Morning came late that day. I remember the maid opening my door about seven a.m..
“Qui est là, ” I asked.
“Service,” she replied.
I also remember flinging my shoe toward her ignorant head as it poked through the door.
“Reviens après le lever du soleil, veux-tu?” I said.
The door slammed and I slept basically undisturbed until nearly three in the afternoon. When I did roust myself into an upright position the first thing I did was rummage through my day-pack for my sunglasses. My room was on the southwest face of the hotel, and the sunlight through the window lit my face. The day outside was bright and warm, and that sweet sticky spring air smell wafted in the window. I decided food was in order. After a quick shower I crossed the hall and jammed my room key into the elevator call. As an afterthought I knocked on Marie’s door, but the elevator opened without any signs of life emanating from her apartment.
Outside the hotel I found myself in a mood to go back to le disco and get twisted. No particular reason, it just seemed like a good idea. I headed off toward Cluny. It was only about six blocks. As I neared the restaurant where I’d met Stephan I paused at a tobacco shop. There were two men chatting inside, and behind one of them was a poster of a very happy latino man with a large cigar. Cubans! I stopped and went inside to grab a smoke. The man behind the counter seemed mildly annoyed to be drawn from his conversation.
” Jour. ” he said. The french take a great deal of pride in their language but they are as inclined to abbreviate as anyone else. This is the french equivalent of someone in Texas saying, “Mornin’.”
“Romeo et Juliets, s’il vous plaît.” Great little cigarillos those are. Small enough not to be overbearing, moist and tightly wrapped, they’d become a favorite of mine after one packet, but they were harder to find than the ‘Cristos.
The man pushed back a lock of his greasy grey and black hair as he scanned the cabinet looking for my smokes. Eventually he stuck a hairy hand to the top shelf where he’d found them. He thunked them onto the counter.
“Vingt-et-un francs.” he said, looking a little confused.
“Oui,” I responded. I tossed out a few pieces of french dingers onto the counter where they clinked about loudly. “Merci,” I said as I turned to go.
“Excusez, moi,” he said behind me, “votre argent. ”
“Royale,” he said without much emotion.
“De rien, ” I said turning back to the door. I stripped the cellophane from the pack and sat down at a table on the sidewalk outside the shop. The evening rush was beginning. The streets were filled with beeping cars and whirring mopeds. The sidewalks get quite crowded as the locals leave their office jobs. Many Parisians live in the same neighborhoods they work in, and the evening shops were opening up and down the street.
Life looks very simple sometimes. And Paris is full of life. A place is often who as much as where. I sat and watched people passing the cafe for some time. I was watching a young woman across the street carrying a small sack. She reminded me of someone I knew, but I couldn’t remember who. I was watching her dress wave in the breeze when I heard the men inside speaking. “Non. Seulement l’américainne. Regardez. ”
Without looking to see who they were speaking to I picked up my box of smokes and headed down the sidewalk. The Citroën with the blue lights on top which was double-parked on the street re-affirmed my suspicions. I turned the corner and broke into a full run, toward the river. When I reached the restaurants the streets were filled with early diners and late tourists, so I slowed to a quick walk and extracted a hair tie from my pocket. I pulled my hair into a pony-tail and slipped into the cafe where I’d dined the night before.
Stephan greeted me at the door. “Ahh, bonjour. Comment allez-vous?” he said.
“Bien, Stephan, très bien. Et vous?” I replied walking past him, hoping he’d seat me well inside the restaurant. He did.
“Oui, Stephan. De l’eau du robinet, s’il vous plaît. Avec des glaçons.”
He looked disappointed. “Nous avons seulement Evian.”
“Whatever,” I said looking behind me out the window. I looked back to Stephan. He looked confused, so I said, “Bon, Evian est bon.”
“Oui, très bien.” He spun away and dashed off to the back. “Stephan, avez- vous vu Marie aujourd’hui? ”
“Ce soir. Après vingt heures. ” he said, not looking back.
Outside the crowd was thickening, but it was the blue flashes on the wall in front of me that told me why. I didn’t wait on my water. I found a door beside the restroom and went down the stairs.
I wasn’t certain of anything except that I didn’t feel like answering questions. I’ve always had serious reservations about authority figures. And the french police don’t do reservations.
I found myself around the corner behind them. The alley to which the stairway led opened to the street they were trying to use. It was a one-way street, like most in Paris. By the honking and yelling I could tell they had passed me already so I peered around the corner toward them.
The two cops making the ruckus outside the restaurant weren’t uniformed, they were on some type of investigative bent, jotting notes and asking questions. One was tall with a Snidley-Whiplash-looking moustache, the other a slight female with a huge white mulatto-type blotch on her face. They’d parked their car abruptly in front of le disco with one wheel on the sidewalk, lights flashing, and apparently were questioning pedestrians at random.
The disco plan I’d made lost considerable appeal pretty much immediately. I decided to try sightseeing somewhere away from where I was. The most direct route away from the police was rue du St. Michel. It leads directly to the Montparnasse district, a very neon-and-espresso area occupying about 10 or 12 square blocks in central Paris. I struck out with that city-dweller-on-a-mission pace and my eyes firmly directed at the ground. 
Which is why I crashed blindly into the bag of groceries. Actually it was the same young woman I’d seen leaving the épicerie earlier. She looked a bit stunned as we rebounded off each other. I was trying to remember how to say pardon in french when she recognized me.
