This is a work of fiction. Names of characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously; any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locations is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2011 by Dennis Milholland – All rights reserved. Other than for private, not-for-profit use, no part of this work may be reproduced, transmitted or stored in any form or by any means, other than that intended by the author, without written permission from the copyright holder.
Careful! This is a work of fiction containing graphic descriptions of sex between males and critiques of religion and governments.
Love It or Leave It
by Dennis Milholland
questions and comments are welcome. www.milholland.eu / dennis@milholland.eu
Forty-nine
(Saturday, October 22nd)
It’s three in the morning and our travel alarm is going off. Raph nudges me to get up, and we crawl out of bed quietly. We’re not tired, since we went to bed at eight, after Aunt Françoise suggested a tour of the “Belly of Paris”, les Halles centrales, and we’ve had a good seven hours of sleep.
Every time I think of Dad’s somewhat younger sister, Françoise, I have to think of what Keith told us in Brighton. She is as mad as a hatter.
One of her eccentricities, as she explained yesterday, is her car. She drives a brightly polished, dark green, 1961 Citroën 2CV Sahara, of which less than three hundred were built.
As the story goes, she was given it by one of her clients, a geologist, who had apparently been looking for oil in Algeria, but who had to discontinue his search because the revolution blew up his business. Anyway, she got the car in lieu of payment for services rendered, directly prior to his enterprise going bust altogether.
The car looks like a shiny breadbox on wheels, has two engines, one in front and one in back, four-wheel drive, fantastic suspension, two 15 litre tanks, and carries its spare tyre on top of the bonnet in front. Just what you need for city traffic.
In twenty minutes, she’ll be collecting us in front of the house for our night out at the central markets of Paris, which has been the site of a covered market since 1183, or so she says. Nonetheless, the entire area is scheduled to be done away with in a few years due to a gigantic gentrification scheme of the Right Bank, stretching from the Seine to the Gare de l’Est. The knowledge of its pending demise is going to make tonight’s experience intense and will probably be a good reason for Raph and me to return frequently before the final curtain falls.
Raph needn’t have nudged me that she’s coming. I was only looking off into space, smoking a cigarette. And after all, a car with two engines at this time of the morning isn’t exactly inconspicuous. As I crush the half-smoked cigarette with my shoe, she pulls up to the curb.
Getting into Auntie Françoise’s car presents a similar challenge for Raph and me, as did Vicky’s VW. So, we go for the same solution: Raph’s in front, and I’m in the back.
At the thought of Vicky and Wanda, I have my first pang of homesickness. It's a longing, all right. However, it’s not that I’m wishing that we were there, rather wishing they were here.
“Yus all right, Lads?” Françoise’s husky voice that sometimes, like now, has a Dublin twang to it makes me laugh, as I struggle to get settled in the back, and Raph is squeezing into the front. She still reminds me of my dad in drag.
“Yeah,” My voice strains as I shift my weight. “we’re used to it. Raph’s girlfriend has a VW Beetle, and I always go into the back.”
Her look is screaming disbelief, while her voice remains relatively subdued. "You have a girlfriend?" Pencilled eyebrows arch keenly.
Raph nods. “Her name’s Vicky and she’s a blonde cheerleader.” He smiles naïvely at Françoise who is now fumbling for a cigarette. “And Dan’s fiancée is Wanda. She's of West African descent."
At that, she lights her cigarette and belts out a course laugh as she exhales. “No wonder the lot of yus had to leave the feckin’ States.”
“No, actually,” I pause to let her pull away from the curb and gun her engines in direction of place du Trocadéro. “the reason we had to leave the States was that Dad's cover got blown.”
“Yus don’t believe all that rubbish about his bein’ a spy, do you?” She fumbles nervously, accidently letting her cigarette fall out of between her fingers onto the street of the northern, semicircle half of place du Trocadéro, as she stops at the traffic lights to turn back onto avenue du Président Wilson to drive west, glancing at me over her shoulder.
“Don’t know.” I have to give a slight laugh. "Thought it was pretty convincing, when Raph and I had to be evacuated from the United States by diplomatic escort and protected by British Army snipers.”
