by Tim Sandlin
So, here I am a wimp when it comes to enclosed darkness and here is Odette dragging me underground. She had me at a disadvantage. I walked with my eyes straight ahead, like crossing a creek on a log. Every now and then I told myself to breathe. Whenever I thought, Gee, I hope the ceiling doesn't collapse, I would knock on wood, so I was constantly knocking on wood. At the ticket place there, I found a pencil stub for the purpose and took it. Self-evident Truth #6: You can never knock on wood too often in a tunnel.
Odette showed me how to stick the ticket in a slot in a machine, then it shot through and out again and the turnstile turned when you pushed through. You had to be quick or people stacked up on your backside and grumbled. We walked down a long tunnel with tile walls and down steps and through another tunnel. There were splits and side tunnels with the directions in French for where they led. Odette could have run off and ditched me and I imagine I would have died down there. One thing you don't want is to get dependent on your hostage for survival.
I heard music and we came out in a big cave room with spoke tunnels leading all over. Two black men dressed in traditional Muslim attire were playing music — saxophone and a waist-high drum thing you hit with your hands like a bongo. They were incredibly good. Even in my late stages of panic attack, I could tell they were way better musicians than what we have back home. They were playing a free-form jazz thing, I don't know what it's called. The drummer closed his eyes and at the end of a saxophone riff he cried out, "Ha!"
"Do these guys live down here?" I asked Odette.
She hadn't been paying them proper attention. "I imagine they go to the streets when they are not working."
"So they stay underground all day and only surface at night?"
"It's their job. You have a job. They have a job. You work where you must."
I dug in my pockets and had Odette take some euros over to drop into the open saxophone case. She tried to make me do it, but I preferred staying where I could hold on to the rail along the wall there.
Odette called me a "silly cowboy" and she kissed me. Not much of a kiss. Nothing wanton, but it was on the lips and did signify goodwill. I watched her walk over to the musicians and drop my money into the case. She said something and pointed toward me. The saxophone player nodded acknowledgment. The drummer kept his eyes closed. I was frozen in place, wondering why Odette had kissed me when she knew full well I was afraid.
We went down more steps to a platform by a drop-off into a ravine that had two sets of train tracks running along the bottom. I stayed as far from the drop-off as I could get, for fear the vertigo would pitch me onto the tracks. I knew from reading about New York that one rail down there would kill you dead if you touch it, but I didn't know which one. Now I know how city folks feel camping in grizzly country. It's not the danger, it's the damn ignorance that makes you shake.
Pretty soon a train came whooshing down through the tunnel. The double doors opened with a hiss of air, like the vacuum tube at a drive-up bank, and a horde of people surged off the train. The horde going on the train didn't wait till the ones getting off got off. The getting-on bunch charged right into and through the getting-off bunch. No one looked at anyone else. I have no idea how they did it, but Odette was right there amongst them, with me in tow.
Once inside, we had to stand much closer to other people than the cowboy code allows and hold on to this pole in hopes of not falling when the train took off. I couldn't have fallen anyway. There were so many bodies around us I would have come up against someone who was against someone all the way back to the wall. It was like a mosh pit you see on MTV, only with umbrellas. Odette was watching me, a smile kind of flickering across her face.
"How can people live like this?" I asked.
She leaned toward my ear to talk. "The Paris metro is safer than your American streets. Just watch out for pickpockets."
I automatically felt for my billfold, which, I suppose, was a mistake since anyone watching would now know that I kept it in my front pocket instead of my back. I'd left my passport and American money at Odette's, hidden under one of the clothes piles in her room, but I had a good deal of my French money and my PRCA card. I didn't want to lose that.
The train started up and, sure enough, the forward thrust pulled the crowd back into an even tighter pack. Odette's lips brushed my earlobe. I liked that. She said, "Like cows on the trail drive, you think?"
"More like canned sardines," I said.
