An American in Paris - Briana's Ghost

Depression hit hard. So many of my old lovers and friends had died or moved away, and for the first time, I felt my own mortality... of my life waning... and then it would be just a poof and out brief candle. Guilt had me thinking the last trip killed her as her sciatica got worse and she needed surgery for it. That last surgery was brutal and then she needed a mitro-valve replaced. Even then she took one more trip. Within six months she was dead. I felt like I killed her dragging her all the way to Northern Idaho to see my family. My selfishness probably did.

 

I was able to put on a retrospective display in honor of Briana's lifework at a local gallery. The gallery's manager said it was the best showing in attendance and sales of any since it opened. I thought the success of the show would be a salve for my grief, but it depressed me all the more because I wished Briana had lived to see success. Recovering from depression enough to feel alive took time. Three years after the funk had lifted and, on a whim, I bought a plane ticket to France for the spring of 2020 to see Basque Country and hoped to reconnect with Adrienne. It was only a vague hope that she would want to see me, after all, it had been twenty years.

She replied enthusiastically to this plan and prepared a place for me, but it wasn't time yet. The pandemic hit me and the world simultaneously at the end of January that year. An acquaintance, a doctor, took care of me there in Cottage Hospital, but said I should get my affairs in order. I thought he was joking but Doctors stop joking when one must prepare their mind for lives to end on a ventilator with tubes and catheters. While comatose Briana's spirit visited and spoke to me. She commanded, "Go to New Mexico, you will begin to recover at last there, Max."

I always called her by my favorite cheese, "Brie-Brie, I can't go. Your memory isn't there."

Briana's apparition became Adrienne and spoke, "C'est égoïst, Max. I will see you later."

I protested, "Self-centered? No! I want to die in your arms! Fuck no! I mean you, Brie-Brie."

Briana's spirit took over, admonishing me, "Adrienne will wait for you. We have other plans. Someone else needs you, Max."

I heard other voices. Sweet angelic ones talking clinically... oxygen... pulse... blood pressure, adding, "His fever broke an hour ago. He's going to make it."

My eyes opened. Vision clear. A ventilator mask was on my face. Two very young sounding women... LVNs or whatever they are right out of city college... covered in surgical caps, masks, and O.R. greens... under clear plastic. I could see their name tags. LVN Alicia Gutierrez and RN Nadya Williams.

Alicia was petite and no more than five feet tall with the sweetest brown eyes behind her protective glasses like a child's. She could have been Brie. Nadya was just a little more mature... maybe thirty. Hard to tell under all that gear except that they were both very young or I was just getting old.

Doctor Farley came into the room covered head to toe wearing the same gear as the others. I recognized his voice and we had known each other for years from Briana's surgery. He was her general practitioner and our addiction specialist. We'd seen each other so often we might as well have been old friends.

"Good morning, Max. Did you have a good nap?"

I ripped the ventilator mask from my face. "Uh... I have to move my car, Doctor Farley. How long have...."

He checked the monitor next to me and asked the RN, "What do you think? His oxygen levels are normal."

Nadya answered with a feint Caribbean rhythm sounding French patois, "Yes. Blood oxeee-gen levels are good. We were going to take him off it now anee-way."

Doc Farley continued, "When you came in from the VA Outpatient Clinic you passed out shortly after I talked with you. Remember talking?"

"Yeh. I asked you to check about my car."

"I checked. Security assured me that your car's okay there as long as it takes. Don't worry."

"What, my heart gave out?"

"No, Max. I'm not your doctor in charge here. Infectious disease specialist Dr. Sullivan from Bethesda is, but I've kept track of you. Congratulations, you're our first Covid 19 survivor... Kind of a celebrity in the medical community of Southern California."

He ran some cognitive tests on me that doctors do... you know, asked questions to see if any brain cells were left, like my name? who is the President? What day is it? and so on.

"How long have I been here, Doc?"

 "Exactly one week, today."

"I had two visitors?"

The RN said, "You are quarantined, Mr. McGee. Visitors weren't allowed."

