Paris

by A. L. Trellis

I was sure I’d been to Paris. Over a decade ago, but the memories never went away. Pretty city. Smelled of urine in spots and the trains were hot like armpits, but I remember the Louvre, the Seine, the Arc de Triomphe. I didn’t get to the Eiffel Tower, maybe on purpose to deny that I was a tourist, but I saw it in the distance. Mostly I stationed myself nightly at an English pub called The Frog and Roast Beef and frequented a bookshop called Tattered Pages that had English language books (my French is embarrassingly elementary). I did get to Shakespeare & Co., but the store was a letdown. Nothing like I’d expected. Notre-Dame, on the other hand, exceeded my expectations.

By the end of my stay, I felt as though enough of the blood of Paris was in my veins, infused through hours spent walking on the banks of the river and drinking strong coffee and eating baguettes with brie. I’ll never be a Parisian, but I knew, upon leaving, that I’d return some day, and when I did, I’d drop back into the city with familiarity, like getting back in bed with an old lover.

But then Rudy accused me of lying.

“There’s no way you’ve been to Paris,” he said.

“What the hell makes you say that?”

“Well, for one, the Seine doesn’t flow through the city. You mean the Hoquet River. And there are bridges connecting the banks, but you mention the, what was it,” he struggled momentarily before remembering, “the Pont Neuf? No, no. That’s not right.”

“What? It’s the most famous bridge in the whole city.”

“You’re wrong.”

“Man,” I said, “That’s like saying there’s no Brooklyn Bridge in New York.”

Rudy didn’t respond, just did the smug thing with his eyebrows and smile when he thinks he’s right and the rest of us are idiots.

We were drinking at the time. Me: lager and bourbon; Rudy: 7 & 7, a ridiculous drink. I told him so.

“That’s a ridiculous drink.”

He shrugged and kept his smile going, making me all the angrier. Why do I spend time with this fool? We only know each other from work, but there I am swapping drinks with him three nights a week just because we’re the last two to leave for the day.

The next day, Rudy comes to my office and shows me a book about Paris. It has pictures of things I don’t recognize.

“See? See?”

“See what?” I ask.

“Show me where this Pont Neuf bridge is in this book.”

“I don’t have time for this.”

“Because you know you won’t find it. Because you’re lying.”

“Why would I lie about going to Paris?”

He shrugs his shoulders, then speculates, “To seem worldly, I guess.”

*

I endured Rudy’s taunts for a week.

“Bonjour, mon ami!”

“Stick it.”

“Excusez-moi?”

“Alright, enough.”

“Pardon.”

“OK, have you used up all your French? Can we move on?”

“Merci.”

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Well, you’d know, wouldn’t you, Monsieur.”

It got to the point where I contemplated going to HR and filing a workplace harassment complaint, but I hate HR. Biggest do-nothing department in the office. I decided to put up with this clown and do my best not to give him any ammunition against me. He baited me a few more times, but I’m busy, can’t you see?

*

I was enjoying, at last, the beginning of the end. Rudy moved on to other concerns, mostly the Prescott account (he was fighting for control) and his regular sparing with Jenkins, who no one liked but had the boss’s ear. But then I received just enough validation to make me pick at the scab.

“Look at this,” I said. “This story in the paper—it’s about a terrorist attack in Paris. They specifically mention Pont Neuf!”

“Where?” I directed his eyes to the mention of Paris’s most famous bridge.

“You feeling okay?” he asked.

“Never better.”

“You sure?” he said and slid the paper back to me. I looked it over. Seemed fine.

“What?”

“The bridge where they found the bomb is not Pont Neuf. It’s Pont Nerf.”

“What?

I looked at the article again. He was correct. Pont Nerf.

“You were close. Now I understand the confusion.”

“This is ridiculous.”

“I mean, Neuf… Nerf. Pretty close.”

“I’m sure it’s Pont Neuf. This is a misprint.”

“One letter off.”

“Ridiculous!”

“You know Nerf in French means nerve?”

“Of course.”

“Well, you’ve got some Nerf.”

“Shut up!”

