Monday Shorts

Haven't posted one of these in a while but here's my last story for Sena's class. I tried to do with the short story what I do with the pantoums. I think I I got a bit closer to that with this:


“…Outcasts Always Mourn”


Pere Lachaise sits outside of Paris. City of Legend. City of Light. City of Love. A maze of the dead. Take the day and wander all you will, you still may never find him.

Echo and dream.

Here lies the poet. The priest. The madman. Le femme de lettres. The Lizard King. No one gets out alive.

“What is the answer?”
“What’s the question?”

Wander through the maze of the dead, the circle unbroken, their words and images still before you, echo and dream.

You still may never find him.

Here they lay in eternal exile. He for the love of Lord Alfred. She for the love of Alice. You for the love of him
.
City of Legend. City of Light. City of Love.

Tell me, do you remember? That day in St. Etiene? Lonely, you were and went wandering. Down the street, steps from your apartment, to Le Liberacion and there he was in a maze of men. You didn’t play. You watched and laughed. Strangers who were not strangers immersed in hot water, steam rising, almost blinding, obscuring from sight the casual faces. Casual. Easy come—easy go. Three men embraced, kissed, touched, groped, enveloped in steam, submerged in hot water as onlookers and passers-by beamed brotherly approval.

Fuck the pain away.

He walked with you to the door and out to the street. You ended up in a café where you were asked to leave when he kissed you.

‘Pas ici. Pas ici.’

Back at the bar in his hotel, he spent 70 Euro on a bottle of Bollinger. A small price to pay to count the stars on your back and fuck the pain away. To sleep beside you, oblivious to the sound of your heart beating. He wouldn’t ask for more. The damage is done. Sex is suicide. The next morning he gave you his card and asked you to come to Paris. You wrote your number on a post-it note and stuck it in the palm of his hand.

You wrote to me to tell me all about it. And that was the end of me.

Tell me. Do you remember the night we met? I was walking in the bar, you were walking out. You turned around and followed me in. I stood at the bar and ordered a white Russian then walked upstairs to the dance floor. Watched the crowd and told myself I wasn’t looking for you.

But there you were.

“Are we the only ones here who want to dance?” you asked, smiling.
“I guess so,” I said and you took my hand.

I sang along to the song they played out of bad habit.
“Look at you,” you said, “Singing me love songs.”

We sang. We danced. We drank too much and had to call a cab. The driver drove us across town to your apartment. Lakeshore Trail. There was no lake. There was no shore. There was no trail. There was a gazebo and a fountain in the middle of a cramped apartment community in the center of a suburban shopping distract. The apartment was dark and you stumbled in the hall as I followed you to the bedroom. You lit candles as I stood watching you. The candles burned dim, the cat sat on the dresser, green eyes glaring, angry to have her spot in the bed taken, jealous of the man who dared to lay in her space.

I lay beside you, head on your pillow, your hair black as the sky outside coming on midnight. Your body a map unfolding, sprawled across the bed. Eyes like autumn leaves, eyes, penny copper brown, piercing as a rusty nail, bloodshot from drinking. Lips, wet, the taste of lime, salt and tequila.

Lonely, black-hearted—all that I am or all that I was—was gone with a kiss. You whispered to me and then the ghosts disappeared—echo and dream.

Echo and dream, you lay beside me, blameless as Adam.

Blameless as Adam, unexpected as death, your fingers played me like a virtuoso, your skill undisputed—practiced as you were, so jaded so very young.

Lies like a cheap rug, you whispered to me, flattering words unneeded
with eyes such as yours.

My body was your terrain, myself a map unfolding, a place not traveled, a bright revelation. Fuck the pain away and caution and care be damned.

This was your shining moment.

Tell me. Do you remember the day you left? We tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. We tried to pretend that things were the same. We did the things we always did. I made dinner, you made margaritas. After dinner you went to pack and I stood alone in the kitchen, listening to music on the MP3 you gave me. Songs of love lost. Songs soaked in gin and regret. And there you were. Your arms around me, tears in your eyes.

“Someday,” I said, “you won’t even remember my name.”
“Don’t say that,” you pleaded.

