The streets around the school were filthy with 4x4s depositing children. Toddlers emerged from moist goodbyes, the vibration of their high-pitched voices harmonising with idling engines. I milled around amongst the parents who had arrived on foot. I took my chances that Eagleback hadn’t seen me. My outfit was the problem—I was the only one in kitchen clogs.
Eagleback had to be one of the youngest teachers and, from the amount of handshakes he fielded as he entered the playground, the most popular. My view was momentarily obscured by smoke from the exhaust of a motorbike, this one dropping off a child in soccer boots. The kid was standing apart from his friends—he might not have had any—and I used him as cover. I removed a week-old chouquette from my pocket and handed it to him. The kid regarded the morsel with suspicion and me with bafflement. Now I got on one knee to hide—as if I was making a proposal. Having regarded it with contempt, the kid was now eating the pastry.
Eagleback was buzzing around, rounding up the children while taking an interest in their playground game. He seemed to be enjoying himself as much as they were. This deepened my curiosity—there wasn’t a trace of the distress he had shown on Léon Frot.
I was still kneeling, with the child in the soccer boots awaiting my next move. Only when I told him that there was no more food did I realise that my hand was clenched white around his.
The fading exhaust fumes could not have been mistaken for a parting mist but that’s the way it appeared to happen. Eagleback was turning around to answer a child who was refusing to line up with the others. The young boy was exhausted from playing and he didn’t want to go inside. The boy in the soccer boots ran inside and in the thronged street I stood—certain that Eagleback had seen me. The morning sun was warming the heavy white clouds cushioning the roofs of the school building. I took a moment to bathe in it, almost forgetting for a moment where I was and what I was intending to do.
The corridor as I crept along it seemed to go on forever. Everything was at a different height—the steps were shallower and the door handles were hung lower. Even the water fountain in the corridor was the height of a small chair. The classrooms were screened behind glass walls. Most of the children were still bubbling with the excitement of the playground and I passed unnoticed. The corridors were congested with tiny coats and I could smell wax from the crayon drawings on the walls. A little boy on miniature crutches was chatting with the school nurse.
—Vas y mon chou, she said, addressing the child as though they were lovers.
This was a happy little school—and Eagleback was waiting somewhere in it for me.
Another row of windows and a moment later I was standing at an open door as he led a class of six-year-olds in a song about the seasons. The time for sunshine and holidays and playtime was not far away. He was there before me, absorbed in the music and the important message he was communicating. Now he was becoming a tree, presumably to suggest the coming of autumn. What would I say? Probably I would fall dumb before him. What if he asked me who I was? He would know more than I did.
The children were imitating his movements with their hands above their heads. Eagleback paused the performance to explain the concept of tumbling leaves but the children seemed unhappy until the music resumed. Although he kept his eyes open as he was singing, he did not seem to notice me standing at the classroom door.
I was already halfway into the room by the time Eagleback looked over.
He cut the music and smiled and nodded, as if he had been expecting me. His raised hand silenced the children. He walked past me to the door at quite a slow pace whilst instructing the class to sit at their desks and await his return. The corridor was a better place to talk anyway.
In his hand he held—not a detonator—the remote control for the stereo.
—Do you think it’s appropriate to just walk into a school? he said.
—Just wanted to say hello.
—This is a school. There are children.
—Sorry this is a little abrupt. Turning up out of the blue.
—You don’t know me. You don’t know me and I don’t know you.
Some kind of force was inflating him so that he loomed over me. My mouth opened every time he stretched his neck and I let out a laugh.
—Would you prefer it if I called the police? he said. They will be here in two minutes. Unless you go now. Now.
—How about later? We can talk later?
My hand reached for his as he walked to the classroom door.
—Two minutes, they’ll be here in two minutes, he said, staring past me before stepping inside and shutting the door. The singing resumed almost immediately.
Funny How Everyone, Even People with No Memory, Need a Break from Being Themselves
After a couple of days staying with Elias I met up with Ghislaine. Smoke was rising from somewhere further along the canal as we ran. There was a whiff of beef tea as I followed her along the towpath. We covered five miles in no time at all and soon we were sitting on a bench in the playground on Square Maurice Gardette. There was an old man with his feet wrapped up in plastic bags on the bench opposite. An unusually lovely melody, something I could tolerate, drifted from his old radio and our lovely evening was such that I wanted to open up to Ghislaine.
Our conversations had to count for something, even though most of it—from my side—was made up. For this purpose, I was recklessly prepared to invent a first love and a first heartbreak.
—I was in love once, I said. Love is great.
—What is so great?
—You know yourself.
—Who is your lover?
—Was, I said.
—Yes, she said. Is.
—Ah no, I said. You know yourself
This was my first time in one of these conversations and I was keeping track of who said what—a little of her and a little of me. Of course, her part involved talking about Eagleback. They had been going to her sister’s house in Orléans for Easter and she asked him to buy an egg and—as I knew only too well—he bought an exorbitant chocolate orb and eggs and orbs are not the same thing, are they?
—From Bertrand Rose? she said. An Easter egg is design for children, their palates.