Alicia asked Dr. Farley, "Is Brie-Brie his wife?"

Dr. Farley said, "Sort of... well yes."

"He was talking with her and someone else when he started coming out of it."

A platoon of mask-wearing doctors in O.R. gear entered and filled the room. One sat in a corner recording stats that were called back by the others onto a laptop.

Death didn't happen as expected and I survived, puzzling over and forgetting the vision of Briana and Adrienne, until later. I was on my feet in three days, but I was quarantined another twenty days and kept in isolation as little was known about Covid 19 then and hospital staffs were overwhelmed.

Since I couldn't go to France just then I thought it was my idea to go back to New Mexico, but I felt as though I was being led back to where I first fell in love with the landscape, the people, and the legend of the area around Taos. With money in the bank, I packed what was left of Briana's furniture and art, the motorcycle, and honed down my belongings to fit in a moving van and a U-Haul. I felt old, at the age of seventy-four, and that there was far less time left of life than what had gone before; therefore, driven by a feeling of its rightness, I vowed that I must act my age and, obeying such whims, as foolish old men often do, I launched off on an insane change of destiny in May of 2020.

North of El Prado among the cattle ranches was the place I chose to live out my last years in New Mexico. It wasn't far from Arroyo Hondo where Risingstar had been fifty years before. I was a young man then and time moved on and the communes were gone and the people there had moved on decades before. I loved them but never knew any of them that well; not enough to stay in touch or make contact... just as I had with people my whole life, except for Adrienne and a few others. I was then, and now am, always a stranger in a strange land of my own design but the experience with the spirituality of the landscape, mountains, and people there touched my innermost being while I was near comatose.

It took a year and a half for the travel bans to be eased and my plane ticket was still good. October/November of 2021 was time to leave, and I was secretly superstitious that I was being led. My suspicions were confirmed that the gods were with me as the ABQ airline agent at booking upgraded the fare to Premium. It wasn't much but it was enough to validate the extravagance of such an adventure. I realize that the majority of working people were at least ten to twenty years younger than me and must consider me an elderly gentleman with a walking stick. They must feel that they honor old men like me and I'm glad they do. Elderly? I am, but by no means a gentleman by those who know my mind.

Others are used to travel but I felt like it was a privilege to be able to score a ticket and fly halfway across the globe to be there for a friend. From Albuquerque to Dallas and then a nine-and-a-half hour flight, I landed at the Charles De Gaulle airport... the French phrases that I worked on before had all walked out of my brain ... like a leaky faucet... and, instead of a merci, a thankyou would roll out of my lips, but I was in France... well not France exactly... not yet for I was in Airport World and was lost and I love being lost. I boarded the Metro with my luggage, which is awkward enough, a carry-on and a smaller bag. I was travelling light. A beautiful young Slavic woman with cupid bow lips and Botticelli locks cascading over her shoulders sat across from me with a small carry-on bag. Unable to explain in French my confusion, I showed her the printout that I'd bought online of the hotel's address on the Rue Bergères. She spoke broken English and we exchanged names. Mora explained that I wanted to get off at the Chatelet Les Halles end of the line and pointed to the name lighted above the doors as it scrolled by the names of all the stops.

Paris, as the Metro passed the stop at Drancy, I thought of the trains... the cattle cars leaving there, perhaps on these same routes, for places in Poland in the not-so-distant past; but Paris was still a place of wonder to me. I daydreamed knowing my feet would take me to places of history I'd only heard about in Hemingway's Movable Feast and other Lost Generation writers. I was told to read it but I declined. I hate tour guides, tour busses and the glossing over of places you get with them.

 Paris. Beautiful Mora opened my thoughts of Adrienne's sparrow brown eyes that framed an elegant Basque nose that some would think of as too large... lips pinched into her cheeks from the way French women need to speak. Back when I last saw her, she was at that perfect age that a woman's youth is in its last flourish... her tanned flesh tight ... and her ass... I thought, was an athletic wonder... a thoroughbred and a beauty I would long to touch. Not supposed to think this way about women in the year 2021. No, don't you dare speak it or the language police will cancel you before the type leaves the keyboard.

