vivian had left a message there. Of course, she’d have to know I was in Paris. But what did I have to lose? Perhaps she had spoken to my mother by now.

  No such luck. And now I was stuck in the busy 9th, clogged with crazed shoppers and sightseers, the traffic like a million killer bees. I had to admit, the Opéra was looking a great deal spiffier than the last time I’d been in Paris. Choking on exhaust and too weary to do any window shopping of my own, I zigzagged across the boulevard des Capucines and went down into the métro station.

  Home at last, thank the baby Jesus. The alert, generous-bosomed madame who seemed to rule at the hotel was having her afternoon tisane when I stopped at the desk for my key. I must have looked about as frazzled as I felt, because she offered me a cup.

  French businesswomen are about the least homey human beings imaginable. Anybody would be scared of them. I know I am. This one, however, told me she had noticed my saxophone, and wondered if I was in Paris to play an engagement somewhere. She had always admired le jazz, she said, and at the time of their wedding anniversary each year, she and her husband enjoyed making an evening of it at the music club just off St. Germain des Pre. You know—the one with the likeness of Satchmo in black plaster in the entryway.

  I told the madame, in as little detail as possible, about my search for Aunt Viv. She was sympathetic—genuinely so, I believed—and when she offered further assistance, I jumped on it.

  The madame’s husband relieved her at the desk while the two of us climbed into the taxi she had ordered. We were going to La Pitié Salpêtrière, a giant medical complex in the 13th arrondissement that also housed the city morgue. It made sense, didn’t it, to check there first? Oh yes, it was quite sensible, my companion agreed. After all, if, heaven forbid, Vivian was at La Pitié, then there was little point in canvassing the hospitals and the emergency rooms and hospices and so on—our search would be over.

  The office where we waited had a beautiful view of the Jardin des Plantes. As the lady from the administrative office led us along the corridors the worst kinds of morbid one-liners were running through my brain. I couldn’t help it. It was like whistling in the graveyard.

  Back in the fresh air, I went weak with relief, happy to know that Viv was not one of the bodies in those human filing cabinets. The madame and I rested for a few moments on a bench in the Jardin des Plantes and then caught another cab home.

  Back at the hotel we worked out a fair way of computing the phone charges I was racking up calling the appropriate municipal offices to determine if anyone fitting my aunt’s general description had been admitted to a Paris hospital. It seemed only right, I told her gratefully, that I also pay the week’s rent that my aunt had skipped on. That was most responsible of me, she said. Would I like to pay that now, or should she add that sum to my own bill at the end of my stay?

  None of the hospitals had any mysterious amnesiacs in residence who might be my poor aunt. So, as far as we knew, Aunt Vivian was still alive, somewhere out there. She had to be. If she was broke, how was she going to get out of Paris? I was going to have to bite the bullet and go to the embassy soon, it seemed.

  It was time for me to clear out of Madame’s way and let her get her dinner started. I thanked her for all her efforts—the tea and sympathy not the least of them—and went upstairs. />
  About seven o’clock I put on a fresh shirt and jeans and left the hotel, with no particular destination.

  I wound up at one of the revival cinemas near the place everybody referred to as the Beat Hotel, a dump with character over on the rue Gît le Coeur, which I had checked out the previous day. Its reputation had been made by William Burroughs and his crowd in the fifties, and I guess its legend was still going strong. Not a single vacancy.

  The street was clogged with kids of all nations, hanging out, playing guitars, smoking reefer, dry humping in doorways, eating frites and souvlaki, and just glorying in being alive and young and stupid. A few paces away was perhaps the world’s narrowest, shortest street, which I had searched for years ago, on my first visit to the city, because its name was so intriguing: rue de Chat-Qui-Peche. The Cat Who Fishes? What the hell was the point of that? Right after finding it, I had had an even bigger disappointment. I had wandered over to the rue Mouffetard, where, I had been told, a lot of cute third world students ate cheap Middle Eastern meals. I was promptly groped and nearly kidnaped by a tobacconist with hideous b.o., and had never again set foot on that street.

