Leper Tango

by David MacKinnon

  “I see. And the other?”

  “The other curls into a little pocket at the St-Rosaire cemetery on boulevard Auguste Blanqui.”

  “I see. The anarchist.”

  “One and the same.”

  “All right, that ’s good enough, Franck. I have all I need. Just stay where you are. I will now describe your travels up Sheba’s cunt in detail.”

  He pushed the mike up to his mouth and entered into a first person travelogue narrative of the itinerary I had just mapped out, speaking in an unguent, new-age murmur.

  “I am walking up the cunt of rue Gay Lussac, feeling the walls of Sheba’s cunt ...”

  From my point of view, he narrated a more than credible reproduction of Sheba’s cunt, at one point likening it to a fifty-two bedroom castle with a cliff view over an islet in the Loire river.

  “I’m in the vaginal antechamber. I’m looking through a sunlight into the fallopian tube.”

  After twenty minutes of this spiel, he pressed down on the Stop button, popped open the cassette and flipped it over to me.

  “There. Twice a day, Franck. Or anytime, you’re feeling a little stressed.”

  He entered a final notation on his notepad, ending with a checkmark and an exclamation point.

  “Here is what I think, Franck. You have been confusing this Sheba with the city of Paris. I think that, under the circumstances, you have only one choice. You have to go back and fuck the city of Paris.”

  “How do you fuck a city?”

  “I don’t know. But, your answer lies in there somewhere.”

  I looked at him more closely. He began fiddling with his pencil.

  “It’s you, isn’t it, Paul?”

  Still staring at his back.

  “Who are you talking to, Mr Robinson? My name is Hen ... Hender, Hederickson. Henderson.”

  “Paul.”

  “I’ll be with you in a second, Mr Robinson. Just have to unplug this infernal cassette.”

  He stood up, turned around. His features sagged momentarily, then tightened into a grim mask. “I’d rather not talk about it.” “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  “I’ve put all of that behind me. I’ve got a good job. Nobody asks me anything, and then you turn up. This is problematic. I’ve got a good life.”

  His voice had slightly picked up in rhythm, taking on a chirpy lilt.

  “Take it easy. Your secret is safe. Last I heard, you’d been abducted.”

  “Not exactly. It was a Dianetics thing. All right, I was kidnapped. Look, it could happen to anyone. Don’t get me wrong. There are some good sides to Scientology. Look at all the celebrities involved: Travolta, Tom Cruise.”

  “But, you bailed out.”

  He was holding a framed photo in his hand. The photo was of Ron Hubbard, ex-marine, founding charlatan supremo of the Scientologists. There was a signature on it.

  “It was a cultural thing. I never got used to Baton Rouge. At least what I saw of it. The centre had rented the local where Lee Harvey Oswald stayed just before the assassination. I had to distribute flyers to people.

  They’d just disappear, get sent off to other centres. Eventually, my family sent in a deprogrammer. Patrick, I think the guy’s name was. I guess you could say I was only reborn once I left the movement. Reborn as a psychologist. But, let’s get back to you.”

  I recalled a moment back in the city, sitting in a café on the rue Montorgueil, on a stool beside a young, bespectacled Englishman, alone, drunk despite the early morning hour, spilling his guts out to a waitress who ignored him while he flipped her twenty franc tips. He had been babbling, “Just let me take you out for a drink.

  I cannot bear to live without you.” The heavily caked makeup of the tart freezing into a sneer as she poured out another démi-pression, slid it contemptuously across the counter at double the regular tarif, then retreated to the opposite end of the bar to dream, not about beauty, or the ephemeral nature of life, or the Louvre or the sun king, but how she could skin another mark to pay for her daily coiffure.

  Like Bosch `s miser. At the brink of death and still reaching for the dish of gold pieces held out by the devil. Or like me, reaching out for a cunt. Throwing away a lifetime’s effort for an afternoon pipe at discount. Or generally doing what men are good at, which is passively buying into a confidence game, no matter how cheap. My thought was interrupted by John Player, as he pushed his recording equipment into a grey, metal filing cabinet pull-out drawer.

