—This is a lot of fish, I said, counting nearly a hundred for a thirty cover restaurant. Isn’t this what they call demand and supply?
When it came to gems like that, I was either repeating something I had heard or it was a fluke, as it was in this instance. ‘International bowel syndrome’ was another one.
—I think you mean supply and demand, but it makes more sense your way, said Ségo. Anyway, we have a surprise for you.
—Everything is a surprise for me.
—You’re having a birthday party.
—Why? I said
—It was Daniel’s idea. He has the tone of voice that people do what he says. He really likes you, you know. Lucky girl.
But Daniel knew that I didn’t have a date of birth—no evidence to show that I officially existed at all—so I couldn’t have a birthday party. Besides.
—It’s today, she said. We decided. He did. We’ll take some wine from here when were done. It’s not as if we’ll be stuck for fish.
—I’ve never been to a party, I said.
—Now I’ve seen it all. Someone who doesn’t want a birthday party.
Ségo looked like she felt sorry for me when I didn’t seem more excited and began to scold me for taking everything, even the work I did in her restaurant, too seriously.
This birthday was news to me—Mademoiselle, I’m afraid we had to switch from turbot to John Dory. Mademoiselle, we regret to inform you that chef replaced the chocolate fondant with pistachio. News about fish and about fondants was my kind of news, but this party was an awful idea and I couldn’t say so. At least I had one of those faces that didn’t let on what I was thinking.
Fish blood ran down from my arm and collected in drips on the tip of my elbow. I was beginning to wish we were still listening to the music. Reluctant to be any ruder than I had been already, I took extra care with the last few fish, thus buying myself a little more silence. Soon the kitchen became eerie once more, just how I liked it.
During service Daniel would clear a table and before he had turned away I’d have the dishes sluiced and squeaking on the rack. No one knew why La Plongeuse was such a champ at dishwashing, she just was—the best they’d ever seen. First of all, my system involved doing everything at speed. I ate fast, too, spoke fast, walked fast—ran fast with my heart going fast, the blood moving through me. My sound effect would have been a plummeting firework. There was a reason I moved so fast in the kitchen—I liked to wash the plates and get them back to Amadou and Ségo without their noticing, so that there were dishes on the bottom of their piles that never got used. They just got to do their own thing.
It wasn’t just dishes. My system involved doing everything fast and imagining all the time I was saving, imagining all the time I’d save by not doing anything other than the essentials. Sometimes I would speak while I was eating while walking, thus saving even more time. It got to the point where I began to breathe fast. I was a panter—not the honest-to-goodness panting of a dog or a mountaineer, but short, flustered mouth-breaths. Of course, doing everything at such high speed allowed me to think slowly. But my slow thinking rarely went further than clean plates so everything I did formed a pleasing circle. Nothing wasted only energy.
This lunchtime there was Hippolyte and other Hippolytes with their gay or not gay way of holding a fork—even if I guessed it was more complicated than forks. Daniel was slapping shoulders and doling out the bisous. He was good at knowing who did and didn’t want the personal touch. Once or twice a day, for my amusement, he would pretend not to speak English to the tourists who’d found Gravy in one of the blogs. Most of our customers were very busy being in Paris—it was a full-time job. One girl, an Ellen from Illinois, asked for a picture with the kitchen crew. I’d never seen myself in a photo before—I looked about twelve and I looked about forty.
—You’re all so cool in your outfits, Ellen squeaked. Can I get an apron?
From the hatch I would survey the dining room. All before me, in cargo-pants and flip-flops, in varsity shirts and flimsy sarongs, tourists were having the times of their lives. Coucouing, cavorting, pretending, avoiding the truth—surrendering themselves to the times of their lives, only, as far as I was concerned, to avoid the slow-moving disappointment of summer in Paris.
This Is Great, I Hate It
There was so much to be afraid of in this new word. Pap smears, sport, God and the like. Now I was about to add parties to the list.
Ségo’s house—on a cobbled lane off Rue Saint Maur—was not at all as I had imagined, but the garden was as beautiful as I’d expected it to be. I didn’t know the names of plants—I had to be told what a pergola was—but the small space was arranged to create the illusion of being in wild country. The spring breeze was bending the taller plants and insects were swarming around the blooms.
The interior resembled a tidy office with noisy art that I thought had to be bad—sculptures of question marks and posters saying POW! The hallway was bright with so many candles that I had to keep on checking the sleeves of my windbreaker. I was keeping it on to avoid conversations about Pink Floyd. But the story had gotten out and I was made to listen to a spooky piece of nonsense called ‘Wish You Were Here’. It was better than the droning I had experienced earlier but not by much.
I knew I was making the wrong face but the pounding in my head was more insistent than the music. A smoky number of some sort, another one—the sound of a keyboard being dragged through mayonnaise, something to listen to as acid rain falls from the sky. The song building so gently and dourly until the melody burst with exhaustion.
—Do you like the music? I was asked.
