Paris Times Eight (6 page)

A WEEK LATER,
we moved away from the Rue de l'Université apartment with its inner courtyard and ever-vigilant concierge, its arched and gated entranceway and elegant stone facade. Luc's parents were due back from the sunny south, and we had to move to less spacious and less central digs.

We had been faux aristocrats in that rented eight-room apartment. Overnight we reentered the ranks of the proletariat, with four dingy rooms walled in by the rude noise of the incessant street traffic. The new apartment was across town in the nondescript
10
th Arondissement, on the Right Bank, no less, far from anything beautiful or historically edifying, a district so blandly practical it was home to two railway stations—Gare du Nord and Gare de l'Est.

The assault on our sensibilities was almost too much.

Nigel, for one, responded by slapping one of his energetic and lively boys across the face so hard it made the boy's nose bleed. Such a sudden decline in standards made Paris seem even more brutal than before.

Luc should have stayed with the apartment we'd left, but there he was, helping the fragile Jenna carry her books up the new stairs. “It's just for a while,
cher
Luc. Until we get properly settled.”

He understood reversals of fortune. It was why, I soon discovered, he was still part of our nomadic scene. I also understood the surge of interest in us, in me. He was crafting a connection to North America, a bridge of opportunity.

Unbeknownst to me, Jenna had been talking up her brother-in-law, Colin, proprietor of a successful auction house in Toronto that had a cache of rich clients attached to it. The rooms of Ross Galleries were stacked with fine furniture and objets d'art, exactly the kind of place in which an unemployed Parisian with a sense of entitlement could feel at home. When Luc heard “auction house,” he doubtless thought Sotheby's or Christie's. Ross was nowhere in that league. But it was an in, of sorts, and a way to explore the New World in a manner Luc had grown accustomed to—surrounded by beauty and sensual charm.

To make sure that I might be of some use to him in the near future, toward my final days in Paris, Luc, out of nowhere, proposed to show me Paris by night on the back of a motorbike. Since Chantilly I had been keeping my distance. But this sounded like fun. And I didn't have to talk to him, risk embarrassing myself again. I just had to hold on and enjoy the ride.

He knew the city, knew where the crowds were and weren't on this late summer night. We roared down main boulevards, almost wiping out whole families, and then bumped down cobblestone streets where there was hardly a person. Paris was mesmerizing at midnight. The lights shone bright through the darkness, velvet lozenges of blurred color, and because I was sitting and watching the scenery whiz by, I got a sense of the city as a panoramic spectacle, dramatic even without the interaction of people. The city's monumentality was the main event.

I clung to Luc, held tightly to his waist as he whipped around corners and the wind licked my hair. It didn't matter that it was dishevelled now. I was, belatedly, enjoying myself.

We motored past a café that looked as if it had been painted by Van Gogh. I felt a wave of nostalgia in anticipation of the moment, a few days hence, when I would have to leave this place and all its memories, victories, and defeats. Luc put his foot to the gas. We lurched ahead. I wanted to linger over my reverie, but he stopped in front of a building and said, “Let's go up.”

It was a friend's apartment, but the friend wasn't there. Luc had a key, however. I supposed this was the communal sex pad, where young French aristos came when they wanted to get laid and their parents were at home. A
gar-çonnière.
Luc sat on the floor in his faded designer jeans, the toes of his cowboy boots worn and dirty, and rolled a joint. He asked did I want some? It just wasn't my thing. But I knew to say,
“Non, merci.”
He smiled. Then he inhaled.

He closed his eyes. In a moment he was asleep, and there I was in a strange apartment with an even stranger young man. Who had bad manners now? I let him sleep for about thirty minutes. Then I woke him with a gentle kick.
“On y va,”
I said. Let's go. He smiled sheepishly. I helped him up. We didn't speak on the way back. Couldn't. The wind was in our ears and our mouths. Then again, there was nothing more to say.

I FOLLOWED A
different flight path home. I stopped first in Newfoundland and then changed planes for a direct flight to Toronto. After two months in Paris, city of chic, I gazed despondently at the assembly of my fellow Canadians—a dowdy lot, dressed in cutoffs and T-shirts, without any discernible sense of style. I was reminded of how uninspiring I found my native land.