Had I known how easy it was for a taxi I would have taken one to City Centre straight to my hotel for 56 Euros. But I wouldn't have met Mora and any old man can still dream.

Getting off the train I didn't know how to get out of the station... didn't know that my ticket stub would get me through the turnstile and onto the street. It was modern inside with shops like any mall in the USA. Hell, I'd never taken a subway in any of the stations in large cities back in the States, so I was stumped. Beggars saw that I was confused and with their hands out asked for coin. Was the station's mall Hugo's alley of miracles where the cripples threw down their crutches somewhere in there? I loved it though I might as well be on Mars for all I knew until I saw Mora approaching.

"Are you lost? You have this?" She held up her ticket stub from the train.

"Uh, yes... uh Oui. I think." I reached into my pocket and I pulled it out as a two Euro coin fell onto the tiles. I started to lean down on my walking stick to pick it up but she was first and handed it to me.

"Follow me." She led me to the turnstile as I admired her soldierly stride in sneakers. She put her stub in the slot and turned on the other side. With a merci beaucoup and thank you I rolled out onto the streets, and there I was, in the center of the city of legend ogling the gate of the first young woman I had met in Paris as she walked away.

She stopped and turned, saying, "I hope you enjoy Paris."

"Oui," I said, "You too."

Towing my luggage on its wheels, I walked the distance up the Rue du Louvre and on up the Rue Montmartre marveling at all the stone facades painted with the patina of time, the traffic ... taxis, police sirens, bicycles, and motor scooters, navigating through insanely narrow side streets and wider boulevards where buses and trams shared the streets with all the forementioned.

 The concierge's counter at the Rue Bergères Astotel with its modernized glass and chrome lobby complete with a stainless-steel elevator, made it feel to me that it wasn't any such place the lost generation would have afforded. I tried my online French, but the young clerk replied in English with an American accent. Of course, everyone under seventy-five have made the world their oyster, I reminded myself. But the clerk was polite and helpful with directions to places to eat, including a restaurant through the back door to the lobby to a mall with a department store.

The room was more to my liking. It was large enough for a bed and had a small balcony outside the window. An electric urn for heating water, two ceramic cups, freeze-dried-coffee, four packages each of powdered creamer and thin paper tubes of sugar were neatly placed on the desk. I plugged in the laptop cord to the DC adapter. I hoped to find a cafe for real coffee within a short walk other than a mall cafe. I hadn't flown halfway across the planet to do what I could have done at home. 

Paris, I was tired from the flight, but it was still early enough to look around and walked out the door towards the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre. At first, I had to get used to all the traffic and people on the streets after living in the country... so much activity... the air was buzzing with excitement. I said to myself, "I am in Paris! I am an American in Paris!" I looked for a cafe and there was a restaurant nearby on the Rue du Faubourg Montmartre... it was closed.  It was too soon anyway. I wasn't as hungry for breakfast as I was for Paris. I kept walking past shops, each specializing... one on a corner... widow display for Confiserie/Desserts, another a flower shop with blossoming pots displayed hanging or on tiered stands as though glaciating onto the sidewalk. It wasn't too early to sell flowers and a Boulangerie pastry shop displayed a variety of tasty looking goods but not outside seating, so I kept going past scooters and cycles parked side by side at the curb. I learned to wait at walking lights on the corners of the most insignificant side streets too. It was smart to pay special attention to those signs and the traffic lanes for bicycles... miss-stepping but once and damned near run down... bicycles plenty going one direction while traffic lanes went the other for motor vehicles.... buzzing... had to get used to streets signs too and not pay attention to the direction signs for various attractions.... museums etc... the signs to look for were numbered name placards posted on corner buildings.

