by Peter Meinke
“Just average,” the boy said. “Not dangerous. I’m studying to be an engineer.”
“Yes, all American boys become engineers, don’t they? It must be a law of some sort. They build and they knock it down, they build and they knock it down. I would think it’s exhausting.”
“I have to go,” the boy said, beginning to rise from the table.
“No!” The man put his hand on the boy’s thin wrist. “Please don’t go, it’s been so many years. I know I’m not doing this well, I’m out of practice, is all. Don’t go.” The boy sat down again, but perched on the edge of his chair like a fledgling ready to test his wings. “Do you know what I do for a living?” the man asked. “Does your mother ever tell you how I make the money I send?”
“She says you do all right.”
“I sell mail and laundry chutes to apartment buildings. It’s quite profitable, actually. Better than bloody sonnets or short stories, what a fool I must have been! Everybody needs them—chutes I mean, not sonnets. Letters and dirty laundry, that’s what the world’s about. But at twenty-one”—he patted his pockets, looking for the photograph—“who knows that? And I think I was the youngest man ever to reach the age of twenty-one, I was that silly. Your mother liked that for a while, staying up all night to see the sunrise, sitting in the park waiting for the starlings to come out, things like that. You know what I like about you?”
“What?” said the boy.
“You look people in the eye, that might be American, too: the English have trouble doing that. We tend to stare at a light fixture while we talk, haven’t you noticed?”
“You look at your drink,” the boy said, and the man laughed, beckoning the waiter. “A pint of ale to stare at,” he said to the waiter. He winked at the boy. “Never mix, never worry.”
“That makes white wine, red wine, scotch, and beer,” the boy said. “You won’t get sick?”
“Sick?” said the man. “I’m dead. Your mother killed me. She was a keeper-tracker, too. ‘That’s your fourth,’ she’d say. ‘That’s our sixth movie this month, that’s the tenth time you said that, that’s the twelfth time you’ve gone to the loo.’ She got tired of my spending her money, I suppose; it must have bored her, cheering me up all the time. So she went back to Newport, la dee da, and took you with her. Do you like America, really?”
“I do,” the boy said, “I like it a lot. I’ve met nice people.”
“They’re nice if you’re not black or Mexican or Polish, whatever. Your mother told me some stories.”
“Just read the papers,” said the boy. “I mean the English papers.”
“Yes, people prefer their own, don’t they? Paint your bum green and sooner or later someone will shoot you. Only natural, after all.”
“I really have to go. I have a date.”
“Listen, did your mother ever tell you what we did the first time I was away from you? I flew to America; we had this crazy idea that American publishers would like my work better than the English publishers did. I was only going to be gone a week. You were about two years old and we were afraid you’d forget me, so we made a dozen copies of my passport photograph and pinned them all around your crib, probably scared you to death. Did she tell you that?”
“What did the publishers say?” the boy asked.
“Never saw them,” the man said. “I stayed at the Algonquin and got terrified by the whole thing. I’d look up an editor’s address and walk around the building and duck in the nearest pub for a drink. Came home in three days. She had taken down the photographs. You had eaten one of them apparently. She never told you that?”
The boy was standing, shrugging into his jacket. He took the man’s hand. “Good-bye,” he said. “Take care.” He strode off on long thin legs.
The man turned around to watch him. He struggled to rise, then sat down again, pulling out his wallet. “He’s a good lad,” he told the waiter. “Did you hear him? ‘Take care,’ he said. He has every reason”—he held the waiter’s eye—“every reason to dislike me. And still he said, ‘Take care.’ I bloody well will, too.”
Through the windows he could see the starlings swooping and swerving over the bright marquees, in and out of the tall plane trees, mirroring the dense crowd below as we surged toward our dim and irresistible destinies.
Winter Term
That January everyone in Paris was under thirty. The streets bustled all day, but about 10:00 P.M., when the first movies emptied, they began to hum with a special youthful energy. Knots of young people clustered around street musicians playing American rock songs, and others—like Sara, Giselle, and Nancy—sat in the windows of the cafés, nursing small coffees or inexpensive wines.
