As I stare at the notebook, and think about the next word, and feel the morning sun on my face and arms, and listen to the birds in the trees above me, and smell the bread of some local boulangerie, and taste the remains of the black coffee I drank on my way here, I feel someone moving toward me, I hear footsteps on the gravel path, a shadow passes over. I don’t look up. I know there’s an empty bench a few feet away but the person sits next to me. There are two feet of space between us. I glance down, I see a pair of black Converse All Stars, short black socks, long thin pale legs. I think about moving, or turning away, figure the person will take whatever picture they want to take, move on. And so I stare at the black ink on brown paper, at the empty space on the page that I am going to fill. And as I think, I hear a voice.
What are you writing?
A woman, though I knew that already. Slight accent on the English that I can’t specifically place, though I’d guess somewhere in Scandinavia. Voice is sweet and low, like coffee with a little cream and ten spoonfuls of sugar. I don’t look up, or respond. I hear some rustling in a bag, a lighter ignite, and the intake of breath, I smell tobacco, the harsh and delightful odor of relief and addiction. I hear the voice again, don’t look up.
You’re playing hard to get. That’s kind of cute.
Chuckle, but don’t look.
You can look at me. I’m not Medusa. You won’t turn to stone.
Another chuckle.
You’re a stubborn one. At least answer my question, I’m curious.
What am I writing?
Yes.
None of your goddamn business.
She laughs. I stare at the black ink, brown paper. She does not leave, and I hear more rustling. I try to find my train of thought, find my way back to what I was doing, but it doesn’t happen. I sit up, look over, tall and thin, pale, long deep thick wavy dark-red hair, freckles on her cheeks and across the bridge of her nose, brown eyes the color of cocoa, thick pouty lips like cherry pie, no lipstick. She’s wearing a white short-sleeved sundress with little skulls all over it, red skulls, black skulls, yellow skulls, blue and pink and green skulls, her black Converses and little black socks. She’s crushingly beautiful, and doesn’t appear to be trying to be at all, and the dress, the black humor of it, the mocking cuteness of it, make her more so.
Nice dress.
She smiles, straight white perfect teeth.
Thank you.
Dig the shoes too.
They’re comfy. Good for walking around.
Where you from?
The Northlands.
I laugh.
Which one of them?
One of the ones in the North.
I laugh again. She motions to my notebook.
What are you writing?
A book.
A book. Wow. Fancy.
I laugh again.
What is your book about?
You know Le Misanthrope?
The play by Molière?
Yes.
Yes, I know Le Misanthrope.
She says Le Misanthrope with an almost perfect French accent.
I’m writing a book based on Le Misanthrope, but set today, in New York.
She laughs.
Is that funny?
She nods.
It is.
Why?
Nobody will read that.
Why?
Le Misanthrope is about the biggest dickhead in the world.
He’s a man of integrity.
All he does is bitch and moan and complain.
He’s in love, he’s tormented.
He’s in love with the meanest, most miserable wench on the planet.
I laugh.
I guess you don’t like Le Misanthrope.
I’m sure it was wonderful three hundred years ago, but now? Don’t write that book. It will be awful, and no one will read it.
You a literary critic?
Nope.
Writer?
God, no.
Just like sitting down next to writers and harassing them?
You’re almost cute. Almost.
She smiles and holds her index finger close to her thumb, almost.
I figured I’d sit with you and see what you were doing.
Now you know.
I don’t fuck writers, though. They’re drama queens. I did it once and the poor boy cried and wanted to snuggle after we were done.
What makes you think I want to fuck you?
You don’t?
I shake my head, lie.
Nope.
She smiles, motions toward my hand.
May I?
I nod, she takes my hand lifts it slowly toward her mouth. She opens her lips slightly, thick and pouty like cherry pie, no lipstick, looks me straight in the eye, puts my index and ring fingers into her mouth, and she sucks them. Her mouth is warm, soft and wet, and her eyes are staring into mine, light brown the color of cocoa. She pulls my fingers slowly out, her tongue running along the bottom of them, her lips surrounding. I’m breathless, my cock is immediately and instantly hard, and I want to fuck her more than anything in my life. When my fingers are out, she sets my hand in my lap, never looks away.
Now?
Yes.
Yes?
Yes.
She smiles. My fingers are still warm, wet, my cock hard.
And I’m not much of a snuggler, so you don’t have to worry about that.
She laughs.
And a writer? Are you much of one of those?
Yes.
What have you written?
I hold up my notebook.
That’s it?
I have a few more of these.
Published?
Not yet.
So you’re a pretend writer.
No.
You’re not a real one until you’re published.
If that’s how you think of it, cool. It’s not how I do.
How do you?
That it’s just time. That when I do publish I won’t be any more of a writer than I am now, I’ll just have done more work.
What kind of books do you want to write, besides Le Misanthrope, which you definitely should not waste your time doing.
I want to burn the fucking world down.
She smiles.
I like that.
It’s a beautiful perfect smile.
Thank you.
Maybe I will fuck another writer.
I smile.
What do you do?
What do you think?
No idea.
I’m tall and thin and I wear cool clothes.
