MARLENE, this past weekend, was dawdling through Montmartre for no reason. She stopped in front of the man with a thinning ponytail, a wooden easel between them, he looked up, she said, draw me. The man drew a caricature of Marlene, her eyes puffed and sliding open, her mouth a squeaking pickle about to snap in two, her cheeks like flattened candy wrappers. She handed him the fee in euro coins, counting it out.
MARLENE’s sauntering through the bar towards the terrace with two glasses of vino verde, trying to get her lavender coat to catch a breeze and ribbon around her legs. A couple of the men wave their hands and say, Come on, Marlene, you’re blocking the TV… The man-from-the-back reties his white apron twice around his waist. His worn purple cotton T-shirt hangs at the sleeves and sticks to his shoulders, the sweat in the form of angel wings. Sorry, Marlene says and moves out of the way, but what do you think? Think of what, the man with brown leather loafers says and picks up his pint of beer. Think of my new coat, Marlene’s smiling shyly. Oh, yeah, the man says. That’s right. It looks nice, Marlene. Good colour for you.
MARLENE’s still blushing when she returns from the terrace and the two women are sipping their wine behind her and she joins the men and watches the TV screen. An enormous stage is lit up with crossed beams. The camera zooms in like an eagle swooping, then abruptly cuts back to a panel of judges. A woman in a corseted canary-yellow dress, petite, reddish-orange lips, says Hello, she waves. The next judge, tight white button-up, glasses like an architect, a cleft chin and a shiny forehead someone forgot to powder, says Hello, Hello there Albania! The first act is a young man in loose white soccer shorts and a red-and-yellow team shirt. He spins two soccer balls on his index fingers, then takes one spinning ball to his chest, bounces it to his foot, then his heel, then up to his knee, clocking his hips to the traditional Albanian song playing in the background. The third judge is a short man with a clean buzz to his dark hair. He’s disappointed. Then the words burst through the screen: Albania’s Got Talent! and cuts to the commercial break. The man with loafers puts down his pint glass, smoothes out his thick steel-wool moustache, then goes outside to smoke. The others pick up their conversation.
MARLENE’s watching the commercials as if they were a continuation of the talent show. Her mouth’s loose and her eyes glaze and her fingers curl in, even the one she cut yesterday, with two band-aids taped around it. Are you okay Marlene? the barman asks. Marlene looks over to him. Am I okay? Marlene repeats it. She thinks about it. I’m just, Marlene takes a couple breaths, I’m just…
MARLENE! The man-from-the-back yells. Your phone’s ringing! You left it on top of the cash register. You’re lucky no one stole it. Oh I don’t think anyone’d steal it… It’s an iPhone, Marlene! I mean I trust everyone here. But there are guys that come in and out. I mean I trust people. You shouldn’t! But I want to. If you wanted to trust people, Marlene, you should’ve gotten a Nokia. I’m just looking out for you. That’s nice of you, thank you. The phone’s still ringing in Marlene’s hand. Answer it, Marlene.
MARLENE, hello. It’s Marlene’s ex. Her voice is low. She doesn’t want her son to hear. He’s nine and he’s sad and she doesn’t want any more messes. When are you coming over, Marlene’s ex asks her, to pick up the last of your stuff? Marlene’s ex lives two streets down from the bar, between the Japanese massage place, windows covered with posters of bare backs and orchids, and the corner-store épicerie, she’s on the third floor, where you can yell from the street, phrases like WHAT’S YOUR DOOR CODE AGAIN? and I JUST NEED TO SEE YOU.
MARLENE, I’m putting it in a box and I’m taking it to the bar and I’m dropping it off. Alright, Marlene agrees, because she wants her ex to see her in her new lavender coat and maybe she’ll bring the boy, even though he’s not her biological son, after five years, he called her Mama Marlene. Then she hangs up and realizes her ex is on her way, carrying a cardboard box of her stuff, the last one, the final trinkets of ways she couldn’t explain herself and that plant, the small cactus she never watered and yet, it lived on, without a grudge. On the TV screen the next contestant is up. A boy in suspenders and a black bow tie. He’s missing his two front teeth. He’s singing Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, voice splintering from him, eyes pinching and cheeks flushed as he’s reaching for the high notes. Next is a boy in a Muslim cap with dark skin and blue eyes, blowing the trumpet like Miles Davis while serving baklava.
