Frankie in Paris

by Shauna McGuiness

  Tepid water fell over my shoulders in the tiny bathroom, doing nothing to cool me off. I crawled into my bed, deciding to call Rich tomorrow. I already missed him.

  “Good night,” Lulu said.

  “Bonne nuit,” I yawned and closed my eyes.

  4

  Loose on the Town

  When I opened my eyes again, I noticed a little coffee with cream water stain in a Rorschach pattern above my bed. It looked like it was in the shape of a teddy bear. No, not a bear: a cat. Two pointy ears floated above a wide oval bump of paint.

  The TV was on, and Lulu was sitting up in her bed.

  “Did you sleep at all?” I asked.

  “A little,” she replied.

  Due to some of the medication that she takes, she isn’t able to sleep. She goes to bed late and wakes up early. When I was a little girl and I used to spend the night at her house, I would marvel at how she left her radio tuned to a talk radio station all night long. There were twin beds in her bedroom, and she would always make me a cozy nest in between them, on the floor (by my request), and she would let me read romance novels—even though I could barely sound out the titles.

  I would marvel at the pictures on the cover. Women in ripped dresses, being held by men with long hair and no shirt or maybe a pirate getup. We would watch the late, late shows together, and I would finally fall asleep, but she would stay up listening to the radio.

  Grampy had moved to another bedroom years before because he couldn’t sleep with the noise. She claims that she asked him to relocate because he snored. I still don’t know who to believe. Maybe they were both telling the truth.

  Lulu would always be awake, watching television, by the time I woke up.

  ***

  Looking up and out of the window, I could see a rectangle of blue sky.

  “What are we doing today?”

  “I thought maybe we could go to an outdoor market.” That sounded wonderful.

  My stomach rumbled at me impatiently. Needless to say, our dinner from the night before had long been digested. “But first, let’s go down and see what they have for breakfast.”

  What to wear for our first day at large? I settled on a black, ankle length, rayon dress. It had little maroon roses on it, and I wore a black T-shirt under the thin straps. Lulu was wearing a navy blue silk suit with a white shell underneath.

  Watching her apply pancake makeup, I hunted through my purse for my lipstick. Then we put on our shoes: mine clunky and industrial and hers, white and delicate. And flat.

  Downstairs, someone other than Henri was at the front desk. Much younger and handsome, in a French way—whatever that meant—he had blonde hair and a silver hoop earring through his left eyebrow and was wearing the hotel's burgundy suit jacket and bright orangey-yellow bowtie.

  “Bonjour!” he called as we walked by.

  Responding in his language, we giggled like girlfriends.

  In the breakfast room, one couple was already eating. Although there were several open tables, the hostess sat us directly next to them—probably figuring that we were all American and might want to talk.

  “Hello,” the woman said.

  “Hi,” I smiled, “we’re from California.”

  “I’m Lu,” said Lulu, “and this is my granddaughter, Francesca.”

  “Please call me Frank,” I corrected firmly.

  They introduced themselves and told us that they were from Hawaii. Neither of us had ever been to The Islands, and Lulu told them that.

  “How are you enjoying Paris?” I asked. “You must be used to this heat, being from Hawaii.”

  “We are,” the man agreed. He had a blob of purple jam stuck to the side of his upper lip. I concentrated on it until it twisted and landed on his plate with a light plop. A bit embarrassed, he swiped at his mouth to capture any possible residue.

  “We’re ready to be home. This is our last day,” his wife added.

  Our waitress told us that they were serving a continental breakfast. Of course I knew what this would mean: more bread. Lulu chose a croissant and I opted for toasted French bread with butter and jam. We both drank coffee, but first I added my customary five sweeteners and three creamers, turning my beverage the shade of old lady pantyhose.

  A short conversation about what we did back home followed, and Lulu told them that I was an actress. They informed us that their niece was Tina Something-or-other, from some recent movie that I'd yet to see. Lulu thought that this was thrilling. I half expected her to ask for their autographs because they were famous by association.

