The Bird Market of Paris (27 page)

They nodded, snuffed out their cigarettes, and took one hundred francs for the pigeon as well as fifty francs each for them, with fifty more each when they delivered it. I told them it didn't matter what kind of pigeon they bought, what gender or color. I wanted a standard, everyday pigeon like the ones at our feet, and pointed to the bench where I'd wait for them to return. The boys pocketed the money and kissed me on both cheeks before they strolled out of sight.

I sat on the bench, elated.
In your face, fate. I've got this
. Tourists trolled the stone head, crouching inside the nook between its palm and cheek for photographs. The day cooled and the tree above me whispered and sighed in the breeze.

After thirty minutes I wanted to jog nearby for an orange Fanta and a panini, but couldn't leave my spot in case the boys returned. An hour passed. Then two. The sky softened into periwinkle, then gray, with yellow-streaked clouds like rough brushstrokes on a cheap canvas. My tongue felt big in my mouth.

Three hours. Four. They weren't coming back. I turned around on the bench and cried, hoping no one would see what a fool I'd become. I wiped my face, put on my dark sunglasses, and shuffled toward home. The faces of passersby looked uncaring, solid with indifference. I wanted a drink.

I slumped to the counter of a dark and cool
tabac
and ordered a
café crème
and a chocolate tart. I'd drown myself in desserts rather than alcohol, at least for now—finally taking one suggestion I'd heard in my recovery meetings: eat dessert to quell the craving for a drink. A couple of round old Parisian men stood at the counter to my left. My coffee arrived, thick and sweet. I licked my upper lip.

One of the two old men next to me snorted, the one with no front teeth and several chins, and said to the bartender, in French, “What do we have here?” I understood him.

“American,” said the bartender, disinterested, drying coffee cups with a dishtowel.

The man snorted again, elbowed his friend, gestured to me with a nod of his head and a waggle of his chins, and said, “
American, eh? Je préfère coucher un cheval
.”

Roughly translated, he would rather go to bed with a horse. I didn't know whether to be further dejected or laugh. I stared into the mirror at the back of the bar, hoping nothing showed on my face. I finished my coffee in two gulps, paid for it, left the chocolate tart, and ran around the corner, making sure to check street signs so I'd never enter that
tabac
again.

I wanted to laugh about being less worthy of intercourse than a mare. I wanted to laugh about the folly of the entire day, the Shakespearean way this pigeon mission was shaking out, me thinking that buying a pigeon was the ticket to a clean conscience—but I couldn't.

Dusk turned to night and the lights of Paris blazed on all at once. Not far from my apartment, a corner restaurant appeared with a red awning and a chalkboard easel in front advertising tonight's special,
moules frites
. Inside, the wooden bar was glazed with warm, inviting yellow light.

I sat on a shabby leather barstool and scanned the bar. The bartender asked what I wanted and I was going to order
moules frites
, but from the depths of my psyche, from nowhere and everywhere all at once, I formed my mouth around the words:
frozen daiquiri
.

I was in Paris, France, not a palm tree in sight, ordering something served with a cocktail umbrella and a slice of pineapple.

Without a wince or hesitation, the bartender turned to his rack of bottles. He filled a stainless steel cocktail shaker with ice, and poured a sickly green-colored liquid into it—sweet and sour mix—and a shot of rum. He moved with the deliberation of an executioner. He spilled the contents of the shaker into a blender. The blades smashed the ice into slush, the green liquid almost phosphorescent, like the fluid inside glow sticks.

I licked my lips. I was inside that blender. I
was
that drink.

He stopped the blender, and in one motion lifted both the drink and me and poured us into a daiquiri glass, with its curvaceous hips, wide rim, and delicate stem. He set the drink in front of me. I tasted it in my mouth before I even touched the glass, felt the cold, icy mess on my lips, sweet, sour, hot with the island taste of sugar cane and lightning over the ocean. It would burn my head, warm my chest, set my feet on fire. Then I'd have another.

