I want to break the chapters into small segments, since today's attention spans or allowable chunks of time are so small anymore. As I revise the chapters (again), I find that I ask myself, "How did my authors stand me?" I am one persnickety editor.
But now, Paris.
When Joanne landed at Charles De Gaulle Airport and passed through the douane, the customs official barely glanced at her passport, but remarked, “You were born in France. Bienvenue.”
Welcome. Right, that, she thought. I was born here. And all I have to show for it is a fancy birth certificate. It wasn’t something she often thought about. Her family left France when she was just three years old. Her parents were New Yorkers, and she was a naturalized American. She didn’t consider herself French, and had visited France, Paris, only once. She could count on one hand how many French words and phrases she knew.
One thing she did know was how to navigate an airport and hail a taxi. She hated overnight flights to Europe. She could never quite relax, much less sleep. Now, looking at the countryside speeding outside the taxi window, her eyes stung, and she felt desiccated.
Her phone rang.
“Joanne! You are here, yes? I am late. I be home soon.”
“Mikhail, it’s nine in the morning.”
“I know. But you wait, yes? You will see a café across from my apartment. I see you there.” He hung up.
It figured. He was probably in some tempestuous beauty’s bed. The taxi dropped her at the café. She hauled out her bag and took a small table outside. Prostitutes leaned in doorways across the street. She glanced at them, unfazed. Years earlier, when she ransomed her life’s savings and purchased a loft in Manhattan, the neighborhood was chockfull of working girls jumping in and out of suburban mini-vans in parking lots. Not anymore. Now her building abutted swank high-rises, art galleries, even two dry cleaners. The local strip joint had closed and was replaced by a bagel shop. She shook her head, the bagels were crap.
She ordered a cappuccino, that much she could manage, and watched out for Mikhail. There was a slight chill in the air, the light was softly gray, she pulled her fur-lined denim jacket closer, and waited. Ten minutes later, a motorcycle drove right up onto the sidewalk. She moved back sliding her chair out of the way. Mikhail grinned behind the visor of his red helmet, then pushed it up and off. She stood.
"You maniac." She smiled.
They hugged hello, or rather, she let herself be engulfed in his big bear arms. He grabbed her bag, and balanced it on the front of his bike.
“Sorry, I am sorry. I know, I am always late. Now, this way, you come,” Mikhail practically shouted as he simultaneously reached for her arm, held her bag, and walked the bike across the street as its engine gurgled.
As they approached his front door, the prostitutes moved aside, greeting Mikhail with bonjour monsieur’s and nods of neighborly recognition. Joanne looked over her shoulder, and caught one of the girls checking out his behind from behind.
“I bet they’d like to get a piece of you, Mikhail.”
He parked the motorcycle, punched in his entrance digicode, and pushed the enormous, heavy door open into the long hallway. He hauled her large travel duffel over his shoulders, and Joanne followed him up three winding flights of narrow stairs. Beyond another enormous door, a hallway revealed gorgeously shabby rooms, high ceilings, wide planked floors, antique moldings, and floor-to-ceiling windows that opened onto little balconies over the street. For all of the activity below, the place was serene and quiet. Suffused light from over the neighboring rooftops illuminated the ancient rooms. A large gilt-edged mirror was propped against a wall. Next to it, an ancient, ponderous table was covered with papers. Books were littered everywhere, strewn from built-in bookcases, authored in English, Russian, French, and German.
Tiny glasses dotted any leftover empty space. Mikhail had not yet cleaned from his latest vodka party.
“Joanne, I am so sorry. A mess, I know.”
He started to gather the shot glasses onto a silver serving tray.
"We clean up now," he said as he walked into the bathroom where he placed the glasses into the tub.
"Mikhail," she started, when she saw what he was doing. "What the...? We're washing your glassware in your bathtub? Is this a Soviet thing? Are we reliving the Bolshevik Revolution?"
"Yes, yes. We do this fast." He unbuttoned his shirt and hung it on a door hook.
Joanne shook her head and blinked at the sight of Mikhail, bare-chested, on his knees, sweating, his fair hair falling into his eyes.
"Come. You help."
Joanne leaned forward and handed him dozens of tiny glasses and dishes. He washed, she dried.
“Mikhail. You’ve got to get a kitchen sink.”
“I know, I know. Next thing. Everyone tells me.”
Joanne held up one of the glasses as she wiped it dry. “Should I even bother to ask whose bed you wound up in last night?”
He smiled.
“Okay. I won’t.”
“This girl,” he started. “She has long legs. And she wears, you know, these stockings, yes?” He drew a circle around the upper part of his thigh.
“Stockings and garter belt.”
“Yes. So sexy. German girl. Today, I like German girls.”
“No French girls?”
“No. No French. But maybe Spanish.”
“You haven't changed.”
