Don’t cry, Katerina.
I’m sorry.
Don’t.
I start to cry. Not sobbing but tears running down my face I couldn’t speak if I needed to speak, quivering lips quivering hands. We sit with each other, each of us crying for our own reasons, but in the same place we were together strong and true, now we’re broken, and what was will never be the same it’s broken. Someone starts banging on the bathroom door I pull her tight whisper
We gotta go.
She kisses me my neck my cheek my lips stands up moves off of me straightens her dress. I stand up put myself together button my pants there’s more banging on the door. Katerina speaks.
What do you want to do?
I reach up, wipe the tears from her cheeks.
I don’t know.
Let’s go home.
I’ll never step foot in there again.
Let’s go to your place.
No.
What do you want to do, Jay?
I don’t know.
More banging on the door I step around her open it. I step out there’s a man, a woman, a man dressed as a woman, the man says thank you I step around them, Katerina follows me. We walk to the edge of the club music lights people dancing and drinking she reaches for my hand I pull it away.
I’m going to find Philippe and get out of here.
When will I see you again?
I don’t know.
What are you going to do?
Get out of here.
Please let me make this better.
I don’t want to talk about it anymore.
She looks like she’s about to cry again, I reach out put my arms around her pull her close, pull her tight she whispers
I love you.
I don’t respond just hold her she whispers again
I love you, Jay.
I say
I love you too.
I let her go and walk away I don’t look back I can’t look back if I do look back I won’t be able to keep going I don’t look back I walk away. I find Philippe the girls are dancing he’s drinking a glass of champagne on the sofa, I tell him I’m going to leave he says cool I’m ready to go. I get the check five bottles of champagne and a bottle of vodka in the fanciest nightclub in the fanciest city in the world the bill is enormous I don’t give a fuck I just want to leave. I pay the bill my money is almost entirely gone, enough left to get to London and get a start, Philippe and I walk out he says good-bye to the manager and the doormen I don’t look back.
He wants to go to Laura’s he gives me the key to his place. When we split I give him a hug tell him thank you for being such a magnificent friend, Paris wouldn’t have been shit without him. He laughs says it was fun, come back someday. He goes to Laura’s I go to his place drink another bottle of wine go to sleep. I wake up the next morning write another note of thanks leave him my friends’ phone number and address in London tell him to stay in touch. I leave his key on top of the note. I pack my meager belongings into a backpack take a train to the airport buy a ticket fly to London.
Good-bye, Paris, I love you.
Thank you.
Love.
Los Angeles, 2017
* * *
I want to see you.
Great.
I need to see you.
You okay?
I’ve been better.
What’s wrong?
Can you come to Zurich?
Zurich?
Yes.
Why Zurich?
It’s where I’m going to be.
When?
When could you come?
It’ll take a day or so to get there. I could leave whenever.
What will you tell your wife?
The truth.
What will she say?
She knows about you.
What does she know?
Everything.
Everything?
Yes.
Will she think it’s weird?
Probably, but I’m not coming there to fuck you, or to start some affair with you.
No, you’re not.
And it’s happened before. More than once. My friends all know if they need something and I can help them, that I will. If they need to see me, I’ll come.
I don’t need your help, I just need to see you.
Why?
You’ll understand when you get here.
You’re kind of freaking me out.
Haven’t I always?
In so many ways, yes, though most of those ways were pretty wonderful.
Hopefully this will be as well.
Yes.
Three days from now, Writer Boy.
I can make that happen, Model Girl.
Send me your travel when you have it. I’ll send you info on where we’ll meet.
Cool.
À bientôt.
Busting out your French?
Oui.
À bientôt.
London, 1993
* * *
My life here is simple. I live with two women both great friends they share a bedroom I sleep on the couch. It’s a big couch soft and comfortable when I lie down I sink into it and it swallows me. I have a warm comforter and giant pillow. The place is on a little street called Tamworth near a cemetery and a Tube station, a store on the corner sells beer and cigarettes and candy bars. We keep it reasonably clean a small kitchen, a table and four chairs, my couch, a television. My friends Anna and Amy both came to avoid the machine in America, both have working papers, both have simple jobs in offices. They were both here for their junior year of college and wanted to come back, neither will stay forever, for now they’re happy to go to work they go out after work they have fun together, they laugh and smile and raise their glasses, they aren’t interested in much beyond having a good time. I have a job working as a PA at a film company. A friend from America hooked me up it’s off the books I get paid in cash at the end of every week, it’s not much but enough. I spend my days getting producers and directors coffee, serving them lunch, making deliveries. It’s simple and easy and mindless I go where I’m told, I do what I’m told, for now I’m cool with it. I write at night, usually for two or three hours before I start drinking. Some nights the drinking is at home a couple bottles of cheap wine or a few beers, some nights I meet Anna and Amy at a pub I laugh and smile and raise a glass with them, some nights I go out on my own I found a bar that sells MD 20/20, known in America as Mad Dog, known by me as a Purple Ticket to Hell, some nights I punch that ticket and meet my old friends Mister Darkness and Mister Oblivion. London is a good town to be an alcoholic. There are pubs everywhere they all close at 11:00 p.m. You can wander around all night and everything is closed, except for the big clubs in Central London, which do not interest me. I get drunk and I’m in bed by 11:30, I can wake up the next day and go to my dumb job.