“I love Renoir,” Sara said, her round face inscrutable behind large dark glasses. “He makes fat women so attractive.” That afternoon they had been to a special Renoir exhibit with their art class and had agreed to meet in the evening for a blowout. It was Friday and they were tired of art. All morning they sketched, all afternoon they listened to lectures or attended exhibits. On weekends they took excursions: Chartres, Versailles, Rheims. And they had to do reading at night, all of it in French! This was an intensive one-month course, and though it was almost over—only the individual conferences with the instructor remained—Nancy felt she had bitten off more than she could manger. Her French was still minimal; she had trouble with languages, that was all there was to it.
Back in the U.S. she had even tried a hypnotist. “You are a little French girl,” he told her, “learning to count: un, deux, trois, quatre . . .” It worked well for lists, even for verb declensions, but she was never able to put together whole sentences in actual conversations. She could only throw in nouns or verbs where they seemed most appropriate.
“Les pommes,” she said to her concierge this morning, pointing at a bowl of fruit in the concierge’s kitchen. “J’aime les pommes.”
“Vous parlez français très bien, Mademoiselle Nancy,” said the old lady, who was overcharging her ten francs per night. But she didn’t offer Nancy an apple.
Sara, on the other hand, spoke French fluently, almost as well as Giselle, who was married to a Frenchman and who had lived in Paris for six years. He called her Gigi.
“There are only three reasons why I stay in Paris,” he told them one night in his soft accent. “Gigi et Gigi et Gigi. A young girl like her doesn’t want to live in the country. But Paris is no longer the same.” He often spoke of himself as an old man, because at thirty-five he was ten years older than Giselle. Nancy had disgraced herself that night by being unable to finish her dinner after Giselle announced, halfway through, that they were eating calves’ brains.
“It’s a specialité of the region where Henri is from,” she said. “You were eating it before, what’s the difference now that you know what it is?”
But Nancy thought she might get sick. “I know it doesn’t make any sense; it’s very good, really. I guess I’ve just had enough, is all.”
They made an odd threesome, thought Nancy, who admired the others’ sophistication, linguistic and otherwise. Sara was fat (as Sara herself said, there was no getting around it), and Giselle was headed in that direction, though she still could be described as lush. She was sexy, and dressed to show it. She had posed nude for Nancy and Sara; she enjoyed doing that, whereas Nancy would have fainted if they had made her do it. Maybe it was simply because, next to Sara and Giselle, she was built comparatively like a bird. In high school and college, shower time was never her favorite. Giselle’s luxurious hair of groin and armpit somehow made Nancy nervous and self-conscious. Her sketches had been terrible.
Nancy had won an art contest in Providence, and the prize had been a round-trip ticket to Paris. A month was all she could afford, so when she found out about this Winter Term course she arranged with her university to get credit for it: it wasn’t costing her much at all. In fact, compared to Giselle and Sara, she was the rich one, with her credit cards, checks from her parents, savings from her pa
rt-time job. Giselle was a full-time student and Henri an underpaid English teacher in a private Parisian high school; there was much talk of a book for children that Henri was working on and that Giselle would illustrate, but Nancy was skeptical. She hadn’t seen any evidence of the book, and Giselle’s style leaned toward the sloppy abstract and not toward children’s illustrations. Sara’s was a stranger case. She claimed to have met an Arab in Miami, where she was teaching in an ELS program.
“He’s crazy about me,” she told Nancy. “He said he likes legs that are so close together the wind can’t whistle through! Isn’t that crazy? I’ve been to Cairo and Beirut and London with him, and then he had to go back to his country. He would have sent me home, but I said, ‘Just get me an apartment in Paris so I can work on my French.’ ” Nancy had doubts about this story, too—almost everything in Paris seemed unreal somehow—but Sara did have a nice apartment, although she never carried much more than twenty francs on her and apparently lived on “croque monsieur” sandwiches, the cheap toasted cheese ubiquitous in Paris, except when Nancy or Giselle bought her something more substantial. Nancy was happy to do this. She was flattered to be included in the trio, and they were making her experience Parisian.
