“Well, yes...” I lit a cigarette, rubbed my eyes. “She came here for a semester, study abroad. Reason why we broke up in the first place. Kept insisting that I visit. So I went ahead and put it all on a credit card, let her know I was on my way. She wrote back to me a week before my flight. Told me she was seeing someone. Guy named Howard... Oops, I guess.”
The Sea Captain put his hands to grizzly cheeks, giggled. Translated for his companion. The student slouched low. Forehead against his knees. Sighed. Straightened. Asked me in English who this Howard was.
“Englishman,” I told him. Stole three heartbeats from my drink, considered it, then added: “He’s a flight attendant.”
Upon hearing the Italian, our Sea Captain bellowed with laughter. Stomped. Spat on the floor. “The skies are no place for a real man!” he proclaimed, then fell back into mirthful seizures.
“Paris is no place for me,” I told him.
The Sea Captain nodded emphatically, and downed his drink. Reached for his backup. Ice cubes barely given a chance to melt as he halved it, trickles of pineapple and gin navigating his beard.
His companion asked for an update. I filled him in. He sighed, placed a hand on my knee.
Three loud barks ripped through the smoke and kind theatrics.
I turned in my seat.
There was that greatest of Danes. All four paws, perched on the floor. Tail raised. Menacing growls directed at a pair of men in black leather jackets.
Then three more barks, followed by an endless invective. Summoning the doorman, whose Adam’s apple bobbed with concise, French commands. His orders were met with indignant arguments, prompting the dog to join the fray, all culminating with expulsion, both leather boys lobbing angry expletives as they left.
Words even I could understand.
The Sea Captain laughed, currency of the open waters. He leaned over, smacked my shoulder. Began to spout Italian from chapped lips. Drunk. Forgetting for the moment that ours was a relationship built on Spanish songs.
I turned to his companion for clarification.
“He says the dog is the security,” the student told me. “What do you call it, in the bars and the discotheques...?”
I lit a cigarette. “Bouncer?”
“Yes. He says the dog is the bouncer. The man will let anyone in and he will let anyone stay. But if the dog doesn’t like you, then you have to leave. Like our two friends with the leather jackets.”
Another one of those things that rang true with creative liberties, some inconvenient remainder that urged me to turn in my seat, just one more time. Expecting to cast my eyes across the bar. Coming face to face, instead, with an enormous snout.
Eyes peering into mine. Encased in rich, magnanimous black. Tail at full attention.
I stared right back, far beyond the earlier half of the universe.
Cigarette in my right hand becoming a tower of ash. Ready for the inevitable. Fully prepared, after all the quiet humiliations of the past few days, to be cast out onto unwelcoming streets by a beautiful, unwelcoming dog.
I closed my eyes.
Emptiness met by the feel of a hot, wet tongue against my mouth.
Opened my eyes.
More kisses, all across my face. Baptized by the world’s last remaining guardian.
I heard the Sea Captain laugh as my cigarette fell to the floor, and I wrapped my arms around the furry neck of my one true and only friend.
***
By the following night, I had reached my limit. Unwilling to watch as Helena made time with her French flight attendant. Or Bill delight in the carnal knowledge of dual, overhead pussy. Or any of the regulars with money to spend, a place to belong, or willing partner to deceive.
Finished my pint, holstered my bookbag, and casually strolled out of that English pub.
Glanced at inhospitable street signs.
Terrible with names, but always set to rely on the character of my magnetic pole.
Made my way to Le Crocodile.
Looking for a little face time with my new best friend.
Stumbled into the joint with smoke trailing from my lips.
Sat down the bar. Bottle of Bordeaux and half a fifth rocking me gently from side to side.
The bartender made her rounds, settled on me.
Experience had made a fortune teller out of this one, and she asked in plain English, “What would you like?”
I ran a little reconnaissance. No sign of the bouncer, hide nor hair.
“Where’s the dog?”
It was loud that night. She leaned in close. Tilted her head, ear to my mouth, nose as far from my rancid breath as it could point.