I think about Paris constantly. Think about the places I love, the people I love, the streets I love, the air I breathed in Paris the air that gave me life, the air it gave me life. I think about Louis bellowing at the sky, I think about Omer snickering at the drunks in Polly, I think about Philippe picking up garbage and having dinners with Laura and occasionally sneaking out and getting hammered. I think about Bar Dix and Stolly’s and Shakespeare and Company the beautiful books and the beautiful lost people who pass through those doors. I think about The Gates and Olympia the film of Picasso painting and the dumbass motherfuckers taking pictures of the fake Mona Lisa, I think about coffee at Flore and sandwiches at Maison de Gyros and steaks at Lipp. I think about the bridges and the parks and the monuments and the squares and the churches and cathedrals, I think about the Seine, slow and heavy and eternal, silent and looming, utterly and absolutely dominant, seemingly still but not, filled with 2,300 years of hopes and prayers, of love and life and death, unfortunately filled with several hundred pages of my writing. When I think about Paris, I think about Katerina. I wonder where she is, what she’s doing, if she’s happy, if she’s smiling and
laughing I hope she is.
I imagine her reading in bed.
Making coffee.
Walking through Le Marais.
Rushing to a meeting or casting, strolling home.
I imagine her looking at a painting, some odd awesome unexpected opinion on the tips of her lips. I imagine her looking through magazines at the newsstands, books on the quay, art in the stalls. I imagine her drinking champagne and chatting with Petra, I imagine her sitting in a café making smartass remarks, I imagine her red hair in the breeze, I imagine her sitting on the Métro singing a song to herself. I imagine her smile, the smile I saw the most beautiful thing I saw in the most beautiful and most civilized city in the world, I hope she’s smiling now, and I hope that smile is big and happy and true.
And as much as I hope someday she finds happiness and joy and whatever peace she seeks, right now I don’t want to think about her. I want to forget her. I want to let go of the memories I can still taste her and smell her and sometimes I wake up looking for her next to me. Every time I think of her it hurts me. Every time she comes into my mind it hurts me. Every imagination I have of her hurts me. And as many as I have that are good and pure and beautiful and sweet, they are balanced by the one that is and will always be burned into my fucking mind, the one where her head was moving up and down and he was looking up and smiling at me. It comes to me when I wake, it comes to me as I fall asleep, it comes and goes throughout my day it comes when I’m sober and it comes when I’m drunk, heavy and hard and crushing it comes to me again and again, again and again it comes.
My life here is simple.
I work and I write and I get drunk.
London is big and beautiful and vibrant and filled with art and books and music and life, but not for me.
Maybe in another life or at another time, but not in this life or in this time.
My heart is broken.
Won’t be forever it is now.
Probably time for me to go.
Not sure where there’s nothing for me at home.
But it is.
Home.
So I’ll go, figure it out, roll the fucking dice, I can do there what I’m doing here, and I’ll be farther away, and though they say wherever you go there you are, I call bullshit on that, being farther away will be better for me, across an ocean, thousands and thousands of miles, it will be better for me.
Time to go.
Roll the fucking dice.
Los Angeles, 2017
* * *
Got a flight.
Thank you.
Nonstop from LA to Zurich.
Great.
Leave tomorrow.
I’m here already.
I take off at 7:20 p.m., land at 3:15 p.m. the day after.
Long flight.
I’ll read, sleep.
Some things never change.
In the old days I would have gotten drunk.
Thankfully that did change.
Need anything from America?
Just you.
I’m not one of our finer products.
The only one I need, though.
If you change your mind, let me know.
I won’t.
See you in a couple days.
Text me when you land, and I’ll tell you where to go.
London And Paris And London And America, 1993
* * *
Phone rings I answer it, it’s Philippe.
JayBoy Motherfucker.
I laugh.
What’s up, Phil?
You gotta come back here.
You miss me?
A little, but that’s not why you gotta come back.
I’m going back to America, man. I’m not coming back to Paris.
You owe me.
I probably do.
Katerina’s on the warpath. Going berzerko. Going to all our old spots, hassling people, says she needs to see you.
Tell her you don’t know where I am.
I did.
And?
She laughed at me and called me a fucking liar.
She’s smart.
You need to come back. Just for a day. Deal with her.
No.
I’ll give her your number and address in London.
Please don’t.
You owe me. And this is your mess. Come clean it up.
