“I don’t know,” I say. I’m really hungry and really cold. On the other hand, I just met this guy and he’s talking a lot about teeth and that’s a saw sticking out of his tool bag.
Jules shrugs. He says goodbye and heads off. I strum my guitar, thinking I’ll hang out for another hour. Maybe get a few more euros. Then I’d have enough for a hot meal in a cheap café. I’m a few bars into “Wake Me Up When September Ends” when my A string breaks. I don’t have any spares.
I turn around, looking for a man in orange. I spot him. He’s a few yards away, about to turn a corner.
“Jules! Hey, Jules!” I shout.
He turns around. “What?”
“You have any guitar strings on you?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay.”
“Okay, what?”
What am I so worried about? A serial killer would solve all my problems.
“Okay, wait. I’m coming.”
23
She’s good,” Jules says.
“She’s skinny,” the bald man says, looking unhappy.
“So?”
“So? So she’ll eat all the food in my kitchen! Why do you always bring me stray dogs? Constantine. Virgil. Now this one!”
Jules plants a kiss smack on top of Rémy’s shiny head. Rémy swears at him. Jules tugs on my jacket. “Come on. This way.”
I hear Rémy tell a waiter, “No one cares if she’s good. Customers don’t want to see talented girls. They want pretty ones. With big boobs.”
“I’ll be sure to bring some next time,” I say. Rémy doesn’t hear me, but Jules does.
“Don’t pay any attention to him,” he says. “He’s always like that.”
“You think anyone hassles Jack White about his boobs?”
“Forget it. All that matters is the food. He’s got stew tonight. I can smell it.”
We walk through the tiny restaurant, past a zinc-topped bar, to a stage that’s no bigger than a manhole. There’s no mic. No speakers. No nothing.
I change my broken string, tune up, and then we play. Badly at first, until our hands warm up, then a bit better. Jules sings lead. I do backup. It’s not terrible, but still, everyone pretty much ignores us. I glimpse Rémy walking around. He’s frowning. He comes up and says, “Sing sad songs. People drink more when they’re sad.”
So we do. We play some Jeff Buckley, some Simon and Garfunkel, and various other downer tunes for an hour or so, until Rémy motions us to the bar. There are bowls of beef stew waiting for us, and a basket of crusty bread.
Jules smiles at me. “I told you we’d eat.”
The stew is so good. It’s beyond delicious. It’s like a blood transfusion.
“Hey, Jules, this is amazing. Thanks for bringing me here,” I say, between bites.
He’s about to say something back, when this guy comes over, takes the spoon out of his bowl, and starts eating his food. I’m kind of concerned until I see them kiss each other on the cheek.
“This is Virgil,” Jules tells me. “Virgil, this is Andi. I found her at the Eiffel Tower. She’s good.”
“Then what’s she doing with you?” Virgil says.
He turns to me, and … like, wow, but he’s fine. Damn. I mean, really. He’s tall and lean with Lil Wayne dreads and a soul patch. He’s got high cheekbones, light brown skin, eyes as warm as coffee. He pulls out a barstool next to Jules and sits down.
“What are you doing here? You heading into the cats tonight?” Jules asks him.
“No, I’m working. Just came to see you play.”
“The cats?” I say, puzzled.
“The catacombs,” Jules says. “Virgil’s a big-time cataphile.”
I know what the catacombs are, but I’ve never heard of a cataphile. “It sounds vaguely illegal,” I say.
“It’s very illegal,” Virgil says. “We go into the closed-off sections at night. Try to map new tunnels. Find new rooms. It’s only dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. Mostly it’s fun.”
“Dark tunnels and dead people,” I say. “Yeah, sounds like a great time.”
“When does your shift start?” Jules asks him.
“Midnight,” Virgil says. He tells us he came into the city early. There’s been trouble again. Between some kids and the police. He wanted to get out before dark. Before someone messed with his cab.
He tells me that he’s a taxi driver and that he lives with his parents in a cité—a housing project—in the banlieue, or suburb, of Clichy-sous-Bois. Which is about ten miles out of the city center. I’ve heard of Clichy. It’s a tough place, like a lot of the banlieues. A few years ago, two boys were killed there during a police chase. Their deaths sparked riots that went on for days.
“I thought the trouble was over,” I say.
He shakes his head. “The trouble’s never over.” He changes the subject. “Where you from?”
“Brooklyn.”
His eyes light up. “You know Jay-Z?”
“Um, no. We don’t exactly move in the same social circles, Jay and I. Why? Are you an MC?”
“I’m a hip-hop master,” he says.
“He’s a hip-hop disaster,” Jules says.
Virgil flips him off. “I’m writing my own stuff,” he tells me. “It’s a mix. Hip-hop. World. Funk. Roots. It’s all there.”
“Are you signed?” I ask him.
He shakes his head. “I want to do it on my own label.”
Jules smirks. “Good thing. Cuz Cash Money don’t want you doing it on theirs.”
Virgil ignores him. “After I get my own label, I’m going to have my own club. And a chain of restaurants and a line of clothing.”
