by Tim Sandlin
I said, "But — "
She picked up my fries. "Move."
We left the Coke sitting on the counter. I don't know why she made me buy it. Maybe ordering the Coke was code. Saying beer might have meant Plan canceled. Hell, I don't know.
We stepped away from the main traffic flow and Giselle thrust the fries into my sternum. "Eat."
I was watching Bernard. "Let's sit down first, so I won't hit my head when I fall."
"Now."
I looked over at the bathrooms, with Armand and Leon on each side of the doors, and Pinto to the other side of the exit. Armand and Leon were watching me. Pinto wasn't.
"Eat," Giselle said. "Or I shoot."
Odette squeezed my hand.
I said, "To hell with it," and stuck a handful of French fries in my mouth. They had a hint of pecan flavor that I suppose was caused by the foreign substance. Otherwise, they were the same as the fries at the airport — cooked in oil that wasn't hot enough.
"Not bad," I said.
Giselle said, "More."
I ate another handful. Bernard was still upright, waiting on a family. The kids chattered at him like chipmunks on speed and he wasn't catching any of it. If Pinto hadn't exaggerated, or outright lied, Bernard should hit the floor about now.
I turned to Giselle. "I'm not dead yet."
"Eat more."
Michael watched with a half-smile on his smug jock face. "I told you the powder is harmless."
Odette said, "Are you okay?"
"I could use some ketchup."
I sucked air and grabbed my stomach, then bent double and moaned.
Odette said, "Rowdy?"
"Jesus, help me!" I fell over a chair onto the floor. Thrashing, rolling side to side, fingers clawing my belly, "Make it stop! God, make it stop!" I went into spasms. Arched like a sick dog. Dry heaved. A good bit of activity broke out above me. Cries of "Un médecin! Un médecin!" and "Appelez une ambulance." I could hear Bernard freaking out.
I howled and spazzed again, then curled on my side, fetal.
Odette was beside me, on the floor, talking fast French. She rolled me onto my back and I felt her fingers on my throat, searching for a pulse. Her fingers were soft. Pleasant. Her mouth covered mine and she blew into me.
Pinto said, "Move up."
Odette shifted to the side of my head and Pinto straddled my stomach. He punched me hard in the chest, then went into a rhythm of pushing and leaning back. Odette breathed into my lungs.
"Check him again," Pinto said.
Odette turned her head so her ear floated over my nostrils. "Non."
Then she went back to breathing for me while Pinto pumped at my heart. This went on for thirty seconds or so before Odette stopped. Her fingers felt for a pulse again, then she sat back on her heels. "He is dead."
Repercussions were about what you would expect. Bernard screamed. Michael shouted, "It can't be!" Giselle put two bullets into Michael. At the sudden gunfire, bodies surged away. I heard Armand shouting. Someone shoved someone who fell over me and bounced back up.
I turned my head to the side and opened my eyes. Michael was on the floor, our faces less than a foot apart. Blood trickled from his nose and the lower edge of his lips. When he coughed, a surge of pain swept through his body.
He said, "You're not dead."
I smiled. "Nope."
"Slick."
"I told you not to call me that."
Above us, Pinto had Giselle's gun arm up behind her back. Gendarmes were pouring into the room. Armand tried to break for it and they caught him. Leon roared and bowled over a cluster of officers who pulled him down. As Giselle stared at me, her eyes took on a wild, cat-like hatred — the same look I'd seen on her face when we made love.
It took all Michael had left to ask the question. "Who are you?"
I stood and brushed off my jeans, certain now that I knew the answer. When I leaned down to pick up my hat, I looked Michael right in the eyes.
"I am a cowboy."
Michael died.
I walked out of there.
36.
Odette waited for me outside, next to the tree growing from the sidewalk. She gave me a hug I will remember when I'm an old cuss drooling in a wheelchair trapped in the overheated rec room of a state-run nursing home. I will look back on my life and remember that hug.
She said, "If Will James were here he would slap your cute bottom and shout Yahoo!"
"What about William James?"
"He would say you have had a religious experience."
"Got that right."