The bartender turned around, maybe to ring me up or clean a glass, and I bolted so fast I knocked over my barstool, leaving the drink deserted and the tab unpaid. I ran to the apartment and sprang up the six flights of stairs, two at a time. My hands shook as I locked the deadbolt behind me.

 

Chapter 24

The next day I strolled without direction, still reeling with humiliation from the pigeon debacles and near alcohol relapse. The heat formed hazy waves of translucent mirage shimmering off the broad sidewalks, urging tourists to tuck into cafés and drink Perrier
menthe
or smoke under the shade of a
tabac
's awning. Sweaty and numb, I walked on autopilot, wondering how I'd messed up the trip so badly. I didn't feel damned or unlucky—I felt stupid and impotent. I'd been full of hubris, the quality that killed all the antiheroes in Shakespeare's tragedies, thinking I'd waltz into Paris and set myself free as easily as opening a can of beans. I felt beaten. The bell had been rung and my fight was over.

I found Les Deux Magots on the Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés, one of the cafés where the existentialist Sartre and his lover Simone de Beauvoir had dined and philosophized, and where, sometimes, Hemingway had strolled over to say hello. I still felt embarrassed entering restaurants and bars in Paris as a single woman, overly worried that I'd be mistaken for a prostitute. Waiters glowered at me like I didn't belong.

I told the maître'd I was waiting for a friend. He placed me in a small, charming garden area in the back of the restaurant. I ordered a ham and butter sandwich and a
café crème
from a cute waiter. The weather turned breezy, lemony sunlight polishing everything it touched.

The waiter brought my sandwich and coffee and asked about my friend. I shrugged and pointed to my wrist, where a watch might have been, but I never wore one.

A brown sparrow lighted on the table to my left, swiveling his head, hopping forward, then back, then forward again, jerking his head all the while as if he had a nervous tic. I pulled off the edge of my sandwich, ground the bread between my fingers, and tossed it to him. Then there were three sparrows, twelve, twenty. I folded my hands in my lap and held my breath as they swarmed my table and my plate, pecking and chirping and multiplying.

I broke off more of my sandwich. It didn't scare them. I ground the bread between my palms and placed my hand on the table. The little birds hopped onto my palm and ate from it. They stuffed themselves on my sandwich as I studied how they moved, tried to tell them apart, and tossed crumbs to the timid ones who kept a distance. I'd been desperate to release a bird, and here were a quarrel of them, coming to
me
.

Four birds sat in each of my hands, the bold males with their dark beaks and black masks, the females with their drab plumage, all trusting me to keep my end of our unspoken bargain—they would honor me with faith and I wouldn't move. If Poppy were here he'd have attracted ten times the sparrows. A hundred times.

In the middle of my reverie, the waiter swooped toward my table and whooshed his arm into my flock, scattering them onto the tops of the umbrellas. He frowned, shook his head, and removed my plate.

*   *   *

I didn't like the idea of wandering through the red-light district by myself, but it was the middle of the day and I hoped my map of the city would distinguish me as a tourist, not a lady of the night—or the afternoon. I wanted to see the Moulin Rouge. After two Métro changes and a one-block walk up Place Blanche in the searing heat, there stood the windmill of the Moulin Rouge. It was smaller than I had imagined. The vanes on the windmill were still; the meager breeze couldn't break the heat enough to evaporate sweat, much less power a windmill.

Below the sign, green plastic netting wrapped around a horizontal pole spanning the width of the windmill. This kind of netting, along with pigeon spikes and plaster owls, was placed all over the city so birds didn't perch or nest where they weren't wanted. As I studied the windmill, something moved in the netting at the far left, at least twenty feet over my head. A pigeon hung there, caught by one foot in the plastic webbing.

I walked closer. It hung downward in a perpetual headlong free fall, wings spread out like an upside-down Jesus. He struggled to free himself, flapping wildly and resting again. He panted in the heat, and if he didn't free himself soon he would die of exhaustion or dehydration.

Passersby bustled around me on the sidewalk. Had I been in New York, I could have found help. But I didn't speak French well enough to start such a conversation with anyone, and I had no idea if Paris even cared enough to have a paid official on “pigeon detail,” someone from their animal care and control center, like the one in New York.