  Finishing our breakfast, we said our goodbyes, and Lulu went to the front desk to ask how to get to the Bastille Market. The employee behind the desk gave her a local map and told us how to find the nearest Metro station.

  ***

  Lulu flipped her sunglasses up, and we took the stairs down to the Metro. I worried about her lack of peripheral vision, so I held her arm until we reached the bottom, where we managed to figure out how to buy tickets and waited for the train. The doors opened, and we boarded, eager for our first ride on the Metro, hurrying over to the only two seats that were together.

  A group of teenage girls huddled together with foreheads touching. They were whispering and giggling in what sounded like German. An old woman with a scarf around her head slept with her head back and a cane in her hands, the bottom of it touching the floor. A thin swarthy man stood against a wall and stared at me. I patted my waist, where my passport was hiding inside of my dress. He didn’t look like a human trafficker, but you never could tell. Taking a deep breath, I tried my hardest not to look in his direction.

  The map that was glued on the wall inside the train helped us find the right stop.

  ***

  A swirl of colors, sounds and scents announced our arrival at the street market. I'd never seen so many different kinds of cheese, wine, and produce. Lulu enjoyed the samples of fromage, and I looked for gifts to bring home to my friends and family, visiting the tables and booths packed along both sides of the road, enjoying the rainbows of hanging dried flowers and homemade soaps.

  After wandering for an hour or so, I saw it: a towering stack of shoeboxes, and on each top box was a different style of Doc Marten boot.

  I hurried to the booth and started shopping. A pair of “Oxbloods”—a burgundy colored boot—seemed to wave, beckoning in my direction. I rubbed my thumb over the fabric Air Wair tags that sprouted out of the back. I had wanted a pair for a while. They were so terribly punk rock!

  I searched for a pair of the elusive twelve-holed boots, but didn’t find any. There were some with ten holes, which I liked enormously. They would work in the absence of twelve-holers. Here I am on our first full day and I already accomplished my mission! The beginning sparks of a shopper’s high began to tingle within me as I caressed the boots and perused the other merchandise.

  The vendor came over and asked if I needed any help. He was sort of cute, wearing faded jeans and a wrinkled button up shirt—reminding me of the boys at the university: stylish in a nonchalant sort of way. Long bangs flopped over fuzzy caterpillar eyebrows.

  “Combien?” I asked how much the boots cost.

  The Oxbloods were seventy-five dollars, and the tall boots were one hundred, by my francs to dollars calculations. A pretty good discount of about thirty dollars each. They were beautiful, and my feet cried out for them. It would deplete most of my shopping money, but this was all I really wanted, anyway. I'd just begun to get down to business when I heard her voice.

  “Don’t DO it!” Lulu called across the crowd.

  My face grew hot, like I had grown an instant severe sunburn.

  “Don’t buy those shoes!” She was running to close the gap between us. In my mind’s eye, the whole event was happening in slow motion.

  “But, Lulu, I want these boots.” I sounded like André the Giant, in my reduced-speed moment (anybody want a peanut?).

  “Don’t you know you have to bargain with them? They expect you
to bargain with them. You can’t pay what they ask. That’s not how they do it here!"

  Getting into a sort of tug of war over the heavy footwear, I pulled them toward my chest, and she used a surprising amount of strength to yank them in her direction. The people around us who understood her were laughing.

  This is completely and utterly humiliating. She was right, of course. I hadn’t even thought about trying to haggle for my purchase because I had wanted them so badly and they were already a good bargain. How did she know how to bargain, anyway? Wasn’t she the same person who could barely use a map?

  My twenty-year-old pride was damaged. There she stood, looking up at me with her dark glasses over her eyes, hands on her hips, obviously exasperated. The rings on her fingers sparkled like fairy dust.

  I want to die. I wanted that shifty, dangerous mime to sweep up and grab me and carry me away. Anything would have been better than living that moment!

