by Jayne Tuttle
A hot breeze teases my hair as I pedal along the rue des Petites-Écuries. The sun is going down and people are spilling out onto the pavements, standing around tables and leaning on poles, laughing, arguing, drinking. I take my feet off the pedals as I draw nearer the Faubourg-Saint-Denis, where the bike lane becomes blocked by music fans queuing to enter the New Morning jazz club. I weave my way past them and into the intersection, where a cloud of fragrant weed hits my lungs. I breathe it in deep. Traffic comes at me from three directions, from the rue du Château d’Eau to the east and from the north and south on Saint-Denis. I wobble my way through the chaos, narrowly avoiding a woman pushing a pram and the rear bumper of a car as it pulls up short. My brakes are hopeless so I use my sandals on the road. I pull back into the bike lane and proceed the wrong way up it into little Africa and its buzzing hairdressing salons with people crammed in having their hair braided and twisted and sprayed and coloured. Balls of hair in the gutter spring into my spokes as I roll over them with my crappy tyres. Shops sell wigs in pink, yellow, brown, black, white, grey, blond, sparkly purple and fluorescent green, in every style and shape you could imagine, on white plastic heads with names like Bella and Lucie and Diamant and Kama and Star and Trixie.
At the boulevard de Sébastopol I hear a bell ding and someone call, ‘Jayne!’ It’s Étienne. We stop in front of a man grilling corn on a barbecue and Étienne kisses me on both cheeks. ‘Félicitations!’
‘Toi aussi!’
It’s the first time I’ve seen him since we were both accepted into second year. He looks tanned, his curly dark hair fairer from time in the sun.
He complements my vingt mouvements, telling me they were truc de ouf quoi. I laugh my head off. He smiles and pays for his corn cob, and is swept away in the Friday night crowd. I stop for a moment and stare at my reflection in the broken mirror outside the Sunshine fashion shop. My face and body are splintered into chunks of hair and flesh and the bright, swirling colours of the world behind me.
I turn my bike around and glide through the bumper-to-bumper traffic, past the coolest African eatery in town, which I have never seen closed or empty. Drum music thumps, people dance and slap hands amid the spit and graffiti and the rubbish squashed into the pavement. I pedal up the boulevard, narrowly missing motorbikes and scooters and a smart car as I manoeuvre into the bike lane. Past the imposing Mairie with its authoritative turrets and towers, past the Firemen’s Caserne and on to the picturesque bar, Le Petit Château d’Eau, where I step off my bike and chain it to a pole.
Two well-built pompiers, the local firemen-studs who attend to all neighbourhood emergencies, walk past me on their way back to the Caserne and say bonsoir. A group of well-dressed young women sit drinking kir outside the bar and I look for Kiki, finding her inside in one of the old rustic booths, nursing a glass of beer and a little bowl of peanuts.
‘Bella regazza!’ she says, kissing and hugging me. It feels like ages since we’ve seen each other.
I order a beer too, and we clink glasses and drink. Momo, the dog who lives in the bar, comes and sits under my seat. I pat him gently.
‘So what’s the news?’
Zahir’s gone and Kiki has been nailing the yoga teacher. And the yoga teacher, whose name is Manu, teaches a famous photographer, who was an addict for many years and now requires a special diet and support. She has given Kiki a job as her personal chef and assistant.
‘That’s the best news I’ve ever heard,’ I say, banging on the table.
‘She’s incredible,’ says Kiki. ‘And it means that even though my residency at the Cité is nearly up, I can stay in Paris and work. It’s perfect.’
My stomach clenches at the mere mention of Kiki leaving. I haven’t been able to fathom it as an option. Now I don’t have to. ‘Praise the lord!’
‘And that’s not all,’ she says, leaning over the table.
The famous photographer had booked to spend the summer at an expensive health retreat in Florida, but Kiki has convinced her to spend the money on a two-week holiday in the Dordogne instead. Manu will teach yoga, Kiki will cook, ‘and you,’ she adds, ‘will entertain! Oh, and drive. None of us want to do that.’
I jump for joy. ‘The countryside!’
‘Are you wearing a bra?’
‘Fresh air!’
‘I dream of not having to wear a bra.’
‘Let’s drink more beer!’
