Femmes, Forever

By G. B. Absher

Falling in Paris is the story of a young boy with many things to learn who happens to find many women to teach him in the crown jewel of France. It takes place across two autumn months between an arrival and departure from Charles de Gaulle International Airport in 2012.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9781524513825

G. B. Absher

About the Author As for me, I’m an LA-based twenty-seven-year-old student of business and design. I work at a hotel and a surf shop, and I write feverishly in my free time. I previously published a work titled A Mid-Summer’s Daydream. I’m rewriting it.

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Copyright © 2016 by George Brian Absher.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2016910530

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5245-1384-9

   Softcover   978-1-5245-1383-2

   eBook   978-1-5245-1382-5

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 08/18/2016

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Contents

LILI :

Up, Up, and Away

AUBREY :

MARIE :

Cotton Jones Dans La Parc

KELSEY :

LINDSAY :

ROBIN :

La Tour

KATE :

The Girl Who Liked To Picture Doors

Paris (Rachel)

ELIZABETH :

Shut Up And Write, Bitch

The Shepard German

ELENA :

ERICA :

ALISON :

LAURA :

Montparnasse in the Window

RACHEL :

DIANE :

KERRY :

This City’s A Lover

OLIVIA :

Last Night, Late Night

(in the Moleskine)

*   *   *

F our pills down the shoot, boop. Is that it? Hmm, I hope this works. I tell myself it’s medicine, the doctor’s simple order, so why shouldn’t it work? The only thing I can think that might interfere with the effectiveness would be the jetlag or the hour, whatever it is; late. Dead morning in LA, but here in New York it’s only midnight. And I’m at the end of an abysmal layover to Paris. Halfway there; tomorrow, I’m going to wake up in France. With a long breath, I close my ringed weary eyes for a moment and listen to the music.

Now boarding, she says. It cuts through the tunes, and the assembly slowly rises to its feet to make queue. The small, orange plastic pill bottle is still in my hand. I look it once over for some reassurance. It says to take it all at once orally. I laugh with young adolescence and trash it before she scans my ticket.

Have I got everything? Yes. Clothes, shirts, pants, socks, underwear; long underwear too because fuck, it might get a little chilly out there; a knit sweater, and a scarf as well. I have a towel and a washcloth and a toothbrush and paste, deodorant, a razor, a nice pair of shoes, and a few books: Scar Tissue, On The Road, The New College French & English Dictionary, East Of Eden. All this is packed away in my checked green Samsonite luggage.

The important stuff I keep close to me in my backpack, which isn’t enormous so I had to choose wisely: my laptop, my camera, extra lenses (the new 35mm and the old borrowed fish-eye that I have to focus manually if I ever want to use it), my sunglasses, my passport, my old Perrington notebook that’s written about halfway through, and the black leather-bound Moleskine I just stole from the terminal’s airport market (I paid the five dollars for gummy worms, but thirty dollars was too much to ask for paper sheets even if they did have a good texture, cute rounded corners, and supple leather. The old Perrington has rounded corners; the leather’s all right, I only paid ten dollars for it, and they look about the same).

Finally, the book my mother bought for me at my request before I left is tucked away in there as well. Another one of Kerouac’s, his last in fact, and it’s got a pair of titles between the covers. The second, called Pic, didn’t really stop my eye at the bookstore. Rather, it was the first title that made me cock and inspect it further. Satori In Paris, I want this one, I told her. I’m two pages deep and already done with a chapter. By the look of things, the chapters are short, easy reading, a little absentminded too, but the love is in his rhythm. No one can deny that. I read until dinner’s served in all its plastic-wrapped and preserved glory. The booze isn’t free, so I take a ginger ale to wash everything down. After it’s done, I rest my head on a pillow by the window and try to find sleep in Cat Power’s whisper to my ear.

I’m in Paris, it’s nothing. This is nothing special. I keep telling myself over and over and over and over again. It sounds off, like a loud, pessimistic snooze alarm pulsing in my time-deprived head as we slowly taxi towards the terminal at Charles de Gaulle. This is nothing special. I say this is nothing special. Still, every fiber of muscle, every neuron fires in me with the thought that it is. This is special. I’m shaking. No, it’s nothing. Come on fingers, play something soothing in my ears. They Adele me; I’m in Paris.

I know it won’t be this way forever, I know. Everything’s more beautiful and breathtakingly prominent when you think to yourself, I might never see this again, and I’ll certainly never see it like it is right now, not ever, no, never again. This is it. Each story between blinks becomes fruit for the soul, each and every one when everything’s new. This holds true only more so when the story’s quite beautiful to begin with, and Paris is a beautiful, beautiful city. Believe me, I’ve been here once before.

