The Unforgiving Minute (4 page)

routine.

I tossed and turned in my bed for hours. I had a tight

feeling in my chest and gut. I couldn’t tell what I was feeling.

Anger was mixed with grief and emptiness was mixed with a vague

feeling of a monkey being off my back. Julie asked me what the

matter was at breakfast that morning and I contrived a story

about business pressures. My drive into the city seemed endless

and I drove in a trance. I felt like a teenager who had broken

up with his steady. I was desperate and ready to play the fool,

a role that I sadly played for the best part of the next year. I

stopped at a florist shop and picked up a dozen roses. I was

convinced at this time that I was ready to leave my wife, my

home, and my children for this woman. I wrote a card and

enclosed it with the flowers:

“Laura, my love. Only you can make my

dreams come true. Marry me. I love you, Bob.”

Laura was a person of rigid habits and disciplines. I

knew that at precisely ten there was a scheduled coffee break, at

which time she always headed for the ladies’ room in the hall.

We had met there so many times. We always joked that it was like

meeting between classes in high school. I actually lurked in the

hall with my box of flowers under my arm. People looked at me

like I was some sort of idiot, but my pain precluded any sane and

reasonable behavior. I saw her walk out the door of her office

and my heart skipped a beat. My fantasy was that she would

tearfully run to my arms and everything would be as it was.

Instead, she glared at me with a look of hate in her eyes that I

had never seen before. The face that always looked so pretty to

me, even in the morning upon waking up, took on an ugliness I had

never seen before. She screamed at the top of her lungs. I felt

lucky that no one else was in the hallway at the time. “I told

you it’s over. Stop trying to make something out of this. It’s

hopeless. Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone!”

I threw the flowers at her feet and literally ran back to

my office. The receptionist looked at me like I was a madman.

I locked myself in my office and actually sat there crying

like a baby. I think I hated myself at that moment more than

anything.

About twenty minutes later, my private line rang. I

picked it up with anticipation. Laura’s voice was calm and soft.

“That was very sweet; I’m sorry I lost my temper.”

I breathed a sigh of relief. “Did you read the card?”

She said that she had and that it moved her deeply and

before I could get a word in she said, “I’m very confused; you’ve

got to give me time to think. There’s no one else, believe me,

but I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. If I didn’t

discuss it, it’s because I have great difficulty putting the

words together. I’m not like you.”

I pleaded and cajoled and even sounded to myself like I

was whining and sniveling. I knew that I was putting myself in a

position of great weakness, but I was obsessed. She finally told

me that she couldn’t speak any longer and hung up. I managed to

get her to lunch several times in the next few weeks but as soon

as my whining and begging started she clammed up and the lunch

turned into a shambles. Her overriding theme at all times was

that nothing had changed. She still felt the same about me but

was not willing to go back into what she now seemed to consider a

bad situation for her. My despair evolved into despondency and I

just couldn’t shake it off. If it wasn’t for the friendship and

love of Ann Marie who was, through everything, my sister, my

mother, my lover, I think I would have gone off the deep end.

***

I reached the Place de la Concorde and looked over the

vast panorama of this magnificent square. I tried to imagine

that this was once the place where some of France’s most famous

sons and daughters literally lost their heads. It was hard to

believe that this elegant setting was once bathed in human blood.

I lingered for a long time, studying each monument and perusing

the obelisk in depth. This structure is seventy-five feet high

and is well over three thousand years old, but on my previous

trips I gave it no more than a passing glance. I turned away

from the river and walked to the Rue de Rivoli.

I walked slowly along this magnificent arcaded street,

slowly and leisurely looking into shop windows and strolling

through hotel lobbies. I was no longer lonely and felt a strange

and cleansing calm cover over me. I felt that in a few short

days I had come a long way toward a peace within myself. I felt

that looking from afar I could better sort out some of the things

in my life that were bothering me. I would call Ann Marie this

evening to let her know where I could be reached. She was the

one link between the world and Robert Boyd. Her husband,

Dominic, had died three years before and her son was living in

North Carolina. She lived in a modest home in Douglaston, Long

Island, and could be communicated with easily. Julie spoke to

her constantly so that if anything was wrong with my family, Ann

Marie would know.

I wandered through the streets of Paris, occasionally

alighting at a sidewalk caf´e for wine or coffee. I felt that I

had never felt Paris before. I had seen it but never felt it. I

stopped at a kiosk and bought the latest edition of the French

pictorial magazine, Paris-Match. It was fun sipping wine and

leafing through the ads and photos. I found that, surprisingly,

my French was still strong and that I could read a good deal of

the text.

Afterward, I walked all the way to Montmartre, passing the

white-domed basilica of Sacre Coeur, located atop the highest

hill in Paris. I wandered through the main square and through

the streets and felt like I was walking through a Utrillo

painting. I took my time and drank in the street scene. I tried

to make believe I wasn’t a tourist, but to no avail. I soon

tired of the unimpressive paintings by artists imitating other

artists and looked for a place to have some lunch. Montmartre

seemed to get more seedy and dirty each time I visited it. After

about ten more minutes of looking around without my heart in it,

I decided on the Metro and lunch on the Champs-Elys´ees.

I was glad to sit down in the Metro after a long morning

of being on my feet. I leaned back in my seat and relaxed,

closing my eyes.