*

My first bite of cassoulet was revelatory. Simple peasant dish. Duck meat, vegetables, broth, no bread crumbs like you’d think. That’s one way of making it, but the savory bowl I enjoyed in a bistro on Rue de Rivoli presented a cleaner bit of fare. One bite and I knew what all the fuss over French cooking was about.

“But cassoulet is not cassoulet without breadcrumbs,” Rudy said.

Why had I bothered trying to prove that I’d been to Paris, eaten cassoulet (sans chapelure) and stood in the Louvre? The taunts were waning now that he’d found a new target of humiliation, Miguel the intern.

“Is that your real name, the one your parents gave you?”

“Why?”

“It’s just,” said Rudy, “That you don’t really look like a Miguel. More like a Michael.”

“Are you for real?”

“What’s your ethnicity, if I may ask.”

“I don’t have to tell you that,” said Miguel.

“No, no, of course not,” said Rudy, adding, “Well then, Adios, Miguelito.”

“You’re an insufferable prick, you know that,” I said, rising to the defense of the intern. “The kid is named Miguel. Who the hell are you to question that?”

“Are you going to sit there and tell me he looks like a Miguel? Really?”

“And just what does a Miguel look like?”

“Do I have to come out and say it? Fine! Brown. A Miguel would look browner than this guy.”

“You’re a racist,” I said.

“No, I just don’t like pretention. Like when people lie about visiting Paris.”

And with that, I was again the target of Rudy’s mockery.

I uttered a string of sentence fragments seeking to prove, yet again, that I have been to Paris, which is how we got on the subject of what makes a cassoulet. By the end of the conversation, where I mentioned the Louvre, Rudy challenged me again.

“The Louvre? In Paris?”

“Of course.”

“Dude…”

“What? It’s the most famous museum.” I thought it over, then added, “In the world.”

“Is it?”

“Of course it is! And I was there. I walked through I.M. Pei’s glass pyramid. I saw the Mona Lisa.”

“And there you have it,” Rudy said. “The Mona Lisa is not in Paris. It’s housed in the British Museum.”

“Nonsense.”

“No, I’m quite certain. In fact, I have no idea what this Louvre you’re talking about is, but the museums of Paris don’t hold a candle to the ones in London, New York… even the National Museum of Montenegro has a superior collection of antiquities than anything you’ll find in Paris.”

“I cannot believe we’re having this conversation.”

“You started it,” said Rudy with a shrug. He left the room before I could collect myself sufficiently.

*

Ticket in hand, I queued as instructed. The rules for airline travel seemed to have changed somewhat since my last flight. Two years ago? Had it been that long? Now that I think of it, yes. It’d been two years. But that didn’t matter to me at the moment, shuffling with luggage toward the gate, as I thought of nothing more than what I’d do later that night in Paris, which of the old haunts I’d visit first, deciding after short debate that it would be the café Treize au Jardin. The café had made an indelible impression with its lovely cakes and strong coffee and the charming locals who sought escape from the office or to spend their days writing and reading.

I spent the plane ride trying to get through a novel by Camus, but the turbulence and elbow pokes from the large oaf seated next to me got to be too much, so I opened my notebook and made plans. What I’d do on my second day. My third. I had a week to myself. Not very long, but time enough. Skip the usual tourist traps and concentrate on what I’d missed last time. Maybe see the catacombs. And the Eiffel Tower, why not?

A little nauseous from the flight, I arrived no worse for wear at Cointrin Airport, gathered my luggage and was soon in a taxi. In my best French I asked the driver to take a route that would pass over the river. He didn’t understand. Damn! Rustier than I thought! In the rear view mirror his eyes surveyed me a bit then settled back on the road. He must have gathered that I was no stranger to the city because, soon enough, we went past the lovely water. I could only guess what the disreputable driver would have charged a less savvy traveler.

Checking into the Grand Hôtel Villa de France took a bit (my room was still being prepared) so I killed time walking through the neighborhood. Some shops appeared new, opened during the years I was away, and while they made me feel slightly unmoored, I recognized the Tabac where I tried my first Gauloises Blonde. I’ve stopped smoking since then, but… when in Paris!