“Do you speak English?” I asked an older gentleman who looked American. He shook his head. I stopped a young German couple whom I heard speaking English, but when I pointed to the bird they kept walking.

I walked into the dark and cool Moulin Rouge. On either side of the long, plush red hallway, posters of seminude showgirls in glitzy costumes with grand feathered hats hung as advertisements for the show. I approached a young, pretty blonde woman behind a wooden podium and she smiled.

“There's a bird outside with a problem,” I said, pointing toward daylight down the dark corridor. “Let me show you.”

“Ah, you want to see the show,” she said.

“No. There's a bird in trouble. I need help. Come look.” I gestured for her to follow me. She didn't move.

“I do not understand,” she said. “You want a ticket for the show … tonight?”

“No, listen,” I said, searching for the right words. “Outside, there's a …
oiseau mal
.
Oiseau mal
.” I gestured like a bird flapping its wings and continued pointing outside. She shook her head and squinted at me. All I had managed to say was “bad bird.”

I turned away, cursing myself for resisting Nona and Poppy when they tried to teach me to speak French.

The bird was a typical rock dove of the order Columbiformes—a city pigeon—with a two-bar pattern on his wings and white pied markings on his dark face and neck. This one was a big male, his breast shining with iridescent purples and blues, his belly and mantle light gray.

To the left, under the trapped bird, was a dirty white door, which I assumed led to the backstage area of the Moulin Rouge. To the side of the door was an intercom. I knocked on the door. Nothing. I pressed the intercom. Once. Twice. Three times. A crackling voice spoke.

“
Oui
?”

“Can someone come here?” I said. “
Oiseau mal
.”

A male voice punctuated the static, something in French I didn't understand.

“
Oiseau mal
!” I yelled into the intercom.

Nothing. I buzzed the intercom again.
I'm sorry, little one
, I thought, staring at the helpless bird.
I'm trying to save you
.

“
Oiseau mal ici
!” I yelled into the intercom again, remembering the French word for
here
, banging on the door again.

The door cracked open and a dark-haired Frenchman appeared. He looked about twenty-five years old, a little mussed up, kind of sexy. His white T-shirt was dirty, as were his well-worn jeans, but his face was fresh and ruddy, and he had an intense alertness in his dark eyes. He said something in French I didn't understand.

“
Oiseau mal
,” I said, like an idiot, beckoning him to step outside and pointing toward the pigeon. He stepped outside and surveyed the problem.

“Ah!” he said, finger pointing to the pigeon. “I will make the rescue.” He walked inside and shut the door.

The bird continued to struggle in the heat. As the minutes passed, a small crowd gathered, murmuring in French. The young man emerged from the door carrying a tall wooden ladder, which he rested on the wall beneath the pigeon. He slipped on work gloves and climbed the ladder to the top. As he reached the pigeon, he pulled a large pair of shears from his back pocket. I bolted to the ladder and rattled it.

“No!” I yelled. “Don't cut his foot off!”

“No, no,” the guy said, waving a hand behind him. He turned back to the bird, but I wasn't sure he had understood.

I climbed a few rungs of the ladder while he used the shears to cut the green netting away from the bird's foot. He held the pigeon tenderly with one gloved hand as he removed it from the mesh. I blushed and backed away.

As he descended the ladder, pigeon in his free hand, I saw that the bird's foot was malformed—a clubfoot—which is how it had become caught in the mesh. Its leg was bleeding. A woman with a cart full of groceries pulled up beside me and clicked her tongue.

“Poor bird,” she said. “Poor, poor bird.”

“You speak English?”

She nodded. “Poor bird,” she said again.

I reached my hands out to take the bird from the cute guy as he stepped onto the sidewalk. He gave me a gorgeous, warm smile and handed me the bird. The crowd applauded as we made the hand-off, and dispersed. The guy took the ladder inside.

I had a pigeon.

“What will you do with him?” the lady with the grocery cart asked. She looked to be in her late sixties, dyed red hair sprayed into bouffant perfection, lots of blush, and a black penciled-on mole above her orange-lipsticked mouth.