  The cute salesman looked at me and shrugged. I didn’t know what to say. Those big eyebrows raised, as if to say, “Try me.” He was waiting. I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t even think about doing it. I let Lulu have the boots and pivoted away from the two of them. As I turned, a row of shoeboxes toppled off the shelf, nearly hitting the guy in the head. He tried to catch them as they spilled into the dirt. I hadn’t intended to do it, but I was so frustrated/angry/embarrassed (take your pick!) that they just sort of followed my energy as I left.

  Shuffling away from that side of the street, I pretended to look at some purses at another booth. Dozens of them were hanging from a metal rack, but I didn’t really see them. Everything was blurry from tears of embarrassment, which I just couldn't allow to fall. They fell anyway.

  “Did you change your mind?” Lulu called, trotting to keep up with me. Her flats whispered across the ground with a scratch-scratch-scratch.

  “I’ll look again later,” I mumbled.

  I didn’t buy anything that morning.

  ***

  We were both hungry and decided to find somewhere to eat lunch.

  As we were about to leave the market, I saw some jewelry that appealed to me. A black velvet table was filled with pieces made from different colors of crystal beads. I tried to decide who might want some earrings or a bracelet, back home. My mother would have enjoyed receiving a pair of pink dangly ones. Allie might have liked some, too.

  A guy sitting in a lawn chair behind the table heard us admiring the jewelry and comparing names. He was eating a bagel filled with something mixed with onions. I could have smelled it from six miles away.

  He looked decidedly unFrench to me. I don’t know where I thought he might be from, but it wasn’t this particular country. His wild, curly black hair matched his full beard and he was wearing a ribbed tank top, which had probably once been white. It was sort of a yellowish tan now. A "wife beater" tank top is what some people would have called it: gotta love that image.

  “Hey American! I LOVE AMERICA!” he chuckled in an indefinable accent and flailed his arms around, trying to grab my shoulder.

  “I love YOU, American!” He pointed at Lulu with his odorous food. A piece of some kind of meat fell out of it, onto the black velvet. Picking it up, he put it in his mouth, licked his fingers, then wiped them across his chest.

  My mouth dropped open, and I turned to give Lulu a what the hell with my face. Her Coke-bottle-covered eyes glowed with pleasure.

  “Yes,” she said, ever the coquette. She practically batted her eyelashes, “WE ARE FROM AMERICA.” She spoke slowly and loudly, doing so, because she thought it made people understand English if you spoke excruciatingly slowly, with great volume. How humiliating.

  “Heyhey American Ladies! You come to my house, huh?” I reached for Lulu, to drag her away from her new friend if necessary, but she took a step forward, and I missed.

  “Do you live in Paris?” she asked, in a normal volume and tempo—she must have decided to trust his language skills.

  “No, not Paris, but close. Close to here, lady!”

  “Come on Lulu, we need to go.”

  “No go! You come to my house for real French party!” He emphasized the word “party” with a hip thrust, still yelling.

  Lulu was rummaging in her purse, looking for a scrap of paper to write the lunatic’s address down. So we could go to his "real French party.” I shuddered to think what that must have meant.

  Her digging efforts paid off, and she found an old Walgreens receipt.

  “Do you have a pen?” she asked him eagerly.

  Nodding his head, greasy curls bouncing, he picked one up off of his table to hand to her.

  Giving it a hard look, I made it slip out of his hand.

  “Whoopsies!” He reached for it, and I rolled it across the dark velvet, sending it off the edge and onto the ground.

  “Lulu: NOW!” I looped my arm through her elbow and literally pulled her down the street, while he yelled more invitations in our direction.

  Twisting away from me, she glared.

  “Now why did you do that? We could have gone to a party!”

  “I don’t think that was the kind of party you want to bring your granddaughter to.”

  “How do you know? He seemed like a nice enough man.”

  “Yeah, Lulu and he really likes Americans.” I gave her a heated glance.

  Looking up and down the sidewalk for a place to sit down and breathe for a moment, I realized that I was famished.

  Then I saw it. A beacon shining through the storm: the Golden Arches that I had loved since I was too young to say “Happy Meal.”