MARLENE’s ex shows up with a cardboard box in her hands, she’s got blue jeans and a silky shirt tucked in, her flour-blond hair parted in the middle, strands of grey hidden, her lipstick applied, a tired rose.
MARLENE, her ex says, here take this. She hands her the box. Marlene takes the box and says thank you then puts it down on the curb next to the now-empty green garbage bins. You don’t want any of it? Marlene’s ex asks her. I don’t think so, Marlene replies. She’s wondering if her ex has noticed her new lavender coat.
MARLENE waits. She waits. She turns a little left and bends her knees as if she’s about to curtsey. Marlene’s ex is staring at her, pulling her eyebrows together. If you didn’t want any of it — but Marlene’s ex stops herself because she doesn’t want to get into it.
MARLENE is now doubting whether her ex will notice the coat at all and suddenly, the boy’s back in her thoughts. She really wants to see the boy. She misses that little boy. That little peanut nose, that little wobbly-eyed boy, that vigilant stare and high eyebrows, Marlene misses that little boy more than anything, she could almost take off her new lavender coat and throw it into the green bin. Well, goodbye, Marlene’s ex says, they kiss on the cheek, and she is walking away. The two young women left change on the table, and the empty wine glasses side by side.
MARLENE swallows because her mouth is getting dry. She’s done with her shift but she decides to stick around at the bar until it’s completely dark. The sun sets. The bobby pin’s hanging down on a couple of strands from her head, she’s stroking her dark hair messily with her band-aided finger, mostly missing the hair and bumping the plaster into her chin. It’s the night-time now, there is no shame.
MARLENE steps outside to make a call on her iPhone; it’s ringing and ringing, then the call’s picked up. Marlene says, It’s me again, to her ex. Her ex breathes out, Marlene, please, she says in a quiet voice because the boy’s asleep now, You can’t do this. Marlene is just listening, wondering if the boy heard the phone ring and woke up and is listening just like her, his small body crouched against his bedroom door. We said we were going to respect each other, Marlene. Marlene’s ex is taking her time now because she’s getting angry. You’re only thirty-eight, but I swear, Marlene, at that bar, you look — about fifty, and I know, that’s an awful thing to say, to someone you love, but now, we have to love other people.
MARLENE likes poetry, and it’s almost 2am, and they’re closing up, so the man with the steel-wool moustache stands up and recites a stanza he remembers from Lasgush Poradeci, “Why I Need to Love You”:
Because I chose to love you.
And I chose to woo you.
And I chose to
kiss you.
That’s why.
Then the bar owner shushes him and says to Marlene, you should read Ismail Kadare, Marlene, he’s our guy. He even stops wiping the counter and clears his throat, and announces, “Poetry” is the title of this poem. He moves the rag to the side and begins to deliver the lines carefully, translating them from Albanian in his head for Marlene:
Poetry,
How did you find your way to me?
My mother does not know Albanian well,
She writes letters like Aragon, without commas and periods,
My father roamed the seas in his youth,
But you have come,
Walking down the pavement of my quiet city of stone,
And knocked timidly at the door of my three-storey house,
At Number 16.
Not bad, the man with the steel-wool moustache says. Marlene smiles but can’t look up at the
barman. She says Thank you to the floor.
MARLENE’s walking down Rue du Faubourg Saint-Denis alone, with her iPhone in her hand, because the barman locked up the café and they all said goodbye. It’s cool now, the wind is blowing up her jean skirt, and ruffling her new lavender coat. The homeless man at Carrefour is awake, he says, Psst, to Marlene but she’s got her eyes semi-closed, walking towards the arch of Porte Saint-Denis, smiling to herself. The homeless man forgets Marlene and starts picking at his belly button. She’s already down the street, alone and humming, to herself and to her new coat, the lavender fabric dancing in the gusts of wind, her left hand bobbing to the melody she’s humming, and her right cradling the iPhone between her band-aided finger and palm. He’s behind her, the shadow, speeding up, his shoulders in, narrow hips, quick steps. He lunges at Marlene.