‘Wait!’ she says. ‘I brought us a surprise.’ She reaches down into her bag and brings up a magnum of Dom Pérignon.
‘Norbert!’
‘It wouldn’t fit in my fridge, so it’s warm, but it’ll still be good!’
‘Yay!’
‘Let’s go to the canal and drink it from plastic cups!’
The bobos are at the canal in droves, in effortless flowing clothes, with baskets of wine and cheese, and music. Drummers drum and dancers dance; the trees have all their leaves back on and the sun pokes its last rays through them, trying to push away the creeping evening coolness. A young guy on a skateboard lights my cigarette and Kiki and I drink the frothy delicacy of Dom Pérignon from our cups.
‘Life is good!’ I splutter.
‘La vita e bella!’
‘La vita e bella!’ I repeat. ‘Why so Italian today?’
‘I don’t know. Today feels like Italy.’
Today is Italy but we are in France and are Australian so we drink the entire bottle of champagne and dance our way up the cobblestoned path by the canal, through the hazy mass of bodies and down the rue des Récollets, around Piss Alley beside the Église Saint-Laurent as the bells toll. The sky is prussian blue as we cross the busy intersection of Magenta and Strasbourg and make our way down the rue de la Fidélité, past a darkened bar with tiger-skin couches.
‘Bar-à-putes,’ I say, pointing to it with a wink.
‘It’s not a whore bar,’ says Kiki. ‘It’s just full of old cougars.’
‘Adrien reckons it is.’
‘Adrien would.’
A pause.
‘Do you like Adrien?’ I ask.
‘Of course!’ she says. ‘But I can imagine why he would think something like this is a whore bar.’
I’m not sure what she means but I don’t pursue it. I feel giddy on life, on this night, and I want to drink it in with my best friend.
The rue du Faubourg-Saint-Denis is like a festival; music and laughter blend with the clinking of crockery and glassware on the terraces. At the end of the street the golden glow of the ancient arch beckons us down to the Mauri7, but Kiki spots a cab, hugs me and falls into it, and I couldn’t have drunk more anyway, so I stumble up the street, past the refugees singing in the square, towards the gates of the Récollets, shining in the moonlight.
I tap in the code but I’m too drunk to go to bed, so I turn and walk back down to the canal, where the world is paisley and people are everywhere. I sit on my own, with them all.
Tits of the Dordogne
ADRIEN CAN’T TAKE time off his job and isn’t invited to the Dordogne anyway, so I kiss him goodbye after dinner on my floor, pack a little bag and sit around feeling nervous about meeting such a famous artist.
When I showed Adrien a book of her photography I borrowed from Kiki, it flopped open at an image of a naked guy masturbating. She had captured the moment so truthfully – the clenched jaw, the flushed cheeks, the vein pulsating in his forehead – it made me excited and a bit sick at the same time.
‘Nooo!’ said Adrien, shielding his eyes.
‘Really? What about these?’ I flipped through pages I’d marked, photos of people with vacant eyes in shabby bedrooms, naked couples kissing, children in living rooms, drag queens in a backyard. Al, the photographer, had this way of bringing you right up close into people’s lives. Too close. That’s why I loved them. They were hard to look at, yet you couldn’t look away.
‘I don’t like these photos. C’est glook.’
I didn’t know what glook meant but could feel it from the way
it sounded – seedy, dark, grim. Of course they were. That was the point. They were unabashedly real, with their harsh, realistic colours, trashy decor, and blurred, off-centre framing. They revealed a deep, painful beauty. I was startled by his rejection of them, but put the book down and changed the subject. What did it matter if we had different taste in art?
Al lives in the rue Charlot. I ride there in the summer rain, which turns my hair into a wild fuzzy mane. Manu is to take her on the one-o’clock train from Montparnasse, because she doesn’t like cars or planes, and Kiki and I will pick up a rental car and drive to the château. I am the designated driver.
Manu lets me in. I have only met him once, after Kiki’s yoga class one day. He is in the same stretched T-shirt and hippie pants with bells around the bottoms, but his long matted hair this time is pulled into a bun. We kiss each other and he says he’s glad I’m coming. Then he gets distracted and disappears, leaving me in a large, cluttered salon with light streaming in dusty stripes across the exotic rugs and worn sofas with beautiful cats on them. People emerge from various corners: a beautiful, smoking androgyne with cropped black hair points me down the hall, past a guy with a naked washboard stomach who gives me a slow hug like he hasn’t seen me in years, leading to Kiki, fussing over Al in her bed, a middle-aged baby bird in a pile of sweaty sheets. Kiki squeezes me, mumbles something and rushes out of the room.