I glide through the spaceport terminal. Really, with this place? It’s got a taste of that vintage clean-sleek future with dark stainless metal and big glass. I feel like Ethan (Handsome) Hawke in Gattaca. Through the customs gate I glide, to the baggage carousel and onward. At the currency exchange I give them sixty US dollars, and they hand me back forty-six and change in their funny monopoly money that’s all different sizes. Then it’s towards the sliding glass doors. I call Lili from a pay phone, and it’s early (7:45 or so by the airport ticker clocks), but she answers. Yawning and surprised, she tells me to take the RoissyBus to the opera house.

LILI :

I’m going to kill myself. I should go to Paris and jump off the Eiffel Tower. I’ll be dead. You know, in fact, if I get the Concorde, I could be dead three hours earlier, which would be perfect.

-Woody Allen

T his is Paris. It’s a feeling of vague familiarity, but to be true, it’s entirely foreign. I didn’t remember Paris like this, and it’s only been a few months over a year since Max, Mike, Grant, and I had bid Au ‘voir to Marie on a midsummer morning and snuck away on the metro to Gare du Nord. It feels like the same city—the symmetry, the architecture, the language—but this is different. It’s not a holiday this time, it’s not a free-form wild romp like before, no great adventure.

No, this is just living, an attempt to focus, to put pencil to paper, and slave away at a keyboard. I came here to write. LA’s too wrought with diversions, too many things to do, too many people to see, too many girls, two too many girls. It’s only autumn, but it already feels like it’ll soon be too cold to get into anything real mischievous. Plus, I don’t know anyone out here—save for Marie, and of course, Lili.

Oh, hey there, I hear over the vague undertones of French flying around the steps of L’Opéra. I pull the camera from my eye and my eye from the skyline to the sidewalk below, and there she is on a silly bicycle covered in plastic taupe. I hear the color’s very soothing. It’s Lili.

Oh, hey yourself, I say, looking serious as I try not to smile. She’s exactly as I remember her: sassy and shoulder-groovin’ and animated behind a pair of Ray Bans, and for a second, the city turns into LA and I never really left. But that must be the jetlag. My heavy eyes blink, and when they open again, I’m back in gay ole’ Paris.

Lili’s looking at me hard, I can’t believe you’re actually here.

Yeah. I don’t believe I’m here either, I say. Not yet, anyways.

She laughs, Yeah? Rough flight? You look like hell.

Gee, thanks. My skin’s sticky from the processed airplane air, my joints hurt, and I feel high off delirium. What time is it by the way? I ask.

Lili flicks her wrist and consults a classy little timepiece on a worn leather band, It’s just past nine.

Good Lord! I’m about to pass out. How far’s your place?

It’s a quick ride on the Vélib’, she says, looking down at the bike between her legs.

The what?

The Vélib’, she says. There’s dozens of cheap taupe bikes locked up at tiny stations every other block or so, and they’re available with the simple swipe of a Vélib’ card. But each card can only take one bike every thirty minutes. It’s like a metro pass without being able to cheat your friends through.

But I don’t have a Vélib’, I say frowning, and I duck because most of that went right over my head.

She looks at me sourly, I know. You suck. Lili’s always been a little tart ever since high school—pretty and secretive and sarcastically tart. That’s Lili. She’s a wild one. She’s charmingly seductive. I might have loved her once. If I did, if that’s even what it was, it was a long time ago—before college. We’re nothing but old friends now, dry with bitter humor. She’s always fascinated me, and for that, I’ve since learned to be wary. I saw beauty in her the way one sees it in a pack of wild mustangs running at a cliff’s edge. It’s not something you want to find yourself in the midst of, but at the right range, it’s a rare and beautiful thing. She’s untamed and together and always flirting with a dangerous unknown, it seems. It’s not that far, she says. We can walk.

It’s pretty fucking far actually with fifty pounds of backpack and luggage digging into my shoulders. We head southwest through the city for a spell and turn left on Avenue de Marigny—a solid walk. It takes us twenty minutes to get to the Seine, and as we cross at Pont Alexandre III, Napoleon’s tomb in the distance, a young scruffy Parisian walking the other way picks a ring up off the ground and holds it up to me saying something in French.

He’s trying to hustle you. Ignore him, Lili says to me. Then she turns to him with a wave of her hand and sneers, Non, merci. And we keep walking.

