“Je vous emmène?” she cawed again, and I realized the hoarse lilt of the question was asking a question behind the question. Un train peut en cacher un autre. The lizardskin epidermis collapsed into an atavistic grin. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger together as if starting a fire with flint.
“Je vous emmène?”
Then, in an undertone.
“You’ve brought it with you?”
I nodded. If she belonged anywhere, it was in Marvel Comics. The Incredible Hulkette. I followed her upstairs. She removed her shoes. She had a club foot and limped heavily. We entered a second-floor flat overlooking the pedestrian street. On the table beside the bed, a set of knitting needles in a plastic cup. Beside the cup, a partially darned set of stockings for an infant. On the wall behind, a photo of a young woman, wearing a bridal gown, accompanied by a dark, curly-haired man wearing a tuxedo. Cherubic looks.
“Did you bring the money?”
“It’s arriving on Tuesday. Western Union.”
“Écoutez, mon mec, you said you had the six hundred francs! To think I believed you were a law yer. Putain. Quel con!”
I lit a cigarette.
“Who’s that in the photo, Collette?”
“Mêle-toi de tes oignons. I want my money, or I call my pimp.”
“Tell you what, Collette. Ever been to America?”
“Quel intérêt? ”
“Quel intérêt? It’s every French girl ’s dream! Pacific ocean. La forêt canadienne. Niagara Falls. A chance to begin everything.” Two tears streamed down her caulked face. Rivulets dripping through a chasm of broken dreams.
“Conard! C’est le fric qu’ il me faut, pauvre con! Fou-moi la paix.”
“You know the gamine?”
“Écoute, tu me fous la paix, tu m’entends!”
Sometimes when, as the French put it, your butt is between two chairs, you end up, like I was, staring at a rhomboid-shaped lump of sugar on a table in an empty couscous restaurant in the early afternoon. As if it were auditioning for a Delaunay canvas. I don’t suppose too many Hollywood scripts will be snapped up about guys spinning sugar cubes on table tops, but that is what I was engaged in. The label was a Euro production, approved by all the requisite Euro sugar Appellation d 'origine contrôlée bodies in four languages. Zuiker. Sucre. Zucchero. Sugar. A coagulated lump of approved soluble glucose.
A heavy smog had descended over the city. I lit a cigarette, stubbed out the one still burning, caught sight of the pink neon sign overhanging the entrance to the Brasserie Guignotte. Lobster was on special. The banner in the window announced Homard du Canada — fraîchement importée!! I recalled the last time I had made love to her, and it suddenly didn’t seem like a beautiful thing anymore. More like a couple of lobsters, beady, stalking eyes, oversized pincers; fighting for space on a stone-bed in an aquarium, oozing trails of lime-green unguent too vile to name.
Just about noon. Tranh would be arriving soon. I had enticed him with the image of Canadian lobster and vin de Bourgogne. Bourgogne. Dijon, capital of Bourgogne.
Any place principally known for its mustard to be avoided at all costs. The pinnacle of municipal achievement a tripartite concoction of rape seed, vinegar and water. On the other hand, Bourgogne Aligoté was a nice base mix for a Kir. After a few of those, and lunch with Tranh, if I could squeeze a few hundred francs from him, I could pay an afternoon visit to Galicia and persuade her to give me a half hour of her time down in the former leprosarium. For old times sake. It wasn’t perfection, but it was a hell of a lot better than living in Dijon.
Tranh entered the Brasserie Guignotte just as I waved the waiter back for a refill of my Kir.
“Cancel the order,” Tranh called out, “a bottle of Veuve Cliquot and two flutes.”
“What’s the occasion?” I asked as he took a seat.
“The most remarkable occurrence, Robinson. My wife has died!”
“She died, or you killed her?”
“Incredible, Robinson. Inoubliable. Now, I can tell you everything. But, first promise me. Will you come to the funeral?”
“I don’t know, Tranh. Not too big on ceremonial rites. We’ll see.”
“All right, fine, that’s fine, we can discuss that over the champagne. Waiter, oh good, he is coming. My wife had made a last request. Victor, she had said to me before her decline, no matter how difficult, I want you to make love to me before we go to the Netherlands. It will bring me good luck. Of course, I agreed, despite the obvious logistical difficulties. And, yesterday was the big day. I will not bore you with the mechanics of the event, Robinson, but I will say that from my standpoint, it could not have been better. And, in mid-thrust, she expired, Robinson! Have you ever heard anything like it?
Sudden cardiac death. I shall either be imprisoned, or go down in medical history. Or both!”
I had seen Tranh overexcited before, but it was the first time I saw him happy. We caught up on some other news in and around the quarter, when the topic of Alena came up.
“Robinson. Speaking of funerals, did I mention to you that I attended Alena’s?”
“Our Alena? The one who jumped into the Seine?” “One and the same. There were only three of us at the burial. Alena excluded, of course. Her mother was in attendance. A short, fat, non-descript woman from the Vienne region. She worked as a Monoprix cashier. Have you ever noticed those throw-away nail files the girls use on the street?”