I found a cafe that looked like what my imagination told me Paris was supposed to look like. I don't remember where, but by then I was lost and it didn't matter, and I ordered a cafe au lait and croissant. Wearing my western style hat and Italian shoes, I knew I looked like an American, but I didn't care. I was now in Paris. I reflected, I am going to be what I am and treat everyone with courtesy and don't grin like a tourist but don't be afraid to be one. I am, after all, on planet earth and the same rules apply everywhere. Yes, there is one rule. Respect. I learned respect from Adrienne. I did.

There was always some reason to disrespect others for one reason or another. But she had no boundaries on that account. I'd heard that the French smelled and are rude to foreigners and that wasn't my experience. I found that they were no different than people elsewhere, unless elsewhere they were trying to kill you. But that was war and the French certainly experienced the worst of war and occupation. The memory of it lives on in the generations since, I believe. In some ways they overcompensate. But I won't go there.

Sitting at the table outside I watched people. Some were tourists; Germans, Americans, English, Moroccan, Africans from former colonies. Some were given the brush-off by the waiter. Others were respected. Writing in my notebook, I was there as an observer and was treated with quiet courtesy and privacy. I took my time and who was to show up? the Slavic girl, Mora, from the train. She saw me and smiled. She was taller than I thought she was on the train. I watched her walk, taking a table on the other side of the Cafe. Her back was to me, so my eyes drifted from the page where I did a quick model style sketch of her face, knee length gray woolen skirt, narrow hips, and elongated calves I'd observed on her entry. Satisfied with the sketch, my eyes returned to writing on the pages, I hadn't looked up in some time before I heard her voice, "Hello, Chatelet les Halles. excuse me, may I sit with you a minute?"

Oh my fucking god, yes. Am I dreaming? "Certainly," I said and pulled out the empty chair for her.

She sat, crossed those long legs and waved to the waiter. "I knew you are a writer or something like that. May I see your sketch?"

If I could blush, I would've. "I'm not an artist."

"You are writer then. Writers do sketch, don't they?"

I loved the way non-English speaking people try to make themselves understood in Pidgeon or in full sentences. She did both. Never in between. "Sometimes."

I turned back the pages to the sketch and handed the notebook to her.

"It is grid paper. Nice. I like it. You do that fast. I thought you would be sleep now. Your flying is long?"

I parade waved a hand. "Twelve hours all. Oui. I must see Paris."

I caught myself speaking abbreviated sentences and was embarrassed to do that. It's condescending.

"I remember first time too."

I am sitting in a French cafe chatting with a beautiful young woman. What could be better?

"How long ago?"

"We leave Crimea, Sebastopol, when Putin..."

 The way she said Putin was damned near a spit. I remembered when it happened. Counting on my fingers, "That was seven years ago."

"I was fourteen. I count in English. I speak okay French. It is better than English. I learn English, but forget moch."

I was doing the math in my head, not my fingers. She is twenty-one. "That's okay, my French is zip." Adding, "Oh, to be young and beautiful in Paris."

She blushed and smiled, showing the perfectly white teeth of a toothpaste model.

"Yes, I am beautiful modeel." With a broad smile and a guttural throaty laugh, she added, "I like old-dare men. They don't make at me."

Go figure, I thought, a model, and I wasn't nervous at all. I laughed, "Oh, Mora, be careful a fifty-years younger man lives in this old man's body."

And she laughed again, "I mean old-dare, not old."

I was relieved when she laughed a hearty laugh as only Slavic women can. They don't know what a coy titter is.

"Not true, creepy old men do. You not old creepy man."

"Merci beaucoup. That is the best compliment. Tell me about Ukraine and Crimea. Do you miss it?"

"I am ordering avocado pain perdu. Perdu like you in train station. See, Americans like it. You try? Ukraini eat big breakfast too. More than French, but this place serves best. You try, you will like."

