by Tim Sandlin
Next down the line came a map of Boulder, Colorado, and below that a chat room where they discussed how spiritual American Indian drugs are. The room was subdivided into cactus-derived, mushroom-derived, and toad sweat. I didn't get any farther below that because Odette walked in.
24
"I thought I would find you here," Odette said. "I am adept at judging character. I knew the moment you were released, you would begin the tracking of Giselle."
She came up behind me and looked over my shoulder as I retreated back to Yahoo. Odette didn't touch me like I thought she would. She held a hand over my shoulder as close as you can come to touching without touching. The warmth of her hand penetrated my shirt. Made my skin prickle. Somehow, almost but not quite touching felt more personal than if she'd grabbed me. Everybody hugs everybody these days. It's the ones you expect to touch but don't who have feelings too complicated to express.
I gave Odette Self-evident Truth #8: The only thing worse than finding out you were wrong when you prejudged a person's character is to find out you were right.
"I'll think about that." I couldn't see Odette there behind me, but I could feel her, the way she took up air, and she smelled okay. There's a place in Joshua Tree National Park that smells like Odette. Maybe it's the Joshua tree, itself. I think I could smell Odette anywhere under any conditions and know it was her.
"Why are you no longer imprisoned?" she asked.
"I was innocent."
She snort-laughed. "That must have been difficult to prove."
"The police knew your apache friends attacked me without cause." I typed and talked. "They just didn't want a riot to break out there in the bar. Some of those folks didn't like Americans."
"All of those folks didn't like Americans, except maybe me. What I don't understand is why you are on Giselle's computer."
A list came up on the screen. Lots of Codys, Dustys, Hunters, and men with letter names — J.D. and K.W "I'm looking up bull-rider standings. See." I pointed to my name on the list. "Winning Crockett County jumped me from one hundred and three to sixty-two. If I win every rodeo I enter from now to Thanksgiving, I'll have a shot at making top fifteen."
She didn't ask when Thanksgiving came. "That would reach your goal, no?"
"The top fifteen qualify for National Finals. I wouldn't need my buckle back if I could ride at National Finals."
Her hand finally dropped onto my shoulder. It was like completing an electrical circuit. "Is that possible? For you to win every rodeo?"
I scanned up the list to see who was ahead of me. It was a bunch of unknowns till you got into the high thirties. Not so much unknown to me, but Odette probably hadn't heard of them. The top ten were household names, in Wyoming, anyway. Ty would love me if I became a household name.
"I've won one in a row, so far. No reason to think I can't keep the streak alive."
Odette's body rustled. It's funny how with some people you can tell what they're looking at without looking at them. She was looking to see where else I'd been in Giselle's room.
"Did you find the buckle?"
"Nope." I shut off the computer. "Is Studi albino?"
"Who?"
"The roommate. I was wondering if she's albino."
"She's blond."
"She looks like a pretty version of Edgar Winter."
Odette came around to the side of the chair where she could see my face. She'd changed clothes since this morning. Now she was wearing this gingham jumper thing, with a T-shirt. In her super-clean glasses, she looked about twelve years old. "I do not know of Edgar Winter, but Studi dyes her hair to please the men she works with. Her dream is to marry a pilot."
"Back home, any girl whose dream is to get married keeps her mouth shut about it. Women in the West look at marriage as a form of giving up."
Odette's eyes darted here and there around the room, as if searching. I wondered what she was looking for — the gun, the dope, the dildo? Frozen Charlotte? She must have come to Giselle's for a reason.
I've found if you want to know something, the thing to do is ask. "So, why are you here?"
"I was looking for you," Odette said.
"Why?"
She shrugged. Bunnies could never get away with that French shrug. If a bunny tried it, she'd come off as an airhead, and Odette did not come off as an airhead. "I don't ask myself why."
"There's a difference between thinking you might find me here and coming here to find me. You had no reason to believe I was out of jail."
Odette touched her fingertips to my cheekbone and looked down at me. I couldn't tell if it was a look of affection or thinking I was pathetic. "That is true only if you are a cowboy in Paris for your belt buckle. If you are CIA or Interpol or others even more sinister, I knew you would be out."
"I'm not CIA, Interpol, or anything else sinister."
"Then why are you not still in custody?"
There's a word for thinking your species or country or football team is the center of everything. I forget the word, but plenty of people have it. I know rodeo cowboys who can't conceive of walking into a bar in Paris, France, and saying, "I was a close personal friend of Freckles Brown," and no one in that smoky-as-a-tar-pit hole knowing who it was you're talking about. If you finally convinced this cowboy that there actually is a place where thirty or more men gather to drink where no one has heard of Freckles Brown, he would spit and say, "Them frogs are the most ignorant bastards on earth." I imagine there re names a Frenchman could drop and if I didn't know them, he'd say the same thing about me — soccer players or bicycle riders, that sort of thing. Folks from New York City are the worst at this word, whatever it is. Their song is, "If it didn't happen here, it didn't happen anywhere."
