Allan Stein (6 page)

"Jimmy asked if you were free too."

"What did you tell him?"

"That you were in jail."

"No."

"I told him you were taking some school group on a trip. I didn't say where. I doubt he'll press me for details."

"Maybe I'll join you. I mean, after Paris."

"Mmm, you should. I don't see any reason not to stay on at Jimmy's."

"I could bring you the drawings."

"Yes, you could; that's very good. I'll tell them I'm flying back via San Francisco. A week in Paris and then a week in San Francisco. I've got to get back by the twenty-ninth."

"The museum won't collapse in your absence?"

"Not so anyone would notice."

The prospect of vacation at Jimmy's was already giving Herbert a blush of health and vigor I hadn't seen on him in several months. He still looked gaunt and drunk, but his mouth was more relaxed and his eyes sparkled. The arrangement promised to be as good for him as it was for me, and this equanimity was pleasing. It assuaged the guilt I felt for the one truly wrong and completely unconscionable thing I did to my dearest friend before going to Paris. I don't know why it was important to me. I can't say how the compulsion became so irresistible and the act so plausible, but I took his passport. I stole it from his apartment while he was at work, rifling through the desk to find it, together with his birth certificate— and then I mutilated the passport, so it would have to be replaced. I wanted a new one with my picture and his name, to make the masquerade of my Paris trip complete.

Our last drink was at Shackles. An air of melancholy settled with the balding assistant manager's news that Tristan was gone for
two weeks. "The kids are all off for spring break," he told us. "How glum," Herbert said, and indeed the whole place was glum. The assistant didn't bother to wear the croupier's disguise. He wiped our clean table with a filthy cloth and stood waiting for an order. We split a bottle of heavy Bordeaux and then a Napa Valley red zinfandel that was like drinking a brick wall. A little bon voyage.

"Is that a new watch? You never wore a watch before." I'd bought a watch and Herbert was right, I had never had one before.

"I know. I thought I might need one." I fiddled with the mechanism and ran my fingers along the soft leather band. I had been doing that all evening.

"What time is your flight?"

"Afternoon. One o'clock, I think." The bar was crowded but it seemed empty, the drinkers subdued by the fact it was Monday evening, stunned by the recent weekend's end and the terrible recurring surprise of work again.

"It takes forever."

"Eleven hours. I change planes in Copenhagen."

"Oh, SAS?"

"Mmm." I'd bought the ticket with Herbert's credit card, as per instructions; I also had it issued in his name, with his passport, but he didn't know that.

"I love SAS. All those little sandwiches, and you know they'll give you aquavit, chilled to absolute zero."

"Delicious." We drank wine without speaking for some time.

"Thank God I'm leaving for California. I couldn't stand another evening like this, here without Tristan."

"Thank you very much. I'll miss you too."

"I mean without Tristan or you, obviously. That kind of thing goes without saying."

"Tristan's probably waiting for you at Jimmy's."

"Don't tease me. I would die to spend a few weeks with him at Jimmy's."

"He looks Californian, maybe he's back home for break, just over the ridge at the next ranch. Jimmy probably hires him every spring to, you know, mow the range. The neighbor boy, out mowing the range, all shirtless and sweaty." I smiled weakly, happy to give my friend at least this small token.

"Maybe he
does
live down there. I wonder if he'd visit, I mean if I invited him?"

"He'd have to stay overnight. Can't drive drunk."

"The bursar would certainly have his family's address."

"A scented note in the letter box."

"I should probably just phone. Though maybe a note is best, so he doesn't feel pressured in any way."

"A simple note: Jimmy's phone number and a condom."

"You're so crude."

"What's so crude about a condom? It's a very normal thing. You're so anachronistic."

"It isn't normal to send one in the mail as a dinner invitation."

"Mmm, just dinner?"

"Obviously just dinner." Herbert tried the zinfandel and made a face. "Or maybe a day trip, a hike in the hills and lunch somewhere, like that fabulous place near Point Reyes. Jimmy could get us reservations, I mean if anyone could."

"Just send the condom."

"Oh, shut up."

