Rhode Island Red (23 page)

I asked for a room and, to forestall any problems, paid for a few days in advance. I pulled the envelope with the Thomas Cook money orders earmarked for Aunt Vivian out of my carry-on bag and committed it to the hotel safe. Mom had asked if it wouldn't be better to buy traveler's checks in my own name, but I wanted to guarantee I wouldn't be tempted to start dipping into those funds for my own use. In Vivian's place, I don't think I would've appreciated any messenger messing about with my inheritance, even if it was a totally unexpected gift from heaven.

I splurged on the best room in the house. Even so, the toilet was down the hall. The bidet had been cracked and repaired half a dozen times. The bureau smelled faintly of mildew. But the room was a good size, and the
view
wasn't bad. Not bad at all: my room, on the sixth floor, looked out over the busy square with its ancient copper fountain. I put in five minutes at the open window just looking at the people, pulling the air into my chest—and thinking about Aunt Vivian, somewhere out there. I didn't know yet what kind of shape I'd find her in. But I did know she wouldn't be high stepping in her designer jeans and smart black pumps. She wouldn't be laughing her tantalizing laugh that put lights in her clear brown eyes. She wouldn't be young anymore.

I thought, too, of my first trip to Paris and all the subsequent ones; of the friends I'd once had here, all dispersed to other places, other lives, now; of my summer in Provence; the meals, the men; the just plain fun. I'd been happy, ecstatic, in Paris—drunk on it—and yet I'd also known that peculiar
tristesse
that could fasten around your heart like a vise, for no particular reason, and suddenly make you feel so very alone.

Tiredness overtook me then. I closed the shutters tight. I turned back the covers on the creaky iron bed and slipped between the ironed white sheets. And then—darkness.

The trick is not to let yourself sleep too long lest you fall victim to jet lag. It was the only travel tip I could ever remember. You've got to crash and allow the old ankles to lose the swelling that results from sitting constricted in one place for so long. Nap, yes. But you mustn't sleep too long, or you'll be on the way back home before your body clock is running right again.

I was groggy when I pulled myself out of dreamland—and ravenous. I opened the metal shutters.
Pam!
Night had fallen. Those inimitable lights were all around me, and, down below, the canopies of a thousand cafes. I went and cleaned up quickly in the communal shower room and then jumped into some black trousers and a leotard. I threw my long raincoat over that and I was ready to roll.

I did a quick turn around the Pantheon, where I had often gone in the dark of night to sit and think and sometimes consume a couple of
boules
of rich ice cream purchased at one of the carts dotting the landscape. Then I headed back across the square and the boulevard St. Michel, pulsating with young people.

I hit boulevard St. Germain, or rather it hit me. It was Friday night and the street was hopping. Traffic was the predictable nightmare. I took a deep breath and ran, snaked, bullied my way across the street, heedless of the color of the traffic lights. I headed north then, away from the worst of the crowds. I had decided to eat at the Café Cloche, which was on the pricey side, but my mouth was watering for a couple of their beautiful spring lamb chops. I remembered that they didn't take reservations—the only reason I had for believing I'd get a table on a Friday night. The cross streets were beginning to look familiar now. Yes, this was the block. The café was near.

Except it wasn't. It was not there. The Café Cloche, where I'd once been seduced by a chain-smoking academic from Toulouse over a fine
daube
of beef, was no more. I stared stupidly, dejected, at the darkened window of the boutique that had replaced the restaurant.

Well, what was the big deal? Things change. So I'd find someplace else to eat dinner. A restaurant closing was a small thing, yet, inexplicably, it unsettled me. I walked back slowly into the heart of the crowd and found a friendly looking if undistinguished place where I ordered foie gras and then went on to langoustines and a half bottle of white wine. Afterward, I browsed somnolently through a few of the late-night bookstores on St. Michel, buying nothing, and found my way back to the hotel.

I got into my nightgown almost immediately. It was cool in the room but I opened the window wide and let the low night sky fall in on me. Another one of those singular Paris moments. The lights on the Pantheon were silver blue and I watched them for a long time, wondering how many others were doing the same thing, their hearts moving in their chest. But, curiously enough, I had stopped crying.