“Where’s the dog?” I repeated. “The Great Dane?”
She pulled back just a bit. Face close to mine. Her eyes changed colors. “Chevalier?”
“He didn’t tell me his name.”
“He is dead.”
I pursed my lips. Opened my mouth. Closed it. Opened it again, with an idiot’s lament: “Dead?”
She nodded. Sharp features casting sad, cinematic shades. “Yes.”
“How? When?”
“Last night.”
Again, “How?”
“He was poisoned.”
A brief dystopia ran through my mind. Chevalier bending down towards his food dish with a happy grin. Lips wet with anticipation. Tongue like a pink sleeping bag. Large bites, wet food all over his face. Wolfing it down, as all dogs were sworn to do. Maybe making it so far as fifty feet from his feeding post, when his stomach must have told him something was wrong. Maybe his insides split apart. Maybe they just slowly dissolved. Lying on his side. Legs kicking in a static race to outrun the pain. Whimpering. Blood trickling from his ears as he convulsed. Eyes wide. Going someplace else. Taking a little trip to some faraway place, beyond the sea.
Sunkist agony in the few minutes it took to die at someone else’s hand.
Didn’t feel the teardrop till it landed on my arm.
The bartender reached out to touch my hand.
I pulled away. A mean, ignorant reflex. Absolute rejection of the kindest act any one person had yet to display since touching down.
“I need a drink.”
She looked hurt. Never occurred to me she might be missing him too.
No bouncer left to kick me out for bad behavior, and she cleared her throat. “What would you like?”
I thought about apologizing. Then I didn’t. Closed my eyes and pressed an index finger somewhere along the cocktail list.
Wasn’t that how I had gotten here in the first place?
***
The drinks were loaded. I was loaded.
And my only friend in this horrible city had been murdered. From the inside out.
I stood up from the barstool.
Made for the door.
Paused long enough to grab a chair. Folded it in half, and tucked it under my jacket. Somehow positive this would provide enough cover to allow the theft to go unnoticed. I walked past the scarecrow and into the streets.
The door closed behind me.
Silence strolled in, paired with a thin layer of mist.
I leaned the chair against my leg and lit a cigarette.
Exhaled into the damp air. “So that actually worked...”
I picked up my stolen treasure and made my way towards the gardens of Luxembourg.
***
I scaled the fence, careful to keep my crotch from the sharp ends of Flur De Lis.
Reached over and lifted the chair onto my side.
Found a bench. Pulled a bottle of wine from my bookbag. Had a few drinks.
Picked up a stray copy of Le Monde, its soiled headline reading Taliban Explique la Demolition de Bouddha.
Stretched out along bountiful splinters and closed my eyes.
***
The rain must have been coming down for a good ten minutes before I opened my eyes.
Raindrops fighting past the treetops. Seeping into my clothes. Running down my face and
into my mouth, nostrils struggling.
I sat up.
Still dark. I raised my head. Beyond the leaves, puzzle pieces made for a red, vengeful sky.
With my head imploding, clothes a wet swampland, I stood and moved on.
***
Found a commercial bank with a concrete overhang.
Concrete bench carved out of the wall.
Hardly mattered at that point. More water than waste, I was soaked to the bone.
Still, sleep wasn’t something I was about to reject.
The bench was too short for my body
I unfolded the chair and placed it at the end of the runway.
Laid my head down on the moistened cloth.
Closed my eyes.
Made my bed, three sheets to the wind.
***
Wasn’t the rain this time, but a police officer.
Flawless, pale face of an international pop star, all dolled up in uniform.
Tapping my shoulder for what was obviously some time now.
I let my eyes adjust to the gray morning light.
Took a fast look behind me. Bank wasn’t open yet. Or maybe it was a Saturday.
He didn’t waste time with French. “American, yes?”
I nodded. “Yes, officer. American. Sorry about that.”
“Passport?”