As Odette and I hugged, I looked across the avenue to the sidewalk where Mrs. Whiteside stood beside a phone booth, watching us. She wore a black raincoat and a floppy hat, like that woman at the end of Casablanca. Monty Clift was in her arms. I couldn't see her face well enough to know what she was thinking.
Odette broke off the hug and stepped back to look in my eyes. "Is my Michael dead?"
"Looks like it."
Her eyes did a drifty thing where the focus went off and came back. "If someone must die, I am grateful it is him and not you."
More and more gendarmes converged on the mall. Police cars and ambulances came wailing up the street. Unlike American emergency vehicles, the French have a volume control on their sirens, so you think the thing is going full blast and then suddenly the loudness triples. I hope cops in Wyoming never discover volume control.
Pinto fought the flow of bodies going in and down the stairs to join us on the sidewalk. He had a silk hankie wrapped around his left hand. "The bitch bit me," he said.
Odette bristled. "Who are you calling the bitch?"
"Any woman bites Pinto Whiteside is a bitch."
I had my own call to bristle. "So what's the deal, am I likely to keel over dead in the next ten minutes?"
"Not likely, but you may talk to God in an hour or two."
"You lied to me, you clown."
He tightened his handkerchief. He wasn't wrapping right, but I didn't feel like showing him a better way. "Would you have stayed in Paris to protect American interests if I'd said they planned to send McDonald's customers on a psychedelic trip?"
"No."
"Just as I thought." He held his right hand out to shake with Odette. "You came through like a Marine back there, little lady."
Odette didn't shake hands with him. She didn't even speak to him. She spoke to me. "Who is this person? Tell me the truth."
"Like he said, the name is Pinto Whiteside. Unless he's lying about that one, too."
"Is this moron the reason my husband is dead and my friends are going to prison?"
"I'm afraid that's me more than the moron. I'm the reason Michael is dead. I'm sorry."
Odette gave one of her French shrugs I love so much. Her eyes slicked up, just a tad. "The inheritance will be a comfort in my sorrow."
Odette and I had a nice moment going there until Pinto jumped in and spoiled it. "An American corporation has been saved," he said. "Collateral casualties are a small price to pay."
My first impulse was to nail him in the nose. I mean, Michael may have been an evil prick, but he wasn't collateral. The problem was, I just couldn't get up the emotion it takes to hit somebody. There'd been enough nailing for one day.
Instead — "Where's my buckle?"
He flushed, watermelon pink. "How should I know where your blasted buckle is. Last time I saw the thing it was in your back pocket."
"You were the only one wanted me to stay in town, the only one who knew I was at Odette's apartment."
"God knows, Rowdy, if I had your buckle I would give it up. You deserve a reward for making Europe safe for American business, but all I can offer is your nation's gratitude. Or would you rather have a nice piece of turquoise?"
"In one minute, I'm going to show you where you can put your turquoise."
Pinto laughed. He said to Odette, "I don't know what you see in him."
Pinto and Odette studied me, I suppose trying to fi
gure what she saw in me. Made me self-conscious. I took off my Stetson and wiped sweat from my forehead, then set it back on again. "Don't you have somewhere to be?"
Pinto nodded. "I'd better get back inside. Make sure the Paris police arrest the right people. It would be like them to blame the tourists and let everyone who speaks French go home."
As Pinto turned to leave, I said, "Give my best to Alene."
He stopped to look back at me. He almost said something, then he thought better of it.
Pinto hadn't noticed Mrs. Whiteside standing across the avenue. Before Odette and I turned to go, I waved at her, just to make sure she knew I'd seen her there. Mrs. Whiteside and I locked eyes for a long moment in which I felt as if an entire stream of unspoken information was flying back and forth across the avenue. Then she nodded. I would have given almost anything to know what the information that went unspoken was.
"Was that man CIA?" Odette asked.
"Starbucks. But he used to be CIA. I don't think he is anymore."
She nodded toward Mrs. Whiteside. "Is she CIA?"