  At least the movie was no disappointment. How many times had I seen Children of Paradise since my college roommate and I first caught it on campus? Too many to count. I cried again anyway.

  Lord, what a beautiful night. There was no way I was going to dinner alone again. Maybe I should turn into the first bar I saw and make a fool of myself by begging some stranger to come eat with me—or perhaps I should just pick up a sandwich someplace and call it a night.

  I went for the sandwich. I would not have been good company for anybody.

  After coffee the next morning an idea came to me. No, I hadn’t yet thought of my next move for locating Vivian. It was something a lot goofier than that.

  In fact, it was probably about the goofiest idea that had ever come my way: I decided to take my sax down into the metro and play for change. Reckless. Silly. Ill-considered. Preposterous.

  Formidable, I’d do it.

  It was the stuff of fantasy. Maybe I didn’t have the chops a lot of my fellow street musicians back in Manhattan had, but at least I’d be able to say I played in Paris. I got cleaned up and dressed in a hurry. I wanted to get out of the room and down into the metro before I had a chance to wimp out.

  I got a polite bonjour along with an indulgent smile from the old monsieur behind the reception desk as I tripped past him, my instrument case festooned with an old India print scarf I often use as a strap for the sax.

  I bought a booklet of metro tickets and passed through the turnstile. It was an act of supreme hubris to set up shop at Odéon, one of the busier stops in the city. What with the number of hip Parisians who lived in or passed through the neighborhood every day—students, intellectuals, musicians, jazzaholics of all stripes—I was betting half of them had heard better horns than mine before they’d finished their morning coffee.

  But what the hell. I wasn’t playing to pay the rent; I was living out a fantasy. I settled myself at the mouth of the passageway connecting the Clignancourt line to the Austerlitz, took a deep breath, and started to blow. I began with “How Deep Is the Ocean.” Hardly anyone took notice of me. That was okay, because my playing was a lot rustier than my French. I didn’t sound so great.

  Still, I pressed on. I chose “With a Song in My Heart” next. Not bad, if I do say so myself. And indeed, a cool-looking man in an expensive trench coat stood there attentively until I’d finished, and then began to dig into his pocket for change. The sound of the francs hitting the bottom of the case made my heart soar. I gave the guy a big shit-eating grin and immediately launched into “Lover Man.” I felt so good, anything seemed possible. Maybe even a certifiable miracle. Maybe I’d see Viv bustling along the tunnel, running to catch a train.

  The late morning crowd was replaced by the noontime one, people bustling along to lunch appointments, or going to do their shopping, or heading home for a leisurely meal and maybe some quick nooky—or vice versa—before returning to work.

  I had to chuckle at the idea I’d had earlier in the morning—that if I kept at it all day, maybe I could make enough in tips to buy Moms and Aubrey some nice perfume. Ha. I barely made enough to buy a Big Mac. It really didn’t bother me, though. I was having a good time.

  I went above ground about two o’clock and found a cart that had nice-looking crepes. I strolled along the Seine as I ate, and then turned into a beautiful old tabac on the Quai Voltaire, where I had a grand café and bummed a cigarette from a waiter who was tall enough for the NBA and weighed about ten pounds.

  I couldn’t wait to get back to my post in the subway. And when I did, I hit the ground running. I had never managed to make “It Never Entered My Mind” sound like that before in my life. And my “Green Dolphin Street” ran a close second. I even got a nice round of applause from a group of older women with folding umbrellas.

  Don’t ever get too comfortable. It’s just one of a thousand lessons that I have never truly taken in. My mother has been cautioning me about it since I was old enough to crawl. And Ernestine, my conscience, never tires of saying it. But I always forget.

  It was about five-thirty. I got through a couple of bars of “You Took Advantage of Me” before I realized something strange was up. I was hearing the same licks being played—note for note—not twenty feet away. On a violin, of all things. It startled the shit out of me. In fact, for a moment I thought I was hallucinating. I looked into the passageway and saw a long-legged, light-skinned black man with demure dreadlocks and wire-rim spectacles gazing directly, defiantly into my eyes while he bowed absentmindedly.