What was that about?

He was gonna try to get you to give him ten dollars for that shitty ring. He dropped it there earlier. It’s a thing they do.

Who do?

The gypsies. Then they’ll try to rob you. Look out for them.

So I look out for them. Are we there yet?

Almost. Kinda. It’s through this park and just past Invalides, she says and does a double-take. You wanna take a break?

I let a deep sigh out, That would be awesome. We sit on a green wood bench lined up even with a row of trimmed trees.

Lili crosses her legs, pulls a pouch of Lucky Strike tobacco from her shoulder bag, and opens it. There’s a single rolled cigarette inside. She didn’t really smoke in the States, and she looks me sharp in the eyes, Don’t judge me.

I won’t if you roll me one, I snap back.

She considers it. Fine, she sighs, and she tosses me the one she’d been fiddling with in her fingers. Then she rolls another and we smoke. The ground’s covered with leaves, brown-orange and trampled, but the trees still have some life in them, in the greens speckled yellow.

I catch my breath with a puff of tobacco smoke. It’s crisp and sends my skin into bumps. Lili sees a close leaf falling and looks at me. You picked a good time to come, she says. It’s not usually as nice as it is this time in October.

I blow a puff out, How nice is it usually?

It should be colder, but it isn’t.

Lucky me, there’s no emphasis in it. I have none to spare. Paris is hustling by through morning rush hour, and the clocks in my head don’t think that sounds right and they’re whining up a fuss. It’s a little past midnight back in LA. What the hell am I doing here. It’s a statement not a question. Each blink comes with a throb and a shake, and I feel my eyes sink into my skull as my cigarette burns low.

C’mon, says Lili, picking up one of my bags. It’s just around the corner. I’ve got another class to go to, so you can take a nap up there or whatever when I’m gone.

Oh-kay, I say. And I pick up the other bag.

Before we trek off again, she takes one last mean drag from her cigarette and flicks it at me with a smile, I can’t believe you’re actually here.

Lili lives in a little servant’s quarters below the roof of a lavish Parisian apartment block in the 7th Arrondissement. There’s no elevator, and she takes me through to the back where there’s a servants’ staircase that spirals up six flights to the top. The steps are steep and always twisting up. They never straighten out, and a tiny landing and a servants’ door marks each floor until there’s no more steps, and we’re walking down a tall skinny hallway with doors on either side and recessed skylights and battered floorboards. They look recently stripped, but Lili says they’ve been like that since she moved in a year ago. She’s panting when she says it, and I’m panting while I listen because fucking hell, those stairs are no joke.

When Lili opens the door, we both drop the bags not so softly on the hardwood floors, and I grab my knees, sucking in breaths. Wow, really Lil? That was fucking miserable, I say. I didn’t think I was in this bad a shape.

Yeah, dude. Tell me about it. I do that at least twice a day. She pours two glasses of water and hands me one, and we sit at her table. It’s a tiny thing against the wall opposite the door, barely big enough for two people to eat comfortably. The place is a box, and a closet juts out to the middle from the door wall and opens both ways. Her bed hugs one wall, and the bathroom and kitchen hug the other. You must be starving, she says. She breaks a baguette in half and digs through the mini fridge under the kitchen counter. You have to try this butter I have. It’s to die for, muahaha!

Is it now. I spread some on some bread and take a bite. Then I take another and another and another until it’s gone, and I finally begin to catch my breath. It’s damned good butter if I do say so myself. What is that? I ask, still licking my pallet.

That’s butter, man. Real butter, she says. French butter.

I take the bar of it in my hand and inspect it, Is that salt?

Yup, sea salt crystals. It’s so good. Then she reaches into the fridge again and pulls out another bar, or more a sliced rock of butter. Here, try this one.

What’s this one?

Ouzo, she says. It’s altogether different in flavor and sweetness and saltiness, and it’s equally amazing. I never pegged Lili for a fine butter connoisseur, but it doesn’t surprise me. She’s accustomed to fine tastes. Her parents are both Italian, so hers was a savory household back in LA. It was whenever I came over for dinner. She’s lived up a hill and a few blocks west of me.

Your butters are divine, I tell her.

Why, thank you, she says with a curtsy. Oh! I gotta go to class right now, and you look like you need some shut-eye, so you can sleep in my bed for now. She takes a step towards me and leans in and sniffs, Yeah, that’s fine. I’ll be back in three hours or so.

Ha! Spanks. I don’t smell that bad.