MARLENE’s face down on the cobblestone circle beneath the arch. There’s pigeon shit and cigarette ash smeared on her coat, torn hem. The shadow’s sprinting far into the darkness, one hand moving the wind, the other clutching her iPhone, which is, suddenly, ringing in his grip.
MARLENE, do you, want to, come over? I’d like to see you. He’d like to see you too. He can’t sleep. He wants you to sing him something. After, we could lie down, together. I miss your body. I don’t think I can, just stop, loving you. Also, I’m ready to talk about my responsibility in what happened. And your brother called me. He says he doesn’t know how to say he’s sorry, that’s why, but he’d like to give it a try. I was thinking you could go back to school. I could take care of us for a bit. You looked so beautiful this afternoon in your new lavender coat, please. Come home.
MARLENE, near the curb where it smells like stone and urine, is pushing herself over, onto her back. She opens her eyes and begins counting the stars, fourteen, fifteen…
1 “Marlene or Number 16” won the 2017 Galley Beggar Press Short Story Prize.
Yulia
Donari Braxton
i.
She said she “liked the idea of an American in Paris.” Romantic, she said. But she ate syllables and the word comes like: “rustic,” her tongue curling a little noose. Lynch z’ie foreign dip’zong! Friction seppuku, an air-raid siren. Notes like from a dog whistle, pinching scales through the fashionable gap-tooth of her upper rows. Irresistible.
Especially when she breathes. Especially in Trocadéro at night, where we’ve always hated Germans, and in my family, still do. She was one, half naked under a bright neon-red Pepsi Cola LED sign attached to the wall, and she had no idea what she was talking about.
We were catching our breath still: one of us was panting, one just sighing but rapidly, so. You blend into places. You don’t take things too seriously. You peel off a limb, bits and pieces. You enter a pool, get out of the pool. The water you take with you: you don’t like that water. You shake it off like a stray, there-there. You wrap yourself in blankets to suffocate the fire; you trade wet for the itch and a roll in the grass.
ii.
For me, there was no other way to make love. If there was one, she didn’t seem to know about it or care. It was the silence afterwards, stung. An unusual silence — a somehow personal one. And war every night waiting out that she’d break it:
“C’était bien?”
“I thought you fell asleep.”
“Look at this picture.”
“If you like dogs so much, get a dog?”
“C’est toi mon chien.”
About dogs, she was vocal about liking them. If there were a dog in the street and she thought you were watching, she’d approach the dog just to show you, or something. She trafficked in luxury vehicles and self-analysis, and had a playlist of conversation readymade for the bakery, Vavin, Veronese.
I remember sometime around her seventeenth year, her parents objected to nose jobs, so she sold her BMW, and paid for one herself. She explained that surgery in small-town Germany is no small cross to bear, how she’d dealt with the experience, how she’d prevailed (this was in line at the bakery). Then, she waits for your surrender — just picks at the almond croissant, small bites.
“Brave of you.”
“Well, now I regret it.”
And on and on, processed and repurposed — no feelings, instead packageable facts. Transactional trauma, a virtues ledger. And about bakeries: once or twice a month, she’d bring home bagels and lox; this was extremely pandering of her. You’d have to take really large bites. You’d have to spit nothing out.
iii.
In France, Germans speak French. A lot of people do, Verfremdungseffekt. In Hebrew, there’s no word for that. We’d walk the Canal Saint-Denis and I’d scan the window menus, look at the prices, calculate. Once we were seated, she’d somehow find a “special,” or something in fine print, or she’d combine a dish or two or three — in the end, she’d have to chip in for the bill. That day, she’d have the steak, where I’d eat mostly bread, between our dates, to afford the lies that I’d told.