I reached into my back pocket, fairly certain that wouldn’t get me shot. Not in Paris, anyway. Five thousand miles from the goons of New York City, and I presented my documentation. Inexplicably dry. He thumbed through to the picture. Did a little comparison to the damp and bloodshot drunk stretched out before him.
He handed it back. “What are you doing in France?”
“I came to visit my ex-girlfriend.”
His mouth opened slightly. The uncertain reaction towards cancer, death in the family. Unwanted pregnancy. He shook his head. “You should not have done that, my friend.”
“Yes. Believe me, I am so very, very sorry.”
He tipped me a smile of pure pity. Asked me to get on with my day. No need to haul me off on charges of vagrancy. Far as this story went, my time had been served.
***
I pressed the buzzer.
Waited.
Took a look around the French wilderness, waiting.
Lit a cigarette to make the time go by.
Let my finger announce my arrival once more.
The door opened.
There was Helena. Eyes red as mine. Makeup smeared. Distress call caught in her vocal chords. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“They killed Chevalier,” I said.
“Who?”
“I’m just here to get my stuff. But I can tell you all about it...”
She let me in, and the neighbors got some free entertainment that morning.
***
She asked me where the hell I thought I could go. My flight home wasn’t for another two days. I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t know my way. I was drunk. I was insane. I was a prick for disappearing. I was an asshole for coming back. I shoved what little I had into a red duffle. Couldn’t argue with a single point she made, and so I just stated what I could.
“This time, it was you.”
She began to cry.
I began to reconsider.
Then I remembered the kind, somber face of a beautiful dog.
Walked down the steps.
Out the door. Into the cold.
With a duffle bag of wrinkled clothes, two bottles of cheap French red, and less than fifty Euros in my pocket, I went wandering along the cobbled bloodlines of the old world.
I went wandering, with an invisible shotgun strapped to my back, in search of the men who killed Chevalier.
Color Test.
I was twenty-one with a bullet in my brain.
Doing time at The Bishop. Served by the best, buyback every fourth drink. Picking juke box songs with impunity. Staring into space over shots of Jim Beam, gray shades tapped into glass ashtrays.
Hustling tables at an Upper East Side five-star, taking orders from old money.
“Guests,” I muttered.
“What’s that you said?” Finley asked. Parked himself across from me, wiped the counter down.
“I said, Guests.”
“Why?”
“That’s what they got us calling customers now. Guests... Welcome to my house. Make yourself comfortable. Let me bring you some food, some good wine. Now give me money and go away, I’m expecting more guests.” I polished off another Budweiser. “What a duplicitous fucking world.”
Finley turned to a neighboring barstool. “You responsible for him this evening, Nelligan?”
Mister Danny Nelligan gave it some thought, shoulders hunched beneath his suit.
“It’s ok to say no,” I told him.
“What the hell,” Danny said, a little drunk himself. “Let’s get the kid a few more, see if he puts on a show.”
“Had a front row to the last one,” Finley said. Served a couple of cold ones and a double barrel of Beam. “I laughed, I cried. I threw him out of the bar.”
“You cut me off,” I amended.
“Cut you loose, baby.”
“When was this?” Danny asked.
Finley and I replied in unison: “Slice of pepperoni and a dead albino.”
Our bartender went to field a pair of Bombay Martinis.
Danny raised his glass. “To our jobs.”
“Servicing without the sex.”
“To Fox News and the Oceanic Grill.”
“Catering to the needs of the rich on the backs of the needy.”
“Sláinte.”
Down the hatch.
“Lucky,” Danny grimaced. “I’ve made a decision about you.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m getting you laid.”
“Again, thank you, Danny. Not gay.”
“Don’t flatter yourself. I have my standards.”
“Says the queer New York liberal working for Fox News.”
“My friend just walked in. Ana.”
I sniffed, took a pull of my beer.
“She’s quite the little number,” Danny continued. “Check her out. She’s at the end of the bar.”
I nodded, eyeing a soccer match up on the flat screen. “I know Ana.”
