An Englishman In Paris

This month's assignment was to write precisely 500 words based on the following photograph:

An Englishman In Paris

Smythe paced.

She was late, but he had always believed that to be a woman's prerogative. "Fashionably late" she would call it when eventually she arrived, high heels awkward on the ubiquitous kitty-litter with which all Parisian parks are inexplicably paved, a breathless kiss rouging his cheek.

"Meet me in the Tuileries, by Rodin's ROFL" she had whispered.

His expression of helpless bafflement was sufficiently eloquent for her to add, "Look at the statues and figure it out for yourself, silly. God, you are so square it's adorable."

And then she was gone.

Smythe paused in his pacing, glancing down at his shoes. Immaculate only minutes before, the shiny black leather was now sueded grey with dust. The godawful muck might well be kinder to horse's hooves than cobbles or asphalt but this was twenty-bloody-eleven and he shuddered to think what chaos might ensue were he to ride a horse to the Tuileries through Parisian lunchtime traffic. It must be a conspiracy by Paris cobblers and boot-polish manufacturers. He was grateful the stuff was dry; on rainy days he had to chisel his shoes clean.

For a moment he considered standing on the grass but this was not allowed by park ordnances and Smythe would never dream of transgressing such authority. The grass was for the statues to roll about on; mere humans were forced to trail through the cat-litter.

An Englishman in Paris, he mused, was always a fish out of water. He had lived here for most of his life but would never be Parisian. It was much the same for the English in America. There were Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, African-Americans, even a few Native-Americans, but never – ever – English-Americans. He would always be “an Englishman in America” just as he was “an Englishman in Paris:” a small and misunderstood island of quiet desperation with a slight air of Dickensian fustiness, a constant twenty years behind his immediate surroundings.

He checked his watch: almost half an hour late. That was well within the bounds of prerogative and he was happy to wait. Scattered throughout the park, casual groups of empty green chairs held mysterious conclave but he was loath to sit in one. Some part of him knew that it would be inelegant to be caught seated when she arrived. It must appear as if he had just got here himself. The Englishman again. A Parisian would have been sprawled in a chair for ages by now; indeed would probably have charmed a passing girl and disappeared, reeking of Gauloises and stale coffee.

He waited, feigning nonchalance as he scanned the paths for her, determined not to wave like a gauche American but to pretend he had not seen her until she startled him with her presence.

The statue caught his eye. What had she called it? “Rodin’s ROFL.” The phrase drifted through his mind and he tried to picture what kind of person might really talk like that …

She arrived, fashionably late, but Smythe had fled.

Warm Brown Life

This week’s sentence was taken from J.M. Barrie’s delightful precursor to ‘Peter Pan And Wendy’, the Pan we all know and love: ‘Peter Pan In Kensington Gardens.’

The sentence was:
'There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf.'

Warm Brown Life

Mister Lunchtime. Perched on the park bench. Passing joggers flailed and gasped, the slap of their soles receding into general background chatter. Kids yelling. Muffled traffic. Park noise.
He tuned it out, apple poised for the first bite.

Sudden movement caught his eye and he instinctively followed it.
A smile creased his face. Ambushed by childish delight: 'There is almost nothing that has such a keen sense of fun as a fallen leaf'.
He watched the wind catch at this one, the desperate fluttering of its final few moments before a sudden blast plucked it free from the tree; torn from the twig where it had been born into springtime and where it had spent this past summer's life that was now ending.
A large plane leaf: deepest yellow flecked with brown at the curling edges. Magnificent in itself. Free of treedom it clearly revelled in this one last mad fling.
A blustery gust and the leaf swooped and swirled, caught an updraught, sparkling gold shimmered in the sunlight as it spun against the deep blue sky.
What a truly beautiful way to go, he thought. Perhaps humans might feel this same sheer uninhibited joy when wrenched free of the burden of life. He somehow doubted it. We should be so lucky.

Still flying; frisky, skittish, playful, whirling in the tumbling breeze.

Watching the leaf duck and dive he felt a momentary pang of regret at being the wrong shape to join in the fun. Physics being physics, even spread-eagled, leaping from the high-board he had always tended to the vertical.
Just once in his life he would love to experience this glorious flutter and glide, to go out like this leaf, in one last gravity-defying dance, whooping and hollering his way to oblivion.

Suicide jumpers, he mused, might come closest to such spectacular flourish, though of course they would need billowy clothes and a really windy day to try it. Mostly people simply dropped, more like fruit than leaves. And just as messy. Rarely would they spin or do anything more than surrender to the inevitability of gravity. On occasion one might hit a ledge on the way down and bounce, cartwheeling, puppet-dancing, an aerobatic spectacular plummeting to the big bang, but usually it was simply a dull demonstration of Newton's laws.
Not his leaf though. This guy was defiantly taking the scenic route.
Mentally he urged it on.
"Fly, you little sucker! Go out in a blaze of glory."

He was glad of the breeze. Pity the leaf that falls on a still day. A few twirls and a curlicue to sign off and then oblivion. The slow transformation to humus.
At last his leaf, sated, settled with a sigh joining the millions basking in the sunshine. Deep drifts the colours of fire would feed next year’s leaves.
Kicking his way happily through this warm brown life, he tossed his apple into a pile of leaves where it disappeared beneath the surface.
Let it join the party.

I love the park …

Magic is always possible there.

Lunch

This week’s sentence was taken from Edith Wharton’s ‘The Age of Innocence’.

It was:
‘“Tell me what you do all day,” he said, crossing his arms under his tilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.’