  I stood where I was, seething, until he finished, and then strode over to the gangly Caribbean-looking prick. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing? I was here first,” I told him in rapid-fire French.

  His eyes bugged behind the glass of his spectacles.

  “Idiot!” I shouted at him. And then went on to ask him if he was deaf, and then if he was under the mistaken impression that he was funny. I finished with “Who the hell do you think you are—Marcel Marceau?”

  There was plenty of anger in his eyes, but he said nothing. Which only increased my fury.

  “Eh bien, salaud? Pourquoi tu me reponds pas?”

  “I’m not answering you,” he said, acidly, and in English, “because I don’t know any gutter French yet.”

  “Oh my God. You’re…an American.”

  At this point he chose to answer me in French, adding a Gallic smirk to his little repertory of expressions: “No need to be so snotty about it. So are you—obviously.”

  “Obviously?” I began to splutter. “Oh, so I don’t know how to speak French? Is that what your lame-ass little riposte is supposed to mean?”

  More smirk.

  I got right up in his face then. “Don’t even think about criticizing my accent, mister. You speak French like a pig.”

  “That’s because I am an autodidact. I hope to polish my accent while—”

  “An au-to-di-dact,” I repeated, and then began to roar with scornful laughter. I was being the schoolyard bully picking on the kid with the bulging book bag. It was cheap and unworthy of me, but I couldn’t put the brakes on it. “Jesus, this is unbelievable. I have to come all the way to Paris to deal with an evil, pretentious, bourgeois asshole from the hood—”

  “I was thinking the same thing about you.”

  “Hey, you see here! I may be pretentious, but I am not bourgeois—and I sure as hell am not from your hood.”

  “Bitch, you can be from Jupiter for all I care,” he said, abruptly ending our absurd argument. “Just as long as you move your ass along. This is my spot.”

  “What do you mean, your spot? You own it or something?”

  “I mean I got a right to play here at this time four days a week. I have a piece of paper that says so.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “I have no interest in what you
believe. I’m a legal resident of the city of Paris and I have an artist permit to play here.”

  I was going to slice into him about his prissy-sissy attitude, but suddenly all the wind was gone from my sails. Suddenly I knew who I reminded myself of: a monster-gold-earring-wearing gangsta girl on the IRT; hunching her shoulders, threatening, gesticulating wildly, using her high-polished fingernails like a garden trowel as she read out some enemy in subliterate slang.

  “You know what?” I said, calm now. “You can die on this fucking spot, mister legal resident. Forget you.”

  I turned on my heel and walked back to my case.

  As I climbed the stair at the other end of the tunnel, I could hear him playing “How About You?”

  His playing was effortless, swinging, like something humming inside your own head.

  I’d like to show you some New York in June, I thought bitterly.

  Oh, but shit, he was good.

  Well, that was nice and ugly.

  “Ugly” didn’t really capture the essence of it, though. It was, to use some prissy language of my own, mortifying. Jesus—why did I do that!

  I hated myself.

  Above ground again, my face burned with shame. Two black Americans, strangers, meeting in Paris under those singularly strange circumstances—it should have been an occasion for rejoicing. But what do we do? Rather, what do I do? Ridicule. Curse. Clown. Fight over a little patch of peesoaked concrete. Goddamn, it was horrible. And the more I thought about it, the more thoroughly depressed I became.

  I walked for a while, trying to get myself in hand, shake off the bad feelings. I sat in the Jardins du Luxembourg for a little while, smelling the sweetness of the grass, despising it. I watched the parents as they sauntered home with their kids; the lovers as they kissed in parting. Everybody seemed to be carrying a baguette for that night’s dinner. Man, it would be so nice to be invited to somebody’s house for dinner. I was yearning for somebody just to call me by my name—for something familiar like that. A plain meal in an apartment I’d visited many times, and a couple of hours of aimless, civilized conversation. I am still civilized, I told myself. Despite that appalling interlude in the metro. I’m not the asshole who behaved that way. I’m better than that—really.