While that morning’s another story entirely: I’d laughed during lovemaking, and this was the final nail in the coffin. You can’t redo these things ever.
You stand instead to attention: zu Befehl!
You do sex in a serious way; this is a serious time. You give your partner your undivided attention. You stomach that attention’s a word for what it’s not. That it’s not the thing; it’s every other thing your brain’s fucking off about — then you get to get the erection; sometimes you get to keep it. The cerebral cortex does that.
It blocks out the hum in the room. The beats of blood pulsing in your neck, your heartbeat. You’re dying. The cotton fabric lightly resting against your skin. Black Blazer, Button-Up, Banana Republic, $59.99. Miraculously the world melts away, and now you pull focus, the little lens in your mind’s eye stopping down, to the one thing you do, and poorly at that. Women. And that, my boy, is all that you do, l’man ha’Shem.
“Regarde moi!”
I have to look around the room sometimes, too. I have to look down:
“Non, mais regarde!”
“Arrête.”
iv.
After sex is the part she seemed to like the most. She reveled in silence, but only then. She was analytical at night, while I lived in constant fear of laundry. What remained of her fashion sense — Michael Kors Leopard Calf Hair Mini Skirt, $312.28, Gucci Marmont Belt Black $299.99, either a red or blue one Juicy Couture Long-Sleeve Tee — these careful statements now just bunched at her hips, like a loincloth collage. I wore the rest of her makeup on my neck and my shoulders, and wondered if her eyes were closed, really. She love-talked in French, but the oui came like wee, so to American ears, you’re less stud than spinning teacup. Then in postmortem she’d caress and say: Mmm? Over and over, as if she were asking me a question. If I would reply to her: Mmm? Or if I would reply: Mmm. or Mmm!? She’d just reply, by going: Mmm? to me again. As if I were the one who had asked her Mmm? to begin with — which, I have to say, I hated about her more than anything else.
“Tu veux que je m’en aille?”
“Speak English.”
“Did I say it wrong?
“It’s just better that way.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“Oui.”
“Hahaha,” she said.
But I had no sense of humor. I hadn’t told a joke deliberately in some forty years. I was who she thought I was; she just didn’t know it. That’s why I always looked away when she looked at me too closely.
Here, I break off to go fetch the towel. I had to clean myself off. That’s your job after sex. You’re a man and your ecstasy makes garbage. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. You’re a housewarming guest in the valley; your cocktail’s spilt on the new crimson Bombay, $3990. You pat at it kind of. You wait for the help to arrive and take over, for the host to spirit you away, Hé hé hé héééééééééééé! Donari, non non nonnnnn, t’en fais pas Donariiii, pas de soucis Donariii, allez!
But here, no one comes. No one saves you fr
om your fluids, your vulgarity, your Jewishness. You sit patting forever and ever and ever — she’s kept her eyes open. She wants to see to the task’s done. Your disease is one thing, your kin’s another entirely. It almost hurts my feelings in retrospect.
“Water if you like.”
“Mmm?”
“Mhm.”
“Mmm?”
“Mhm?”
Music was playing from a gramophone in the other room. The music was inappropriately modern or unironically not.
“How old is this music?”
“It has a USB port.”
“I said music.”
“1960’s, I said.”
“I want to go out.”
“I’ll walk you home then, come on.”
v.
We dressed individually, separate rooms. It was fall/winter and we needed long socks, heavy scarves, gloves and coats. I wore mostly black, while she wore blacks, reds, a purple headband.
I locked the door behind us with a heavy gold latchkey, the old-fashioned kind still in use in parts of the Latin Quarter. We set down the corridor together, the stairwell, mostly in silence. I put the gold latchkey in the brown tote that she’d taken, shaped like a hand, so that I wouldn’t lose it. It had a fancy silver zipper that I was always scared that I’d break, because the corner fabric was tearing. I offered to carry the bag for her but she declined.
We'll Never Have Paris Page 9
