Jimmy Green, 1992 by Richard Ford

BY RICHARD FORD

they were in a taxi, on their way to the american bar on Général-Leclerc to watch the election returns. Rain had begun blowing sideways, three minutes past midnight. The little Fiat, its windshield dimpled and furred with water, all at once began sliding, then veered left, up and (almost) into the Denfert-Rochereau lion, but swerved again, wheels spinning, then sped up all the way around the rotary and half again, and stopped — facing up Boulevard Raspail the wrong way. “Ooo-laaaa,” the driver said, exultant. “Maximum machine-gun racket effect.”

The French woman, Nelli, had squeezed Green’s hand extremely hard. In alarm. “We’re almost there,” Jimmy Green said. “He just wants to make this interesting.”

“Well,” the French woman said, touching her hair and glancing out the taxi’s window. Cars went pounding by, honking. “Such an asshole.”

The tiny, red-eared driver (a Turk, of course) beamed at her in the rear-view, a look of delight and rebuke, then juiced it, spun the wheels in the slick and shot away. Smallscale near-catastrophes apparently pleased him.

Green had several times gone past where she worked, on his walk to and from his good little lunch place in Rue Soufflot. She was the proprietress, he thought — of the little photo gallery in Rue Racine — or else she was the clerk. It didn’t matter. He wanted to see her closer up. The gallery sold famous, unauthorised, unsigned prints for a great deal of money. To tourists. The faceless couple waltzing on a Paris street (which everyone knew to be staged). Two clochards drinking on the quay. The famous Lartigue of an upside-down man in a skullcap, diving (so it appeared) into a shallow, shining pond. If you bought one, Jimmy Green thought, you were happy.

Each afternoon, the woman could be seen staring out the shop window at the street, her face mingled in the glass with the well-known Capa image showing Japanese officers in jodhpurs having a joke and a cigarette, while 100 Chinese, trussed and on their knees waited patiently for what was soon to come.

This time, he stepped inside with a made-up question about the Capa. The camera? The film? Where it was published first? The woman smiled at him with her violet eyes. She was older, he now could see, the flesh under her eyes slightly wrinkled, shadowed, her face longish, eyelids heavy. Thin lips, a small mouth, not perfect teeth. The parts weren’t so attractive. But she was — the smooth skin of her hands, ankles, her bland expression pronouncing an expectation of being looked at. She wore a flimsy silk shift with blue and pink flowers and stylish cherry pumps. Her hair was the red they all did, with bangs. A look, Green thought, that didn’t bother about age. She was Jewish, he somehow guessed, like him — though the French were French first. He’d decided he would ask her to go to the American Bar, where he’d never been. It wouldn’t matter what she said. He didn’t want to sleep with her, just go someplace. He cared little about the election at home.

He’d walked around the gallery, affecting to look at this and that, speaking pointlessly to no one, making himself plausible. Safe. She’d known nothing about the Capa, which meant she was the clerk.

She stepped again to the front window, peering at the lycée students coming home wearing backpacks and giggling. It was the view she had of the world. In what he imagined to be anticipated, from the middle of the shop he asked if she would come with him tonight to watch the American election on TV. She half turned and smiled as if he’d said something else.

“What?” she asked. He said those words again and smiled back, as if it was a joke. She tapped her red toe lightly on the polished floor, breathed audibly in and out. She was bored. He went on smiling, nodded, felt himself extremely American.

She shook her head no. “All right,” she said. “Yes. I have nothing to do else.”

“Nothing else to do,” he said. He hadn’t said his name. But he did now. “I’m Jimmy Green. From Cadmus, Louisiana.”

“Nelli,” she said, and that was enough.

cadmus was a nice southern town where jews were allowed to be part of most things except the country club. It was in the northwest part of the state. Oil, gas and timber. Conservative, but not antediluvian. It hadn’t seceded when other towns had. Cotton stopped farther east.

