I'm touring the Louvre.
I have a three day lay-over in Paris, and since it's raining, I thought I would walk through the ground floor of the Louvre, in the rooms devoted to the Middle Ages. Statues of the saints mixed with thoughts of knights and ladies and heavy swords. I had a fascination for this at a young age, and I still have it. I find it restful to lose my soul in the imagined customs of a thousand years ago.
In a room in the Pavillon des etats, I see a tall woman standing before a cathedral sculpture of a martyr, the saint protected by a red velvet rope. Don't touch, the rope says. She's quite tall, this woman, thin, elegant looking, maybe fifty years old. She's dressed in black, with a small white pearl in each earlobe, a three-stranded pearl necklace; a long black ensemble, black shoes, very thin ankles sheathed in sheer black stockings.
We are alone in the room, no one else, not even a guard.
When she hears my footsteps, she turns and looks at me. What begins as a glance becomes a long look, maybe a hint of surprise in her eyes. Does she think I'm a boy? No, darling, I'm a girl, although I'd like to stick my tongue up your cunt -- as far as possible -- and see how far it will reach. I could reach your liver, if I'm in a decent mood. And when I'm drunk, I can most certainly reach your heart.
Of course nothing happens. I linger in the room, pretending to study another statue, but sneaking an occasional glance at her. At those fine ankles. I wonder which are the ghosts, the stone saints or the two of us, the woman and myself, from the present century. Ghosts looking at ghosts. All these statues with vacant eyes.
She glances at me twice more, each time a second more than necessary, and I'm tempted to think it's with interest. But I've played this game too many times to believe there's anything here to be developed. She looks rich, maybe American. She has straw- colored blonde hair coiffed in a chignon, tied in back with a black ribbon. So elegant looking. I ought to be put away in an asylum for thinking obscene thoughts about a woman like this. Her interest in the Middle Ages must derive from an interest in the Church, which is a passion more than an interest -- look at the black she wears -- a woman passionate in her religion, recently a grandmother, a rich husband with a yacht, two fine sons who will someday improve the family fortune. I imagine she's in Paris to buy clothes and to visit an old school friend who married the French equivalent of her husband.
She leaves the room, and I remain alone with the martyrs.
* * *
The rain has stopped when I come outside, and now I don't know what to do. Should I go to my little hotel and read? Should I pass the afternoon on the bourgeois Right Bank or the neurotic Left Bank? Or I should go to the Pont de Neuf and throw myself into the river to end my indecision. I climb into a taxi and tell the driver to take me to St. Germain. To the Flore. When it rains the Flore is always crowded inside, and one can at least watch the human race at its maneuverings, the eye games, the mouth games, philosophers eyeing the girls in tight jeans who walk by to show the philosophers their tight little asses.
When I enter the Flore, the tobacco smoke is so thick I feel I'm in a fog bank. I see an empty little table, and I'm just about to walk to it, when there, in another direction, at another little table, is the woman from the Louvre.
When our eyes meet, she tilts her head. Recognition, surprise, a faint smile. I walk to her table and say in English:
"The Louvre was more peaceful."
She seems surprised. "You speak English well."
"I practice whenever I can."
She smiles. "Why don't you sit down?"
* * *
She's American, from New York, stopping in Paris a few days after a trip to London to visit her sister. With Americans, you can immediately establish everything important about them in a few minutes. A French woman would amuse herself constructing a mystery. This woman's name is Helene. Do I live in Paris? Yes, I say, but I'm not here often. When she asks about my work and I tell her I'm an airline stewardess, she seems delighted. What an adventurous life! If she only knew how boring it is, how it's not much better than working as a waiter, how the hotels in Cairo have cockroaches, how Bombay smells of rotting garbage, how often I get monstrous headaches on a long flight.
I order a Pernod from the waiter and Helene and I talk about the Louvre. At the moment I don't have any interest in the Louvre or what it contains, only in Helene. The most obscene thoughts whirl in my brain, and now I'm worried that maybe I should consult a psychiatrist and purge myself of these pornographic images. What would Helene say if she knew the images that are passing through my mind. She talks about the Louvre, and all the while I'm thinking about what she has under her dress, my mind imagining, designing, constructing, as if knowing the color of her underwear is absolutely necessary for the continued existence of the cosmos. Does she understand this? There is no hint of anything in her perfect face, a perfect plastic Anglo-Saxon American face, a bit gaunt, but that only adds to the charm. Yes, she must be at least fifty, but I am already infatuated with every square gently aging centimeter of her body. Her breasts appear small, almost nonexistent, but I'm certain the nipples are exquisitely sensitive. I derange myself with my feverish imaginings. I must know more. I ask about her husband. Is he here in Paris?
"Oh, no, I'm travelling alone. My husband is in New York."
"The freedom must be refreshing."
"Yes, it is."
"Sometimes men are in the way."
She exhibits a faint smile. "Do you think so?"
"I'm lesbian."