“What?” Her disbelief becomes even more pronounced by her facial expression.
“What has Dad told you?” Raph wants to know.
She is about to light another cigarette and has to mumble since it’s wedged between her lips. “Absolutely nothing.” Her lighter clicks; she exhales a large plume of smoke. “Geneviève said that the FBI was after him for espionage.”
“Then, maybe we should let it go at that.” I lean back across the seats, and we drive on without speaking. Anyway, trying to make ourselves understood above the noise of two engines is difficult at best.
She keeps to the Right Bank, crossing into the 8th arrondissement. Our street, avenue du Président Wilson, ends at place de l'Alma, which, in turn, puts us onto the street along the river. We shoot past the south side of le Grand Palais and before we know it, she’s downshifting to negotiate place de la Concorde, the obelisk and fountain alight in spotlights but the wide open spaces are devoid of traffic.
We cut in front of a tank truck squirting water to wash the street as she hangs a right onto rue de Rivoli. Tearing along the north-side of the Jardin des Tuileries and consequently arriving in the first arrondissement, we are quickly approaching the Louvre, which we whirl past in a left-hand turn onto rue du Louvre, where she parks.
When we get out of the car, we can hear commotion. The whiffs, that we’re getting, smell like a pantry full of fresh groceries. The air is tense with excitement, and it seems to warm up on the other side, pulling us across the rue du Louvre.
We enter les Halles centrales de Paris, huge market buildings connected by streets covered with high halls of wrought-iron, wooden louvers and sooty glass walls and roofs, somewhat reminiscent of Victoria Station in London. The complex rises about three storeys above the pavement and extends to the West for some six city blocks and two long blocks to the North ending across from the church of Saint Eustache.
Market activities spill over into the surrounding streets and lanes of the quartier. Specialty shops in the side streets are all open for business, although it’s barely four in the morning.
Wooden crates are filled with live fish on ice. Steel shelving filled with exotic flowers are waiting for florists. Stacks of produce higher than my head are being bought and sold. Men in white coats are carrying entire carcasses of beef on their shoulders as if it were nothing. Carcasses of all sorts are being hung from hooks and dismembered into cuts for individual consumption. According to Françoise, some fifty thousand people are involved in making this wonder happen every morning.
Everyone is hurrying, but there is nothing hectic. The scenes are like a choreographed stage production.
Françoise leaves us gawking on the corner of a crowded, covered street in the midst of everything, only to return moments later with an olive-green, cone-shaped paper bag full of hot, roasted chestnuts. To answer our inquisitive looks, she gestures back at the vendor, who is busy stirring the roasting nuts with a wooden paddle in a large copper bowl, suspended over a gas flame. The elderly woman, selling the chestnuts, has a steady flow of customers, who buy a bag or two in passing, without having to queue.
As Françoise pulls out an intricately crocheted shopping net, into which she places the bag, Raph looks as if he’s being cheated, and “Don’t we get to try one?” comes out a bit too forward.
“Sorry.” She hands us the conical paper bag and returns to the chestnut vendor. She comes back, while we are peeling nuts. “It only just dawned on me that you’ve probably never had marrons.” She takes one out of our bag and stores the other in her net. “Your mother wants them for stuffing the duck, later on.” She looks as if we’re totally inept. “Don’t tell me, you’ve never stuffed a duck, either.”
“We’ve never really ever stuffed anything.” Obviously, Raph isn’t aware of the double meaning in the Irish usage of the word, stuffed. I nearly choke; chestnut particles are threatening my windpipe.
Françoise giggles and lights a cigarette. “You’re virgins, then?”
“Uh, hum.” Raph is now just realising what he’d said and, of course, turns the shade of dark rosewood, which is super sexy in the dim reflection of gas street lights.
“I’ve just the girl for yus, then.” Françoise explains as we leave the market buildings at the church of Saint-Eustache and walk through the activities on the north side of les Halles. She stops to haggle a bit but then does purchase three ducks. “Would you care for an onion soup and a glass of white wine?"