I would have eaten her shoes if she had said try it like she did. We talked on for an hour over a modest breakfast of a sunny side up egg over avocado on toast. She told me about the invasion and how they thought Americans would stop Putin. But we laughed more than we bitched about it. She slipped off her short jacket revealing transparent fabric over her braless breasts. My eyes went straight to the chocolate chips under her blouse, and she saw that and laughed, puffing up her chest in an imitation of the way Putin sat on his horse bare chested holding the reins. I did a short one of Obama's professorial speeches.

We were laughing like we were drunk, and when I started blurring words, she said, "Give me your notebook, I write number in it."

I handed it back. "Now, you to go to hotel and get some sleep, I promise to meet you at the cafe someday."

As I was leaving, she shouted, "Come here. I think you to take picture... you know, a selfie us... send it me. I like a selfie weeth interesting man I met on train."

I did that and we nuzzled up like honeymooners, but she dampened my ardor adding, "I show my friends. I know beautiful old women too. If you don't see me, you can text where you be. Anytime, okay, American friend. Un American à Paree... like Cinema. Your adventures? Bon jour."

So, I posted the selfie to her phone when I got back to my room, and I knew I had been in Paris that morning feeling ten, no twenty, years younger. A message from Adrienne came through while I slept.

"Are you in Paris now? Call me or text me when you get this."

I texted her and told her my plan which was to stay in Paris for a week and then come to her in Biarritz.

She answered. "I'm at my mother's home. Have fun."

"I will call when I get more sleep."

"You could've stayed at my apartment in Paris, but my nephew is there. Sorry. It's okay if I call now?

"Yes, of course."

She called me sounding tired.

"Fu, how are you holding up?"

"Oh, it is a good thing you will stay in Paris a few days, I think. I am sick from the chemo. Maybe I will feel better in a week. I miss you, and want to see you no matter how sick I am."

" I can give you a chance to recover. I know it's hard."

"Je t'aime, Ciao - Ciao."

"I love you too."

I stayed in my room until dark before I stepped out after writing my experience of the morning with Mora. After Adrienne said je t'aime on the phone I felt a tinge of guilt. Hell, I hadn't seen Adrienne in two decades, what was I thinking. I realized then that, as much as I suppressed it and told myself the obsession was over, I was lying to myself.

Of course, I had every reason to believe that I was a free man, but my freedom was compromised by a tinge of guilt for being in Paris at all. My Briana wanted me to travel with her to Europe so many times, but I had declined. My pride didn't allow me to go on her dime as I was barely able to pay rent in Santa Barbara or keep gas in the car as it was. She would be paying for everything. This annoyed her as much as she admired me for it because so many men had taken advantage of her generosity before I came along. However, these refusals haunted the joy I felt even when I moved to New Mexico. That was one place she would've never gone with me to stay... visit, perhaps, but not to live. She was born and bred a Jewish Princess from Los Angeles and could've never tolerated living more than a short drive from a nail or hair salon. I loved that about her. Her last few days alive she still had her nails and pedicure done. Perhaps it was just my Irish Catholic mother that infused guilt into every pleasure, and I'd fought that guilt since my teens.

 

Paris at night became the city of lights but I didn't feel like staying out late. A walk around the immediate area to ogle was enough for the day. I saw a market that was big enough to have everything from wines, breads, and groceries to coolers of cheeses and sandwiches, so I dropped in and bought a chicken something wrap to bring back to the room. I broke a €50 bill for change to get used to handling the currency and got an assortment of €5 and €10 bills and various coins. I would have to become accustomed to the range of coins, their sizes, and values (1 - 2 - 5 -10 - 20 and 50 cent coppers and €1 and €2 coins). American coins don't go up to dollars and, having little need other than my pockets for coins, I could understand why most of those ahead of me in line carried a coin purse of some kind. The €2 coins felt like quarters and are at the current rate more valuable than a $2 bill, so it was a good idea to pay attention to and count my change more often than I would at home. I believe that nothing made me feel more like a tourist than the currency. Not knowing much French was one thing but coins were another. The cashiers could see me coming and treated me with remarkable courtesy. Maybe because I was older and looked confused most of the time but I could laugh easily at my ineptness so I had no real trouble with any of it.