Paris proved a comeuppance in my own view of reality. What I mean is, I travel a good bit, probably a hundred thousand miles a year, and it had been a long time since I'd gone to a place and not run into people I knew. It'd been so long I'd fooled myself into thinking I knew people everywhere, but that isn't true. What is true is I know people everywhere I go when I'm likely to be there.
So, even if I wind up somewhere weird like Camden, Connecticut, I'll be there when a rodeo is in town, so people I know will be there, too. Professional rodeo is a migratory city.
As Odette and I walked down the wet sidewalk, dodging dogs and dog dip, circling randomly parked scooters, and, on my part, doing my best to stay out of the way of locals with umbrellas, I kept expecting to see someone familiar. A waitress, maybe. I hadn't been anywhere since high school that I didn't know a waitress. Or maybe a stoved-in has-been. My world is peppered by old men with bad legs and lip cancer, but here in Paris, everyone I saw that afternoon walked fast and sported a full mouth. Anyone I had anything in common with was on their way to Dalhart.
"Who are you planning to strike next?" Odette said. She didn't seem to mind the mist. She walked straight up, breasts forward, as if rain and sunshine affected her the same.
"I thought I'd start with Armand."
"You've already fought him. Why not pummel someone new?" I think she was being satirical or sardonic or one of those other words that slide over my head.
"Giselle will give the buckle up if Armand tells her to, and Armand will tell her to when he sees not giving me the buckle is more trouble than giving it to me."
She moved closer to me as we stepped around a crate of rotten cabbage. Don't ask me why they had a crate of bad cabbage in the middle of the sidewalk. Our arms bumped.
"You have the problem worked out," Odette said. "Men in Paris rarely have problems worked out. Their sensitivity forces them to be indecisive."
"No one accuses me of sensitivity." She might have smiled. I don't know. Women often miss it when I kid around. "First thing you're going to show me is where Armand lives."
Some women can walk down the street with a man and some can't. Mica would rub me off on a stop sign, or blow the timing at a curb. Odette had the spontaneity of a shadow.
"No one knows wher
e Armand lives," she said. "Even I don't know."
"No one at all? That's hard to believe."
"None except his inner circle, like Leon or Remi. Giselle might since she is his woman, but I'm not certain Armand would let a lover know where he sleeps."
I asked the uppermost question. "Have you had sex with Armand?"
"Maybe, once."
"Maybe?"
"A long time ago. When I was a girl and easily influenced by angry charisma. Armand can get any first-year student he wants."
I figured Odette at twenty-three, maybe twenty-four, so her "long time ago" was not the same as mine. To her, it could mean last spring.
"I'll bet I know someone could tell us where Armand lives," I said.
"How is that possible? Armand's movements are secret. He is political."
"Politicians in France keep their addresses secret?" That seemed odd, but, when I thought about it, I realized American politicians don't list home addresses in the phone book, either.
"Armand is not a politician. He is a French purist. He fights for the cause of our national culture. Often he works outside legalities."
We came to a babbling schizophrenic with visible nose dribble and his hand out. I stopped to dig for spare change. I've had to ask for spare change before, when I was young and not operating under the disadvantage of mental illness. I wasn't about to pass him by.
"I haven't figured out Armand's cause yet, except he doesn't like fast food."
Odette waited while I finished the transaction. The schizophrenic mumbled something that could have been translated as "Thank you" or "Fuck you." Either way.
"Armand is rebelle du monde. Anti-globalization. We are all anti-globalization. American companies like your McDonald's and Wendy's are destroying our culture."
The street beggar took the money and went into a burger joint called Quick that appeared to be a low-rent McDonald's, or maybe a high-rent Jack in the Box. "They destroyed our culture a long time ago. You're better off without it," I said.
"McDonald's has hundreds and hundreds of franchises in France today. They don't even call them restaurants. You Americans invented eating in a franchise."
We started walking again. Odette seemed to have a destination in mind. She didn't hesitate at intersections, anyway. I didn't ask where we were going. We passed several restaurants named Brassiere, which I thought was weird. Must be a chain. A tall, sleek woman decked out in black spandex glided past. Her shopping bag said SEPHORA. She reeked of sophistication. I couldn't help but check her out, wondering what she thought of bulls. Women either go for cowboys, or they don't. You don't meet many middle-of-the-roaders.
Odette saw the checkout and punched me hard on the shoulder. "We must drive the invaders away. I admire Armand for his battle."
I kneaded my shoulder — the right one held in place by a pin — and wondered if she'd hit that hard because I was an American out to ruin her country or a man looking at a tall woman. Girls are so complicated, they hit for one reason but there's always a second reason buried underneath, like toads in a dried-up bog. Hell, it's not just hitting. Everything girls do they do for a reason other than what would appear obvious.
"Only way to drive them out is if nobody eats there. Then, they go away. That's how it works in the States."
"But the chains are hugely successful. If we leave it to the common man, there will soon be no French culture. We will all behave as if we live in Los Angeles."
"You make that sound like a drawback."
"The French people have sold their civilization for a cheap piece of badly cooked beef." She studied my face. "You are flush. Are you ill?"
I was feeling strange. Nothing out of hand, mind you, but my jaws were grinding and my forehead felt stretched. It came to me that whatever I sniffed back in Giselle's room might have had some kick after all.