After what couldn’t have been more than a few minutes, I

was awakened by a beautiful female voice, accompanied by a

guitar, singing a familiar John Denver song. She looked to be in

her middle or late thirties and wore her blonde hair long and

straight, in the style of a 1960’s hippie. She wore round

rimless glasses and looked to me like the people you always see

hanging around Madison Square Garden in New York when the

Grateful Dead are in town. She wore high boots, a long print

skirt, and a buckskin vest over a yellowing white blouse. On the

floor was an overturned floppy hat with a smattering of coins and

bills from various countries. We made eye contact, and she,

being cognizant of the indifference of the other passengers,

focused exclusively on me. She could see that I really loved her

music and performed in great style. My attention seemed to

inspire her as we rolled along.

When the train stopped at L’Etoile station, I dropped

fifty francs in the hat and turned to leave the train. As I was

walking up the stairs to the exit, my peripheral vision spotted

her print skirt trailing behind me. Just as I exited she fell in

beside me.

“You really liked my music, didn’t you?”

“It was very professional,” I said. “Why is a girl of

your talents singing for pennies on the Paris Metro?”

“It’s a long story,” she said, in an obviously mid-western

American accent. “Buy me lunch and I’ll tell all.”

I was so grateful for the company that I accepted eagerly.

We sat down at a charming sidewalk caf´e on the Champs

D’Elys´ee. I ordered a salad and a glass of wine and she ordered

enough to feed the two of us. I surmised she hadn’t had a decent

meal for a long while. She seemed to hold back on the promised

story until she sated her appetite and imbibed several glasses of

wine. How we must have looked together! The well-groomed

businessman and the 1960’s hippie in quasi-western dress, floppy

hat, and guitar leaning against the chair. She looked at me for

a few silent moments with her sad light-blue eyes and told me her

story slowly and in great detail. Her name was Jane Brubaker and

she came originally from Toledo, Ohio. She attended the

University of Michigan, which is a short distance away in Ann

Arbor, and while in her freshman year was captivated by a fellow

student, an angry young man who was the archetypical protestor of

the era. He was anti-establishment and, like so many of his ilk,

was into hallucinogenic drugs. Rock music was his undying

passion. Some time during her first semester, they got into his

van and headed for the west coast. She discovered that she had a

better-than-average singing voice and learned the guitar during

the time she spent with him. They bummed around America for five

years, making a living by singing, doing odd jobs, and

occasionally stealing. They partook of marijuana, quaaludes,

mescaline, heroin, cheap wine, and beer. There was scarcely a

day of her life that she wasn’t stoned.

One morning she crawled out of her sleeping bag in an

abandoned barn near Sacramento and found her companion stiff and

cold in his sleeping bag, a needle sticking out of his arm. Her

first thought was to run, but instead she got into the van and

found the local police. She hadn’t thought of tidying up the

barn and was arrested for possession of drugs. She spent three

years in the California Women’s Penitentiary at Tehachapi. She

was raped and beaten by other inmates and led the most miserable

of existences. When she was released, she was a beaten and cowed

woman with the shakes and a thousand-yard stare. She went to

live with friends made during her travels who lived in Los

Angeles. One night she almost overdosed, but her friends were

afraid to take her to a hospital, lest she end up back in prison.

Near death, she was miraculously nursed back to health by her

friends. For almost a year, she was semi-comatose and

incoherent. When she finally recovered, her friends scraped up

enough money for a bus ticket and sent her back to Toledo. Her

parents, who had long ago given her up for dead, were overjoyed.

She stayed at home reluctant to do anything but lay around all

day strumming her guitar and staring into space. One night she

swallowed a whole bottle of aspirin in an attempt at suicide. If

she hadn’t rolled from her bed with a loud thump, she may not

have survived.

Her next stop was a private psychiatric clinic, which

became her home for six years. When the family decided she was

fit to be released, she was thirty-one years old, with no job, no

professional skills, and a history of prison and psychiatric

rehabilitation. She practiced her music with a great dedication

and finally landed a job singing and playing at a lounge near the

university. She was so successful that she was approached by two

male professionals who wanted to put together a Peter-Paul-and—

Mary-style act and tour Europe. The group was a mild success

until it broke up suddenly about a year ago. Jane decided to

stay on the continent and attempt to make it on her own. She got

a few bookings but eventually ended up stranded here in Paris

after going through all of her money. The costume she was

wearing, which made me think she was a hippie, was actually a

costume from the act.

“Where are you living?” I said.

She looked at me for what seemed like a long time with

those sad, light-blue eyes that were already haunting me. “What

little belongings I have left are in an abandoned building in

Montparnasse. I sleep there and use public toilets for bathing.”

I stupidly asked her how she bathes in a public toilet and

she gave a detailed explanation of wetting rags or paper toweling

and standing naked in a booth and washing herself down. She

washed her clothing in the sink and carried it back to the

abandoned building where she hung it to dry. Most of the money

she made was used for food and other necessities. She knew that,

unless she caught on with a real job, she could never accumulate

enough for airfare back to America.

“Why don’t you ask your parents for the money?” I queried.

She explained that her father was now dead and that she

didn’t want to be a further burden on her mother after all the

pain she had already caused.

“My mother thinks I’m still a great success and knockin’

‘em dead in Europe I prefer to leave it that way.”

We sat silently for a long time, eating and drinking, when

I realized I hadn’t even told her my name. I told my story. She