Sure you don’t. Hehe. Smell ya later. She’s a mischievous cackler as she leaves, and she cuts a slim fit figure in the doorway. It’s got to be the stairs. Six flights twice a day will give anyone body karate.

The blood’s still pumping from those damned stairs, and tired as I am, my sunken eyes don’t feel like closing yet, so I write. In a mixed-up open-eyed conscious daydream, I write. Sitting on the single loveseat below the tiny servant’s quarters window. This will clear my head:

Up, Up, and Away

It’s a feeling like standing on the fulcrum point, a seesaw parallel with both ends in the air. I don’t want to fall in place on one side, but it’s going to happen. It always does, can’t be avoided. Oh well, my legs are still strong. I can stand up here a bit longer, but it’s getting more and more difficult. It’s a balancing act, a tightrope walk with reality on either side. I tell myself to breathe because I realize I’m holding my breath waiting for something to happen. So they’re forced, deep breaths—the kind that you suck in until your lungs are full before letting it all go.

And that’s when I get the tickle in the back of my mind that I’m stuck here in the middle. And the ground below looks inviting, so I close my eyes and stand with my feet close together—to no avail. I’m trapped in a balance, there’s not even a teeter. When I open my eyes again and look out the window, the plane’s descending on New York. That slow, airline descent, and it’s just started. We’re below the high feather-wisp clouds now, but the low-level ones are still far below. They’re not puffy white anymore, but pewter grey. The sun’s set over the west horizon, and that red rose glow is slowly waning in the wide space between. It’s eerie. Like some marshmallow Martian landscape with dark cloud mountain ranges pushing up in the distance, silhouetted by the running sun before it’s gone.

It’s night in New York, and our colonies of orange light come into view, scattered at first, then gradually thickening and rising up closer. It’s easy to get lost in a window seat, I always do. Next thing I know, the landing gear rumbles out and we’re touching down at JFK, and I’m grabbing bags and shuffling down the aisle, long strides on the catwalk to stretch the legs that yearn to move after sitting for so long. The hunger pangs are nauseating. Maybe it’s the new pressure in my ears. Maybe it was that god-awful penguin movie showing on the plane. Maybe it was the hangover from last night. Either way, JFK is a two-hour insomnia. My eyelids want to close, but how’s sleep supposed to come when my body feels this awful. The gears in my head are grinding much too loud. It’s all I’m coherent enough to do to buy some $7 vacuum-sealed club sandwich and a $5 bag of gummy worms and an apple juice. Fuck airports.

[stop]

For dinner, we go out.

The night is sweater cold and cozy in this green knitted thing I picked up in LA before leaving. It’s got little leather elbow pads, it zips down the middle, and it’s a little heavy for autumn in LA, but here in Paris, it’s just right. We walk arm in arm, Lili and I, chatting fast with jabs back and forth like little kids playing tag, and she drags from a cigarette in her right hand, and I drag from one in my left. And when the sidewalk thins, we split seamlessly and walk single file.

She’s a quick walker, Lili, and I keep pace. What do you want? she asks.

I want to eat something French, I say with a wave of the Lucky Strike she rolled me.

Hmm… French you say? I know just the place. She steers us to a corner restaurant nearby. Café Constant. The place isn’t open for dinner yet, but there’s already a line waiting. It’s mostly an older crowd, and to my surprise, there’s a lot of English being thrown around. Lili tells me the 7th is the arrondissement that most Americans move to when they move to Paris. This place is an American favorite, she says. Last time the ‘rents came out, we ate here.

Lovely, we’ll fit right in. And when they finally open the doors and let us sit, we do. We slide right in at a table by the entrance. It’s not a big place on the ground floor. There’s a line of tables pushed up against the floor-to-ceiling windows facing the bar with just enough space for servers to rush by in between the two. I take the seat up against the window because I get to look at the bar and all the bottles behind it, and I like that almost as much as Lili likes sitting in the aisle. She’s quite adamant about it actually, and I don’t mind the close quarters, so it works out. Our server’s sharp and gives us the English menu, and I sigh easy relief. Merci, I say. Merci beaucoup.

Lili gets the roasted chicken plate, and I get a hearty steak and potatoes. She orders a glass of white French wine, and I ask her to order me a decent red because as I look at the list, I realize that the wines are different out here and I don’t know which to choose. I’m starving. It’s been forever since I’ve had a proper steak dinner. I want to do it right. Luckily, Lili likes her wine and she picks me an ace.

The dinner is everything I want. The steak is savory in a sauce with a sharp bite, and the chef hit the medium-well nail on the head. To know me is to know