Jimmy Green had been liked — widely — and was admired, successful. He’d even been the progressive mayor for a time, had friends on all sides. His wife was a lawyer, his daughter was off at Dartmouth, bound for medical school. His father, dead for years, had started a company that serviced cotton gins. Jimmy had been vice-president of the bank his father also started to finance the gin business, and before the mayoralty had been offered. He’d gone to Yale, where he’d studied diverse and widening subjects which eventually came down to interdisciplinary. He was sociable, played golf at the club

where he couldn’t be a member, got along, possessed talents.

And then. It had all blown up — fast, and faster, and in spectacular (predictable) fashion. A bank colleague’s young daughter. Some errant travel receipts. Sums of money unreported (though repaid). A shocking, needless restraining order. He was, of course, required to resign as mayor and at the bank. Being a Jew was mentioned.

“How did you suppose this would all turn out, Jimmy?” his wife had said, on her way out the divorce door. “I don’t know,” he said, trying to smile. “Maybe I didn’t think about it.” That had been five years ago. Not that long.

He’d moved from Cadmus to New York, where he rented for a time and tried to like it (his father had left him money he’d held on to). Then on to Maine for no particular reason except that he knew some people in Camden, and a house by the water had come up. Maine seemed a very good place from which to begin again, go outward into the world, which he felt he should do. He was only 51. His daughter came up to see him and cried and was angry. His wife had married again quickly, downstate, but stayed bitter. He was in touch with a few people who liked and trusted him. A college chum or two.

Nothing, of course, suggested life had worked out well or, for that matter, that he’d been treated unfairly. Life was still trying to work out. Someone (his dead father), might say he was a weak man, but not necessarily a bad, weak man. His sister in Cincinnati, who taught at the seminary and had married a rabbi, tended to hold less flexible views. He, though, believed he had good qualities. He was lacking in cruelty. Did not pity himself. Was loyal, in his own terms. Wasn’t easily disheartened. Could be patient. Many other people were in his same unwieldy situation. There simply wasn’t a term coined for it — people who understood their fate and circumstances to be not altogether who they were.

However, he had no wish ever to go to work again — that was clear — and no reason to. And not at all, he’d found, did he miss Cadmus, Louisiana. Too small.

In Paris, he had made few acquaintances; mostly men in his French class at the American Library. From the back of a magazine, he’d found a small flat, only for the fall. “Partial rooftop view with geraniums.” He took meals out. Practised the new language on waiters and cab drivers, who preferred English. He liked Paris, where he’d been twice as a student and once with Ann, his wife. Somewhere he’d read a great sage had said that in Paris you felt more foreign than anywhere, “…the thin, quick feminine” something or other. He didn’t have it right. But that didn’t seem true. He didn’t feel very foreign here. What did seem true was that it didn’t matter much where one was anymore. Not as much as before. Paris was perfectly fine. Though if someone had asked him why he was here now, in the fall, rather than in Berlin or Cairo or Istanbul — anywhere — he didn’t think he could say. Those other, ordinary people — who’d had similar life experiences to his recent ones — you never knew what happened to them. They faded away. Though they went on with life, only outside the world’s blinding glare.

nelli had said to come to her flat on the avenue de Lowendal. She had her daughter who would need delivering to the father, who lived not far. The daughter would be asleep, which made things easy. Her apartment was close to the École Militaire, where the Metro emerged from underground, and you saw the Invalides, and afterward the Tower and the river. His was not far either.

A large, curved Beaux-Arts gate with a vacant guardien’s box opened off the avenue to a wide court, like an interior park with four-storey, connected brick buildings around three sides. Large leafless trees stood in the dark. Decorative benches were established for when the weather turned and flowers came back. It was almost midnight, lights were on in many of the windows. Cold rain had begun on the walk up, the sky milky with a swarming light from the city. He had his coat and wore jeans and his rubber shoes from Maine.

Nelli’s flat was up two flights, a door left ajar as if things were busy inside — people possibly departing and arriving. She greeted him without ceremony, seated on a cushioned hassock, putting on her shoes to go. The flat was spacious; high ceilings, brass fixtures, curtain-less windows giving onto the garden, heavy floor lamps casting golden light onto large leather furnishings. All the carpets were Eastern. Rich, Jimmy understood. Many surfaces held artefacts, small human shapes in wood, urns, pottery shards, spears, authentic-looking things. Not a shop-girl’s flat. He sat himself on the edge of a leather couch and watched her conduct her last, small, intimate act of dressing. He hadn’t said anything. Only hello, though he was glad to be here now.