I made a bet with myself as I called downstairs to order breakfast. At every hotel I'd ever lived in on this side of the Seine, the maid's name was Josette. I figured that would never change.

I lost. Marise bid me good morning in her musical colonial accent—was she from Antigua? maybe St. Croix?—and set the wooden tray bearing my soupy black coffee and croissants down at the foot of the bed.

I spent the late morning and all afternoon checking out the really low-rent hotels on streets like Gay Lussac, thinking that Vivian might have got her hands on a few bucks to live on, but not enough to go back to the hotel in the Square. The next day, I figured, I'd go another rung down on the ladder and try Pigalle and the parts of Bastille that had not yet been gentrified. Then, if I didn't turn up any leads, I'd head out to the edge of the city, Buttes Chaumont or someplace, where I'd probably be mugged and left for dead somewhere.

I put in a full day. Nothing. At six o'clock I returned to the hotel and put in a call to my mother, reporting on my progress, or rather lack of progress.

I took a long soak in the pay-per-bath room down the hall and changed into something slightly slinky. There was a fabulous wine bar on the rue du Cherche Midi that I loved. It had been the scene of two or three major flirting triumphs.

They sold lighting fixtures there now. I stood on the pavement watching the clerk clear the register and begin to close up for the evening. I could have cried.

I wandered down into the métro and took the train to Pont Marie, on the right bank. Surely the much more staid wine bar that a friend's father had once taken us to would still be there. And it was. But it was obvious there would be no lighthearted seductions taking place that evening. Oh no. No sharing a steak frites with a cute translator and then a nightcap at some avant garde jazz loft. No and no. Average age of the patrons at this stately establishment: 55 by my calculations. Successful businessmen and their co-workers, or their Chanel-clad ladies. I put away two lovely glasses of Medoc and was on my way.

I walked along the Seine in the twilight, feet hurting in my strappy heels. The magazine/postcards/junk stands on the quai were all closed now. Here and there I could hear voices down below, along the water. I had to smile. One thing you never forget, your first kiss on the banks of the Seine. I just know it's one of those pictures that go flying across your vision as you lay dying.

I had had nothing to eat except the breakfast croissant and a yogurt taken on the run midday. I was starving but I hated the thought of eating alone again.

What choice did I have, though? I went to Au Pactole, a perfectly nice place on St. Germain, just the tiniest bit stuffy, up the block from a hotel I'd once lived in—the Hotel de Lima. It was almost pleasurable to behave so formally with the maître d', like playing a role, or wearing a disguise.
Hmmm
—
she is black and French speaking. Must be an immigrant. Spinster on vacation from the provinces
, I could almost hear the young waiter thinking.
Trying to dress Parisian. Not bad looking. Needs to get laid, though
. I was the only solo table in the good-sized room, which was awash in fresh white flowers and skyscraper-tall candles. After an already too heavy meal, I pigged on goat cheese and a big-time dessert.

The thing is, I mused during my meandering walk home along the quai, the main thing is: the police have to be avoided.

If nothing happened with my search for Vivian in the next day or so, I might have to contact the American embassy. But not the French police. It was half instinctual cop-o-phobia and half worry that maybe Vivian had wandered into something not on the up and up; then there was the plain gut-clenching terror based on the Gallic mind-set. Guilty until proven innocent was not a metaphor over here, it was the law. You just did not fuck with cops in this country—not even traffic cops.

What does a foreigner do when he or she is broke, in trouble—no friends, no resources? I didn't know. True, I had bummed around Europe before, hitchhiked with companions, smoked dope with kids I met at discos, and so on. But I had never been anything like stranded or in trouble with the law. I always had a return ticket in my pocket, and help was a collect call away. I thought about the asshole white boys who thought they were slick enough to get away with smuggling hashish out of Turkey. I found myself shuddering.

The
Herald Tribune?
What about placing an ad there—“Aunt Viv: You're richer than you think. Call home. All is forgiven.” Something to that effect.

Not a likely venue. Vivian had lived in Paris before. She had enough French that if she read the newspapers at all, she'd read a French one.