—If this is music, then no.
One perfect, amazing moment after another. Finally I was learning to love parties. Not really—I was acting weird. I could feel it off the people around me.
I had to go the bathroom. I had to go to the bathroom in a big rush—I had no idea I had been constipated all along. Afterwards I was pleased to find Ségo’s toothbrush and I used it as I combed through her cabinets. On the shelf above the bath was enough skin-gunk, in bottles and little tubes, to form a museum exhibit. A dainty finger of cream made my cheeks feel as fresh as a raw chop. I read the labels on her skincare: Avène. Uriage.
But all I saw was the word avenge.
Avène. Uriage. Avenge.
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The cabinet under the sink was crammed with antiquarian forms of contraception and powders that had gone too far and become cakey. I breathed too heavily into a jar and a flurry of sweet powder filled the room. When the powder cleared I found it—a pocket notebook filled with a strange script that seemed all at once uptight and wayward and belonging to me.
Unstory
January 2nd 2011, Rose Bakery. I want to meet someone. But I am not going to meet anyone here. Here, where you could fall through the door with a park railing sticking out of you and people would check t
heir tote bags for splashes of blood. I dare you to care. I dare you to smile. And that’s just the other customers. The waiters treat you like a shoplifter even when there is nothing worthwhile to steal. I took one of the sacks of garam flour anyway. Gluten-free thievery.
January 30th 2011, Rose Bakery. Interviewed P__ D__ here just now. Talk about cool. Talk about cold. Talk about frozen. Talk about being dead for a thousand years and still expecting people to care. Don’t think I can even post the article. It was a series of pauses punctuated by wet, sorry sighs. The sighs were mine. P__ D__ was too thin to speak. He nearly collapsed under the weight of all that lettuce. Here, let me get that for you.
February 20th 2011, Café la Perle. I met someone. Not just anyone. We did meet somewhere, that much I know, but I can’t remember where. For the first time in my life I was somewhere at the right time, even if I don’t know where it was. It’s a strange new feeling.
February 21st 2011, Rue de Bac. Goodbye who I am.
February 25th 2011, Rue de Bac. The second date was a little more awkward. For one thing, I had to ask Jerome what happened on the first date. We made love, that much I do know. When we fucked he seemed to move. Not just his body but his skin. His skin moved in a mist and his lips changed colour so that they resembled apple skins. We met at Oberkampf métro and walked all the way up to Belleville. Me in those new Marant boots. Not only do your peripheries expand when you have a lover, but the city obliges and opens up. We paused to look in shop windows, to demonstrate that we were in fact curious people. Funny how you start to notice things that are no use to you when you’re alone. The city acquires the sheen it reserves for lovers. That is to say, us. But the reason we were walking all the way up past Belleville is because Jerome has a wife. I don’t remember much about the other day but I certainly don’t remember him mentioning this. What else did I need to know? That Schiste has to be the worst restaurant I have ever been to. The food was expensive school dinners and the staff resembled the kind of people you’d see on the pavement outside Busáras. Jerome made out in advance that he was friends with the owner but they didn’t act like friends to me. The food I didn’t want floated away from the table. The smooth plaster of Jerome’s hands reaching across the table for mine. We held hands for a moment until his bobbing knees urged caution. We have to be careful, he said. That’s one thing you should never say to me. It’s the kind of thing that makes me brave. You need to listen to me, he said. As if listening will change anything.
February 26th 2011, Rue de Bac. Jerome just called me and we—I wish we were we—spoke for hours. We talked about Melbourne some more, Melbs he calls it. We talked about his wife again, whom he doesn’t love, and we talked about his job as a schoolteacher. Teaching is something he does love. Too much talk about schools that went over my head. Where we are from and what we have done is beside the point. We talked about everything except the thing I wanted to talk about. That I want to make love with him all the time. I want to make love with him whilst I am making love with him. It’s the kind of thing I want to share with the world. But I can’t share it with the world or with anyone. But even when I think of him, even when I imagine what it is like to be with Jerome, imagination is not enough. I need him here. When will the mess of us become something more than feeling lost in him, being lost in him? Dumb things like the cowpat of his pants on my floor. His beautiful choo-choo. I want to take his whole ear in my mouth. I want rub my eyeball into his elbow. Weird to read that back. Not weird, not weird at all to be part of love.
February 27th 2011, Rue de Bac. Jerome has stolen my dreams. He has become my dreams.
March 1st 2011, Rue de Bac. (Dinner, awful.) Out with him in public again, though. For the second time. Let’s call that progress. But I don’t want to go back to Schiste ever again. I don’t want to stand inches apart on the métro because that’s all we can do. And his wife? He portrays her as this ethereal, devout creature. I would love to meet her, if only to see what he sees in her. So I can see what he sees in me. Which is to say, I don’t know.