“You’ve met?”
“Kind of.”
“When was this?”
“Slice of pepperoni and a dead albino.”
“All this happened on the same night?”
“You should know. You were there.”
Danny searched his hard drive.
“And that,” I said, “is what we mean by kind of.”
Danny leaned in. Breathed into my ear. “Ana thinks you’re hot.”
“Nobody thinks that.”
“She’s an editor at FHM.”
“How is that even an argument?”
“When I pointed you out, first time…” Danny nudged me with intoxicated finesse. “She damn near lost it. When I told her you were twenty-one, she told me, I could suck his cock so good, make him come, and I bet he’d still be hard as a rock.”
The thought wasn’t a bad one. I kept the contents of my jeans to myself. Lit a cigarette. “Women like that don’t care much for guys like me.”
“Women like what?”
I took a drag, exhaled. “Elegant professionals. Yorktown is sick with them, and I can’t say I care much for their crowd. All wandering over from the east side Cosmopolitan belt. ”
“Please don’t blow smoke in my face, Lucky.”
“Please don’t blow smoke up my ass, Danny.”
A cluster of Manchester U fans erupted with jubilant cheers. Slammed pint glasses onto the counter, arms aloft.
Danny’s body played the buoy once more. Leaned in. His covert theatrics rang loud in my ear. “I’ve seen her pussy.”
“Jesus, Danny. You kiss your mother with that mouth?”
“My mother loves me just the way I am.” r />
“Finally, a homosexual with an original story.”
“It’s shaved.”
“Come again?”
“Her pussy,” David gushed, mashing his vowels together. “It’s beautiful. It purrrrs.”
“Interesting bit of trivia about your mother, there, thank you –”
“Ana. Ana Banana. Your banana inside Ana.”
“Buy me another fucking drink.”
“I’m tired of seeing this young, good looking, talented individual stumble out of here alone every night.”
“Introduce me sometime, I’ll show him the ropes.”
“You want to be published?”
“Yes.”
“She’s an editor at FHM.”
“Stop saying that.”
“You could slip her one of your stories.”
“For Him Magazine don’t have a goddamn fiction column,” I spat, snubbing my cigarette. “And if it did, here’s the kind of ditty they would publish.”
I yanked at a nearby napkin. Flattened it and sent my pen on a rampage. Didn’t notice Danny getting up. Didn’t notice him walk across the bar. I did take the time finish my beer, just as he returned with his catch.
“Lucky…? This. Is Ana.”
Ana stood before me in a black dress, fitted to her slender form. Cut short at mid thigh. Mesh stockings, legs generously dipped into a pair of black leather boots. I had the good sense to skip her breasts, b-cups already committed to memory, and took in her aquiline features. Olive skin. Brown eyes. Shoulder length hair parted down the middle, making a valentine of her face.
Her smile was all regards, cool and self-assured.
“Lucky was just writing a story for your publication,” Danny said. He snatched the napkin off the bar, thrust it against Ana’s shoulder.
She rotated the submission a few times, before settling. “My name is Chad,” she telegraphed, Australian accent struggling with my hieroglyphics. “I woke up one day and bought a copy of FHM because I’m a pussy, too gutless to buy porn. I like reading about tools, cars, and weight lifting. Then I jacked off while thinking about my favorite action hero…”
Ana’s eyes met mine.
I waited, overplaying a hopeful smile.
“I told you he was a genius,” Danny said. He forced her into his barstool, landed a quick kiss. “Have fun, you two.”
He stumbled away.
Left us sitting side by side.
“I left my drink at the end of the bar,” she said.
“Want another?”
I didn’t think she would say yes. “Dry martini. Smirnoff, with a twist. Up.”
I put in our order.
Finley took a quick time out. Tried to make sense of the scenario. Gave it up with an impeccable mix of vodka and vermouth for the beauty. Beer and a shot for the village idiot.
Ana lifted, drank without spilling a drop. “Nice story you wrote there.”