  “ Would you consider taking me back with you? I don’t need to do this anymore.”

  “I’ll send you a postcard.”

  It was bad enough being inside my own brain without dragging another piece of spiritual flotsam across the ocean to where I was going.

  IX

  Practicing law is like flying an airplane, or fighting a war. Not to be done by half. Whether you have one file or six hundred, contingent liability and professional negligence is always lurking round the next corner. You should never, ever dabble. Dabbling brings you within the microscopic focus of the Law Societies. Creaky-wheeled bodies. Right up there with the revenue authorities under the “to be avoided at all costs” rubric. If they get spokes into your wheels, you can sink into a permanent mire. It’s one of the reasons I stuck to personal injur y — no one likes plaintiff counsel, but the equation is simple enough to work out. Cover the costs up front, hit the client with a 30% contingency. If you take on twenty claims in a year, eight were bogus, eight could be settled out of court, if you played the jury card properly, and knew how to get them crying at the injustice of it all, while convincing the client it was a crapshoot, you had a couple of big winners per annum, and year in year out, once you got rolling, three to four million easy. To sum up, the principles of the stock market applied to human suffering.

  Then, there’s the dog files, and the worst of the dog files involved clients who were suing on principle. Holly Reichman had accidentally had both ovaries removed when she was slated for a caesarian, by a hatchet man, an Armenian named Masbourian, another Bourque referral. She was a tricky case, not dog file a priori. Even had PR value, page two item in the daily press. Doctor X stole my vagina! A horribly true tale of menopause at age twenty-nine! On the downside, Holly was married to Isaac Reichman, Hassidic Jew, which is neither here nor there, except she’d already had ten kids. So, I won the case, which made Isaac happy, and more importantly satisfied Holly’s jap vanity. But bringing in a medical expert from the Mayo to prove a woman’s uterus was cut out by a surgeon as opposed to atrophying all on its own due to Isaac’s wish to break post-modern records for procreation is a costly proposition. In short, damages were nominal, which made it any self-respecting law yer’s nightmare — a win on principle. All the case law supported us on the merits, but I couldn’t dig up anything decent on quantum. And for any of you unfamiliar with the dour propensities of Scottish-Canadian judges, let it be known that some part of their brain just doesn’t compute the notion of punitive damages.

  On the winning side of the balance sheet, Kimberly Sutherland was a quad in a halo brace who had been training for a try-out with the Olympic f igure skating team. Two million settlement, and probably worth double that. Plus, Paris was calling again, and the New World looked like a black and white universe compared to the cit y of light. It was time for some creative accounting. In my books, it was a case for natural justice 134 DAVID MACKINNON

  à la Franck Robinson, which involved a classic squeeze of two ends against the middle, and me having to use large chunks of Kimberly Sutherland’s award to pay off disbursements in the Holly Reichman case. It looked bullet-proof at the time, but I hadn’t factored Spike Nussbaum into the equation.

  When someone goes to see a lawyer, it’s usually the worst day of their life. So, on the odds alone, there were bound to be dog files and clients like Spike Nussbaum. Fifteen per cent of clients were write offs. Loss column. The Spikes were another category, as hard to factor as the odds of running into a psychopath in a bowling a
lley, or being born with six toes. Couldn’t be quantified. But shit attracts flies, so sooner or later you have to deal with them.

  Four times that particular morning, I’d watched Spike Nussbaum’s number flash up on call display. By this time, I only called in temps for any secretarial work, so I was stuck with answering the phone myself. Which put me in the direct line of fire.

  “Robinson.”

  “Mr Robinson, sir? Spike Nussbaum.”

  Nussbaum was a Vietnam veteran, the type who would even call you sir just prior to strangling you.

  “Mr Robinson, sir, I really need to talk to you. Sir.”

  “By all means, talk, Mr Nussbaum. You have two minutes. What can I do for you?”

  “What I have to say needs to be said in person. Sir.”

  “I’m afraid that just wouldn’t be possible. I’m on a four week trial right now.”