“Is that all? You’ll never make it big if you think small,” I say. “What about an airline? Your own basketball team? A cable channel? And you need a mansion in the Shamptons if you want to hang with Jay.”
“You’re right. I do,” Virgil says. “As soon as I get it, you’re invited.” He hooks a thumb at Jules. “He’ll be there, too. Parking all my cars.”
I laugh. It comes out sounding rusty. Like how the Tin Man sounded before Dorothy oiled him. “Are your rhymes in French or English?” I ask him.
He snorts. “How many French hip-hop artists can you name?”
“There’s Joey Starr.…”
“Who else?”
“Well … um …”
“Exactly. Until Weezy starts rhyming in French, I’m rhyming in English.”
He asks me if I’ve ever seen Team Robespierre. Fischerspooner. Spooky Ghost. And a bunch of other obscure Brooklyn bands that no one in Brooklyn even knows.
“Fischerspooner?” I say, laughing again. “How do you know about them?”
“He knows every song ever written,” Jules says. “You should see his room, CDs floor to ceiling. He’s got the craziest tunes. Hunting songs from Somalia. Chants from monks in the Carpathians. Circus music from the twenties. Ragga. Zouk. Marching bands from Tennessee. You name it, he’s got it.”
“Why?” I ask, really curious.
Virgil shrugs. “Looking for inspiration, I guess,” he says.
“He wants to write the perfect song,” Jules says.
“Yeah, I do.”
“A song with the whole world in it. The good and the bad, the beauty, the pain,” Jules says.
“Christmas and funerals, coffee and rain. Bruises and roses and shit and champagne,” Virgil raps.
“Cigarettes, garbage cans, silver skull rings. These are a few of my favorite things,” I add, in my best Julie Andrews voice.
Virgil high-fives me.
Jules ups the ante. “Come on, Kanye, give us some.”
“With what? A mandolin?”
“Baby,” Jules says. “Girl. You a man? Step up.”
He leans over the bar, grabs an empty ice bucket, turns it into a beatbox. I walk back to the stage, pick up my guitar, and start giving out some loose, poppin’ Chili Peppers chords.
Virgil grins. “Yeah?” he says, looking
at me.
“Yeah,” I say, looking back.
“Yeah!” Rémy says. “You want to eat? Get your skinny ass up there.”
Virgil pats Rémy’s head on his way to the stage. Rémy swears at him. The three of us noodle around for a bit, work out some beats. Jules snatches one, stretches it, decorates it.
“That’s it,” Virgil says. “Right there.”
I mess around with a few chords until I get something that’ll work as a chorus, something else that’ll back a verse.
“Yeah, that’s good. I like that,” Virgil says.
He takes off his hoodie. He’s got a white T-shirt on. His arms are ripped. His butt looks nice in his jeans. So nice, in fact, that I bungle a chord staring at it.
He turns to me. “Nervous?”
“Yeah. No. Um, yeah.”
Somebody shoot me.
“Me too. When I hold up my hand—like this—it means switch to chorus,” he says. Then he starts laughing, and says, “This’ll never work. You know that, right?” He turns to the audience. “This is called ‘Banloser,’ ” he tells them.
Jules and I start to play. Virgil listens for a few beats, then holds up his hand. We shift to the chorus. He starts rhyming. And he’s good. He’s really good. We switch to the verse, stumble a bit, then pick it back up. And suddenly, it’s happening. The beats and rhymes and chords come together, and everything each one of us is giving becomes bigger and stronger than ourselves. Becomes music. Becomes magic.
“Hey ho Banloser
Call me robber, boozer
And substance abuser
Hey ho Banloser
Call me dole-cheating,
Work-beating welfare ruser
I don’t want to be no
Bad boy for life
Feeling rife
With the strife
And a knife
In my back
But I’m on the outskirts
Trying not to get hurt
Living in a desert
Of poverty and fear
I try to conform
Do no harm, be the norm
But I can’t transform
I can just persevere
I go to an interview
Try to get through to you
Show what I can do
But you don’t want to hear
You smile, but you won’t hire me
And if you did, you’d fire me
Cuz you do not admire me
You wish I’d disappear
Hey ho Banloser
Call me carjacking, bomb-throwing
Guided missile cruiser
Hey ho Banloser
When all I want is to stay off
The evening news, sir
Mr. Sarkozy
Can you hear my plea
Take a look at me
What do you see
You see a delinquent
But I work for my rent
And I’ve got the intent
To undo my torment
Mr. Le Pen
You’re not my friend
France says never again
But you were almost voted in
I say it’s time to bend
Time to amend, to transcend
Before history repeats itself
Again and again
Hey ho Banloser
Call me bruiser, refuser,
That’s what your views are
Hey ho Banloser
Can’t take it no more
Got to face my accuser
Feel my anger, my ambition
It’s a war of words, a war of attrition
Going to change my life, my condition
Through my own volition
Cuz out here it’s a competition
Every day’s a combat mission
I gotta ask permission
When all I want is admission
I’m no politician
Just a simple musician
Got my beats for ammunition
Going to rap my opposition
Cuz it’s plain to see
Out here in Clichy
That liberty, equality, and fraternity,
Are for the boys in the sixth
Not for me”
24
He finishes. There’s applause and whistling and cheering. It worked. Some damn how, it worked. We’re all laughing. Even me. Jules grabs an empty breadbasket off a table and passes it. It comes back with bills and coins. We do more songs. Some are Virgil’s—tunes that Jules knows and I do my best to follow. Some are covers that we all know. After an hour or so, we pass the basket again, then take a break so Virgil can eat.