Weirdly, they had no Gauloises in stock, so I settled on a pack of Mars Gold. One drag was all it took to remind me why I’d quit.

I spent the remainder of my afternoon trying to reorient myself. The further I strolled off the Rue du Jour the stranger things seemed. Gone was the smell of the city, the scent of fresh baked bread wafting from the alley behind a boulangerie, the aroma of smoke and coffee hovering over a sidewalk café, the mild fragrances of the elegant women in high heels clacking along the cobble stone streets. Instead the cafés looked exclusionary, places I’d need a password to enter. And the air reeked of acrid spice. The music was different. The people were mostly the same, only more aloof, not like last time, not like the welcoming Parisians I’d met before who’d gone a long way toward shattering stereotypes of the rude French.

That’s it, I thought. I should look up one of my old acquaintances. I’d gotten rather chummy with a man named Pierre, a sort of rogue from a picaresque novel. Harmless, but not afraid of getting into trouble. I decided to waste no further time and find him.

An hour later, I was sitting at the bar of Le Trappiste nursing a glass of beer when a man slapped me on the shoulder.

“You’re here! When did this happen?”

I had no idea who he was.

“What, you forget your friend already?”

“Pierre?”

“One and only!”

“You just look… wow, how long has it been?”

“Eh? Who knows? I don’t think that way.”

“You just seem so different.”

“Maybe you been away too long.”

“I have. I really have. I’ve been wandering around today and everything seems strange.”

“Well, you know, nothing is sacred. The businessmen look at a building with history and beauty and only see a chance to make money, so they say, ‘Fuck it! Tear it down!’ No respect for anything anymore, you know?”

Pierre articulated what had been bothering me. I suppose, in my naïve and romantic way, I assumed Paris would have preserved its treasures better, not succumbed to the whims of free market capitalism. Somehow I assumed Paris would be above such crass concerns, but alas, even Paris fell prey to the bottom line.

“I guess industrialists will always win,” I said.

“You got that,” said Pierre, probably not understanding me.

“Shall we get a drink somewhere?”

Pierre said he knew a place and took me down a series of streets that all began collapsing into each other, or so I imagined as we went further into the labyrinth of alleys and over the cobble stones eventually ending up in some sort of outdoor market, though the narrow path between too many vendors in too small a small space made the bazaar feel as though it were indoors. Not to mention the heat of so many bodies. I looked up and saw the sky with its many stars, more than one might image would be visible in such an urban setting. Yes, I suppose we were outdoors, though, flanked by carpet salesmen and a woman hocking cheap vases, the café was not of the charming sidewalk variety I’d craved.

“This is the best spot in the city,” he assured me. I must’ve been wearing my displeasure openly.

“Sit down. You’re likely tired from your trip. What would you like?”

I requested a cognac. Pierre nodded, then told me to wait right there. I watched him disappear into a crowd of men at the counter. There seemed to be no order to the place, everyone pushing their bodies into everyone else, all clamoring for the attention of a beleaguered barman.

When Pierre failed to return after thirty minutes exactly, I stood to leave. That’s when the three men who’d been sitting opposite me at a rug shop quickly made their way to my table, blocking my exit.

“Where you go?” one of them asked.

“I’m leaving.”

“You friend of Pierre?”

“Yes.”

“Come with us.”

The shortest of them lead while the other two locked my arms behind me and pushed me through a crowd of shoppers until we were in an alley outside the market. The noise of the haggling shoppers was great enough to cover my cries as the thugs roughed me up. Punch to the gut. Punch to the face. Repeat. Frisk. It didn’t take long for them to find my wallet.

Lying on the ground, I watched them flee the scene. I was grateful the punches had stopped. They might’ve knifed me and left me for dead.

Compounding my humiliation was the fear that somehow Rudy would find out. I’ll never say a word to anyone about the mugging, but Rudy has a way. The bastard.

I pulled myself into a sitting position, spied a small animal nearby. Probably hunting for the source of the rotten meat stink that hung in the air. No, Rudy must never learn of this. But I knew I couldn’t extend my time away from the office. No time to let the visible wounds heal.