Nancy stayed at a dumpy hotel near the Sorbonne, in the student quarter, where the view from her sixth-floor walk-up was magnificent; the rest of the conditions were, architecturally speaking, Late Bestial. By doing her studying in a nearby café and using the bathrooms in the museums, she was able to function fairly well. The best time was late at night when she could sit at her tiny desk and look out her window past the fussy but gorgeous facade of the Sorbonne to the illuminated dignity of the Pantheon. Since her petit déjeuner was delivered to her door at 6:30 A.M., everything about the month—the hours, the weather, the strain, the excitement—had conspired to make her pale and hollow-eyed, an effect she did not dislike.
“We’ll never make it,” Giselle was saying about herself and Henri. “I believe in evil and he believes in chocolate.” The wine was making Nancy drowsy, but Sara and Giselle were becoming more animated.
“Evil and chocolate belong together,” said Sara. “Remember Candide: it was necessary to get syphillis in order to get bonbons. Personally, I think it was worth it.”
“You won’t say that when your teeth drop out,” said Giselle. “Right, Nancy?”
“You two are such charming conversationalists,” Nancy said. “I think I’ll throw up in my wine glass.” Under the next table a large dog lay panting, his tongue unrolled like a carpet and hanging well below his chin.
“Well, it’s almost eleven o’clock,” Sara announced. “Time to meet my boyfriend. Want to come along? He said he might bring some friends.”
“You mean the Arab?” asked Nancy. “He’s come back?”
“God, no! If Yaseen knew I was seeing Tomas he would cut my belly open and offer you sausage.”
“Très jolie,” said Giselle. “He sounds wonderful. Where are we going to meet these creatures of the night?”
“They should be at my apartment, if I can trust Tomas, which I can’t. But it’s better than just sitting here on our last night together. He’s fun, and his friends are, too. Tomas was bom in Germany, but he’s more French now. He’s a translator and makes a lot of money.”
Nancy already had drunk five or six glasses of wine; the evening was starting to move too fast for her to keep track. She felt heavy and dull-witted, and couldn’t think of any sensible objections. She had gone to a few dances and met some boys at the art school; none had been interesting, but only one had been at all bothersome. Indeed he had chased her, late at night, along the Boul’ Mich to her hotel, but he had been too drunk to be scary. Sara had asked, “Was he an Arab?”
“No, why should he be an Arab?”
“Nancy, don’t be so innocent! An Arab can’t go after his own women—her family would kill him—so he chases Europeans and Americans, especially naive Americans with pretty eyes.” Nancy had very large blue eyes that Sara and Giselle were always praising.
She wasn’t overly pleased to be going to Sara’s apartment this late in the evening—how would she get back?—but the business of paying their bill and figuring out the tip kept her mind from focusing. Nancy wound up paying the entire amount, which seemed higher than it should have been; Giselle left a small tip, and Sara paid nothing. Well, why not? Pourquoi pas! She could afford it.
A cold drizzle blew over them as they walked to the metro. Nancy liked it; it sobered her up. Paris is supposed to drizzle, and Sara said tourists wouldn’t complain about the weather unless children were drowning in the streets. A little damp doesn’t matter, Nancy thought. On any corner look right, look left: the familiar and noble monuments confront you. No doubt about it, Paris was the most beautiful city in the world, and she was sorry her stay was drawing to a close.
Sara lived out towards the Bois de Boulogne, and by the time they got there the bells of the city were bonging midnight. The apartment was on the third floor of one of those old five-story buildings with art nouveau railings and windows. They could see from the street that her light was on. Nancy couldn’t help feeling a surge of excitement: after all, she had come here (partly) to have adventures, rendezvous with romantic Frenchmen late at night. At the same time she could hear her father: When the head is a fool, the whole body’s done for. But he had been talking about her decision to be an artist instead of a nurse or teacher. Nancy took a deep breath and, walking in the middle, linked her arms with her friends’ and strode down the sidewalk, feeling on top of the world.