  “I want to eat lunch over there,” I told Lulu, who was still looking wistfully down the street, thoughts of what-could-have-been running through her mind. I could practically see the wheels turning.

  “Why do you want to eat there?” she asked. “That doesn’t make any sense at all!”

  “Just... come with me, please?”

  When we opened the doors, I felt an enormous sense of relief. Just in time, I had found one of France’s McDonald’s. The smell of fries cheered me instantly, and the familiar red and yellow décor washed away all of my feelings of frustration and embarrassment from our morning.

  Lulu ordered a fish sandwich and a tap water, doing a bit of charades to explain her choice of beverage. My Big Mac and fries cost almost twice as much as they did at home, but I didn’t care: I would have paid twenty dollars for that hamburger.

  Lulu chuckled under her breath.

  “What is it?”

  “Well, at least you are eating French fries.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh.

  ***

  We strolled around a little longer and then took the Metro back to the hotel. By the time we reached Rue Berthollet, it was dark. The air was still warm, and it seemed even more thickly humid than the previous evening.

  Along the cobblestones on the way to our hotel, we heard music and laughter. It sounded like a party. Still early in the evening, the tone was very civilized, pleasant.

  Getting closer, we realized that this was some sort of live music street event. Tourists and Parisians alike held bottles of beer or glasses of wine in their hands and flirted with one another. Many of them casually held cigarettes between their fingers. The median age was probably close to mine.

  “I wish you had someone to go out with in the evenings.” Lulu sounded sincere. “I am just too tired. I’m not used to all this walking—"

  “Don’t worry about it, Lulu. Seriously, I am tired too. This really isn’t my sort of thing, anyway.”

  I don’t know what my “thing” was, but I didn’t want her to feel bad.

  A daydream rapidly cycled through my brain, in which Rich and I stood in the group. I had a glass of wine in my hand, and we were laughing. Holding onto the lapels of his leather jacket, I kissed him.

  “Do you mind eef I smoke?” a man with a thick accent asked from behind us.

  “Of course not,” Rich drawled, “as long as you don’t mi
nd if I take a crap in your shoe.”

  I burst into a crazy fit of laughter, and Lulu looked at me as if I had lost my mind. Shaking my head as we entered the lobby of the Hôtel de Lutèce, I stopped—peering out the door where the payphone was hiding, just out of sight.

  “Lulu, I’ll be up in a minute,” I said. “I need to make a phone call.”

  Nodding, she hit the elevator button.

  Calculating the time difference, I thought it was around five in the morning in California. Holding my breath, I dialed anyway.

  “Richie,” I breathed when he answered, “I’m so glad you picked up.”

  “Where else would I be? It’s still the middle of the night,” he yawned. I pictured him all warm and cozy, wrapped up in his blue flannel sheets.

  “Well, technically it’s not the middle of the night.” I stopped. “I am really sorry for calling you so early. I just… I really needed to hear your voice.”

  “I told you to call me anytime. Don’t worry about it. How is it so far?”

  “Interesting.”

  Gazing longingly at the pearl ring around my finger, I recounted last night’s dinner and he laughed softly. Being able to see the humor in the situation helped so much!

  “Any requests from the land of cheese and wine?”

  “Be nice to Lulu. Try to enjoy yourself. And remember, I am here if you need me.”

  The call was being billed to my mom’s calling card, and I really didn’t have too much left to say, so I said goodbye—even though I didn't want to.

  “Love you. Miss you,” I whispered.

  “I love and miss you, too, Frankie.”

  I held the phone for a few seconds, lost in thought.

  ***

  Henri was behind the desk when I reentered the building.

  “Well bonjour, Mademoiselle. How was your day of adventure?”

  “It was…adventurous.” I must have looked a little desperate because he laughed as I turned toward the elevator with a powerful sigh.

  “Zat grand-mère of yours. She eez quite zee firecracker.”

  I snorted. What a terrific description. More like a runaway forest fire. Giving a half-hearted wave, I glumly headed for our floor.