“Sounds good.” Raph tells her, willing to say anything to get the topic off his virginity, at least in heterosexual terms.
The neon sign in the rue Coquillière boldly glares at us, AU PIED DE COCHON. Raph and I have never seen a restaurant, which is open at this hour of the morning, much less full.
The mix of people out front is thrilling. You see people in evening dress, possibly theatregoers. Otheres are certainly costermongers from the market. A few are expensively dressed like entrepreneurs or bankers, and yet they’re rubbing elbows with ones who look as if they may even be homeless.
“Are they open only during the hours of the market?” I yell at Françoise over the din as we enter.
“No, they’re always open.” She states offhandedly, waving to some people she must know, and then she blows them a kiss, pointing at us and shaking her head.
“What do you mean by always?” I’m wondering about her definition of the word.
She looks at me askance and clicks her tongue. “Silly boy. Always is always. This place opened in 1947, or thereabouts, and has never shut." She moves us toward a table that is being vacated and reset.
Once we are seated, Raph picks up the thread. “It has never shut?”
Françoise takes out a cigarette and hands me the lighter. “No,” Once I’ve provided her with a light, she motions for me to help myself; I do. “it’s open and well visited twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week.”
“Wow.” is all that Raph can manage to say in wonderment before the waiter appears, who nods as Françoise orders in very rapidly spoken Parisian argot. Again, Raph’s comment is “Wow.”
“Picked it up at school.” she laughs self-indulgently, releasing billows of smoke from her lungs. “So, tell me, Yves-Raphaël, you said that you have a girlfriend.”
Raph nods, staring at the table top. “Of sorts.” He waves her smoke out of his face. “Our girlfriends are smokescreens.” He chuckles at the aptness. “Decoys.”
“You and Daniel are lovers.” She puts the cigarette out. “Or am I getting wrong signals?”
“That’s correct.” I try to put an end to Raph’s discomfort. “And we’ve been together for most of our lives.”
“So, you have no interest, whatsoever, in the opposite sex?”
“I don’t,” My voice mellows, and my partner blushes. “but Raph seems to.”
Auntie Françoise hones in on me. “And why don’t you?”
“Because my stepmother forced me to perform cunnilingus on her for quite a few years as a school kid. I’ve licked enough cunt to last me a while.” I had no idea that anyone could make a possibly fifty-year old brothel owner blush.
I tap out my cigarette, as the wine waiter approaches with a bottle and three glasses, followed by our table waiter carrying a tray above the heads of passers-by, upon which he is balancing our soupe à l’oignon gratinée. For some inexplicable reason, the gentleman uncorking the bottle chooses me as the one to do the tasting. He sets down the glass in front of me and pours until it's about a quarter full.
Françoise’s right pencilled eyebrow is arched in good-humoured anticipation. Raph is giving me a ‘we’ve-seen-Jennette-do-this’ grin. So, holding onto the stem, I slowly swirl the glass, coating the sides with wine. I sniff the contents and take a loud sip, drawing air through the liquid. There is a peculiar taste of cork. I pull a face and smile at him. « Je le regrette, monsieur. »
He looks astonished. He takes my glass, wipes the rim with his serviette, and gives me a menacing glare. To sip and slurp, he has to look away. « O, bon dieu, il est vraiment liégeux. »
When he returns instantaneously with another bottle and a fresh glass, he shows me the label, which oddly has Quincy printed on it. I repeat the procedure.
This time, the wine is far beyond acceptable. I nod and smile with pleasure.
He informs me that the wine is, without any discussion, on the house. He fills the other two glasses and then tops up mine. After being admirably patient, the waiter with the soup hovering in mid air can serve us.
Raph is beaming in my direction, but his leg is rubbing Françoise’s under the table. She holds up her glass in a toast. “To the good times ahead.”
We drink, and the minute she sets her glass down, she whispers: “You know that you’ve just destroyed all of my misconceptions about Americans. Where did you learn to taste wine so proficiently?” She takes another sip of the superb wine; Raph has to cover his mouth before laughter erupts.