“My father has been an ar-key-o-lo-zheest,” Nelli said, as if she was noticing him noticing. “He kept what he wanted where he went.”

She was in a short red dress now, with different pumps with little straps that flattered her ankles, oblivious to the rain. She was more attractive in the shadowy light. She began collecting scattered things into a child’s pink plastic suitcase. His presence hadn’t changed anything. Whatever they were doing now she’d done with someone else. The sensation — of firsts, of things new — it was fine. You began not even to want that.

“I’d probably do the same,” he said, almost too long after the subject of her father’s thefts had been mentioned. He heard the South in his voice, which he didn’t normally. It meant he was at ease. He’d been in few people’s apartments in Paris. The French didn’t invite you. They met you in public places and kept you at arm’s length. Here, though, was good. He liked watching her finish dressing, packing her child’s clothes. His silence, he believed, expressed that.

“I was conceived to this flat,” Nelli said. She pointed to a white door which was closed. “In zhat room.”

“I was conceived in a car in a cotton field,” Jimmy Green said. “Following a football game.” She produced a quick little intake of breath, as if this was shocking.

A brass menorah hung among an arrangement of African masks. He’d been right, there. She said she spoke English well because she’d lived in Los Angeles in the Seventies with her first husband, who’d aspired to make films but hadn’t made any. Her speech came from that time. “No way” meaning “no”; “sup-er” signifying good. “Far out”, as in “my father removed far out antiquities from a country that became Chad.” He hadn’t used those words in Cadmus. Her saying them, though, made her seem sweet, unguarded, a way he guessed she wasn’t.

In addition to stolen treasure, the flat contained a large rattan cage with two tiny, silent birds inside. There was a map of the London Underground on the little Arabic-looking table. A post-menopausal sexuality seminar circular which was bilingual. And a postcard that showed a teenage Nelli, wearing glasses, sternly facing the camera’s eye. It wasn’t very flattering. Nelli as a frowning schoolgirl, in a grey, pleated uniform skirt with knee socks and a white blouse, her hair in stiff pigtails. She seemed happier now.

Nelli re-entered the room through the white door she’d exited. She was now wearing a black raincoat and what his mother called a “head scarf”, and was carrying a sleeping child cradled in a pink blanket, the child’s body draped across both her arms. In the room she’d departed, a dim light revealed a bed with a white duvet, a wall with framed photographs. A black dog walked into the doorway. Its fur had been shaved, leaving its head and face large and woolly. Like a gargoyle. It stood looking, as if it expected Jimmy to do something surprising.

Nelli glanced at the postcard, balancing her daughter on an arm. A little girl who might be four.

“Do you like thees card?”

“I like your picture,” Jimmy said.

“Can you take this?” She handed him the pink suitcase she’d packed with the child’s clothes. It had no weight.

“My first husband has made this,” Nelli said, arranging the blanket around the little girl’s sleeping face. The child’s hair was dark and curly-thick, her face everted into her mother’s shoulder. Rain was now clattering. Nelli made a dismissive noise with her lips. “Do you like the dog’s coiffure? What is it? Haircut?” “Not so much. He looks sad.”

“No. Of course. But she insists on this way.” The little girl she was referring to was a well-wrapped bundle. “She thinks he wishes to look bee-zahr. She thinks he feels in-ter-resting. He is her puppet.”

in the taxi to the husband’s, which was behind the Trocadero — an expensive quarter — he began thinking that in Maine, where his house was, now was fall, everyone’s longed-for season. Things finished and stored, the free time of wool-gathering before winter, the clock fallen back. His house was empty. Once this Paris time was finished, he’d move back, he believed. Begin something new. White-frozen mornings, sunny middays, short evenings, nights when the moon slid along as in liquid. His daughter entered his mind. He’d thought to fly her to Paris, though she was in Minnesota now, and wouldn’t come, owing to a loyalty to her mother.