I would miss Herbert, but that went without saying. My well-kept secret lent the evening some of the poignancy and glamour of the Last Supper, but only for me. Herbert was a Christ without a clue, unaware he'd been betrayed by his most ardent friend. The betrayal was minor (certainly by comparison), but its resonance was deep. The torpor of our stalled conversation felt profound to me. There was nothing left to exchange. I had already taken the last token of his identity from him.

♦4  
♦

T
he airport was torn up and confusing. I had my two bags and knapsack (only what can be carried), plus the passport, clutched in one hand with my ticket. I hadn't slept well despite all the wine - excitement, I told myself, though approaching the airfield (the only passenger at that hour in the ExPorter Express Van) it was clear that leaving also frightened me. This trip was a precipice and I was going over. Herbert, who is always nervous about airplanes, , had given me some pills to take.

It was difficult to find my terminal. Men with hydraulic tools blasted paint from the concrete floors. Flapping gray tarpaulins covered steel frames where the glass walls were missing. I asked directions, but noise from the tools drowned my voice out. Normally the gates are coded by color, but there was no color left. A woman touched my wrist. She looked at my ticket and motioned me to follow her. Because of the noise we said nothing. This woman was kind, but her face was hard and expressionless, like the floor. She set a brisk pace and only looked back to see that I kept up. Wooden barriers and strung tape channeled us past the torn open places. The sun through the tarps was dull and even. We found my gate and it was crowded, so I had to stand. The woman nodded at it, then left me.

Everything about my flight had been changed. The airplane would leave late and fly to Paris directly because of heavy snow in the north. Danes argued reasonably at the ticket desk. I was in business class, which meant I could board early. In my knapsack (all I had after the gatekeeper snatched my suitcases away) were
Émile
, Walks in Gertrude Stein's Paris
, some
Henry James
,
A Very Pretty Girl from the Country
,
Paris As It Is
, old guidebooks from Herbert— Ward-Lock & Co.'s
Paris
(1911), C. B. Black's
Riviera
(1905; how very intriguing to see what has changed, he said)—and
Zigzagging in France
, all unearthed from the bulky suitcase when it was taken from me, panicky and convinced I would read at least six books on the flight over (I read none of them).

Because I boarded first, the magazines were still available. I picked out a half dozen and stuffed them in the netting of the seat in front of me. Cool air blew through a nozzle and over my face. I sank into the cushions and watched men outside groom the metal wings. Luggage dragged on belts dropped into the plane's belly, then bumped and settled in the hold like ice into a glass. There were engines humming, small engines that soothed my nerves. It might have been the pills.

I rode the airplane as if into sleep, motionless, transported. The ground fell away, and the air inside became thick and busy. The city, my home, rushed away, beyond my reach. Through the scarred plastic window unreal tableaux lurched and turned, then disappeared into clouds. I drank a lot of alcohol and could not stay awake. The flight was very long. It felt like days with meals that came suddenly and too soon. Dinner arrived during a prolonged morning that seemed to be moving backward into night. We had a snack and breakfast in the middle of a dream, then a second morning. The night between was caricatured and flat, an emblem of night that fell and withdrew as suddenly as the backdrop of an opera. The sun appeared, a dull metal disk on an empty curved horizon that was
stained yellow and blue by the sun's arrival. A woman across from me said good morning. She took her breakfast from the steward and thanked him. There is an easy camaraderie in business class. In coach I would not speak to anyone.

"Hello," I said. "Herbert Widener."

"Margaret Carlson." She had work to do and set up a small computer on the tray beside her breakfast. I took my meal from the steward but fell asleep again.

On photocopied pages in my knapsack were these details: Allan Stein's journey with his parents, San Francisco to Paris, 1903 (age eight)—eating biscuits at a table on the train, crumbs on white linen; the pleasure of Allan's window at night, the soft rumbling of the engine, his head pressed to a pillow; the city of Baltimore, kissed by aunts and cousins; boarding the ocean liner in New York; torn bread thrown to diving gulls in the harbor, cold salt air billowing Allan's coat; bright sun; playing shuffleboard on deck with Mikey; a basket of pastry, coffee in a silver pot beside the bed; the sighting of a whale through binoculars, near to dawn, the coast of France; Allan, curled in a deck chair, wrapped in a blanket, watching land; the smell of manure, earth, and coal dust; crates hoisted by cranes onto docks; the weakness of Allan's legs, arriving; passport stamps and shouting; baggage carts, a vendor of pastries, then tea; trains like giant worms asleep in a cavernous station of iron and glass; steam and metal, fog, rain on the rattling window; Allan asleep until Paris.