‘Hello … sweetie,’ Al drawls, reaching out to caress my face. ‘Aren’t you beautiful? Your hair. Can I photograph you, sweetie? While we’re on vacation?’
‘Of course,’ I say, flattered, helping her to a sitting position. It feels like I already know her – perhaps because she’s in bed. She is overweight but fragile. Her hair is ginger with thick strands of grey wiring their way from the crown into clumps in the middle of her back. She looks exhausted.
‘Kiki!’ she calls, and Kiki comes barrelling back into the room, hands full of linen and clothes. ‘Darling. Can we bring Rosie?’
Kiki hesitates. ‘Sure, Al. Does she have a cage thing?’
‘Yeah, sweetie. I take her everywhere.’
Rosie, Al’s favourite cat, is asleep on a sumptuous velvet chair in the salon. She does not like being woken and she does not like the cage. The half-naked guy helps us try to get her into it but she lashes out and scratches him on the midriff. He laughs and leaves the room, gazing down at the scratch like it’s something exquisite.
The drive takes almost a whole day and my driving is scary, but we finally pull up around midnight beside an up-lit château with a dark forest beyond it, and leap out, silently screaming with delight, running across the vast lawns, arms spread, faces wild. An owl hoots and we stop and listen to it, gazing around at the sleeping château with its stone walls covered in ivy, its high windows and moulded turrets.
Kiki takes my hand and we creak open the kitchen door and run barefoot across the wooden floors; there are huge fireplaces and a dining room with ghostly chandeliers and big soft sofas and big clean bathrooms with big deep baths in them. Kiki spins in the kitchen with its ten-burner stove and huge wooden table and beautiful pots and pans strung up à l’ancienne.
Manu’s and Al’s bags are strewn around the table. Kiki gets a bottle of white wine from the fridge and we take our glasses to one of the giant sofas and sprawl on it. Outside is black. There are stars. A thumbnail moon. We drink the whole bottle and fall asleep.
The first days pass in a blissful haze. Kiki and I are constantly drunk and full of excitement. It’s as if we’ve been set free after being cooped up too long. Al has brought a bag of her favourite rare films and we lie around and watch them in the salon, Al watching us watch them and loving that we love them. We go to the village markets and the wine store and Al buys expensive vintage champagne, though she doesn’t drink. We feast like barons in the vast dining room with its long, old wooden table, Al beaming as she watches us devour it all, content with her bowl of lentils and can of Diet Coke. We play backgammon and go for long walks through the countryside and lie on the lawn in the sun. Manu gives yoga classes on the warm wooden floor of the master bedroom. We go on missions to find things to photograph, like weird topiary gardens, and animals and children and trees. Al is inspired and takes hundreds of photos, of Kiki in the kitchen, Manu in the hammock, Rosie pawing a bird, Manu and Kiki kissing, Kiki in the bath, and all of us lying on the sofas and me in front of the TV wearing the ‘Jane Likes Dick’ T-shirt Jack gave me.
One afternoon Al grabs her camera and leads Kiki and me, giddy on champagne, to a part of the forest she has found at the bottom of the property and suggests we take off our shirts. We laugh – why not? And it is funny – Kiki’s boobs are so big and round and mine are so small, and she is so curvy and dark and I am so rake-like and blond, and we frolic like drunken nymphs as Al snaps the shots. When she loses interest in us and starts taking photos of the dying light in the tops of the trees, we pull our shirts on and crawl back up to the garden. Manu comes and sits with us but can’t break into our silly mood and eventually wanders away.
Al is a range of people throughout the day. Sweet Al. Laughing Al. Quiet Al. Delirious Al. Incoherent Al. Content Al. Restless Al. Playful Al. My favourite Al is Cuddly Al, tucked up in bed wanting to talk all night about stories and ideas and art and parents and friendship and love and nightmares.