March 11th 2011, Rue de Bac. He was here for three nights. I wish it was a million nights. What do I have to remember the weekend by? A jar of Jerome’s sweet morning breath would be good now. We stayed indoors all of Saturday. On Sunday morning, we went for a walk. I don’t know how we ended up at the Aligre market, since it’s so far from the seventh and Jerome said it was too close to his apartment for comfort. But that’s where we went. Some things I will never forget. The gapped-teeth of the man pouring the wine in Le Baron Rouge. His bare toenails as unique as oyster shells. The smile he had for us when we kissed standing up at his bar. The amazing things we failed to see because we were too busy with each other. We managed in two hours to buy one lonely cauliflower. The market was full of delicious things and we bought a cauliflower that I didn’t eat, that I’m looking at now. What do cauliflowers have to do with love? It’s quite simple. I do not eat them (no offence) and have never had one in the house before. Nor am I the kind of woman who goes shopping for groceries with someone. The first stall we looked at—it took us an hour to admire the oranges, it didn’t matter that they were like oranges you’d see in Spar. Best thing was the potatoes from Amiens, Jerome couldn’t shut me up about them. I made them talk to each other, but the dirty little potatoes from Amiens had nothing much to say to the parsnips, which didn’t seem to come from anywhere. Jerome threatened to tape my mouth shut before kissing me. I can’t get over the fact that little things like shopping, and shopping for stupid vegetables, come so naturally to us. It’s the hope, that big blast of health holding the promise of more weekends like this one. More mornings. This is what I think about when I look at this cauliflower. We have vegetables. We bought them together.
March 19th 2011, Rue de Bac. Didn’t go to work today. Since I don’t have a job that doesn’t matter. I’d like to have phoned in sick anyway.
March 20th 2011, Rue de Bac. Painkillers rule. One for every day Jerome hasn’t called. No, that would be too much. I woke up with my head in the fireplace again. I suppose what I’d really like to do is burn myself down. Not the most efficient way to go but I don’t have that many options.
March 21st 2011, Rue de Bac. I had to dump the cauliflower in the end.
April 8th 2011, Rue de Bac. Burning myself down can wait. There must have been work stuff or stuff at home or just stuff to deal with, but Jerome reappeared. He came over one morning and we hung out all day and it was normal and lovely. I don’t know what else to say. Normal beats amazing. Normal is love. Normal should be normal. We went to the café near here. La Rénaissance or La Révolution or La Répulsion. Dusk closed in around lunchtime. We spent hours there and I remember every detail, even though we spoke of nothing much. Smoking was forbidden, so said the sign. Yet people were lighting up as though they were in a remake of Casablanca. We sat in the grey haze that protected us from the outside world. Kissing for hours with staleish city breath. No one seemed to notice us yet we could see everything. The man with the voice box, who insisted on interrupting anyone who uttered a word. The woman who brought her own shot glass—so she could control the measures of brandy—stayed there long after the other morning drunks had gone off to find a bed. I wanted to take up smoking and brandying just to fit in. Jerome felt the same, although he was worried about going home smelling of cigarettes. Going home smelling of me. I have no idea why I love him so much and why he does not love me.
April 9th 2011, Rue de Bac. The closest I’ve been to love.
Mine to Take
I knew Ségo’s handwriting from the whiteboard in the restaurant. The wonky e’s and g’s had to be mine. I suppose that I should have had it out with her—and let her have it out with me—but I did not feel it was my place to question why she had my diary. Loyalty didn’t even come into it. It was wrong to go digging around in someone else’s bathroom. Was it stealing when I stuck the notebook into the pocket of my chef’s trousers?<
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The kitchen smelled of dope-smoke and was festooned with every kind of oyster available between there and Arcachon. The room was sparkling with such good intent. Ice bounced into a jug and joints were assembled and distributed more rapidly than life vests at a shipwreck. Daniel had told me there would be no more than a handful of people at the party—when I returned to the kitchen I counted many handfuls. One of his friends was for some reason dressed for mountain climbing, right down to the alpine hat. Someone else was dressed diversely as a stockbroker and a skateboarder, another one in a kilt. Everyone was cool here but all the really cool ones were dressed as bin men.
I went with a question out to the hall, in search of Ségo. I was not a party person, she needed to know that.
—Can we talk outside? I said.
—It’s nice in here.
Ségo was swaying a little too close to the candles and I waited until she was steady before I spoke. The reasons I found parties so excruciating were hard to determine but had to do with being the centre of attention.
I didn’t mention the notebook, but I wanted to know what they knew. Her friends.
—They’re your friends too.
—But what do they know about me?
—This is Paris. Nobody cares who you are or what you are. And hey, you haven’t had a drink. It’s important to have a drink at a party. If it’s your birthday.
I asked her for an orange juice, an order that appeared to amuse the man who had been hovering at my shoulder. It was my doctor. Off-duty Hippolyte wore skinny trousers that dangled above his ankles and a short jacket with barely-there lapels—all of it in black so that he resembled a child undertaker.
One Star Awake Page 3