“Didn’t I just see you running from the cafe?” she asked.
She was speaking English. American-English. And she looked familiar.
“What cafe?” I said. When in doubt, play dumb.
“It was you,” she said, gathering the handles on her cotton sacks, “Why the hurry?”
“Uh- hurry?”
“Come on,” she said. “Wait a minute, I know you. You were hanging out with that weird Valaire girl last night.” She’d been inching away from me, but she suddenly came very near, looking closely at my eyes. ” Brown,” she said, “how unusual. And so clear….”
“Courtney?” I couldn’t believe it. Pull the earring out of their nose and some people look completely different. She was neat and bright-looking, hardly a trace of makeup.
“Yeah! You’re Trouble, right?”
I cringed and replied, “So they say.” I wondered how all these people knew that name.
“What are you doing out here?” she asked. Her eyes traveled from my feet to my eyes. She had the look of a child staring at a candy store, and it really truly frightened me. “You’re up early,” she said, “Shouldn’t you be… sleeping or something?”
“Sleeping?” I asked. It was late in the afternoon, nearly five. The streets were filling with the frenetic dance of rush hour. The smell of kitchens and espresso wafted through the breeze. I couldn’t imagine where she came up with sleep. I did the polite laugh and hoped she wouldn’t explain. “No, I’d just gone after some food when the excitement started.”
She looked puzzled. “What excitement?” she said.
“Well, I have this thing about cops. I’m allergic to guys with badges.”
“But why were you -”
The hi-lo wail of a police siren drowned the rest of what she said. It started suddenly and very nearby. The sound of its tires screeching to a halt came as soon as the wail started. When I looked however I saw different police officers – demanding right of way through the snarled traffic. I unclenched my teeth just as I felt Courtney pulling the back of my shirt. She dragged me down a side street and into a row of maisonettes.
“What do they want with you?” she asked. We were walking quickly, passing people walking the same direction we were. She’d apparently not noticed the police were unconcerned with us.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “I think maybe I’m just paranoid.”
“I don’t think they saw you,” she said, ” but we need to keep moving. The police here are slow but well connected.” We turned a corner and the commotion behind us all but disappeared. “Did you hear about Marie?” she asked.
“Who is Marie?” I replied. Playing dumb can be an art.
“Oh,” she said. She looked let down I didn’t know of whom she spoke, “she’s a… club kid around here. Or she was, I should say. They found her this morning in her apartment..”
I thought Marie was a tramp myself, but the possibility it might make the morning news hadn’t occurred to me. “What do you mean, ‘ found her’?” I asked.
“She was all dead, you know, like snuffed.”
Great, I’m thinking. I’ve found a bunch of new friends and they’re as fucked up as everybody I know back home. And they command a masterful use of language. And they’re killing each other. Marie was cool, even if she did ditch me. I understand though… not everybody likes licorice. I started wondering again about why I attract this element of humanity when Courtney said, “It’s okay though, she was a bitch.”
“That’s too bad,” I mumbled. I thought she was pretty cool. The thought of her dying across the hall from my peaceful slumbering sent a wave of nausea over me. I wondered if I could’ve slept through a commotion like that, or even if the police would’ve let me. “Where did they find her?”
“I don’t know. She was well known and they reported her murder this morning, no details. You know, just hype.” She looked away. “It could’ve been suicide for all they know. There’s nowhere safe anymore anyway.”
She led me up the hill, into an area filled with studious looking young people. We took several alleyways and doubled back once or twice. I was totally lost and feeling quite stunned about Marie. After a few minutes we came to Courtney’s building. As we climbed its white italian marble stairs I realized it wasn’t an apartment building but a huge dwelling. The foyer was lit through the ten-foot windows which framed the ten-foot doors. Massive black doors opened into a foyer with a large library to the left and a sitting room on the right. Directly ahead was a grand dining-room/ballroom in which she left me to sit.
The room was massive. It’s walls were an aged white, but everything that wasn’t wall was done in gold leaf. It was at once beautiful and indulgent. At the center of the room was a gold trimmed marble-topped dining table with forty-two matching chairs.
When she finally returned she handed me a white button down shirt. “You can change into this,” she said. Then she produced an empty cotton shopping bag like the one she’d been carrying earlier. “And carry your stuff in here.” She looked at the double doors which opened onto the balcony above the hall, then out the still- open front door. “You’ll find St. Michel just past the fountain there,” she said, pointing down the hill. “I’m sorry I can’t be of more assistance, but I’m new here and I’m not very good at knowing what you people need.”
I wasn’t at all certain of what she’d meant by ‘you people’ but I was grateful for the shirt. The pullover sweatshirt I’d been wearing was bright red and easy to spot.
“I’m sorry you have to leave,” she said leading me toward the door.
I got the distinct impression that she was telling me it was time to leave. I also thought she was expecting someone soon.
“Stop by tomorrow and I’ll show you an american’s Paris.” she offered. She helped me through the door with one hand on my arm and one in the small of my back. I stepped onto the sidewalk and dropped my shirt and cigars into the sack.
I started away, waved and said, “Thanks. I’ll get the shirt back then as well.”
“Oh, no problem. I’ve got plenty.” she replied.
I heard her say, “Bonsoir,” over my shoulder. I’m so sure, I thought.
Next Week: Time for a little Espresso and Sunset….
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