“This is good money. We should do it again,” Jules says, handing out the take. “Hey, Rémy,” he shouts, “we’re coming back on Sunday.”
“I’ll alert the media,” Rémy says.
“You two in?” Jules says.
Virgil looks at me, then says yes.
“Andi?” Jules says.
I’m looking back at Virgil. At those warm brown eyes of his. “Uh, yeah,” I say. “If I’m here. I might be flying home Sunday, though.”
He looks away, glances at his watch. “I’ve got to go,” he says. He scarfs the last of his stew. “You staying, Jules?”
Jules shakes his head. “I’ve got to work tomorrow.”
“How about you?”
“I’m leaving, too,” I say.
“How?”
“Métro.”
He looks at his watch. “It’s past eleven. That’s too late for the Métro. I’ll take you.”
“What about me?” Jules says.
“You live two streets away. Walk.”
Outside Rémy’s, Jules kisses me goodbye and reminds me about Sunday.
“My car’s over there,” Virgil says, pointing across the street to a beat-up blue Renault. There’s a sticker on the side. It says EPIC TAXI—CALL 01 EPIC RIDE.
We get in and he asks me where I live. I tell him and ask him how long his shift runs.
“Midnight to eight.”
“That’s tough.”
“It’s not so bad. I go home, sleep, then use the afternoons to work on my music.”
“You can sleep during the day?”
“Pretty much. My sister and brother are at school. My parents are at work.”
“Your family, they’re all—”
“French. They’re French. I’m French. We’re all French,” Virgil says tightly.
“Um, actually? I was going to say musicians.”
“Sorry,” he says, and I can hear in his voice that he means it. “It’s just … difficult.”
“I gathered as much. From ‘Banloser.’ ”
“I was born in Paris. My parents came here from Tunisia when they were kids, but we’re still foreigners. Arabs. Africans. Rabble. Scum. We’re what’s wrong with this country and we always will be.”
“What’s your name? Your full name?”
“Virgil Walid Boukadida. What’s yours?”
“Diandra Xenia Alpers.”
“Wow.”
“You can call me Andi.”
“You bet I can.”
“Like you can talk?” I say, giving him a look.
“My mother teaches classical lit,” he says, laughing. “Her favorite poet is Virgil.”
The Decemberists come on the radio. “Grace Cathedral Hill.” We both lunge for the volume. His hand brushes mine.
“Sorry,” he says. But I’m not.
The DJ plays two more songs from Castaways and Cutouts. We don’t talk. We just listen. Most people can’t do that—just shut up and listen. I close my eyes, play some air chords. It’s so amazingly beautiful, that album. When it finishes, Virgil says that Picaresque is better. I can’t let that lie, so we argue about it until “Reckoner” comes on, then we shut up again. When it’s over, he asks me if I’ve ever seen Radiohead in concert. I tell him I have, and that their latest is awesome.
“You have it?” he asks, excited. “How? I
t’s not out yet.”
I tell him they played a small show in L.A. last week and tried out a few new songs on the crowd and that somebody recorded them and posted it on YouTube. “I’ve got the songs on my iPod. You can listen, if you want,” I say. “You have any earphones?”
“Don’t need them,” he says, pointing to the port on his dashboard.
I pop my iPod in and crank the volume up. Three songs later, we pull up in front of G’s house. Virgil peers out of the window at the crappy-looking doors, frowning.
“You’re staying here?” he asks me, turning the music down.
“It’s nicer on the inside.”
“I hope so.” Then he says, “So … how long are you here again?”
“Too damn long,” I say.
The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them and I wish they weren’t because they sound so shitty. I don’t want to sound that way, not to him, but I can’t help it. Shitty’s my default setting. Dr. Becker told me it’s a defense mechanism, a thing I do to push people away. It worked. Virgil’s not even looking at me anymore.
“Hey, thanks for the ride,” I say, trying to sound nicer.
He shrugs. “It was nothing,” he says, leaning over to kiss both of my cheeks.
He’s French, so it doesn’t mean anything, but I wish it did. I so much wish it did. Even though I know it’s a bad idea. I mean, I’ve already had to leave one country on account of a boy.
“Go inside,” he says. “I’ll wait.”
No one’s waited for me to go inside since I was in first grade and I tell him that, but he doesn’t move. So I do as I’m told. Which is novel. He doesn’t drive off until I’m inside the courtyard, with the door closed behind me. I hear his engine rev and then fade away and for a moment I wish this was Hollywood instead of Paris, so I could throw my stuff on the ground and run yelling down the road after him and catch up with him at a traffic light and tell him what a fool I’ve been.
But it’s not. So I pick my way through G’s creepy statues and columns and fountains, trying not to trip over anything. Alone and in the dark. As always.