Red Pants
She said that she kept the extra
words in her mouth in case of an emergency. Silence only loves the gate which
creates it. Her hair smelled like wine and peaches. I just stood there trying
to remember what it reminded me of. Too long of a lull in our conversation and
she forgot that I was there. An itch on her forehead and she began sawing away
with the nail of her pinky.
As we stood by Zola’s grave I
noticed that she was now crying. It was not real though, his importance to her
lay only in that the grave was an ideal prop to serve as a catalyst to the
dramatic scene that she wanted so badly to act out. I wondered if it would look
as suspect to someone who did not know her.
Her hand went into her pocketbook
for a tissue. She momentarily froze. Calculations were being worked out in her
head, which would offer her a better emotional payoff: to complete the scene as
she usually did such things, with a musician’s sense of timing; or to purposely
make it drag out too long so that I would lose my cool and we could have a
fight?
Before she could finish working out
the equation, a group of elderly couples, cameras in hand taking a tour
happened by. Momentarily she was rendered inert as long ago Marthe had made a
vow to herself not to play games in front of the elderly. This was to prevent consciously having to
dredge up the memory of the time that she had defeated herself in Marseilles.
Marthe had wanted to go shopping
even though she knew that I had kidney gravel, my discomfort made worse by the
heat. We kept walking by bars, I did not ask for permission to stop but in the
spirit of compromise asked;
“This one all right?”
She would pull a face or pretend to
be in deep thought as to not have heard me. Finally my discomfort reached a point
that I could not wait any longer and so chose for us. By happenstance it had a
nice view of the bay.
My first drink I put down fast. She
assumed that I would slap some money down on the zinc and that we would leave.
As the drink relaxed everything, I realized that I should have some water and
one more, this time for pleasure’s sake. The motivations for my actions had
nothing to do with her or our games. By way of protest she got no drink but sat
on her stool sideways ignoring the view as to be able to bore her eyes into me.
Finally I told her that if she
wanted to, then she could go on without me. Somehow this caught her by surprise.
She took to the street, the look on her face being mistaken by an older man
eating bouillabaisse al fresco across the street as some kind of hurt. He
called her over and insisted that she have a vermouth, telling him what was the
matter. How could anything be so terrible for a pretty girl in a place with
beautiful weather and good food?
By the time she was being handed a
menu I had left, heading back to the hotel. To the old man, as they sat there
talking, he had worked his magic. See, he thought to himself, she was smiling
again, such a lovely smile.
Marthe chuckled to herself as she
had finished figuring out how long to spend at the table to make me jealous or
if I had not seen her, a little worried. It was right around this time that
under the table the old man was putting well practiced fingers on her bare
thigh.
Back at the hotel, I was giving the
concierge an envelope with her name on it in which there was enough money for a
cattle class seat on the train back to Paris and her passport, everything bound
together by a faded red elastic I had found on the nightstand.
I made my way back to the city
alone, letting scenes outside my window lull me to sleep. Of course we made up
but she now spent most of her time stateside. Obviously practicing on who knew,
as her techniques were now more varied. Even with the confidence of an
increased skill set still, old men were now an omen of bad luck for her.
“Shall we go get a drink?” she
asked me. Taking her hand, as we walked away;
“He is not actually buried there
any longer you know.”
- Wayne H. W Wolfson 2015
www.waynewolfson.com
No comments:
Post a Comment