Mrs. Whiteside turned and walked the opposite direction, away from us. Once again, I admired the way she held herself. It's not easy to carry a dog with dignity, but she pulled it off. "Maybe. It's possible. Might even be probable." She disappeared into the crowd. "The only thing I know for sure is she's not a whore."
"Whoever said she is?"
Odette and I walked with my right arm over her shoulder and her left arm across my hips, natural as water flowing downhill. We cut through a long park with trees and statues and squirrels. Tourists. Guys with carts selling postcards. Young Parisian couples staring into each other's eyes. The rain had stopped and everything had a freshly washed look.
We came to a palace like the one in Beauty and the Beast, the part at the end there where the Prince and Belle two-step and the dishes turn into people. Tyson loved that part. I was knee-deep in a fairyland fantasy when Odette said, "You will stay now, and search for your buckle."
She felt warm under my arm, like we were spot-welded at the hip. Mica was too tall to make arm-in-arm walking go, and with other women we mostly drank in chairs, cowboy danced on the dance floor, or had sex. I don't recall much walking-next-to.
I leaned over and sniffed Odette's hair, there behind the spikes in her ear. French shampoo smells sweeter than Head & Shoulders. "I've been here long enough. My plane leaves tonight."
Her breath caught. She stopped. "But we are in love. You cannot go away when you are in love."
When I turned to face her, Odette was staring into my eyes with a fawn-like vulnerability. She was the most beautiful vision I'd ever seen. I knew, right then, there in the Paris park, this is the best it will ever be for me. My life was at its top.
I said, "It's hard, isn't it."
"It is impossible."
I broke the eye contact. "Not quite."
Odette's face clouded over. "Do you know how many people experience real love?"
"Not many. I never have before you."
"It is immoral to throw that away."
How was I supposed to explain? I felt like a suicide, justifying the act to his family. "Come on, Odette. We have real love today, but if I stay, in a year or two we won't. I have to go now while it's still perfect."
"That is so stupid."
"Paris isn't Wyoming. If I stay, you and whatever amazing thing this is will keep me going for a while, but sooner or later I'll shrivel up and lose myself away from the Rocky Mountains. I'll turn out needy. You won't like me anymore."
Odette pouted. She was able to take the pout far deeper than I'd seen it taken before. In other women, pouting came off as self-pity. Manipulation. Odette made it the expression of universal sorrow. In her face, her eyes and lips, the soft curve of her chin, I saw the shared desolation of being human. "You said love is more important than saving your culture."
"Yeah, well, I am my culture and nothing else. How would I live in a place where peeing is a crisis and everyone dresses like Johnny Cash? Even the air here makes me feel like someone I'm not."
"None of that matters." Tears seeped from Odette's eyes, and, to tell the truth, mine, too. Her posture that had been so outstanding suddenly slumped.
"I have to go, Odette. It's time for you to give me the buckle."
Her eyes flashed. Her voice was bitter. "I do not have your asinine belt buckle."
"Yes, you do. Pinto wasn't the only one wanted me to stay in Paris."
She stared at me, tears making little rivulets on her face. I reached across and touched the back of her hand. "I'll bet it's in your purse, right there."
Odette stared at me so long people passing by started giving us glances. In Paris, you expect emotional scenes on the street. They are the lonely person's entertainment.
Odette reached into her purse and pulled out my buckle. "But you love me."
I took it from her. "Yes."
"And I love you."
"You're the first."
I put the buckle in my right back pocket and took the turquoise cabochon from my left. "Here, you can have this."
She held my turquoise in her hand, staring at it. Then she threw it way down the park. "I want you, Rowdy, not a souvenir." Odette caught my wrist, holding it tight. "Why are you leaving me? It makes no sense."
I tried to think of a reason she would understand. "There's a bull, in Dalhart."
"Your stupid rodeo is more important than the only chance either of us may have at real love." She said it as a statement, not a question.
A tear caught on the down of her cheek. I touched it away, then tasted the salt on the tip of my finger. "Odette, I'm a bull rider. I can't change that."