‘Isn’t it hard to make work that’s so close to you?’ I ask one night as she is snuggled in her blankets. ‘Don’t the people in your photographs get angry at you?’
‘Of course,’ she says, playing with my hair. ‘But if you’re going to make real art, you have to be ready to hurt people. Being an artist is painful.’
‘I’m terrified of upsetting people.’
‘Well, you’d better not be an artist then, sweetie.’
She turns over and I pat her hair. ‘Bring me some of your writing. Read to me.’
I bring back my computer and, embarrassed, start reading the stuff I’m prouder of, the love rants about Adrien, a play idea about two sisters. Al lies silent, asleep perhaps, but I keep reading. I come to a piece about Mum, a long passage called ‘I’m Sorry, We Still Have Time’. The writing is ghastly, ill-formed and raw: it makes me want to be sick just looking at it. I read the words softly, hoping Al is asleep, horrified at what I’ve written, like I’ve betrayed my family and Mum’s experience by even attempting to put words around it.
As I’m tiptoeing out Al mumbles, ‘That’s where it is, sweetie. That place.’
‘Really?’ I whisper.
‘Hmm. That place.’
Al’s moods stay mostly sweet for the next few days but start to become spliced with more frequent dark moments. By the seventh day the sweetness has all but disappeared. It’s clear she’s a lot more unwell than we realised, and still dealing with the after-effects of long-term addiction. She sleeps terribly, and in the mornings can’t feel her legs and screams in terror; by lunchtime she is calm but restless, and the rest of the day her mood shifts between reclusiveness and listlessness to outbursts of anger. She starts to lash out and snap at us; the colour in Kiki’s cheeks starts to drain, and Manu walks out of their yoga session one day and stands on the lawn for a long time, breathing.
One night, Al appears at the top of the staircase as I’m walking past.
‘Hi Al!’ I say. ‘Are you okay? Can I bring you something?’
‘What are you doing here?’ she snarls. ‘Go home! FREELOADER!’
Manu comes from the living room and looks up at Al. She hobbles back to her room and slams the door.
‘I think I should go,’ I say.
Manu sighs. ‘It’s not you. She’s not well.’
Kiki agrees I should go – for my own sake, but also to give Al fewer targets to abuse. She convinces me they’ll be okay, and drops me the next morning at the station with the cat, who sprays and moans all the way back to Paris.
My Studio of Good never felt so good. I dump my things and let Rosie out of the cage, praying Chantal doesn’t find ou
t. The cat goes straight to the shower and shits in it, digging at imaginary dirt to cover it up. I go upstairs and flop gratefully onto my bed. E.T. says hi.
‘Why didn’t you call?’ asks Adrien when I phone him. ‘I was worried.’
‘There was no reception. I missed you.’
‘No reception?’ He pauses. ‘Was it fun?’
‘Yes. No. When can I see you?’
‘I’m busy tonight. Tomorrow. Why was it not fun?’
I tell him about Al’s addiction and how we didn’t realise how unwell she is.
‘Did you take drugs?’
‘No.’
‘Did she take photos of you?’
‘No,’ I lie.
Guilt gnaws at my bones when we hang up. I’m not sure why I felt the need to lie about the photos. Telling him would only make him want to see them, and I’m not sure he’d see the humour in them. He doesn’t understand Al’s aesthetic, and he’s questioned Kiki’s sexuality, so why provoke something? But lying to him sits uneasily in my bones. Why do I keep telling him these little lies?
Rosie leaps onto the end of the bed and stares at me with her head cocked before coming to curl up with me. I am grateful, though she makes my eyes itch.
Four days later I get a call from Kiki. ‘The bitch is back,’ she says. They have cut the trip short.
I take the métro to Oberkampf with Rosie. Manu answers the door looking beaten-up.
He kisses me. ‘Al is in the salon. She’s been asking about you.’
Rosie jumps from her cage and goes running inside. ‘Rosie, darling!’ I hear Al purr. I don’t want to go in, but she calls my name. I walk to the edge of the salon, where she’s sprawled on a chaise longue in her pyjamas, smoking.
‘Jayne, sweetie, come here.’
I go and sit reluctantly next to her, like a three-year-old. She is afternoon oozy Al. ‘Manu tells me I said some things. Sorry, sweetie, I don’t really remember. I don’t think I was feeling well.’