A man off my elbow broke the don't-look rule and glared at me. He had on a black suit and carried a leather briefcase with initials on the front — CJC. If he was half as important as he looked, he should have been in his own car.
"I didn't mean you. Don't be so sensitive." I turned to look away from him and my hat knocked a lady's eyeglasses off. She lit into me like a hornet and I was happy not to know the language. I bent over to retrieve her glasses and offended someone behind me. I never saw who, just felt the stab at my butt and heard a hmmf. When I came up, Odette was laughing. She put her hand over her mouth.
"I hope you are entertained," I said.
She said, "Immensely."
We went on three or four stops and each stop more people came onto the train than got off. I stood there thinking no more would surely fit and here came two women pushing strollers, a batch of American college kids with sixty-pound backpacks, and a guy looked like Buffalo Bill Cody with a sheepdog on a leash. The only plus was each time it got more crowded I had to inch closer to Odette until her right breast pressed into my left ribs and her face was up against mine. I have to admit she'd become a distraction. I was in Paris to find my buckle and get the hell back to Denver in time to reach Dalhart before they turned my bull out, but every time I thought I knew where I was headed and why, this woman started breathing in my face.
She smiled at me from four inches out. Her eyes were the brown of half-and-half cream in fresh coffee. They were highly curious, compared to most eyes I've looked into. I turned my gaze away from Odette before we fell into one of those meaningful eye contact moments that get you in trouble no matter what you do to get out of them. I looked at the toddler down at knee level because toddlers are a safe place to look in a crowd. Anywhere else can cause problems. This one was blond and chubby and about Ty's size back when I last lived with him on a regular basis. Ty used to straddle my boot and play horsey. I imagine I enjoyed it more than he did. There was a song I used to sing while he rocked, about the old gray mare not being what she used to be. Mica hated it.
"We leave at the next station," Odette said.
The crowd was so thick I almost didn't make it out the sliding doors in time. Odette had to hold my hand and pull. I'm not adept when it comes to forcing my way through strangers.
I was never so glad to surface in my life. "Let's don't do that again," I said.
Odette said, "Do what?"
We came up at a six-way intersection that didn't look any different from where we went down. Fancy women. Thin men. Tiny cars. I had no idea which way was north or the direction we'd come from. Think of yourself as popping up in Oz.
Odette turned right and took off. I followed.
I said, "Do you love your husband?" Okay, I'm a turd for asking her what she'd asked me. Odette was the villain in this deal. She'd stolen my stuff, and I had no cause to get involved in her personal life. But we'd slept together on the couch, and — Self-evident Truth #7 — Sleeping-next-to is at least as intimate as banging. Besides, I'd been underground with her and come back alive.
"Of course I love my husband."
"Then why aren't you with him?"
Odette stopped walking and her arms shot out in a Give me a break, you nitwit gesture. "Because he took advantage of my trusting spirit and broke my heart. He is an American." She started walking again, faster than before. "I was a fool. Ever since William James I have believed Americans when they tell the same lies that I would never believe coming from a Frenchman. It is my tragic weakness."
She gave me a fierce
look. "You had better not break my heart."
"Cowboys break hearts," I said. "Bull riders show women the full potential of life itself. Then we move on down the road."
"I am already familiar with the full potential of life itself."
She pointed catty-cornered across the street to a cafe with dark green windows and a single, unoccupied table out front. "Armand's apaches meet him here every morning to learn their assignments."
"Armand?"
"Giselle's man. He is charismatic. You must beware of his magnetic force."
"And Armand has a football team?"
"I do not understand."
"I know he doesn't have a tribe of Indians."
Odette stepped into the street and we crossed diagonally, which is another way to irritate French drivers. "Apache is a French word. It means ruffians. Sabots. Armand sends his followers out to do battle with American imperialists. I myself have cut tires on Pizza Hut delivery scooters."
"Back in Wyoming everyone says Pizza Hut is a front for imperialism."
"The American franchise system is a relentless assault on indigenous culture throughout the world. McDonald's is much more insidious than the CIA."