"I need to sit down."
"This is where we are going." Odette pointed to a heavy wooden door with French writing on a plaque beside the entrance. "You can cool off here."
"Where are you taking me?"
"It's a place you need to see if you wish to understand who I am."
My recoil was unintentional. "Why in God's name would I want that?"
"Come in with me and together we shall find out."
The room was darkly institutional with people clustered together looking at French exhibits on the walls. The exhibits seemed to be historical explanations and maps of what, to my alarm, appeared to be tunnels. A man in a black suit and skinny tie — imagine a high-school shop teacher gone to seed — sat in a booth behind a glass window with a half circle cut in the bottom, the kind of window you see at movie theaters in Nebraska.
Odette proceeded to buy two tickets.
"Where are you taking me?" I asked.
"Somewhere you need to go."
"I hate it when people think they know what I need."
Odette laughed, as if I meant to be funny. Then she fished in her beaded purse and came out with two D-battery flashlights. "You'll want this," she said, giving me a flashlight.
"Oh, no."
"It's more interesting if you can see."
"There's rules I live by and one of them says I can't go anyplace or do anything where I'll need a flashlight."
"For a cowboy, you are certainly a bit of a weenie."
That hurt. I wondered where she'd learned the word. I'll bet it wasn't in school. Probably that American husband of hers had taught her derogatory slang. Tallywhacker. Weenie. There should be a separate prison wing for people who think it's funny to teach foreigners dirty words.
Odette led me through a floor-to-ceiling iron gate not unlike my jail cage and into a room where steps spiraled into the very bowels of Paris. She smiled at me. I tried to smile back and failed. Down she went.
I said, "Hellfire," and down I went after her. Up went the heart rate, pumping whatever weird drug I'd ingested at Giselle's through my system. My saliva tasted like rusted shingling nails.
Your bull rider will insist there is a constant scale of bravery, say a one to ten, with those who panic at a bee in the car as a one and those willing to climb on 1,600 pounds of pissed-off Brahma at ten, and everybody else spread in the middle. But the truth is, there's more than one scale. For instance, I would chainsaw my legs at the knee and go on disability before I'd take a job in a mine. Guys who face live burial as a career choice are either incredibly stupid or incredibly brave, which is the same thing non—bull riders often say about bull riders. That brings up the eternal question of when does stupidity become courage and vice versa. I have chosen not to go there.
The steps went down ten or twelve tight corkscrews straight into the earth. I'd thought going to the bathroom at Crepes a Go Go was like dropping into a well, but that was a squat compared to this place. That thing in your inner ear that keeps you from pitching forward onto your face went blooey on me. A chattering covey of little boys filled the steps above. I risked a look to see who could be making so much racket and they were dressed in uniforms, like Cub Scouts, although I don't suppose France has Cub Scouts. Much of the noise was complaints about the speed of my descent, I think. What they did that mattered was to block my chance of turning around and getting the hell out.
The steps dropped into a cave that was someone's idea of a room. There were more historical photos stuck on the walls that were made of bricks I'd guess came from the fifteenth century. The pictures were that orangey-brown and silver kind they made before black-and-white photography was invented. More maps. Catholic symbols. Some stuff about dead people and Nazis. While I was looking at the pictures, the Cub Scouts or whatever they were filed off through a door that led to a tunnel where I didn't want to go. As rambunctious as the boys were, they'd only been gone ten seconds when the tunnel swallowed up their sound. It was as if they marched into the bedrock and vanished.
"I wanted the children to go ahead," Odette said. She took my hand. "It's nicer when it feels like no one is nearby."
The walls were breathing. I'd gone from hyperventilating on the steps to not breathing at all in the room, so it was as if the walls breathed for me.
"Come on," Odette said.
I didn't say anything. I don't think I was capable.
Odette said, "You will be fine. I will stay with you."
And I let her pull me into the tunnel.
25.
In the past I have said I don't do'well in mines when what I meant was highway tunnels or kindling boxes or amusement park rides that simulate mine shafts. The truth is I'd never been in a real mine where the earth might crash down and bury me alive under a thousand tons of dirt and rocks or trap me in an airless, black pocket of space where all I have left is waiting to die knowing no one will ever see my body again.
Odette's tunnel did have a string of lightbulbs, twenty-five-watt, tops, and the walls were brick, but the ceiling was damp clay or something. It was low — five-ten, maybe — and in places it got lower and the sides narrowed to where we had to walk single file. The floor was wet gravel. I was fighting fibrillation when the tunnel went into a rolling contraction, like a throat swallowing.
I said, "Jesus, what was that?"
"Pardon?"
"What happens if we're down here and there's an earthquake?"
She stopped and turned her head to the side, as if the wall held the answer. "I imagine we die."
"That's not a comfort."
We walked a half mile or so. It's hard to judge distance when your sphincter's puckered. One of the great things about being on a bull is what it does to time. When eight seconds stretches out to hundreds of thoughts and actions and counter-actions, a lifetime feels like it has the potential of going on forever. Time stops is no exaggeration when you're clamped to the spine of a raging Brahma. I'm thinking distance does something similar when you're underground.
