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Page 68.
Chapter 13
 He drove reasonably and calmly through the narrow avenues and white houses among wind-swept trees he’d known all his life. Lac de Créteil glittered under a field of stars. On a distant highway intersection, a beacon swirled across galaxies—as if sailors from distant Aldebaran or Fomalhaut were in danger of running aground off—like—the Seine islands or the hills and buttes to the north and south.
The ultimate destination right now was his desk far away in the Rue Monge, where at the moment he was subletting a tiny fifth-floor garret from a couple of graduate students. He resisted the thrill of sitting at his computer screen and clicking the keyboard to create sheets of music in his head, which would pour out as fountains, flower-spills, and ivy-overhangs of free verse; not flowery, nor needless, but each word chosen lapidary and polished like the single jeweled notes in a careful saxophone solo.
Instead, he drove paused along the way in a familiar neighborhood. He parked before a hedge-hidden house. Leaving his car at the curb, he rang the doorbell and stood waiting on a porch of laid brick, with amber light and moths, not unlike that of his parents.
As he waited, a passenger jet thundered in the sky over nearby Orly International, the only thing that marred the peacefulness of the area.
The door opened, revealing a tall, slender figure in a dark burgundy robe. She looked like the shadow of an angel for a second. Long black hair dangled glossy around a pale face with delicate pink lips and dark eyes. “Hi, Marc, how are you?” said Danielle (Dani) Poncelet. She was the sister of his best friend, Jacques (Jack) Poncelet. The Poncelets had lived in Créteil for many years, where Jack and Marc and Dani had gone to school together. More recently, the Poncelets had moved to a pleasant little street in Thiais, another town in the Val-de-Marne Departement.
He gave her a brotherly wink, to which she responded with familiarity, even a cool fondness. She was his best friend’s sister, which made even the thought of her as a woman seem offensive and incestuous. In return, she seemed as stimulated by him as by an old car on blocks.
“Is Jack home?”
She rubbed her hands in concern. “No…” She shouted over her shoulder, “Mami, where’s Jack?” The distant voice of Mrs. Poncelet answered. Marc could have reached through the screen and hugged her, loving these people and their familiar voices. They were a second family to him, and Jack and his sister felt the same way about the Fontbleus.
Welcome back to a normal existence.
“He’s out on a date,” Danielle said regretfully, wringing her hands on a dish towel. “Want to come in?”
He felt slightly relieved. He’d done his duty and made this initial gesture of re-establishment of contact with his old high school friend. He shook his head. “I know he’s probably mad I haven’t called. I’ll head on back to my apartment. Can you tell him I called? Ask him to call me? If he calls tomorrow I’ll stop by tomorrow night!”
Dani knicksed. “You can go for a beer or two.”
“You can come too.”
She shook her head. “Got a date.”
“Life goes on.”
“It does.” She touched his cheek with a fingertip, and gently closed the door as he bounded down the stairs backto his car.
He drove north on the Avenue de Fontainebleau toward central Paris. He headed through the poorer outskirts of the city. It was tempting: park his car and go bar-hopping? Or go home and write?
He had nothing to lose here and drove through rapidly, thinking of the several phone numbers secreted in his wallet from meetings in meat racks and not-so-meat racks (bars frequented by college students rather than divorcées) in recent months. Satisfied with the evening’s picking up of threads, he resolved now to explore the world of Léopold Montblé, which had stood delinquent for weeks.
The city was enchanted with lights, betraying the bitter truth of its mean streets here and there, among the haunts of poets and artists over the centuries. Not to mention the bloodshed of the Revolution and the Commune and the Occupations (post-Napoleon I, post-Napoleon III) and other violent episodes in the city’s growth over thousands of years. As he drove by the river and the islands, in light traffic along the Quai de la Tournelle (Turret Quay), those spotlighted gargoyles atop the Notre Dame de Paris seemed to wink and leer while looking down at human foible and folly; what else could a gargoyle do? Besides acting responsibly employed as an efficient rain-spout?
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