Fortunes can change in a frightfully short period of time. One moment, you’re along the banks of the Seine, girl and wine in hand, a mouth full of laughter and affection – and plenty of cigarettes to spare. An intemperate tongue and misplaced key and an hour later and you’re desperately gleaning the predawn-ridden streets of a dormant giant in search of nicotine and a moment’s respite from the glacial morning air. You do have the key to your sister’s place up the way, and you tiptoe up the five crack-of-dawn flights on the off chance she’s had a wild one on the other side of town and crashed with a mate. No dice. The five-foot hallway separating the 8 square-foot kitchenette from the rest of the studio leads to nothing but darkness and the stale linger of recently extinguished smoke. It will take an ounce of luck just to exit the crime scene unnoticed. You continue your southward march with an eye out for fellow puffers, though not quite sure your utterly disheveled state of visible mind or sleep-deprived frog-speak will do the trick. “Would you be willing to part with one of those tobacco-agents for 50 cents, my good sir?” “I’ve only one left.” I stare at him in utter bewilderment, trying to determine whether or not he responded in Dutch or Danish before rephrasing the question. “Could you possibly sell me a cigarette for a appropriate and agreed upon rate of monetary exchange, my fair fellow citizen?” “As I said, I’ve only one left,” he repeats in perfect French and a slight grimace of sympathetic confusion. I scratch my head, pause for a moment’s reflection, thank him in mutters and continue on my way. Only once he’d apologized and wished me a good day after I’d turned my back did I realize in which language he’d addressed me.
I wander down the winding rue Mouffetard where the Saturday morning market’s beginning to come to life. In a matter of hours, the street witnesses a remarkable turnaround in the aesthetic of its transitory populace. The inebriated, gel-and-leather-jacket-donning bridge-and-tunnelers scoping the rugby bar for AUP girls had cleared out by 4am, leaving just enough time for the sanitary brigades to clear the narrow, meandering alley with civil rights hoses before crates of rotisserie chickens can be carted in from the suburbs. Producers and merchants of every delectable delight begin to set up shop as the aging alcoholics switch from cognac to coffee and recount the non-events of recent in the café across the way. It’s shaping up to be another lovely day, though my purpling legs must still reckon with my decision to change into cut-off Salvation Army shorts for my first icy, moonlit ramble since Buenos Aires. I’m not going to lie. I was on my way to the area’s only Starbucks in search of a medium coffee and a big purple chair to get my thoughts in order. I’d left my third-floor bay window open in the six-story mansion where I’d been laying my head and could always try and scale the sleek stone with my calcium-fortified, overgrown and under manicured fingernails. At this point, the sun was already rearing most of its head and I could also simply knock on the door and kindly remind my hosts I’d forgotten my key when I went down for a smoke at 2am. The only problem is that I’ve been staying in the house for seven days and had yet to encounter a single human being, apart from stumbling into the wrong bedroom my first night there. Not in the proper state of mind for such an arid encounter, I did the only other thing that comes naturally in this town: head for the Luxembourg gardens.
In the hidden tome of urban mythology, they say you’re allowed to fall asleep on the 2/3 and wake up in the Bronx at 5:42am in a cold drizzle. Just cross the platform and don’t try anything funny, white boy (i.e. hailing gypsy cabs, early morning strolls back to Harlem). Sure, all the hard-working nurses, cooks and security guards who rise at 5am on a Sunday to make the multicultural slave-ship pilgrimage downtown might look at you with barely concealed disdain (as they well should); you may stand out like a sore-thumb, but your civilizational insolence is somehow tolerated. I guess it comes with the territory. On the other hand, to deliberately hop the metro to catch a moment’s kip and warm up a seemed a tad too much for some reason. It’s precisely when you drift off around the Odeon stop that your favorite Parisian professor you’d been meaning to write boards the train on his way to consult the prime minister over orange juice and croissants. So much for that fabled letter of recommendation. No, better go find a nice juicy bench - preferably somewhere under the mounting morning sun though also out of view from the rest of humanity, if possible. I settle for two chairs facing east along the central fountain. Debating between using yesterday’s freebee paper as a blanket or to block the sun, I go for the latter – and momentarily drift into the netherworld of a foolishness-induced subconscious state. Any number of bon petit bourgeois early risers have embarked on their Saturday morning trot, while a handful of mental stragglers make makeshift loops between the park’s southern entrance and the Senate in search of treasure and dog shit. The breeze is just too much, however, and I’m forced to eventually mount my cloudy cranium and direct the rest of my mass into the distance.
I wander back toward my sisters. It’s nearing 9am and I’m debating whether she could have made off for breakfast with her boss or boyfriend to discuss important matters of state. Most likely not. Still, I pass the Pantheon but again and make for the rue Cardinal Lemoine. The tobacco shops and newsstands have finally opened and I reluctantly buy a pack - too scared to mount another failed freebie charm campaign under the auspices of my 50-cent coin. I buy a paper as well and decide to make for ‘Breakfast in America’ – a cheap, cozy diner I’d worked in several years ago for all of six weeks before being ‘kindly discharged’ for visiting my mother in London when I’d been assigned the Friday, Saturday and perhaps even Sunday evening shift. Anyhow, it’s the only place in town with cheap, abundant refills of good American-brewed joe – and I was longing for a speckle of comfort in what then appeared a lonely, if still exceedingly beautiful, world. I’m trying to make out the headlines on the French paper, but it’s all I can do not to brutishly rub my bare legs in an attempt to facilitate the illusion of temporary warmth. The American girl keeps filling my cup and I manage to leaf through a few articles as the joint begins to famously fill up. I’d been taking up an entire booth and decide to make a run for it, leaving 2.50 and making for the door (seasoned Americans in Paris don’t tip). An all-too-brisk morning is shaping up to be quite a heavenly day, and though my heart’s racing like a Chinese Chihuahua evading the butcher, a strange sleep-induced delirium seems to be setting in. Go back to my sisters? Call the Scottish guy I met the other day who lives on the other side of the park and catch a few hours’ kip at his? Better not. Best to go back to the mansion and finally confront my venerable hosts. “Hello, it’s Evan, the American boy – I forgot my key as I went to get the paper this morning.” “Do repeat – who is this?” I hesitate, furiously pondering how to connect the movements of the brain to those of the tongue. “Yes, um, I it is, Laure’s American friend who has, um, been sleeping in your house for what seems to be a week now.” “Oh yes, you, the one we’ve never seen,” she mutters before buzzing me in. I enter and once again disappear into a labyrinth of corridors and elevators before removing my peasant shoes and collapsing fully clothed into bed.
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