She sniffed and kept her eyes over on the palace. The whole handsome prince, beautiful princess, happily-ever-after thing always seemed farfetched to me. I guess it's different if you live in a town full of palaces. "You are a fool. You can't change that, either."
"I never said I wasn't."
Odette almost but not quite smiled. "Admitting you are stupid does not make you less stupid."
I felt her release, like a bull giving up. The bad part was over. "Giselle says I'll vomit soon, and hallucinate. You think we could go back to your place for a while? My stuff's there and I'm not leaving till evening."
Odette turned and we walked some more. She slid her arm around my waist again. It was okay.
I kissed the stud in the top flap of her ear. "What did you hit me with before?"
"Côtes de Duras, 1998."
"Did the bottle break?"
"Of course not. I only gave you a love tap."
"Maybe we could pop open that Côtes de whatever and practice a few more weird French positions."
"Maybe I will hit you on the head again."
It took ten minutes, but we found the turquoise.
Wyoming
37.
One thing and another held me up to the point where I didn't make it to GroVont till early May. Dalhart was a washout — bull busted my ass two seconds out of the chute. Yancy said I'd left my concentration in Odette's drawers. Then I got thrown in Mesquite, New Braunfels, and Tulsa, that last by Ripple hisownself. I finished third in Rapid City, but then in Aberdeen a bull dogger backed a horse trailer over my foot and broke four bones. They outfitted me with a walking cast and I wintered in Aberdeen, working graveyard at 7-Eleven. You might say it was a low point. I lived in Budget Suites and didn't have the money to go out.
In late February, I got an e-mail from Mrs. Whiteside, of all people. In Paris I'd assumed she didn't know English, which just goes to show you Self-evident Truth #12: Never make assumptions about foreign women. She said Pinto had discovered she wasn't what he'd thought she was. He and Monty left for Switzerland to take advantage of the faux cowboy need for turquoise. I looked up faux and, in this case, it means drugstore. "He no longer works for the company," her e-mail said, by which I figure she meant the CIA. I didn't believe her.
Mrs. Whiteside said Odett
e was living in Michael's place on rue Cler. She'd thrown out the furniture and redone it, Odette-style.
Giselle was out of jail, waiting trial for killing an American. That's how Mrs. Whiteside worded it: Killing an American, as if they had a separate category of crime, somewhere between manslaughter and murder. Armand and Leon were also out. They'd convinced Interpol or whoever was in charge over there that Bernard was the mastermind behind the dark belly of Paris's underground. Bernard was in prison and it looked like he would be spending his life there. In my mind, he got what he deserved.
Mrs. Whiteside attached a digital photo of Pinto and Monty standing by the Citroën. Pinto was wearing white shorts tight around his crotch and a sleeveless shirt. He looked like one of those eighty-year-old weight lifters you see hanging out at public swimming pools. His eyes had the glossiness of a man on the low end of a mood swing.
By April, I got out of my cast and things started looking up. I had a two-night affair with a woman who sold real estate and collected bull riders. She had a trophy wall. Made me feel like a real cowboy again, as opposed to a clerk at 7-Eleven. Only a sicko would collect 7-Eleven clerks.
I came in second at a poetry gathering in Deadwood City. My poem was this thing I'd written over the winter called "Quarante Cents à la Fuite. " The title came from the BabelFish Web site. It was the story of an elderly wrangler who dreams all his life of retiring to the city where he can sleep in the afternoon and weather doesn't matter. Finally, he saves enough to move to a big town — I didn't name which one — and at the bus station there he discovers it costs forty cents to piss. He reacts about the way you would expect, spends a weekend in jail with a speed freak, then he beats it back to the ranch, where he swears he'll never go to a city again.
"I'll die after one last leak in the dust," he says at the end of the poem.
They gave me two hundred dollars for that.
So I was feeling flush and optimistic as I propped my Tony Lamas on the low iron fence marking off the outdoor deck at The Roasted Bean, a boutique coffeehouse opened on Main Street there in GroVont by a couple from Santa Barbara who'd decided to ditch the rat race for the simple life in small-town Wyoming. Those people come and go faster than the flu, but they're friendly enough while they're here.