Later that night, I lay beside you and counted the stars on your back, wrote my name along the curve of your spine with my fingertip and prayed you would not forget me.
That was ten years ago. Another lifetime has come and gone. I’ve danced with strangers who aren’t strangers. They’ve taken me home. They’ve touched me with your hands. We drank the margaritas you made. I’ve called them by your name.

They didn’t seem to mind.

Paris. City of Legend. City of Light. City of Love. Like love, Paris is and is not what I imagined it would be. Hemingway’s Paris is gone and yet remains. Truffault’s Paris is gone and yet remains. Echo and dream.

I stayed in the OOOPS hostel off the Latin Quarter. The room could barely contain the bed and was painted the mostly unsightly shade of green I had ever seen, but I could jump on line 6 or 7 to any tourist attraction. Shakespeare and Company was a walk away. There were films in the cinema plein air , and a market and a pizzeria down the street. At night I could go to the Marais as the guide book suggested. Dance at Raid and feel almost at home.

I did none of these things.

The trip was unplanned, my arrival unnoticed and consequently Paris all but escaped me.

One afternoon, however, I sat in the McDonald’s across the street from the Louvre. There was another American-- wealthy, well-dressed and clearly self-indulgent-- sitting with his daughter. “I shouldn’t have brought you here,” he said, “Junk food. You should be eating vegetables instead of quarter pounders and french fries.”

“Oh, Daddy,” she chided.

“Don’t you like vegetables? Epinards? Chou-fleur? Haricots?”

“I like chou-fleur. Daddy, why don’t I live with you?”

“Because you must stay here and learn more French.”

The girl looked down, clutching her doll, twirling the ribbon that hung from the doll’s hair. She spoke perfect French, as a passerby observed, “Qu’elle est mignonne la petite! Elle parle exactetement comme une Francaise.”

I tried not to listen. I ate my Big Mac like the consummate American tourist given in to my own predispositions and surrendered not to the City of Light.

Pere Lachaise. Maze of the immortal. The great and the not-s-so-great. On the street outside the gate a beggar begged for change. Across the street, a boy shouted after a girl in tight blue jeans hung low enough to let the red lace of her panties be seen. He whistled, he jeered, as any boy would do. She told him to “Fuck off,” in French and kept walking. He and his buddies laughed.

It’s all a game, isn’t it?

Tell me. Do you remember that night at the Seelbach Hotel? We sat in the bar where Fitzgerald drank. And “The Poet” wandered the halls looking for the Men’s Room, yelling, “Zelda! Zelda!” You read the tarot for me. The Knight of Cups in the Past; nine of Wands in the present; the Moon in the future.

“Accept the wilder, darker side,” you said.
But I could not.

Pere Lachaise. The maze of the dead. Maze of the immortal. Take the day and wander all you will. You may never find him.

Here lies the poet. The priest. The madman. . Le femme de lettres. The Lizard King. No one gets out alive.

“What is the answer?”
“What’s the question?”

Here they lay in eternal exile. He for the love of Lord Alfred. She for the love of Alice. You for the love of him.

City of Legend. City of Light. City of Love.

I came to Paris-- to your city--because your lover called me. On a Saturday in September. He called me.

I came to Paris but I came too late.

City of Legend. City of Light. City of Love.

Pere Lachaiase. Maze of the dead. Maze of the immortal. Take the day and wander all you will, you still may never find him.

I finally found you. I laid flowers on your grave. White roses, not red. You would want it that way.

I went to the Marais, to Raid. I stood at the bar and ordered a white Russian then walked upstairs to the dance floor. Watched the crowd and told myself I wasn’t looking for you.

There was a boy--hair black as the sky outside coming on midnight. Eyes like autumn leaves, eyes, penny copper brown, piercing as a rusty nail, bloodshot from drinking.

“Are we the only ones here who want to dance?” he asked me.

We sang. We danced. We drank too much and had to call a cab. The driver drove us across town to his apartment. He touched me with your hands. He kissed me with your lips--wet, the taste of lime, salt and tequila. We drank the margaritas you made. I called him by your name.

He didn’t seem to mind.