  “Sir, during my spare time, when I’m not taking care of Kimberly, I’ve been doing some research. Since you never actually sent us a copy of the judgment, I went down to the courthouse and picked up a copy.” “Very enterprising of you, Spike. If I were a betting man, I’d say you have a future.”

  “Sir, it says here that we were awarded two million dollars. Sir. Plus compound interest since the date of service of the writ.”

  “I don’t mind saying the jury appreciated my arguments, Spike.”

  “How come then, Sir, we only got 350 clicks at the end of the day.”

  “Because, Spike, at the end of the day, that’s all there was left.”

  “But, it says two million dollars!”

  “After six months of applications, discoveries, and, don’t quote me on this, but there were dilatory tactics on the part of defence counsel which bordered on the unethical. And, as you well know, we had expert witnesses brought in from the outside. It’s the unfortunate, dreadful procedural side of the system, Spike, but it’s not my job to remedy that.”

  All that to say, the city was drawing me back again, its gravitational pull increasing in direct proportion to my boredom. I picked up the phone and dialled international. The voice that responded was Joel, Wee Willie’s Lyonnais chef, whose reputation was enhanced by rumours that he had tortured men during the Algerian mess.

  “Wee Willies, bonjour.”

  “Joel? Franck Robinson here.”

  “Franck, you old devil! When do we see you again?!”

  “What’s on special today, Joel?”

  “Cèpes à la Bordelaise. Croûtes Comtoises aux Morilles.

  Come back and join us. We’ll party again, Franck!”

  “I’ll be there tomorrow. Make sure the place is crawl-

  ing with slatterns, Joel.”

  PART II

  Chambre 52, Hotel du Quai Voltaire

  Changed locales, Hervé. One step ahead of the law, as they say. Further to my last missive, check Account 332-555 672. And, Hervé, give me a break, and drop the talk on trust accounts and fiduciary duty, otherwise no more phone calls. I don’t depend on you for cash, you depend on me for enterta inment. Besides, this is force majeure. Remember Nuremberg, Hervé. I was just following orders. Your orders are: Transfer the funds. Call up Sam Harder, you remember that wine-soaked lunch we had a few years back at Club St-Denis. If he gets antsy, cook up a power of attorney. Do whatever it takes. I’m counting on you.

  Haven’t quite decided what to do next, but somebody should end up dead to punctuate this little tale in an appropriate manner. Or who knows, maybe everything will turn out, ha ha. Just kidding, only a bullet in the head is going to loop this baby out. In the meantime, thought I might continue my little journal of the john, fully annotated version, concerning my life, such as it is. A Darwinian log-book of sorts. For your personal enjoyment. Top ten popular myths about the john. The food we eat. How to become a john. Favourite john fashions. Why our mothers still love us.

  I am writing this missive from a haunt known as the Café Byzantin which is frequented by the scum of the universe — johns, pedophiles, rapists, abortionists and pimps — the other human debris slouched in various positions at the bar and in the stalls of Café Byzantin. Each of them pouring Leffes and Pastis down their gullets, and each one of them probably with a variation to tell on my own theme.

  None of us actually chose this life. We drifted into it, because we didn’t feel enough drive on our way to the initial destination. It was a question of vitality. A choice between decadence and ethics. Those from the world referred to as normal, or day-to-day or moral fail to fathom why certain women are willing to step out on St-Denis and suck strange men’s cocks, day in and out, and why certain strange men are willing to pay to have their cocks (the instrument of life!!) sucked, or have their life-giving jism dribble out uselessly down the diseased, gelatinous thighs or scarred faces of women who have performed the same task dozens of times the same day with men of unspeakably foul habit.

  So fitting, that last phrase, Hervé. Don’t you see what’s happened here, Hervé? I have committed the ultimate sin. Not whoring, not stealing from the trust funds of quadriplegics, not avoiding child support payments. That’s nickel and dime shit. No, my true sin is identifying myself as part of an oppressed class. But, let me continue my guided tour of the gutters of rue St-Denis, the septic tank of the Western world.