T
he airplane shook, descending, and I woke up with my head pressed to a pillow by the small plastic window. My body felt awful, sick from the alcohol, and cramped. I had slept with the arm of the chair pushed against my ribs. What time was it? It was morning. There was land, bright and green, then patched white with snow or ice, spotted by clouds and crisscrossed by roads where I could see
traffic. Buildings cast shadows to the north and west. There were towns with churches surrounded by checkerboard farmland. The shadows of clouds made patterns like swells in the ocean where they moved over hills below us. Paris could not be seen. I arranged my seat and strained to look forward through the scratched and cloudy window. I saw nothing but dull light. The airplane turned, descending, and I saw farms, again, and a busy highway. It all came rushing toward us, and then the airplane touched down and we had landed. A car waiting at the terminal had been provided by the Cite Universitaire. M. WIDENER, the hand-held placard said. Herbert was treated very well.

"Paris is like a fruit divided into two halves by the gleaming steel of the river," [this from one of my books] "and over each half on either side rises a height which augments the impression of immensity. On the left bank it is the mountain of Sainte-Genevieve crowned by the Pantheon, with its belt of columns on which rests its enormous dome. On the right is the white church of the Sacre Coeur, gleaming on the hill of Mont Martre like some celestial vision. It is at its threshold, rather than from the Eiffel Tower or anywhere else, that you get the most poignant impressions of Paris as a whole. It lies spread out before you, with its setting of distant hills, its swarming expanse of houses dominated here and there by palaces, and broken by the green of gardens; and from that distance the sounds of the city come to you only as one great suppressed murmur, a murmur palpitating with this great heart of the old world."

We drove along a raised highway. The driver was African and did not speak to me. Boxy modern flats sprawled below the road, half occupied and in disrepair. I watched the buildings grow closer and more busy. It began to sleet; then the sleet turned to rain and I closed my eyes, wanting more sleep.

While I try to be gracious I am in fact made uncomfortable by strangers. Paris was a stranger, and I was in it. That fact, plus the
airplane ride, had so drained me that when we pulled up to the forlorn garden wall of the Dupaignes' house—a quaint cottagelike building wedged between towering apartment blocks in a rather ugly district—I asked the driver to find a hotel where I could rest. He stared at me, saying nothing, then drove on. Out the car's back window I saw a boy watching from an upper story of the house, leaning on a window casement, his oversized sweater falling from one shoulder. This was
Stéphane
.

The hotel lobby was cold and empty, like a drained aquarium, and I took my bags upstairs and collapsed onto the bed. I dreamt of nothing, flopping on the covers like a stunned fish, kept from my dreams, from anything beyond sensory impressions, by some kind of synaptical failure I blamed on the long trip. I felt cut in pieces, diced, like a man pressed through a sieve, as if a web of knowingness, a coherence, had been dragged out of me when the plane took off. Sleep helped. Waking up, several hours later, I looked at my watch and it told me the time back home. Herbert was alone in the city now, without me, not due to leave for Jimmy's until the next morning. For an instant, as a kind of reflex, I considered inviting him out for a drink, but of course I couldn't do that. I showered and got dressed and asked the concierge for a map. It was half past five and my appetite and humor had returned. I thought a drink would be nice, and maybe some fresh oysters, after which I'd take on the Dupaignes.

The biting cold and sleet of my arrival had disappeared and a deep blue sky, evening to the east, tapered away between buildings. The breeze smelled of flowers and rain and car exhaust. It was pleasant where it touched my face and neck. I undid the heavy coat I'd brought on the plane and looked around the nearest corner, wondering if the morning's storm might be lodged there, hiding in the shadow of some courtyard, but there was nothing. The concierge had made a map on which he marked a garden, the Jardin du Luxem
bourg, and I could see it, grand chestnut trees all billowing and wet behind a forbiddingly spiked black fence, just a few blocks away. I walked there first, in no great hurry.