"That's true."
Odette put one hand on the door, but she didn't go in. "You be polite, once we are indoors."
"Why do people keep telling me to be polite?"
"These are not football players who will lose their scholarship for beating you into soup."
20.
The tables and chairs hadn't been replaced since Ernest Hemingway liberated Paris. Soccer flickered from two wall-mounted televisions more expensive than all the other furniture combined. Groups of men huddled at the bar, staring up at the televisions, a cigarette in one hand and a drink — coffee more likely than alcohol — in the other. A few looked me and my hat over, but the soccer match interested them more. A woman behind the cash register with eight-inch earrings dangling down to her armpit fuzz watched me longer than the men did. Her watching was not what I would call a welcome. There wasn't a tourist in sight, not that I could have seen one had he been there. Visibility ended about fifteen feet out.
"You think they're using a machine to pump in smoke?" I said to Odette.
"Do not exaggerate. The French abhor exaggeration."
"Maybe something's on fire."
She took hold of my hand and led me down an aisle between students and blue-collar guys in coveralls, eating lunch. The wall opposite the bar had a bunch of banged-flat tin signs that said stuff in French. There was a painting of two toddlers nursing on a wolf. God only knows where that came from.
Odette released my hand. "There is Armand now." She indicated a round table at the far end of the room.
"Which is Armand?"
"Next to Giselle," which wasn't much help because seedy-looking gentlemen sat on both sides of Giselle. "The snake is Remi, and the rugby lock is Leon. He is more bodyguard than politico. You know Bernard."
That left the man on Giselle's right as Armand. All in black, oneday beard, eye sockets you associate with vegetarians, sneer, deeply receding hairline, skin that made you think of Charolais tits. Had I run into Armand anywhere on Earth, I would have hated him on sight.
Giselle spotted me through the smoke. She nudged Armand. I nodded, the way I would to a gate puller before a ride commenced, and jumped in.
"Hey, Giselle, long time no see."
She glowered, which I took as encouraging. Nine out of ten failed rides fail in the first two seconds. Survive that first two seconds, and there's a reasonable chance you'll make the bell.
"Yo, Bernard, beat up any helpless females today?"
Bernard wouldn't look at me. From the lack of shock and awe at my appearance, I figured he'd warned the group that I was on the way. His eyes stayed down on a map of what I figured was Paris that was spread on the table there, the corners held down by beer bottles. More bottles and overflowing ashtrays littered the table. A pile of black shirts sat before the one named Remi, who looked more like a badger with pointy sideburns than a snake. I fingered the collar on the top shirt. It had a golden arches logo on the breast.
"You fellas selling hot McD uniforms? I'll bet there's a good market from guys trying to pick up chicks."
Remi muttered something ugly and negative. Odette launched into her spiel. The henchmen and Bernard inspected their beer bottles while Armand stared at me, dead-eyed, unblinking, the look obviously developed in front of a mirror. Nearby customers cut their eyes at our group, seeing without looking.
Giselle interrupted Odette. Whatever she said was the equivalent of a verbal slap to the head. Odette said words back, Giselle let loose a torrent of scorn. I began to regret that I'd given Giselle the benefit of my dick.
Odette said, "Giselle claims you are a spy. You are CIA, working with Starbucks to destroy the Parisian antiglobalization movement so they can brutalize our culture."
"I'm here for the buckle."
Bernard mumbled, "Only the CIA would provide such a transparent cover."
I have no use for mumblers. "I'm PRCA. So is the buckle."
Giselle sat up straight, leading with her knockers. "You presented the buckle to me, as a gift."
"You are a lying tramp."
Armand went off in French for quite some time. While he rattled, I checked out the map. There was a red sticky star at an intersection by a bridge over the river. My impression was they were planning intrigue.
"Armand says his woman does not lie," Odette said.
"Took him a lot of words to say it."
"I summarized."
"Does he know his woman is a bisexual, sadistic fame-fucker?"