“Last night. Very drunk.” He turned off the bathtub faucet.
“Joanne. I make this money now, yes. But still, I have nothing in my checking account.”
She wiped the back of her hand across her brow.
“I am nothing. A piece of meat. I work in a box. But there is no life. This is no life."
"No way, Mikhail." She shook her head. "Like always, like anywhere, you are doing nothing but living." She lifted both hands, palms upward, toward him. "Huge."
"But, Joanne, what are you going to do? You have this money, you can do anything, yes?”
"Shit." She shrugged. "Mikhail. I have no idea.”
“This work, yes? In Colorado, finished, yes?”
“Yes, the work. Everything. Done. Over.”
“But you are a big success. You are free.”
“Am I?” She looked at him. “Right now, I am nothing but dead tired.”
“Tonight, later. We find out. I take you to two parties tonight. You will see.”
“That sounds cryptic, Mikhail. Very KGB.” She covered her mouth as she yawned.
“Ha!”
“I need a nap. Can I?”
“Yes, yes, yes. I go out for a little while. Tonight you wear your high heels. Sexy.”
Hours later, Joanne woke up in the dark. It took her a moment to remember where she was. She turned her head to look up at a shadowy drape that hung loosely over a tall window, and recalled everything. Mikhail had insisted that she take his bed, and once she washed her face and stripped, she had snuggled under the heavy brocaded coverlet, embroidered with an image of Lenin. The apartment was silent and dark.
Joanne roused herself and padded into the bathroom, groping for the light bulb string over the sink. She blinked. The clock read six o’clock. So dark, so early. Joanne leaned into the mirror, thinking that she should hang upside down like a bat, and fight gravity. In less than six months, she would turn forty. How the hell did that happen? She saw laugh lines around the outside of her eyes. She got away with looking ten years younger, and she knew that couldn’t last forever.
She turned to the bathtub, detangled the hand-held shower-head hose, turned on the faucets, and waited before she adjusted the taps to a comfortable temperature. She climbed into the tub, and hosed herself down. Minutes later, she was dressed, when she found the blow drier on the floor of the main sitting room. She was bent over at the waist, drying her hair from the underside when he phone rang. She stood up, flipping her hair off her face, and answered.
Mikhail yelled over street noise into her ear, “Joanne! I am five minutes away. I buy wine and cheese, baguettes, then I come home. Then we go, yes?”
“Yes?”
“You are awake, yes?”
“Oh yes. Rested, showered, dressed. All of it,” she answered. “I slept like the dead.”
“Yes!” he yelled again. “I be right there.”
Deep breath, Joanne thought. Tonight, everyone would be speaking French, she wouldn’t understand the conversations, and she hated to admit that she might be intimidated. She planned to hang back and watch, if she could, since she would be at Mikhail’s mercy. For as long as she knew him, he was like a person possessed, even as he grabbed the world by the groin. A day, a night with Mikhail was like being whipped through a maelstrom.
Joanne checked her look. Tight, low-slung jeans, a wide belt with a heavy, oversized buckle. Stiletto-heeled boots, a close-fitting, tailored, striped, button-down shirt, unbuttoned at the bottom so that the belt buckle flashed when she moved. She cleaned the lenses of her dark-rimmed glasses, inserted her diamond earrings, slipped the oversized silver sports watch onto her wrist, grabbed the fur-lined jacket, gloves, and dropped a tube of lipstick into her Coach handbag. Right. Ready.
Mikhail burst through the door.
“Joanne,” he started as he dodged into the toilet, the separate water closet, closing the door behind him. From the other side, he yelled, “We go right away. I am rushing!”
Joanne heard the flush as he came out, “You are…” he looked into the front room, “Where are you?”
“Here,” she said, as he turned the other way. She pointed at the door, looked at him over the top of her glasses.
“Okay.” He grabbed the spare helmet, and they dashed down the stairs.
“This first party, is like a birthday party. For my friend, Denis. I think, I don’t know, but Denis will be there. He knows everyone.”
Mikhail adjusted the motorcycle helmet on Joanne’s head, securing the strap under her chin.
“You take these.” He handed her two shopping bags, one with two bottles of wine, two baguettes sticking out from the other.
Joanne swung a leg over the motorcycle, hooked her heels onto the passenger foot levers, and wrapped her arms around Mikhail’s waist. He revved the engine, then eased the bike across the sidewalk onto the street. In a flash, they flew down the glistening boulevard. The shopping bags banged against her side. They sped across bridges, wove through traffic, leaned into curves along the quays lining the Seine, under overpasses, and across the huge grassy expanse in front of Les Invalides.
The Eiffel Tower was lit up neon gold, like Vegas.
Joanne pressed herself against Mikhail’s warm back to keep from getting whipped and thrown around. Unshielded, she knew they could go down in a second.
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