Nelli began to speak about apartments, her daughter limp in her arms, a soft, sour aroma rising from the blanket. The child’s tiny, ordinary face was composed in sleep. Nelli had yet to speak the child’s name or his.

The river, which they passed over, was swollen by rain, the sky hazy-white and shining from the Concorde. “I would like to have a new place. You know?” Nelli said softly. “Maybe some country. To have animals. Une ferme.” She was leaning against his shoulder and the pink suitcase. “Is true that in America there are enormous houses beside each other on tiny — what is the word? Little terrains?”

“Yes,” he said. “Tiny lots.” His bank had financed many of these.

“And where you’re living? In Paris, I mean.”

“In Rue Cassette,” he said. “Near the Sulpice. I rent a place.”

“Nice to be there,” she said. “Very expensive. Americans like to live where they are not born.” With her head on his shoulder, she yawned, holding her daughter across her lap in the blanket. “My daughter,” she said, “would dig une ferme. She loves animals. Do you have animals where you are living in America?”

“I did,” Jimmy said. “At one time.” He’d fallen into her rhythms of speaking English.

the husband was a small, cheerful, bald, café-au-lait West Indian who opened his door wearing a white silk kaftan and a gold earring. He seemed pleased to see them. He smiled, shook Jimmy’s hand and accepted the child’s suitcase. A young, blonde black woman in a leopard leotard was in the apartment and came to the door. Nelli and the husband and the woman talked softly in French and laughed and seemed friends — the way it should be, Jimmy thought. His wife hated him.

Sammy was the husband’s name. He was not the husband who’d made the postcard. They all stayed at the door. No one acted like it was odd to bring the daughter at midnight. The child did not wake up, though Sammy kissed her on the forehead and talked to her as if she were awake. He said her name. Lana. Nelli said Jimmy’s name in a partial English way — Jeemy Green — and lowered her eyes. Then for moments they all four spoke English.

“It’s nice to meet you,” Sammy said as if it interested him who his wife would bring here.

“Me, too,” Jimmy said. The daughter didn’t look anything like this man.

Nelli then spoke more in French, fast business-y phrases that included the words “demain” and “quinze” and (he thought) “diner”. So many of their words were the same, and everyone spoke too fast. Then it was finished, and they left down the dark stairs.

outside on the rain-spattered sidewalk where water was standing, the cab they’d asked to wait had gone. Nelli unexpectedly grasped his arm above his elbow and kissed him hard on the mouth, and pulled close. He put his hands on her hips which were bony, felt her ribs through her raincoat, her stiff brassiere, held her clumsily. Sammy would be watching from above. He thought of Nelli — the schoolgirl on the postcard — brazen in her drab school uniform. His own life, for this moment, felt very far away from him. Which was good.

“I always feel this way when I go away from her,” Nelli said softly into his shoulder, her scarf getting wet.

“How?” he whispered.

“Free,” she said. “As if my life was new. It’s wonderful.” “It’s not what I thought you’d say.” He was holding her, breathing in her hair.

“I know. But. Is the truth. I don’t ask so often for him to take care of her. I wanted very much to go. With you.”

He felt so glad. That she would say such a thing, that she wanted to go with him, and whatever it entailed. He looked up the street for a second taxi’s light and saw one.

the long, gilt-edged windows of the american bar blazed onto Général-Leclerc. Taxis were arriving and departing in the rain. A few ridiculously young prostitutes waited in the warming light in skimpy skirts and knee-high patent-leather boots, praying someone would invite them inside. Magee, the Irishman he knew from the library, had told him all the prostitutes were Polish now, and had colourful diseases, only they were so splendid-looking you forgot. It was Magee who’d told him about here. Americans came on election night and got drunk. It was the tradition. A hoot. No one cared who won. Least of all Magee.

Inside, the American Bar was enormous and intensely noisy and smoky and full of men, the light brassy and harsh. The floor was tiny red, white and blue tiles, which made everything louder. Waiters in long aprons circulated with bottles of Champagne. Televisions were on all the walls, and gangs of young business-types in shirt sleeves and suspenders were smoking cigars, watching American channels, laughing and shouting and drinking.