"He knows English. I would remain civilized if I were in your position," Odette said.
Giselle said, "No buckle. You understand that much English, cowboy?"
Remi and Leon brought their heads up to show me how surly they could be. Leon had a golf ball–sized lump on his forehead and a pearl-colored hearing aid in his right ear. Bernard focused his wrath more on Odette than me. He had his own issues. God knows what they expected. I sure as heck hadn't flown across the ocean just to say, "Never mind," and fly back home.
I rested my fingertips of both hands on the edge of the table. "These boys remind me of a bunch of northern Idaho survivalists. Same body odors."
Next to me, I felt Odette bristle, as if she knew the gist of what was coming and didn't approve.
I went on. "Deep down, they can be reasoned with, but you got to get their attention."
Without asking, I pulled a chair over from the next table. Instead of sitting down, I used the chair to climb up on the round table. "You mind?" I said to Bernard as I borrowed his beer. He didn't mind, out loud, anyway. Careful not to kick over any bottles or ashtrays, I stepped onto the map, with my boots pointed toward Armand, the bar behind him, the bottles behind the bar, and the mirror behind the bottles. Not a one of the butts in the ashtrays had a filter.
"First, let me say that I am an ambassador for my country."
I paused for that to sink in. If my goal had been to get attention, I had done that. Everyone in the place was looking up at my show, even the soccer fans.
"Second, I did not give Giselle, the iron twat here, my Crockett County championship buckle as a gift, although she did sit on my face and probably does deserve compensation. I earned that buckle by staying on a bull was one hell of a lot tougher than you pud pullers."
Remi muttered. Leon growled, even though I would bet he didn't understand a word, except maybe pud puller. Armand smiled.
Odette said, "Rowdy."
"Third, I want my buckle back. Now!"
I threw Bernard's bottle into the mirror, which exploded. The bartender and waiter hit the floor in a hail of glass. I whirled and kicked Leon in the head knob.
Repercussions were about what you would expect.
I went for Leon first because he seemed the dangerous one of the bunch, in a fight, anyway. Remi no doubt had a knife hidden som
ewhere, but I figured he wouldn't pull it unless he could stick me in the back. Armand was a politician. He would order others to rape, maim, and kill, but he wasn't likely to do so himself. And Bernard didn't bother me.
Of course, these calls were based on one-on-one, which wasn't the case here. The case here was, you bring enough coyotes to one location, they'll take on a bear. Remi grabbed my leg that was in midair from booting Leon, and he lifted it. Bernard grabbed the other leg and pulled. Armand swung a bottle into my ACL. I went over. The table went over. Chaos reigned supreme.
Real fights are nothing like movie fights, especially old cowboy movies where John Wayne could throw a man through a picture window without slicing an artery, or a guy in a black hat could wallop Audie Murphy over the head with a bottle and break the bottle instead of Audie's head. People almost never get hurt bad from fist-play in movies. Happens fairly regular in life.
I was on my back on the floor, not the place to be. Remi kicked me in the mouth. I bit his ankle to the bone. As I rose, Bernard pummeled my back. Leon did the charging bull thing. Caught me in the ribs and knocked me through a little table where two beret-type codgers were sipping liqueurs. They saved their drinks but lost the table.
Most of the customers stampeded away from the action but a few decided to play kill the cowboy. The ones coming and the ones going got in each other's way, giving me time to bust up more furniture. I karate-chopped Armand in the Adam's apple. He went over backward and rolled quickly onto his knees. He looked up at me with his mouth open, shocked that someone would dare hit him instead of his minions. Or maybe he was shocked he'd been karate-chopped by a cowboy. John Wayne didn't use karate moves. I learned mine from Jackie Chan movies.
That Leon was a tough bastard. He lifted me off the floor and tossed me into the bar. I bounced and kicked him in the crotch. He didn't care. I figure steroids had turned his nut sack to stone. Whatever, he was more pissed than incapacitated.