“As a matter of fact, I have.”
“They all come from the same Carrefour. A grande
surface in Poitiers. A competitor!”
“So, who was the third person at her funeral?”
“You’ll never believe it. Yannick, the doorman.”
“What was he doing there?”
“It turns out he was madly in love with her, Robinson. During the ceremony, he threw himself into the open grave. During a rainstorm in Père Lachaise, imagine-toi. Alena’s mother and I spent over half an hour just dragging him out of the hole. In the end, we were all covered in mud. So, other than that, nothing much.
How are things with you?”
“Couple of residual issues. Nothing serious.”
“The Vietnam veteran is still after you, I presume.”
“Actually, Tranh, just between you and me, I don’t think he’ll be a problem.”
Tranh sipped his champagne for a moment in silence.
He was watching me, trying to figure something out. It didn’t really bother me. He was far enough outside the loop. No dangers of the téléphone arabe being accessed.
“I mean, he’s not quite as dangerous as I made out.”
“But what about the wanted poster, Robinson? And the threats against your person.”
“Actually, uhh, I sort of had something to do with that.”
“Is it possible?”
“Oh yeah, it’s possible all right. More than possible.”
Tranh’s attic mouse titter was activating, and continued like a low decibel scuttle for a good minute.
“Truly, truly, I have underestimated you. It was a ploy to rid yourself of this woman. Don’t answer, I do not need the answer. May I ask you a favour?”
“Sure. You can ask.”
“May I call you Franck?”
“Sure.”
“Franck, I no longer know what to think. Only that there are no clear lines in life. Things are out of our hands, ultimately. And, I don’t really care. Now, let’s have some lunch!”
V
September 11. I’d been skulking up rue St-Denis towards Porte St-Denis and back to my starting point for two years. Djana, Verena and the African girls were out on afternoon shift. I spotted Galicia, standing in a doorway. She was wearing scarlet pumps, a dull pink t-shirt, and a set of canary pedal pushers so tight, her legs resembled a sulphurous yolk oozing out into the grate of a sewer right outside the door. Ready for a day at the beach. A Monoprix throw-away nail file propped negligently upwards between her thumb and index of her left hand, as she exam
ined her lips in a compact mirror held in her right. She spotted me just as I crossed Pas de Caire in front of the leprosarium housing the Thai massage parlor.
“Franck, tu viens?”
I shook my head and burrowed forward. The sky was darkening. A grey rain dripping down for three days running.
“Franck, tu viens?” Water sluicing through the gutters, a gastric acid of the previous day’s waste.
“Tu viens, Franck? ”
The street cleaners were on strike again. The shit, garbage and sputum caked to the asphalt. The work of a scatological schizophrenic with artistic pretensions.
“Franck, tu viens? Allez, viens, je t'emmène, Franck ...”
The African girls joined in Galicia’s taunts. They formed a loose semi-circle. A Salvation Army choral group, offering cunt instead of eternal redemption. Galicia balancing a powder pack in her left hand. She couldn’t have held a robin’s eggshell with more delicacy, her lips puckered in mock pity.
“Franck, tu viens pas?”
At boulevard de Bonne Nouvelle, I turned left, and found myself in front of a bookstore of historical erotica. The thing about sex is you are just in it. All activity is reduced to the emission of fluids — the secretion of saliva, sweat and grunts. I lit a cigarette, and surveyed a string of photos, showing a Prussian nobleman of the nineteenth century flagellating three servile blondes on leashes.
The St-Denis whores had woven a web of their own making, stretching end to end along the seedy thoroughfare of human refuse. The pimps, flics, barmen and johns were nothing more than figurants, bit-players, and anyone who inhabited the realm knew it. We were the drones buzzing around in concentric circles, and the circles spiralled around chakra-like nexa, located in each and every cunt along that forsaken road.
Our own movements were without focus or direction, except as a function of the cunt. Their immobility was apparent only. It was the presiding of queens overlooking their domains. And St-Denis was the heart of it. Sex was for sale everywhere in the city of Paris. In respectable quarters and less respectable, but St-Denis was the temple of sleaze, and the crypt of the temple was down on the street. On the street, not even the cops or the pimps could compete with the girls. Any display of masculine power was sporadic, ineffective and purely ornamental. In theory, a pimp could beat the shit out of his girls, but if he did, word would get out and his stock-in-trade would decline overnight. An eager young pup of the Brigade Judiciaire could theoretically intervene, at the risk of discovering he had arrested the Deputy Mayor, or a Cardinal, or the bastard son of the Justice Minister. Or that he was screwing with his colleagues’ side pay and commissions. The girls on the other hand knew that as long as they put out, they were basically untouchable.
I continued up rue du Faubourg Poissonnière towards the Gare du Nord.