I smile innocently. “Jenny Marx taught me.”
The abrupt snort forces the sip of wine through her nasal passages. Her serviette comes to the immediate rescue. “Please,” She dabs with the corner of the serviette. “never do that again.”
“Never do what, again, Auntie,” I increase the intensity of my fake smile. “answer a question truthfully?”
“You actually know someone named Jenny Marx?” Both pencilled eyebrows are reaching for the sky.
“Yeah,” Raph removes his hand from in front of his mouth. “she’s our attorney.”
Auntie mumbles something unintelligible and uses her large spoon to break the cheese crust on her bowl of soup. Raph and I follow her lead, each taking a lightly toasted slice of baguette from the basket in the centre of the table. And, needless to say, the food defies description. This is indeed a far cry from the onion rings at Pat’s Pig.
After drinking an after-dinner coffee and Cognac at just past six in the morning, Françoise tries to hand me her wallet under the table. “You’ll have to pay for us at the cashier, Daniel.” nodding toward the woman seated in the cage next to the door. “I’m not allowed, if men are present.” When I give her a totally dumbfounded look, she whispers: “Suffice it to say, it’s just not done.”
I give her back her wallet. “Seph gave me more than enough to take care of this.” I signal for the waiter: « L'addition s'il vous plait. »
As the waiter, in his sexy floor-length white apron with a black jacket over his white shirt and bowtie, gives me the cheque, my eyes must be signalling helplessness, prompting Auntie to laugh and explain that everyone still calculates things in old francs, although the menu has new francs. Consequently, the bill is actually for sixty francs, not six-thousand. And true to his promise, the wine is not on the list. “Leave about ten francs on the table for gratuities, since service is not included.”
I do as I’m told and proceed gingerly to the cashier’s cage. Either, Françoise is right, and everything will go without a hitch. Or, she’s having me on, and sirens and buzzers will go off, whereupon the lovely looking lady in the cage will cuff me and hand me over to the flics for not having anywhere near six thousand francs on me. Luckily, it’s the former.
We follow Françoise out of the restaurant and turn left and left again onto rue du Jour. We walk maybe ten yards and she pulls out a key to the door of a very narrow building. Beyond the door, we are greeted warmly by several, expensively dressed ladies sitting at a bar.
Since there is not one red light in sight, it takes a moment for me to register that, given Aunt Françoise’s profession and that it is just past six in the morning and Champagne is flowing as if there were no tomorrow, we are, more than likely, in a house of dubious repute.
“So,” I return the smile of a young lady, possibly in her early twenties. “is this your house, where you entertained the Gestapo?”
“No,” She smiles at the young woman, whom she calls Susanne, and inquires as to how she is doing. Françoise looks at me again. “that was over on rue Chabanais. It was one of the state-run houses, which has been closed some twenty years now.” She nods her own agreement with what she’s saying. “It was back in ’46 when several of the women and quite a few of the wealthy clients helped me buy this place. It’s a private club and charity."
“Private club and charity?” I snicker as Françoise hands Raph and me each a glass of Champagne.
“Well, quite.” She toasts non-verbally. “Membership is for five years.” She takes a long sip. “And since all memberships are auctioned off every five years, we raise enormous sums for charity. We run the place with the monthly dues and sales of alcohol.”
“How much are the monthly dues?” Raph wants to know as he sips.
“Proportionate to the sum of the auctioned membership.” Raph and I look confused, so Françoise spells it out. “Five years are 60 months. And the bidding starts at 100,000 francs.” Since I'm looking for clarification with a knitted brow and about to speak, she adds: “New francs.” She chuckles and lights a cigarette. “So, if the membership goes for 350,000 francs, the monthly dues are 5,833 francs.”
“And how many members do you have?” The arithmetic wheels are whirling in Raph’s head.
“Fifty members, fifteen active women with twenty on retirement.” She smiles, setting down her glass on the bar and letting her cigarette rest in the ashtray. And this is when I notice it.
I’m staring at the glass and cigarette, when I look more closely at her mouth. “I don’t believe it.”