Kind of funny hearing that from a garbageman.
He laughs says please come back he wants to be able to go to bars and drink in peace I tell him I’ll come for a night find out what Katerina wants calm her down ask her to leave him alone. We hang up.
Two days later it’s Saturday I wake up around noon and I take a shower go to the airport there are cheap flights every hour. I fly to Paris take a train into the city walk from the gare I love French gares I walk from the gare to La Comédie. I walk in and I sit down Petra is working she pours me a whiskey smiles and speaks.
Hi.
Hi.
I thought you moved.
I did.
Back for a visit?
I heard Katerina is looking for me.
Haven’t seen her much lately.
Why?
She’s doing her thing, I’m doing mine.
You get in a fight?
We had a philosophical discussion that did not end well.
Sorry.
It happens.
Do me a favor?
Maybe.
Let her know I’m here.
Sure.
Petra turns walks to a phone on the wall behind the bar picks it up dials speaks for a moment hangs up. She walks back over.
She’ll be here in a few minutes.
Thank you.
Need anything else?
Glass of champagne for her?
She laughs.
Sure.
She pours a glass it isn’t fancy but does have bubbles, she sets it in front of the stool next to me. I sip my whiskey and wait, I’m nervous and I’m scared to see her, my hands are shaking and my heart pounding I wonder what she wants what’s so important. I love her but I’m not coming back. I don’t want to get back together my hands are shaking and my heart is beating, I sip the whiskey but it doesn’t help.
I hear the door open I turn she walks in sees me smiles, it’s a sad forlorn smile she raises a hand. I smile sad and forlorn and raise a hand I watch her walk toward me. She’s wearing jeans and sneakers a big white warm wool sweater, no makeup, her hair in a ponytail it hurts me to see her emotions flood back, love and lust and pain and hurt, how funny she is, how weird and interesting, her confidence and intelligence, how much more beautiful she is without makeup. She turns her stool toward me, I turn mine toward her, she sits and speaks.
Hi.
Hi.
I got you a drink.
She pushes it away.
I’m good.
Really?
Really.
I heard you’re looking for me.
Philippe or Louis or Omer?
Philippe.
I didn’t know who knew where you were, so I went to all of them.
Only Philippe.
You still in France?
No.
Where?
I’m here now, to see you. What do you need?
I don’t know how to say it.
Yes, you do.
I don’t.
I’m not sure I’ve ever met or known anyone who knows how to say what they want to say as well as you do, Katerina.
She smiles.
Thanks.
So say it.
She looks at me, smile fades, I can see her struggling to speak, lip quivering, looks at me, looks into my eyes light brown like cocoa and pale green into me it hurts, she speaks.
I’m pregnant.
I’m speechless shocked thrilled scared.
I’m just over two months pregnant.
Light brown into pale green into me, her eyes and her words into me.
I want to keep the baby.
I smile subd
ued and shocked of all the things I expected to hear and considered I might hear a child, a pregnancy, a baby a life created by us the two of us together was not one of them. I’m not sure whether to hug her or scream with joy or cry or yell or run, I look at her eyes locked into each other I speak.
How?
I don’t know.
I thought you never…
I didn’t, I don’t.
When?
That last night. When you walked away.
You sure?
Yes.
What about…
I never fucked him. Or I haven’t for a long time, not since that day we saw you in the museum, and even then I thought about you when we did.
I laugh.
I’m not sure that actually makes me feel any better about him.
I’m sorry, Jay. I’m so sorry.
You don’t need to apologize again. It’s done, it’s past.
Thank you.
And I think we have other things to worry about now.
She laughs.
Yeah.
And you’re sure, you took a test, all that?
She reaches into her pocket, pulls out a small white plastic stick about four inches long, sets it on the bar, I look down at it. On its face there are two words in French short lines symbolic of the results after the words.
Enceinte II
Pas Enceinte I
There is a small opening next to the words where the results appear, there are two lines II in the space two lines II Enceinte. I take a deep breath, look up, Katerina is smiling, clearly nervous, light-brown eyes wet and hopeful and happy. I smile, my eyes wet and hopeful and happy, speak.
Fuck.
She laughs.
Yeah.
What are we gonna do?
I don’t know.
I was gonna go home.
Home America home?
Yeah.
You still can.
I’m a shithead, but not that much of a shithead.
She laughs again, looks at me, speaks.
Can I have a hug?
I smile.
Yeah.
We both stand I put my arms around her hold her tight, she puts her arms around me pulls me in holds me tight, we stand don’t speak holding tight together we’re having a baby, having a baby. I can feel hear her start to cry I hold her tight we don’t move whatever I thought is irrelevant we’re having a baby life just changed, life just changed in the most magnificent shocking wonderful terrifying way possible, we’re having a baby. She pushes me away tears running down her cheeks I wipe them away she smiles speaks.