I walked into the Gare du Nord. It too had been bombed, and somehow survived. Nazis had the run of the place for awhile. I walked back to Brasserie la Guignotte, and sat down. At Platform 9, the Customs police had teamed up with the CRS, and held three blacks handcuffed to the ground. I took a seat and ordered a Meteor beer. Across the way, a digital neon screen flashed a message:
Discount fare: on bouge?
Fantasia voyages
A tour guide leading a group of dowdy Brits in town for a shrinks convention. They walked into a QUICK fastfood and timidly took their seats.
Franck, tu viens?
I continued right out of the district, and up Réaumur until it turned into the rue du 4 septembre, and back to the American Express office. There were two letters waiting for me. I exited the rue Scribe offices, and stopped in at the Café de la Paix. I ordered a coffee, and opened the first, from the Law Society:
Dear Mr Robinson,
R E: Reichman vs Masbourian et al
Please be informed that your disciplinary hearing has been cancelled due to the disappearance of the complainant. We shall keep you apprised of any further developments in this matter.
Yours truly, Margaret Tillman
The second letter was postmarked Boca Raton, Florida.
Dear Franck,
Laraine here. I’m down recuperating from another bout with Dr Cooper, Franck. Is it worth it? Who knows? But, Franck, I need some company, and while you’re drinking Bacardi in my million dollar flat, have I got a deal for you, Franck? Take a break, Franck. You’re a prick, but you make me laugh.
Love, Laraine
I stared out the window of the Café de la Paix, right at the spot where Oscar Wilde couldn’t sponge a centime from the patrons who had idolized him a year previous. That’s the problem with literature. No contingency funds. Then, staring into the window, I recalled Sheba looking through the plexiglass of the Montreal airport about thirty lifetimes previous. Pushing the index of her left hand up against the glass, drawing a vertical line on it, then peering through it at the whiteness outside. Then uttering my name, sending a small trace of vapour into the window.
“Franck.”
Where had we fucked each other in the city? Père Lachaise. The catacombs. The crypt of the Madeleine.
If she were only a whore, why can’t you get her out of your mind, Franck? The answer is simple. You just don’t.
It was like Tranh said. The lines weren’t really clear in life. Whether Spike found me or not wouldn’t resolve anything one way or the other. As for Sheba, she would stick around for awhile in my brain. Then, the storm would pass. But the overall energy would remain the same.
Then, the thought of that yard-ape Charlotte came to mind. I reached into my pocket, pulled out my wallet.
The old man’s phone number in Lusignan. It was a long shot, 9-1 at best, and even if it panned out, it was another crapshoot having a nine-year-old version of Sheba to deal with. But, hell, she still couldn’t handle firearms, and, what were the options — Margaret Tillman? I walked up to the counter.
“Give me a jeton for the telephone.”
On the other hand, Millie had offered me a freebie for the afternoon. I walked down the stairwell curling downwards, towards the toilets and telephone. As they say in the New World, heads I win, tails you lose.
Publisher Information
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Copyright © 2012, David MacKinnon and Guernica Editions Inc.
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First edition. Printed in Canada.
Legal Deposit — First Quarter
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 2012932925
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
MacKinnon, David (David J.) Leper tango / David MacKinnon.
(Essential prose series ; 95) Issued also in electronic format.
ISBN 978-1-55071-367-1
9781550713688 Epub
9781550713831 Mobi
I. Title. II. Series: Essential prose series ; 95. PS8625.K5535L46 2012 C813'.6 C2012-901199-1
David MacKinnon is a lawyer by training, member of both the British Columbia and Quebec law societies. He has five university degrees, including two law degrees and t wo degrees from Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne. He studie
d history, law, languages and philosophy at the universities of British Columbia, Louvain (Belgium), Sorbonne (Paris), Laval (Québec) and Ottawa. He has worked in oilfields, factories and warehouses, morgues and operating rooms, lumberyards, shipyards, construction sites and in the courtroom as a trial lawyer. For the better part of twenty-five years, he lived and worked in France and Quebec. He has written eight novels.
About Leper Tango
Leper Tango recounts the lunar trajectory of Franck Robinson — a self-confessed member of “the despised and despicable sub-species of skirt-chaser known as the john.” During one of Franck ’s regular free-falls into the Parisian night, he meets Sheba, who moves from being Franck ’s favourite hooker to being Franck ’s obsession. Leper Tango is a confession of an unrepentant man whose stated life aim is to screw an entire cit y. The author, presumably the alter ego of Franck, is also a jack-of-alltrades and vagabond spirit.
— FNAC Book Review
Franck Robinson, forty-something, chaser of skirts, usually the low-end sidewalk variety, combs the streets of Paris in search of Sheba, whom he imagines to be the ultimate Parisian whore. Franck drifts from bordello to bar, and ultimately finds himself trapped by his own demons of alcohol and a fatal attraction. With this hilarious novel, the Canadian MacKinnon showcases a talent for the absurd and a mastery of language reminiscent of Henry Miller.
— Glamour Magazine
Leper Tango Page 24