The garden was crowded with boys, some of them playing basketball at a hoop among the chestnut trees. I sat on a metal chair and watched them. A small fist of cloud shifted, blocking the last sun, and it became dusky where I sat. These boys did not move well. Their bodies were new to the game, and they lurched and stopped like apprentice drivers maneuvering trucks. They had no idea how poorly they played. Each success thrilled them, so they would strut and slap if a simple layup went in. I smiled at their successes, as I did at school when my students discussed philosophy.

Smaller children sailed boats in a pond and their mothers sat on benches with nannies, smoking cigarettes and talking. I read that Allan Stein played in this garden when Gertrude took him on walks. How odd to be sitting in it. (Once Allan played with an American girl, Edith Rosenshine, and Edith was horrified when he asked her to go to the toilet with him. Gertrude assured her it was the French custom, and she went.) Evening came and policemen cleared us from the park. The boys unlocked their bicycles from the fences where they'd chained them, and mothers and children drifted away through traffic.

I walked alongside the park, enjoying the smell of trees, to the rue Vavin, where a perfectly fine cafe was open. It was simple and fairly crowded, and that appealed to me. I wouldn't bother with oysters, not at so plain a place, but wine must be decent everywhere. The evening's chill was coming on, so the outside tables were empty and I took one. Two young women watched through the glass front of the cafe, their table only a few feet from mine. They talked easily and laughed. I caught the eye of one, a fat girl, and I smiled. The waiter came and I ordered a
pichet
of
Côtes-du-Rhône
with a baguette and
Gruyère
. My accent sounded fairly good, casual and dismissive like the French of my mother's drunk friends at home.

A gate of the park was visible across the street, and it emptied for another ten minutes before the gate was finally shut.

The park was empty, closed now. Gravel paths led from the gate into trees that were heavy and shook water on the grass when the wind came up. Traffic and birds made a noise like wildfire. The sky was dead or hollow like a painting, and it made me lonely sitting at the cafe on a slatted chair. I looked around for something, a boy, to admire and found a group of them with worn leather satchels strapped to their backs. A taller black-haired one, in particular, seemed as delightful as the wine I drank. Twisting to swat the shoulder of a pal or grab an arm he caught my eye, right across a long pause in the traffic, and I returned it with a broad smile, amplified by the wine, so that he noticed me. It was nice, this familiar boy, like a kind of universal welcome home, and I felt drawn to him. He grabbed the shoulders of two friends and this trio stopped. The boy was a type: baggy, low-belted American jeans, oversized white T-shirt, and a jacket with logos from basketball or soccer all blossoming on a frame as thin and gangly as Dogan's. He had the arrogance of the spoiled kids I'd enjoyed at my school. His posture and the sudden dash he made, two friends in tow, showed it. They crossed the busy street and came abruptly to my table, so I could see there was nothing that made him bashful. He bellied up to the table so close I could have touched him. He must have been thirteen or fourteen.

"Toi entre sue mais?"
or something like that; it was hard to make out. He smiled at me, then at his friends, who just looked on in amazement. I had no idea what he meant, but I smiled back to show I appreciated his company.

"
Bonsoir
," I tried, in a poor accent. All three laughed at this.

"Toi entre sue mais?"
or whatever it was, repeated. He enunciated it strangely. "Yes or no? " This part I understood. The women at the table through the glass noticed him too, and I'm sure we be
came a topic of their conversation. The boy's face was smooth with a blush of red high in the cheeks matched by his full lips. Soft fuzz feathered the nape of his neck and where his sideburns would someday be. Dark eyes and thick black lashes made him look like an Arabian girl; he might have been Algerian. I could see the waiter hovering inside, busy with a tray of drinks and bread.

"Mmm, yes," I guessed, still smiling. Maybe the boy wanted some of my wine. I hoped his two friends would leave, and they did, racing back through the traffic as the boy bumped his crotch against my table so it moved slightly.

"Too bad," he said, in his poor English, "fucking
pédé
"
and now he ran away after them and I was left at my table. I didn't recognize his curse exactly, but I could guess its meaning from the tone he gave it. A few people stared, walking past my table, but it wasn't worth taking time to explain. The waiter arrived and wiped up the wine where it had spilled.
"Je m'excuse"
he whispered. I think he was embarrassed by the boy's bad behavior. Obviously the boy knew nothing about me. This was just his cruelty, a misunderstanding, less than nothing, and I didn't let it spoil my mood in the cool, promising evening.