She rhymed palate with weight.
—And the thing he buy cost nearly a hundred euro, more. And it make their niece very bad herself. Another one arrive at the apartment after. And Jerome say he doesn’t know anything about that. That is a novelty, no?
—That is, I said.
—Let me get this straightaway, she said. He is frantic and he buy the egg from Bertrand Rose. N’importe quoi. I throw him as far as I believe him. Chocolate orb is helping nobody. We dump it.
The phantom aroma of sweet dough and hot sugar rose from the bench underneath us. It wasn’t that I had any pity for Bristles or her colleagues—Cheeks aside—but I had stolen from Ségo and then restlessly patrolled that corner of Paul Bert for days for the cake to end up in Ghislaine’s garbage chute.
—This pours over me, she said.
—Do you never run with your husband? I said.
—Quoi?
When she said that, meaning what, I thought she was saying quack. Quack.
—Sorry for asking, I said.
—No, you can ask. But it’s going to rain. Let’s get ourselves around and around first. Before I am made of sugar.
Ghislaine insisted we stop on Voltaire in another of those movie set cafés. At least we were on the terrace and seated so that each of us could face the street. We were in an enclosure awash with posters for shows and blackboards featuring set menus that offered very little without a supplement, which seemed to defeat the purpose of a set menu.
On the street some woman was applying lipstick while walking and laughing on the phone. A cab driver slept standing up beside his car.
—I will invite you this evening, Ghislaine said.
She wanted a glass of rosé and a cigarette, which she cadged from the waiter. Ghislaine’s way of sipping the wine slowly felt advisory, something I wished I had managed that night at Daniel’s place. I requested a glass of cold milk, which the waiter wouldn’t allow. I asked for Nutella without the crêpe but no to that, too. I took a cup of hot milk instead.
—Do you anyway had the bad problem with wine?
Ghislaine spoke quietly but directly. In this we were the same, she and I. We asked straight questions, because why not?
—Don’t like the taste, I said.
—I am not nearly as massive in wine. But you ask me about my husband. Here is the history of him. He is dragging the enormous casserole behind him. Because he fuck people. This is for truth. He live the heterogeneous life. You can already imagine that this is a surprise for me. I am frozen now. And I kiss someone. An accidental guy in Pigalle. What do you think on that? I am wild awake thinking on it.
This brought forth an infinite number of questions—not about the man in Pigalle but about Eagleback. Chief among them was a certainty that I had been among his women. One of them.
I offered Ghislaine a multipurpose, —What happened?
—With my kiss? It happen. It is no good that Jerome is making winkings at me. It is over the balcony I will put him. I am enormous with sadness. And I am a fountain, always crying. I fear my lachrymal functions will be extinguished.
—What can you do?
—Change is an impossible dream. Geometry has always been an abysmal mystery. For example, one and one doesn’t necessary equal two all the time. Not good because halfs are handicapped unity that depend on all other half to make one. You see when I meet Jerome at first it is a really good time. We are ideal pirates. But quite simple, he believe in facile money. What is the? I pay the boring things. Detergent and the ticket in particular for the métro. I do not deserve this picture. Now he has the supreme job in the school, they do him an assistant to the chef. This is very genial. Of course, he always occupies himself spending surprise money on the cake no one likes in all of the day. He is a child. It is the superb word to use.
—Was he having an affair?
—This is too much, I’m sorry. Your face, I can see. And you are thinking so much that I am hurt. Nothing he can do is hurt me. It pours over me. Okay, now I am stupid with wine and I want to run this away. Is that how you say it? Run it away?
Ghislaine left to pay with a faithful promise that we would run at full pace all the way back to Léon Frot. As I was beginning to lament another wasted run, I noticed something on the wall behind where Ghislaine had been sitting—a sign with my face on it.
I peeled the poster from the wall making sure to appear as serene as possible to anyone watching. I had not seen myself since those pictures taken by Ellen from Illinois and this one explained very little other than being as bleak a thing as I’d ever seen. It was a formal pose and the portrait was precisely framed—but I was huddled into myself, as soulful as a billygoat, and I wanted never to look like that again.
Under the picture were the words—Personne Disparue.
The poster said that I had last been seen at Gravy two days previously and that I was likely to appear disorientated or distressed. It explained that I spoke bad French and was more comfortable in English. My calm expression in the picture, staring ahead—some kind of visionary saint—seemed to foretell disaster.
When Ghislaine returned the poster was crumpled so tightly that I was able to enclose it within my fist.
Daniel #3
Eva missed work from time to time but never without letting anyone know. Daniel spent a day and a night investigating her world, or what he assumed was her world, the streets around Buttes Chaumont. There was no sign of her amid the sweaty walls of Rosa Bonheur although any one of the backpackers or junkie runaways had her look. No sign of her in any of the non-denominational phone shops on Rue de Crimée or in the nano-village around Avenue Secrétan. He thought he caught a glimpse of those chef’s pants outside Bolivar métro but no.