An American newsman everyone knew was on all the large screens, seated at a desk, with election totes behind him. It was impossible to hear. Somewhere, a barbershop quartet was singing, and there was, for some reason, Irish music as well as the continuous ringing and chatter of the tills. It was meant to be thrilling but was oppressive and dizzying.

All the businessmen in suspenders and shirt sleeves were Republicans — their haircuts and smooth faces so well caredfor. All were waiting for their candidate to be declared so they

could start braying, and running to their offices as the light came up, ready to print money.

A waiter offered Champagne, which was free but warm and vinegary. There was really nothing to do. He and Nelli were pressed against a wall that was all mirrors with gold fittings. Though he was happy to be here, to be with her. She stood stiffly in her red dress, her chin raised as if someone were watching. Her eyes were almost black and caught the light, her thin lips very red and smooth. Red was her colour. Her face and its length was her best feature. Unusual. In someone else it wouldn’t be..

“Which one do you love to win?” Nelli said through the din. She was staring at a TV where the face of the Democrat and the smiling, older face of the Republican were on a screen together. The results in New York were going to be announced shortly. The cigar-chomping businessmen were already beginning to boo at what they expected to be the wrong choice. “I used to like the Democrats,” Jimmy Green said.

“Oh my God,” Nelli said, and looked shocked, her hand over her half-open mouth. She then jauntily raised her chin to reproach him. “You’re a wacko.”

“Sure,” he said. He didn’t care. Why did he have to care? “Neexon,” she said. “I loffed heem.” The big, trustless, sagging Nixon face and lightless eyes formulated for a moment in his mind. His father had detested Nixon. “A born Jew-hater,” he’d said. It was the only time he’d said such a thing. They’d all watched the funeral on TV and felt justified.

“Neexon wass so fonny,” Nelli said. “He wass like a French politician, you know?” She expanded her cheeks and made a grotesque face. How old could she have been when Nixon was president? Living in LA with a husband. Twenty years ago.

Holding his glass and finding it difficult to be heard, he started to say how wrong it was to love Nixon. But stopped.

“Eees not so different now,” she said. “You think so, but it’s not.” He didn’t understand what she could be talking about. She thought he’d said something he hadn’t.

He watched the square, handsome, Technicolor face of the Democrat consume the TV above the flashing word “Winner”. The Republicans staring from below all booed and cursed louder and threw their cigars at the screen.

in a while, nelli picked out someone she knew, a young, fat-cheeked, pink-fleshed man with a balding, round head and wire glasses. Like the others, he was smoking a cigar and wearing suspenders over a starched white shirt his belly urged against. She went to speak to him at the bar, and the man became animated, though he glanced around as he hugged her. She patted his round cheek and laughed. She knew people here.

Jimmy scanned around for the Irishman Magee, who was a lawyer for Texaco, but couldn’t find him. He could barely see 10 feet in the crowd. No one was speaking French, not even the waiters. It was after one, and he realised he felt dizzy again and not entirely well.

In a moment, Nelli brought over the fat, pink-cheeked, young man, who pronounced his name to be Willard B Burton of St Johnsbury, Vermont. The name seemed too old for him, like a name he’d made up. Willard B Burton said he worked “down at Lowndes, Rancliffe in the First.” He was a growth fund something or other. His chief claim tonight though, was to be head of the Young Republicans. He was everybody’s host, and soon, he said, when the southern and western states closed, there’d be a reckoning. A “different song’ll be playing then” was how he put it.

Willard B Burton had the palest blue eyes with irritatedlooking flesh around them, and a fleshy mouth. He looked boiled. He also possessed enormously long feet, encased in shining black wingtips. He was drinking whiskey and weaving slightly.

“Who are we supporting, Mr White,” Willard B Burton asked Jimmy and smiled as if he already knew.

Nelli piped up annoyingly. “He likes the pretty one.” Burton narrowed his pale eyes. People were swarming all around. More booing was commencing. More unhappy news. “Seriously?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jimmy said.

“Well, it does matter. I oughta order you out of here. And don’t I hear old Dixie in your voice? You should be ashamed.” Willard B Burton lowered his fleshy chin in theatrical displeasure. His plenteous lips had become damp.

