I remember France, and the pale, looming city where I spent four months. I always felt that if all its people were somehow erased, Paris would continue on, unchanged, still as aloof and stately and substantial as before. There's a feeling of history lurking along the walls of its white buildings, as though the city belonged as much to ghosts as to the living.
At night on the weekends, Amanda and I would meet in her tiny apartment. She lived on the first floor in a comfy, carpeted, maroon-colored mousehole, with a sagging couch and one window that overlooked a tiny interior courtyard. We used to peer out the bars while we ate cheese, bread and a pink, mousse-like Greek caviar whose name I can't remember. We'd watch people hang their white laundry out their windows; sometimes we'd hear snatches of conversation or strains of maudlin French music exuding from other apartments.
Anyway, we'd change our clothes, put on make-up, clip silver barrettes in our hair, and sally out into Paris the night city. I always thought we made a striking duo: I, small and brown, beside Amanda, blond and tall; my short spikey hair to her lissome long locks. We liked to walk in St. Germain des Pres, where the narrow ways pour out their pedestrians and the Greek shops are lined one alongside the next, selling greasy gyros with fries. Paris thrums with activity at night, when the city, cloaked by darkness, looks less white and majesterial. Even in the darkest hours, people stir. I still remember the bicyclist that teetered drunkenly by us late one night, singly, alone in the at last abandoned street, careering from one sidewalk to the other with a clatter on the cobbles.
One night, Amanda and I decided we'd visit a jazz bar. Inside its cavernous limestone depths, the denizens were quite literally at full swing. We joined the dancing, but eventually began to feel it necessary to peel a couple of amorous older male dancers off our skin. We withdrew to a side wall, trying to avoid them. Amanda had noticed a young man about our age in a corner writing in a notebook.
"Let's go talk to him," she said. "If he's writing in his journal at 1:00 a.m. in a bar, how bad can he be?" She'd heard him talking in English, and thought him an American. We interrupted him without compunction.
He turned out to be a pilot, passing through with the U.S. military. Stationed in the area for only one night, he'd taken the train in from Charles de Gaulle airport to explore the town. The subway stops running at 1:00 a.m. in Paris, so he couldn't return to the airport until dawn; he'd settled in at the jazz club for a long wait, and was writing a letter when we spotted him. He chatted with us with his whole face open and friendly and his sandy brown hair neatly flat along his head. Now that I've lived in the Midwest, I know him better, that pilot. Clean-shaven, straightforward, without pretense, he reminded me not only of many Midwesterners I've met, but also of whole atmosphere here.
Let's get out of here, we decided, at last. Amanda and I would show him Paris. We lit out into the quietening streets, heading for the Seine. Notre Dame loomed beside us; he gazed up at its arches and gargoyles in awe. We crossed a bridge over the river, and sat to talk for awhile on the steps that led down to the concrete banks. The river rolled on in front of us; a gang of Parisian boys blasted by on their bicycles; then the city was left to stillness and the lapping of water and our quiet conversation once again.
Three a.m., then four. We made for the south of the city, walking down the Boulevard St. Michel toward the Jardin de Luxembourg. The long city stretched out under our tired feet. We passed a janitor at the curb washing the sidewalk, who looked up at us indifferently.
Our pilot addressed a loud, jovial word or two in English to the streetsweeper, as he'd done to other passers-by that night. "Nice night out here!" I remember thinking it strange that he'd venture to speak as though expecting the whole world to know English. I thought people would find him insufferably arrogant, a typical ignorant American. But the janitor - indeed, everyone to whom our pilot spoke - lit up at his open demeanor and his easy, natural smile. He smiled toothily in return; good-natured words in rapid French ensued. Our American friend grinned and replied in nonsequitor. On we went.
In the slowly pinkening dawn, as 5:00 a.m. and the re-opening of le metro approached, we straggled tiredly south toward the nearest metro station. The cafes began to stir; their owners emerged like aproned mice, threw open the doors, swept the mat and put out their little metal tables on the sidewalk. We gravitated toward the warm steaming smell of rolls and coffee, and took our few last minutes together to share a meal. Over hot chocolate and croissants, our pilot snapped a few photos of us, and asked the waiter to take a couple more. Amanda gave him her email address, but I'm not sure he ever mailed the pictures to her.
Then we bustled him onto the subway, and he was gone from our lives, and we were gone from his. I wonder how he remembers us. Imagine it -- you're a young man, arriving in a strange city, and two young women emerge like sprites from the depths of the roiling, indifferent night to shepherd you around town. I like the romance of it. Perhaps, for him, the memory has been subsumed in a long series of equally unusual encounters in strange lands. But I remember it clearly, and feel I can still smell the warmth and comfort of that cafe after our long ramble in the chill night air.