I was at the Pont Neuf. Shit, I had been so lost in my thoughts that I'd overshot the hotel. I was beat, my toes crying out for release.

Give me your tired, your poor…your Manolo Blahniks…your tart tatin.

Not just tired now. I was slappy. Maybe I hadn't escaped the jet lag after all. I stood on the quai for a few minutes more. Well, good night, old Notre Dame. And if it's not too much trouble, help me find Aunt Viv before I have to go to the 19th. Amen.

I visited at least fifteen fleabag hotels and hostels the next day. I was seeing the side of Paris they don't print up on the picture postcards. The homeless, the druggies, the bag ladies, the nut jobs were nowhere near as numerous, as filthy, or as desperate as their New York cousins, but they did nothing for tourism either.

Just to make myself feel less like a mendicant, I went and had lunch in an overpriced, overdecorated restaurant in Montmartre and then took the funicular up to Sacré Coeur. I looked out over the city while the shutterbugs swarmed all around me. Maybe there is a heaven, I thought, and it's nothing more than these rooftops.

As long as I was doing the American in Paris bit, I figured I'd go to American Express, on the very remote chance that Vivian had left a message there. Of course, she'd have to know I was in Paris. But what did I have to lose? Perhaps she had spoken to my mother by now.

No such luck. And now I was stuck in the busy 9th, clogged with crazed shoppers and sightseers, the traffic like a million killer bees. I had to admit, the Opéra was looking a great deal spiffier than the last time I'd been in Paris. Choking on exhaust and too weary to do any window shopping of my own, I zigzagged across the boulevard des Capucines and went down into the métro station.

Home at last, thank the baby Jesus. The alert, generous-bosomed madame who seemed to rule at the hotel was having her afternoon
tisane
when I stopped at the desk for my key. I must have looked about as frazzled as I felt, because she offered me a cup.

French businesswomen are about the least homey human beings imaginable. Anybody would be scared of them. I know I am. This one, however, told me she had noticed my saxophone, and wondered if I was in Paris to play an engagement somewhere. She had always admired
le jazz
, she said, and at the time of their wedding anniversary each year, she and her husband enjoyed making an evening of it at the music club just off St. Germain des Pre. You know—the one with the likeness of Satchmo in black plaster in the entryway.

I told the madame, in as little detail as possible, about my search for Aunt Viv. She was sympathetic—genuinely so, I believed—and when she offered further assistance, I jumped on it.

The madame's husband relieved her at the desk while the two of us climbed into the taxi she had ordered. We were going to La Pitié Salpêtrière, a giant medical complex in the 13th arrondissement that also housed the city morgue. It made sense, didn't it, to check there first? Oh yes, it was quite sensible, my companion agreed. After all, if, heaven forbid, Vivian was at La Pitié, then there was little point in canvassing the hospitals and the emergency rooms and hospices and so on—our search would be over.

The office where we waited had a beautiful view of the Jardin des Plantes. As the lady from the administrative office led us along the corridors the worst kinds of morbid one-liners were running through my brain. I couldn't help it. It was like whistling in the graveyard.

Back in the fresh air, I went weak with relief, happy to know that Viv was not one of the bodies in those human filing cabinets. The madame and I rested for a few moments on a bench in the Jardin des Plantes and then caught another cab home.

Back at the hotel we worked out a fair way of computing the phone charges I was racking up calling the appropriate municipal offices to determine if anyone fitting my aunt's general description had been admitted to a Paris hospital. It seemed only right, I told her gratefully, that I also pay the week's rent that my aunt had skipped on. That was most responsible of me, she said. Would I like to pay that now, or should she add that sum to my own bill at the end of my stay?

None of the hospitals had any mysterious amnesiacs in residence who might be my poor aunt. So, as far as we knew, Aunt Vivian was still alive, somewhere out there. She had to be. If she was broke, how was she going to get out of Paris? I was going to have to bite the bullet and go to the embassy soon, it seemed.

It was time for me to clear out of Madame's way and let her get her dinner started. I thanked her for all her efforts—the tea and sympathy not the least of them—and went upstairs.