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Page 23.
Chapter 4
 “Oh listen,” she said as they rounded a corner, “The Beach Boys.” They came onto a narrow street surrounded by cyclopean 19th Century buildings stained with age and human lives gone by. While dark windows looked down, there were neon lights and cigarette smoke and blasting ancient 20th Century rock music at street level amid throngs of vibrant humanity. You could hear it from a block away in the Marais.
“Yes, Good Vibrations,” he said. “We’re in a time machine going backwards.”
“All of Paris is like that.” She said: “Tourists love it, but we love it all the more.”
We’re part of it, and it’s part of us, he thought: ambiance, atmosphere. Although sometimes it’s like too rich food, and you want to get away and wander among trees and nature. But places like the Bois de Vincennes are for that. No need to go far.
“I have an idea,” he said.
“Oh no, now I am getting scared.”
“Sometime soon, let me take you to the Bois de Vincennes.”
“Oh,” she said plaintively, as if he were handing her a cuddly kitten, “a nice walk in the park.”
“You light my fire,” he said.
“Ah, that one is buried in the Père Lachaise.” She meant the cemetery at the eastern edge of Paris, where Jim Morrison lay buried half a century already among so many other long-ago famous people who lived their lives, made their splash, and faded into the shadows of time but left their glow behind.
“I want to hold your hand.”
“That is not surfing music.”
“That’s ancient Beatles.”
“Also nice.” She took him by the hand and towed him along. Her eyes glowed with joy. “I don’t get out much. This is so much fun.” Tears briefly sprang into her eyes. “I had forgotten what it’s like to be human and free. You’ll help me, won’t you? Not hurt me?”
“I would die before I caused you any pain.” He held her close.
Jérôme , you are such an asshole, Marc thought. He added to himself: Unless there is something I don’t know yet. Like she snores loudly. Or farts a lot. We’ll see. Then he thought: I can forgive anything, except neglecting her. He’d forgotten what it felt like to feel protective of a woman about whom he suddenly felt so strongly. Judging by her firm grip on his hand, she felt strong emotions as well.
They entered the crowd of young people, many of them in office dress, standing around holding drinks or smokes and chatting. Many eyes followed them, some hungered up with jealousy.
“We make a nice couple,” she whispered to him. “We could run away together.”
“Anywhere but Créteil,” he said. He’d grown up there, his roots were still there including an unfinished Literature degree, and most of all his loving but tone-deaf, color-blind parents who tried to keep him around age five or whatever.
“I can’t wait to get my teeth into some meat,” she growled like a cave woman. She could be a hearty soul.
I’ll give you some meat, he thought. But he drove the Pleistocene away, and reverted to a 21st Century gentleman. “I’ll buy,” he said bravely. He had just been paid yesterday. He had the rent money in his wallet, but that would have to wait. He could borrow something; maybe pawn a few treasures.
She made a demure, sensible face, and opened her purse to look inside. Her body language was unspoken: I’ll pay.
* * * *
“Baa Baa Baa Baa Baaaaa, Barbra AAAAAAnnnn…” Marc and Emma sang softly with the blaring music as they navigated past the waving bouncers, through a narrow Third Republic doorway replete with chipped ancient paint, and into a further crowd of young people. Around them, music blared. The young did not need words but body and eye lingo as they looked each other over to mate or form friendships. Or just tangled soap operas, whatever.
They found a wooden bench at a table crowded with singing men, obviously students in their late teens and early twenties—some with huge medieval-looking beards from another age—who were covering the carved and mutilated oaken surface up with empty bottles.
It was another excuse to jam so closely together that their thighs were fused in one hot telepathic console. Emma slid her hand between his jean-clad thighs and palmed him possessively. He did the same, with his arm around her slender back and his fingers enjoying the soft widening of her little seat.
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