Daniel had just gone to bed when his father sent word (via an assistant) that someone wanted to speak to him. No matter that it was five in the morning in France. Two minutes later, Eva’s father was slowly panting on the line. He sounded subdued and annoyed that Daniel hadn’t been relaying enough information.
Tony kept on saying, —How is she?
—I told you. She’s well.
—Is she working?
Daniel had the previous weekend visited the Jeu de Paume so found himself saying, —She’s actually working as a museum guide.
—What does Eva know about art?
—More than I do, I can barely keep up. She’s in that whole gallery scene. Openings and whatnot. It’s very, you know.
—No, I don’t know. What does she say about us?
—What does she say? I don’t think she really thinks about home too much, if you know what I mean. She’s busy.
—Do we have to be worried?
—One thing you should not do is worry, Daniel said. She has a bunch of nice friends, she lives in an amazing place. It’s not a million miles from the Père Lachaise cemetery, in case you’re a Jim Morrision fan.
—I’m not.
—Look at it this way. You’re a young woman, you’re in Paris. Wouldn’t you be having a ball?
—I suppose. But she’s never been the type of girl to have a ball.
—A ball is what she’s having. That’s all you need to know. I’m seeing her later. Want me to say anything?
Tony hung up. The poor man was worried about his daughter and Daniel hadn’t answered one of his questions truthfully. People liked to say you withheld information in order to protect someone; the truth was Daniel was keeping Eva for himself. He put up those posters for his own sake and no one else’s.
Some years ago, on the morning of his thirteenth birthday, Daniel’s father took him for a drive along Beachside Avenue in Westport. They’d come out before breakfast and, because his father was wearing Keds, Daniel thought they were going to play tennis. He wondered about the rackets. He was really starving, too, but the important part came when they passed through some unfinished gates into a dirty field. This was not the kind of place they ever went on a Sunday and, until his father urged him to follow him out of the car, Daniel was ready to stay where he was. His father had the delicate step of an indoor man. Yet that morning he was pacing, a boxer at the start of a bout. Daniel was familiar with his attitude to money; Pa was a generous man who gave people whatever they asked him for. Often it was less hassle than not giving, he said. Anyway, at the time when most of his friends were getting bar mitzvahs, this mulish teenager was about to receive an absurd parcel of land worth, in today’s money, about fifteen million dollars.
Of course, Daniel’s father slipped in the mud as he said this. Daniel helped him up, the first time he had ever done that.
Pa’s usual propriety returned when he spoke, hands on hips and chin raised.
—Daniel, he said. Your brother is gone. Your sister is dead to the world. Odds are everything will be yours. My hope for you is that your path will always lead you back here. And when it does I hope you’ll think of this morning.
Most of it was over Daniel’s head. All he knew was he didn’t deserve this gift and didn’t really want it. He would have been more grateful for a hot dog from Blackie’s. He studied the mud stains on the knees of his father’s chinos. It became clear this was a smiling, expectant Oscar speech, exactly the kind of thing his father never did but was doing now.
This can’t be mine, Daniel thought. This should belong to someone else.
—It’s big, is all he said.
Daniel’s father took some wet, sour-smelling leaves and soulfully pressed them into his son’
s pocket.
—This is a taste of what’s to come.
This was not the only thing he said that day that Daniel didn’t understand, but he was able to gather one thing: they barely knew each other, by a teenager’s measurements anyway, but his father seemed to love him (deeply, by their family’s standards) and he was determined that this would be a positive and momentous morning. And somehow that positivity and momentousness would colour Daniel’s life. A few years later, around the time of the epiphany of the tasseled loafers, Daniel decided he’d had enough of the positive and momentous life. Never mind that his prized field in Connecticut had doubled in value or that the family’s building in Manhattan was good enough for Ted Turner and Billy Joel. It was not the back story he wanted.
It wasn’t exactly embedding with the troops, but Daniel was proving himself by bussing tables, slowly and poorly, at the Wiltshire Inn downtown. His job was to float trays from one end of the room to the other. He was twenty; too young to drink but old enough to smoke and some nights he would be so high that he would have to wear glasses to disguise his swirling eyes. Tracy, his manager, assumed he was a flamboyant young man, which wasn’t the case.
The floor team were mostly Hispanic, and all of them surly, and he was truly grateful for the language barrier. The floor staff weren’t required to speak, anyway, and they weren’t supposed to. This is how Daniel’s evenings passed, hazy and eventless, until one night his father walked in. It was unusual to see either of his parents anywhere below MSG. On top of that, his father had heart attacks like other people took vacations and Daniel hadn’t seen him since the last episode. Nor had he told anyone where he was working. Nevertheless, his father was unaffectedly happy to see him, even though Daniel nearly ran him over with a full tray of water glasses.
His father was on the town with some men who resembled hotel concierges but were probably lawyers. He was watchfully sipping Vichy Catalan but his friends were irascibly ordering top-shelf cocktails and getting everything slightly wrong. Their fierce faces suggested a hearty and recent ingestion of cocaine. Pa, on the other hand, was calm. His gambler’s eye absorbing the busy room, the door, and Daniel.
One Star Awake Page 9