Lunch

Central Park in the early 1960s; no mimes, no joggers, no Goddamned cellphones.
Bliss.
Sunny lunchtime in May.
Light so bright it bleached the sky. So fast it slammed into the lake and exploded on impact.
A million sparkling shards, flickering ricochets burning blind-spots, searing the retinas of anyone foolish enough to look.

Down by the lake: two guys in ties.
One lay back on the grass and breathed deep.

“Tell me what you do all day,” he said, crossing his arms under his tilted-back head, and pushing his hat forward to screen the sun-dazzle.

His companion sat looking the other way, watching office girls in summer frocks flounce through their lunch-break.
Greene peered up at him from under the brim of his fedora.

"I mean other than look at girls."

Matching grins.

"I'm a commercial artist."

"No shit?" he paused, "Notwithstanding that, my question remains."

Gray laughed.

"Notwithstanding? You're kidding! Who says notwithstanding these days?"

"I do. Notwithstanding that, what do you do all day, Mister Commercial Artist?"

"I paint those." he pointed his chin at the groups of girls. "I sit all day at a drawing board and make young housewives' dreams come true."

"Son, you know jack shit about housewives' dreams."

A guilty chuckle.

"Yeah, I know. But somebody's gotta make 'em yearn for that crap."

Greene raised his head.

"Dishwashers? Rotisseries? Laundromats? Who needs a dishwasher? That's what the housewife is for. What's she gonna do after dinner? Come and yak at her husband? Leave the poor guy alone, sweetie. Wash the Goddamned dishes."

Gray shook his head, laughing softly.

"You trying to put me out of a job? The world's changing. Housewives apparently have 'leisure time' now."

"You're scaring me, kid. Cut it out."

Gray's blue eyes met Greene's brown. He smiled.

"So what do you do all day, Mister Mysterious?"

"I'm not a cop, if that's what you're worried about."

Gray looked away, relief falling off him like sweat.

"I'm pleased to hear it. Notwithstanding that, my question remains."

Greene couldn't help but laugh.

"You've got a cheek, kid. I like that."

The younger man grinned at him, raising an eyebrow coquettishly.

"Notwithstanding that …"

"You really wanna know what I do? I hang around the park cruising for queers. What do you think?"

"Well I was kinda wondering."

"I'm a writer."

Gray nodded and shifted towards him, his fingers playing with the grass.

"So, Mister Writer man. I don't see you as a crusading journalist, rousting guys like me for the gutter press. What sort of things do you write?"

"I write short stories."

Gray looked a little disappointed.

"No Great American Novel, then?"

"Not yet. Just little slices of New York life."

Gray gazed at him for a long time.

"So what am I? Research?"

"No, son; you're just a figment of my imagination."

Greene got up and stretched. Alone but for the office girls he tipped his hat to them and strolled off through the trees, disappearing into the dappled shade.

The Job

This week's sentence was taken from Paul Auster's 'City Of Glass', from his marvellous "The New York Trilogy", and it was:

"Then, suddenly, with great clarity and precision, he saw Bartleby's window and the blank brick wall before him."

The Job

Then, suddenly, with great clarity and precision, he saw Bartleby's window and the blank brick wall before him.

The wall.
Always the same.
It stared him down.
Browbeat him.

The early morning sun burned the bricks a violent orange that hurt his eyes but it was not the squinting brilliance that he found intimidating.

It was the purity.
The very blankness.
The effrontery of it all.

It was Bartleby …

For blocks all around, every surface within reach of an outstretched arm was a scribbled tangle of graffiti. Layer after layer of tags and murals and adolescent brag and bluster festooned and swagged across wall and window, shutter and trashcan.

Yet no paint touched Bartleby's wall.
Ever.

The bright bricks briefly dazzled him; a malevolent, blazing tabula rubra. He shaded his eyes against their glare.

The wall was around fifty feet long and went up three storeys. Bartleby's window sat just off centre on the middle floor; a stark, black hole into nothingness.

He couldn't see in.

There were no other windows.
There was no door; at least not out front.

He stood across the street and waited as he always waited in what had once been the doorway of a laundry but was now - like so much else here - utterly derelict; trashed, tagged, beaten and left for dead.

He looked at the payphone.
The only undamaged payphone for ten blocks; it stood at one end of Bartleby's pristine wall.

He waited.

He never had to wait long. Somebody would be behind the window watching him; maybe even Bartleby himself, though somehow he doubted that.

The phone would ring three times and he would leave, returning home to find in his mailbox the familiar A4 manila envelope containing a quantity of cash and Bartleby's enigmatic instructions.

The payphone rang.
He left.

He never walked straight back to his apartment but invariably varied his route in a determined attempt at discontinuity.

Some days he would stop for latte and a bagel; others he would browse the bookstores or linger at the library; maybe buy some groceries.

Today he walked to the nearest Metro station and caught a train to the park.
At this hour there were still empty benches. He sat in the shade of a plane tree, waited for a hefty jogger to pound past and opened his attaché case.

Trying not to think of what would be waiting for him at the apartment he read a couple of chapters of Auster's New York Trilogy.
He liked these stories. He liked to lose himself in the characters' Odyssean wanderings; the repetitive interactions between strangers; the vaguely mysterious yet ultimately futile assignments that ruled their lives.
Much like his own …

The envelope was there in his mailbox.
Back in the apartment he closed the blind against the sun and poured himself a stiff scotch, then sat with the envelope on his lap and reached for his letter-opener.

Taking out the single sheet of paper he began to read.