  I

  The bed was in the “green room,” on the first floor, overlooking rue des Martyrs. I looked out the window at a boucherie chevaline on the opposite side of the street. Workers standing outside of a deliver y truck, in blood-soaked aprons, hauling down horse carcasses. I looked back inside the room. Alena squatting over the bidet, douching her cunt with a lime-green rectangular terry-towel, watching me. Flashing what she called her smile troublant. Then turning it off.

  “That’s good. Where’d you learn that?” “What?” she said, her lips pouting.

  “The smile.”

  “I imagine a schoolgirl caught masturbating. It is part of my repertoire. To slow the men down. Looking is free. But then, nothing more until cash.”

  She took a couple more dabs at her cunt with the towel.

  “I have a gift, mister Franck. I can make any man stop.

  I am like a disease.” “You should have gone into sales.” “To sell what. Fish?”

  She folded the towel and placed it back on a rack at the edge of a small sink. Turned around, a cigarette now in her mouth.

  “Light my cigarette. If you are a gentleman.” That word again. Gentleman.

  “I have to make my monthly visit to the Commissariat today. To regularise my taxes.”

  “You pay taxes?”

  “Pauvre con,” she pronounced, “of course. I am profession liberale. Look.”

  She reached into her purse, pulled out a sheet of paper, neatly folded into four. An excerpt from the Registre de Commerce de Paris, identifying her as a péripaticienne.

  “Social benefits, tenants tax, property tax, the crèche, the audiovisual tax, the value-added tax. I’m telling you, Franck, nine thousand tonnes of paper. Nine thousand.

  And what ever is left goes to Yannick. But, inspecteur Chanvre, the assistant prefect, is a customer. He shows me how to organize my paper work. Donnant, donnant.

  C’est cool.”

  Everything about Alena suggested sloth. She moved at crawl-speed. Her voice dripped out in languid streams.

  As if she had been waiting for a decade or so for the right person to come or the right thing to happen, then figured out that stagnation was her natural state. I liked her style, and her way of reducing fucking to routine, marinated in indifference. With A lena, you weren’t really there. She had to show up for work; otherwise she wouldn’t eat. She had to wiggle her ass, because that got your dick hard, and if your dick was hard, she might squeeze an extra couple hundred francs for the promise of something never really delivered upon. And she needed that cash, for cigarettes, to feed her kid, for whatever. But the client, although essential, was interchangeable, fungible. Like a Ken doll coming off
the assembly line. But with venereal disease, or a grudge against his mother, or nothing to do before attending a Church meeting. Or the occasional brutes. Savage, thick-skinned and thick-headed. The type that see women as slabs of meat or punching bags. The kind that made it nice to have a pimp close by.

  “Franck, would you accompany me?” “Sure, no problem.”

  Maybe I’m not normal, but to me, being invited by a whore to walk down the street during daylight hours meant something. Kind of an acknowledgement that I was now part of Alena’s world. More than that. It was an honour. Which shows that I was either very stupid, or I adapted well to different environments.

  We walked together through the Faubourg Montmartre towards the St-Denis post office. Just after turning off Réaumur, we stopped for a moment to watch Pascal, an oversized brute with a squashed nose and quick hands, who was running a dice game. His straightman, Abdul, stood at the other side of the collapsible card table used for their operations. Another crony wearing an amused smirk, watching the mark being played out, who that afternoon was a small Portuguese man wearing an oversized bowler hat which left only a brushy moustache and a stubbly chin visible.

  Abdul was in phase two of the sting operation, staring into Pascal’s eyes, as if he were his father, or as if he were being handed inside information by the vice-chairman of the stock exchange just prior to a public offering of telecom shares. Abdul stared and then stared some more, clutching a handful of hundred franc notes in his left hand, struggling to keep them from jumping onto the table.

  “What do you mean, it’s easy?” he asked, his eyes bulging, incredulous. “I will kill you if you lie.” This followed by a long theatrical pause.

  “But is it possible, are you really the one I have been waiting for, the man in the dream?”

  Abdul inched back towards the table as if he were being pulled back by an invisible leash.

  “Please, kind man, you suck the marrow from my bones and the will from my spirit, but speak the truth, please, just this once, oh kind man, let destiny turn my way.”