“Tidy sum, ne c’est pas?” She is obviously pleased with her business scheme as Raph nods and smiles.
“I don’t mean that.” Getting even closer to her mouth, I let out a whisper: “Your lips are tattooed.”
“Of course they are, Daniel.” She laughs at me and picks up her cigarette. “My eyebrows and eyeliner are tattoos as well. Do you think I want to waste all that time, messing about with makeup?”
Boldly, Raph runs a thumb across her left eyebrow. She smiles somewhat cautiously, as he leans in and kisses her. “Do you keep a room here?” His voice is rough, tight.
“Are you sure you want to?” Her voice is just above a whisper. He nods, and she takes him by the hand, neither of them paying me any heed. Somehow, I don’t figure into the equation.
Of a sudden, I feel misplaced. I pocket Françoise’s cigarettes that are on the bar since mine are running out. Susanne smiles again fetchingly, but I ignore her. It’s time for me to check out. The shopping net with the ducks and chestnuts is hanging on a hook of the coat rack. I sling it over my shoulder and make my way to the door.
The morning air is fresh, and the sun is starting to turn night into day. I decide to walk back home. I need to think, to re-evaluate things. At the moment, I feel, I suppose, as I should: like a teenager who has been forced to become an adult too quickly. Maybe Jennette is right. I may well be just about to fly off the planet.
I make it almost across the place de la Concorde before I break down. Not only is it daunting to try to cross it as a pedestrian, even at this early hour. But I feel physically unable to continue. I don’t know why Raph tried to hurt me by fucking me senseless, and I don’t know why he didn’t as much as look at me, when he went off with Françoise.
I stop and lean against the stone balustrade on the northwest side, at the start of the Champs Élysée. I’m not really sobbing; just tears are streaming down my face as hopelessness grips my heart. I fear the possible start of a nervous collapse. I have never felt so insecure.
Early morning tourists, complete with guidebooks in hand, are giving me weary, questioning glances, as if I could attack them. Their ‘gai Paris’ is being disrupted by human emotions other than amazement.
« Avez-vous des problems ? » The young man in a tidy, white, nylon, perma-press dress shirt, a narrow black necktie and black, wash-and-wear slacks about three inches too short, more than likely in his early twenties inquires about my worries with a thick American accent.
Next to him, I spot his blurry double. I can virtually smell the ‘work of god’ ponging off them like mothballs. I know that they are Mormons even before I can read the nearest black badge through my tears, identifying him as Elder Gribs.
“Yeah,” I tell them in my usual Missourian twang. “your holy vibes are doing me a job.” I decide to fuck with their heads and try for a smile. "Hi, I'm Korihor." I extend my hand first to Elder Bernhisel, who takes it tentatively as he gives Elder Gribs a look, bordering on sheer panic.
The fact that I’ve just introduced myself as the Anti-Christ, against whom there is an in-depth warning in the Book of Mormon’s most prominent part, the Book of Alma, is certainly the reason why. I grin maniacally.
“Where are you from?” Elder Gribs, apparently the braver of the two, demands assertively.
My grin moves into mischievous. “Hell. But you once called it the Garden of Eden.” And, when they peer at me incredulously, I add: “Jackson County, Missouri.”
“Are you LDS?” Elder Gribs thinks he's found the answer.
“If you had read your scriptures well, Elder Gribs,” I scoff and chuckle with a dark, foreboding tone. “you’d know that I’m an insufferable sceptic. And, as a matter of fact, I was on my way to place de l’Alma to meet up with Lucifer, who has let me see and hear again.”
“There’s no such thing as place de l’Alma in Paris.” Elder Gribs waves his guide book of the city with his finger inserted to mark the place de la Concorde.
I take the thin, green booklet gently from him and point directly at it. His eyes bulge as he recognises that there's also the Alma Bridge to go with it.
Of course, what their faith-based education has failed to impart to them is that the bridge and the square are named after the battle won on the Alma River during the Crimean War and not for the collection of fairytales in the Book of Mormon. However, my mood has improved as I continue on to that very square, congratulating myself on having turned getting rid of annoying missionaries into an art form.