The apartment was dimly lit and a little cluttered, but neat and comfortable enough. Compared to Nancy’s dingy hotel room, it was positively baronial: a heavy cocktail table covered with bottles and ashtrays, a deep sofa, four or five comfortable chairs. The bedroom door was open and the large unmade bed had a built-in bookcase as its headboard. The dining room and kitchen were small but had old cupboards and chairs: everything was in good taste. The walls were covered with matted posters of operas and art exhibits, including an eccentric and grotesque nude over the sofa announcing Don Giovanni.
The young men, Nancy thought, were a disaster. First of all, they were not that young. The only one her age, whose name was Adrian, was so drunk that he seemed retarded, though he was good-looking enough, small and slender with long brown hair. He struggled to stand up when they entered and an older man, laughing, pushed him back down on the sofa, where he remained sprawled with a full bottle of wine in his hand. She missed the older man’s name, something like Auguste. He didn’t speak English and she couldn’t understand a word he said. He had a beefy build, graying hair, and an extremely florid face, as if his blood pressure was about to pop.
Tomas came over to greet them and kissed their hands, lingering over Sara’s. “We had despaired, my dears, absolutely despaired,” he said. He kissed the inside of Sara’s elbow and smiled beatifically. He had the worst teeth, crooked and brown, that Nancy had ever seen up close. Tomas was a man of about thirty with a swarthy complexion and receding none-too-clean black hair. He didn’t look German to Nancy; more like a gypsy or—and this made no sense, even to her—an underworld informant. He had a bobbing, ingratiating manner, smiled constantly, and was exceedingly amorous. Within fifteen minutes he had kissed most of the available parts of Sara’s ample body, and didn’t at all slow down his conversation.
“We are so happy you are to be here,” he said, rubbing Sara’s hand against his prominent cheekbones. “We are the luckiest gentlemen in the universe. And we have wonderful things to drink!” He swept his hands toward the bottles on the table. “Adrian has brought us a bottle of the very best brandy, but we won’t let him drink any of it; he’s had enough already.” Adrian acknowledged this remark, tipping his bottle of wine toward Nancy. She could see that the party was a set-up and that Adrian had been meant for her. That was all right—she was rather touched by it, though she wished they had asked her first. At any rate, Adrian was not about to
harm anyone; he was in worse shape than the fraternity louts she was used to back home.
“Well, let’s have some brandy then,” said Sara, disengaging herself from Tomas and going to the cupboard for glasses. Tomas opened the bottle and poured five full glasses. Nancy had never drunk brandy before, but she liked it. She could feel it sliding down to her stomach, flooding her body, and calming her nerves. Auguste had pulled his chair close to Giselle, who was already laughing at his anecdotes. Nancy couldn’t just stare at the other couples, so she began wandering around the rooms, sipping her brandy, studying the posters.
After a while she heard Sara shout, “We almost forgot! It’s time for our formidables!” At their favorite café the beer came in three sizes—demi, serieux, and formidable—and the three young women had pledged several times to drink a formidable together before Nancy had to return home. In the living room Tomas had lined up five huge steins and was pouring liter bottles of beer into them. Adrian apparently drank only out of wine bottles.
Nancy had misplaced her brandy, or perhaps had finished it, and now she was thirsty. But not that thirsty: she would need two hands just to pick it up! “No way, José,” she said. “That thing is bigger than my stomach.”
By now the smoke in the room was getting thick, as everyone but Nancy and Adrian smoked steadily while they drank. “Henri says that Parisians spit less than we used to,” Giselle had said earlier, “but we still smoke like fiends.”
Ne crachez pas, Nancy thought. Remembering this, she wondered what Henri was doing. Maybe he was out of town. Giselle and Auguste, if that was his name, were facing each other, clanking their steins together, his hand on her thigh, her hand on his stomach. Nancy gulped her beer. She was surprised to see it was well after 1:00 A.M. already, but she no longer felt tired. She wished Adrian were in better condition to talk; the others were so actively engaged. On impulse, she walked over and sat down near him on the sofa.