My mother was waiting for me at the airport. We embraced. I was happy to see her, yet sad too. I had returned with books and postcards and stories of all that I had seen and done, silk scarves and perfumes as presents, and emboldened ambition.

She spoke to me about the neighbor's dog barking through the night, the fact that my brother was in trouble again, that it had rained and then it had been hot. All the flowers had died. I had returned home to a lunar landscape. I sat next to her in the car in silence. Nothing had changed. Except for me.

I realized in that moment that I had grown even more determined to transcend the narrow confines of my life in southern Ontario. I would return to Paris—but next time on my own terms and better prepared for the challenge. I was about to start my university education and saw it as a means to an end, the goal being freedom and happiness in the most beautiful city on earth.

Although I had secured an entrance scholarship to the university, I still needed some money to help me get by. Within a few days of my return I went from the glory of the
Arc de Triomphe
to the whitewashed arches of Toronto's Princess Gates, entryway to the Canadian National Exhibition, a horse-and-cow event stinking of sweat, candy floss, and manure. I landed a last-minute job on the midway, convincing passersby to divest themselves of seventy-five cents to toss beanbags into a boxed set of squares in order to win a stuffed animal. “Don't walk by until you've given it a try.”

This was my cri de coeur in the final days of the summer of
1979
, my last days as an adolescent. My last days at home.

TWO

Wannabe
·
1983
·

I BOUGHT MY
plane ticket with some of the money I had won for making the principal's list in my final weeks as an undergrad. The funds were earmarked for graduate school, Plan B in case my dream of becoming a writer in Paris didn't pan out. I had been accepted to start the master's program in the fall, which was my mother's idea. She had originally wanted me to be a lawyer. A more practical and rewarding career than writing. But for the last four years I had been writing for the student newspapers, and when my mother saw my name in print, she started to come around to liking the idea of me becoming a journalist. When I took her along with me to some of the shows I was then reviewing as a fledgling dance critic, we'd sit in the best seats and be fawned upon at intermission by publicists and impresarios. She liked that, the idea of me getting attention, as she imagined some of it reflecting on her. But since I was to be a writer, she wanted me to stand head and shoulders above the pack. It's why she insisted I get the postgraduate degree. “To show that you are a cut above, which you are,” she said. “We both are.”

But I knew I wouldn't do it. By that September I expected to be properly ensconced in Paris, with a job. I didn't tell my mother that. I didn't tell anyone. I just told her that I was going to Paris for the summer, to spend time with an old high school friend, Danielle, who had offered me a bed to sleep in for a few weeks until another one of her Toronto friends arrived in June. My mother said, “Go, have a good time. You deserve it. You've worked so hard.” And so in May of
1983
, after writing my final exams, I sailed out of the ivory tower on fairy wings. I was free and ready for adventure, for all that might involve. On the plane ride over I wrote out a to-do list. Right after Get Job I wrote Get Boyfriend. The blank space that followed filled me with fear and longing.

For the trip, my mother had bought me a pair of red ballerina flats, a nod to my dance obsession. I wore the shoes as soon as I got to Paris, where it rained incessantly. I stepped in puddles everywhere. Soon my new shoes started to disintegrate, staining my feet crimson. As they peeled away in my hands, I saw that they were made of cardboard, which I was sure my mother hadn't known when buying them. She probably got them cheap. But she had meant well, and so I never told her how the shoes had turned my feet red as blood. Besides, that spring the
1948
film
The Red
Shoes
was playing regularly at a cinema near the Place de l'Opéra. Set in Paris, it is about a dancer who can't stop dancing. With my stained feet, I saw myself cast in a similar role, partnered with Paris until I dropped. Even later, when back to wearing my old tennis shoes, the new red shoes tossed to the garbage, I continued to walk through Paris feeling connected to the city on a deeply emotional level. Despite the gloomy weather, in Paris I felt my senses awakening as if from a deep sleep. The city was a powerful stimulant that made me feel deliriously vibrant, invigorated, alive. The mighty Seine with its vaulting bridges, the narrow winding streets, the boutique windows showcasing the latest fashions, the mad swirl of traffic, was paradise to me. I felt a sense of inner joy. I felt I had come home.