Sounds like a good gig.
It is.
How do you get a gig like that?
Genetics and luck.
Pay well?
Ridiculous.
What do you do in your free time?
Play.
What’s that mean?
She smiles.
It means I play.
We stare at each other for a moment, pale green and light brown like cocoa. My heart is beating, nerves tingling, I’m dizzy and I’m high. Something about her. Eyes or hair or lips, smile, attitude, her long thin pale legs, the slight accent from the Northlands, the skulls on her dress, the way my fingers felt in her mouth, that she knows Le Misanthrope, that she hates my book idea that she likes the idea of burning the world down that my cock is still hard. Something about her. The way her skin felt when she touched my hand. Something about her. Her deep thick heavy red hair. Something about her. The shampoo she used or the soap, pheromones, I don’t know, something. My heart is beating, nerves tingling, I’m dizzy and I’m high. I want to kiss her, taste her lips, suck her tongue. I want my hands on the insides of her thighs, the arc of her ass. I want to kiss her neck, chest, I want her nipples hard between my teeth. I want to lick her ass, her pussy, her clit, move inside her, stay inside her, deep hard and wet, eyes locked, hands, the tips of our fingers.
I want to hear her moan.
We stare at ea
ch other for a moment, pale green and light brown like cocoa. She leans forward and she softly and slowly blows on my cheek, her breath is sweet I close my eyes she blows on my cheek sweet breath and warm. When she stops I open my eyes, she’s smiling.
Time for me to go.
Why?
I have things to do.
What?
Things.
I laugh.
What’s your name?
I’ll tell you next time we see each other.
When will that be?
I don’t know.
You have a number?
Let’s leave it for the Gods to decide.
I laugh.
The Gods?
I am from the Northlands, we still believe.
She stands.
Until.
I nod, smile.
Until.
She turns and walks away and though I want to stare I want to follow her I want to go wherever she goes I don’t. I look down at my notebook black ink on brown paper. I look up at The Gates of Hell at the lust and pain and ecstasy and horror towering over me immovable and permanent. I look into the blue of the sky endless and beautiful.
I can still smell her, feel her breath on my cheek sweet and warm.
My cock is still hard.
Until.
* * *
My new best pal is a garbageman named Philippe. He’s from a fancy French family that owns hotels and vineyards, but decided to spend his compulsory military service on the back of a garbage truck instead of running around in the woods pretending to be a soldier. We met through an American girl he dates, to whom I used to sell cocaine in America. She came here to work for her father’s very large global real estate company and she heard I was in Paris and tracked me down and I went out with her and Philippe we met at a fancy bar off avenue George Cinq filled with young French professionals. We ended up at Polly Maggoo yelling at tourists, pissing in the gutter, eating sandwiches from Maison de Gyros, and vomiting into the Seine from Pont Neuf I woke up on the ground beneath Fontaine des Innocents. It was a wonderful evening, though I remember very little of it. We went out the next night I woke up in square du Temple. We went out the night after that I woke under a tree on boulevard de Clichy. Philippe has the type of hours and the type of job that are conducive to bad behavior. He starts work 4:30 a.m., finishes at 10:30 a.m. It doesn’t matter if he smells because he handles trash all day. It doesn’t matter if he’s sick he just blames the garbage. When he’s done he sleeps until 5:00 or 6:00 p.m. If he has a date with his girl he goes out with her. If he doesn’t he comes and finds me, sometimes at my apartment, sometimes at Polly Maggoo, sometimes at Shakespeare and Company, sometimes at Stolly’s. He loves to drink, smoke, laugh, eat, yell, wander, he’s always down for trouble, for an adventure, for doing something most people would regret but that makes us holler with joy. And he is my one friend who does not live in my world. Who is part of and can move easily within the higher echelons of French society. He has a large apartment in the 8th arrondissement, the fanciest and most upscale part of Paris. He can go to popular clubs and most likely knows the people who own them. He summers in the South, on the Mediterranean, where his family has a house in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, halfway between Nice and Monaco. Most of the time we go out, he is dressed in nice clothing, pressed pants and tucked-in button-down shirts, a sport coat with a nice label and suede shoes. His wallet is always full, he’s going to business school when he finishes his service, he’ll doubtless be successful doing whatever he wants to do. For now, though, he’s a garbageman, and a drunk, and a maniac. And my new best pal. Encouraging me to have another drink, talk to a girl I might otherwise ignore, showing me places in Paris I wouldn’t know or know to look for. He takes me to a joint in the 11th that sells absinthe if you know the secret password (Rimbaud), and not the fake shit that most people drink, but the real juice that makes you smile and buzz and hallucinate and dream. He shows me where to buy cocaine in Saint-Denis train station, and which dealers will rip me off and which won’t. He gives me the addresses of two bordellos, one in the Marais and one in Montmartre, where the girls flirt and you can smoke hash from a hookah and they have steam rooms and hot tubs and massages between sessions. He takes me to Les Bains Douches to laugh at and make fun of celebrities and gawk at the models we see on the covers of magazines. He often pays for everything, despite my protests, says every penny is worth it, that his French friends are more concerned with politics and business and the vintage of the wines they drink than having any real fun and raising any real hell. Sometimes he brings a briefcase with him, in which he keeps his green garbageman uniform, sometimes he puts it on while we’re out, sometimes he vanishes in the middle of whatever we’re doing, I know he’s going to do his job and I’ll see him soon enough. And though he has never seen or read a word of anything I’ve written, he is the first person I know who believes in what I’m doing and doesn’t think I’m insane for doing it. If you want to be a great writer, Jay, he says, you need to live and see and feel and dream and love and fuck and cry and fail and scream in the streets and get kicked right square in your fucking nuts, all the great writers did those things, and you’re doing them and you’re wonderful at them, especially the getting kicked right square in your fucking nuts part, so of course someday you’ll write a great book, and everyone will hate you and you’ll get in a shitload of trouble and you’ll sit at home and laugh your head off about it, of course! And though it’s not the type of endorsement that will get a book on the shelves or into the canon, it means something to me, that maybe I’m not crazy, that maybe I will pull this off, that maybe my way will be the right way for me, it means fucking something. And so I take his advice. Live and see and feel and dream and love and fuck and cry and fail and scream in the streets and get kicked right square in my fucking nuts.
* * *
My relationship with the couple who own and run the boulangerie below my apartment continues to deteriorate. Though I still go there daily, and oftentimes twice daily, they seem to be growing increasingly hostile toward me. My order has been refined so that I always get one of two things, either a baguette or a sandwich poulet, which is a ten-inch piece of baguette with chicken and lettuce and tomato and mayonnaise in it. Despite still trying to speak French and be friendly, when the Old Lady sees me she stops smiling and asks in her sternest voice: Sandwich ou baguette? When I answer she hands me the product and takes my money and glares at me until I leave. Good times, man, good times with my neighbors, good fucking times.
* * *
I meet a girl named Suzie at Café de Flore. We’re both sitting outside, facing boulevard Saint-Germain, squashed into the small chairs at the small tables drinking the small coffees mine is black hers is a café crème. We’re next to each other she’s reading a magazine I’m reading Justine by Lawrence Durrell. Our legs keep brushing against each other, accidentally or not, at one point we both put down our reading material to watch the crowds walk by there is no greater city than Paris and maybe no greater café than Flore to watch the crowds walk by. It’s late afternoon I offer to buy her a drink she orders champagne and though I don’t normally drink it, I order one as well. She has long black hair, blue eyes, she’s wearing a Chanel dress and heels, works in fashion PR, sending out invitations for fashion shows and deciding where people get to sit, an endeavor she compares to being a referee at a knife fight, people will kill each other for the right seat, and kill her if she doesn’t give them what they want. She’s from England was raised in Knightsbridge, educated in Switzerland, spent her summers at her father’s estate in Gloucestershire, she has thin arms, beautiful hands, French manicure. Her accent is a delight, each word delicate and sophisticated and somehow more intelligent and considered and wonderful than any of the words I speak in my slow, base American drawl. We talk about people walking by imagine who they are and where they’re going we talk about the current American president who she thinks is a jackass we debate whether Michelangelo or Raphael is greater,
whether we prefer the Rodin Museum or the Picasso, whether le Centre Pompidou is a beautiful building or absurd. We switch from champagne to whiskey we play footsie under the table we move closer together our hands start to play in the same way as our feet. I pay our bill and we leave walk through Saint-Germain it’s a clear hot summer night and it feels like the world is shimmering. We walk along the boulevard past the lights from glittering cafés through the crowds drinking and eating. We walk down rue de Buci no cars no vehicles, chairs and tables in the street all of them full there’s laughter and words and the eyes of a thousand people seeking love and sex and conversation and ideas. It’s hot and dark and Suzie and I are holding hands walking flirting playfully bumping each other, we stop for ice cream, we get one cone to share, I watch her tongue sliding along the strawberry crème and I want them both in my mouth. We cut up rue de Seine it’s darker less crowded she takes me into her building a beautiful perfect charming Paris house three or four hundred years old converted into apartments, there’s one per floor, she’s on the second floor, I’m walking up the stairs behind her watching staring wanting imagining knowing what’s going to happen.
She opens the door.
We step inside.
She hangs her keys, turns around, smiles, asks me if I want a tour.
I say no, I don’t want a tour.
I step forward.
Kiss her.
Lips and tongues and breath.
I press her against the wall.
Hands held above her head with one of mine.
Lips and tongues and breath.
I smell alcohol and cigarettes and the summer, I smell the fading remnants of her perfume. I smell the anticipation of sex.
Lips and tongues and breath.
Hands.
Up her dress in my pants.
Wet and hard.
Lips and tongues and breath and hands wet and hard.
We’re both drunk, drunk enough for inhibitions to be gone, but sober enough to know what we’re doing, sober enough to know how we want to do it. She moves off the wall leads me into the apartment a sofa in the living room light is streaming through a tall French door it is otherwise dark. She pushes me onto the couch, takes out my cock and lifts her dress, climbs into my lap. I pull the dress off her shoulders the straps of her brassiere with it, she sits on my cock and I start kissing licking and sucking her tits.