Danielle had come to the airport to pick me up, but I barely recognized her. When I had last seen her, during our final year of high school four years earlier, she had been fat and dowdy. She had worn running shoes and jeans and, in the winter, snowflake sweaters buttoned up to her dimpled chin. She was a fashion disaster, but smart, with piercing blue eyes that sliced straight through you. But who was that swinging a black handbag at the turnstile? I recognized her by her laughter, a sound like wind chimes. She enveloped me with braceleted arms and kissed me twice, just like a Frenchwoman. It wasn't the only sign that since moving to Paris as an international business student a few years earlier, she had changed. She had never been a beauty. But Paris had somehow buffed her to a shine. She glowed from the inside out. While no less round, her fleshiness now appeared sleek and sophisticated. Clothes of a dramatic cut and color had replaced the ragtag wardrobe of old. On her lobes were discs of shining metal, the work of a local artisan. She had tamed her adolescent curls into a becoming style that encircled her face, enhancing the brilliance of her eyes. She had become a
parisienne.
I had always wanted to become one too, ever since encountering this rare breed on my first trip to Paris four years earlier. But back in Toronto I had fumbled in tying a silk scarf around my neck. I kohled my eyes, but the inky makeup made me look sick, not sleek. To be a member of this stylish breed, I thought you had to be born in Paris. But one look at Danielle and I could see that you just had to be open to the influence of Paris to make it happen. In a relatively short time Danielle had learned to walk the high-heeled walk. She possessed a poise that would have forever eluded her in flat-footed Toronto. I stared at her in amazement. If she could do it, become a woman of the world, then presto! so could I.

But she had an important advantage: family connections. Her aunt and uncle owned a flat at
27
Rue de Fleurus, in the same building where Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas had famously hosted their literary salon. She held the keys to the garret on top of the family apartment, a former
chambre de bonne,
or maid's room, with a sharply slanted ceiling and a bird's-eye view of the rooftops of Paris. Danielle constantly mentioned this. It lent her cachet. She had lived there herself when she first moved to Paris almost five years earlier, before landing her job at a major French cosmetics company as a financial consultant. She had since moved on to more spacious digs in the up-and-coming Marais. But at that time she was in the habit of inviting deserving artists to live there in exchange for modest rent, and the promise of their company. Too practical to live hand to mouth herself, Danielle derived a vicarious thrill from befriending people committed to the bohemian ideal, mostly foreigners, as I was to discover.

One of them was an aspirant writer, also from Canada, whom Danielle had met months earlier through friends of friends. Tom, from rural Ontario, was firmly ensconced in the garret, “With no intention of leaving any time soon,” Danielle said. “But I'll introduce you. Maybe he'll be useful.”

We cut through the Jardin du Luxembourg, watching the puddles as we walked arm-in-arm toward the building that I had known since my high school days as a sanctuary for artists, having read
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas.
Danielle keyed in the access code on a panel located on an outside wall. I heard a click, and then together we pushed open the large glass doors covered with scrolling, black wrought iron. Huffing and puffing up five flights of stairs, we entered a narrow corridor with a number of small doors. Danielle stood before one of them, and knocked.

Tom didn't have a telephone and so hadn't been expecting us. He opened the door and blinked rapidly when looking into Danielle's smiling face, as if it were the first time he had seen anything brightly optimistic in days. Danielle introduced me, calling me her other writer friend. Tom had fine, wheat-colored hair and a sickly pale complexion. He extended his hand, lined with dark blue veins. His handshake was flaccid, his gaze indirect. He smelled of nicotine and wasted ambition. He asked us to come in. Spartan and small, with just a bed and a desk tucked under the window, the room had a beamed ceiling so low I had to duck when I entered. It reminded me of the student dormitory I had just escaped in Toronto, except it had a much better view. Beyond the curtainless window the rooftops of Paris undulated against a purple-and-pink sky. I looked out at the city spread beneath my feet and felt as buoyant as the birds. If I lived there, I thought, I would never lack for poetic inspiration.