“I’m not ashamed. But you can order me out,” Jimmy said. “It’s all right. We’ll go.”

“No. Really,” Willard B Burton said. “We have to get you into a clinic. You’re very deranged.” He weaved a bit more, fisting his drink, his cigar in his other hand. His lower lip rode up onto his upper one to express resolve about the clinic idea. This was the expression everybody at Lowndes, Rancliffe laughed about when he wasn’t present.

“Go, go, go now, Burty,” Nelli said. “You’re boring. You’re bothering me.”

Willard B Burton’s eyes caught Jimmy’s and grew cold with buffoonish fury. “You really have to get treatment for your mental disease, Mr French,” he said. “You don’t know much of anything.”

“Please go away someplace else now, Burty,” Nelli said and let her eyes wander around, as if looking for someone new.

“We’ll have to fix you. And we will.” Burton was doing his best to be ominous. Jimmy thought someone should slap him and he’d be better.

“It’s nothing to get upset about,” Jimmy said and smiled. “Is that so?” Burton said.

“Of course.”

“Well, we’ll just see.” Nelli had Willard B Burton’s arm where it would’ve been soft up under his starched shirt. “We’ll just see about that,” he said then lurched around with her still holding him, and careened into the crowd toward the bar.

for a brief time, then, they stood and didn’t speak, their backs to the shiny mirrors, which in places revealed worn, black backing. They were at the beginning of the little hallway leading to the toilets. People bumped clumsily by. When the doors opened there were the damp smells. Nelli made no further mention of Willard B Burton. By tomorrow, Jimmy thought, he’d have forgotten much of this, possibly all. When a waiter passed he’d asked for a gin.

“What makes you like to go in Paris?” she said. Parees. “It makes me feel like I could be something good if I wanted to,” he said. Which he believed was true.

“Reelly?” She was not quite listening, looking around, wrinkling her nose, being a spectator. “I wass born to Parees. Do you think this is the good I can be?”

“You’re wonderful,” Jimmy said. “And you’re very nice.” This was the thing he said to women he liked when he was drunk. That they were wonderful. And that they were very nice. He pulled her closer, his back against the mirror. She seemed to want to be kissed again. Though no one else was kissing.

He kissed her on the mouth and tasted the chalk of her lipstick, smelled a hint of sour baby blanket. Her face was soft, not like a girl’s taut, resilient skin. He felt the boniness again, her slightness. Her dry hair smelled of smoke and perfume. He took a grip under her bare arm, into her armpit. “How old are you?” she spoke into his ear.

“Fifty,” he said and felt drunk, as if the intense noise was the cause.

“Fifty,” she said. Some businessmen were now singing to compete with the barbershop quartet.

“Beantown, oh Beantown, what a mean, mean town, Ultimately a rather sad and obscene town,

Not at all a serene or a clean town…”

What did it mean, he wondered. Something from Harvard, where they’d all gone.

“We should leave here, do you think?” Nelli said. What had being 50 meant to her? Possibly she was 40.

“Of course,” he said, then wasn’t sure he’d said that. She kissed his ear, sent a shock to his thighs. The word “Winner” was again announced on the TV, followed by great shouting.

“I think your friend’s candidate didn’t win,” he said. “He’s not my friend.” She was looking around the room. He peered into the large room for Willard B Burton — to determine what he might be doing at this moment of abject loss. The round, unhappy face wasn’t to be found.

on the way out, he saw magee at the copper bar looking drunk and perspiring. A tall blonde girl was beside him in a skimpy silver skirt. Magee was wearing a ludicrous Western suit with pockets in the shape of arrows. He’d sweated through his shirt, and his trousers were half unzipped, his eyes red and unfocused.

“It’s become a bleedin’ wake, in here,” Magee allowed. “Just as well,” Jimmy said.

“You should stay. A prat from your embassy’s givin’ a speech about American democracy. It’ll incite a fuckin’ riot.”

“We’re leaving,” Jimmy said. He had Nelli’s hand behind him. He smiled at Magee, who touched him lightly on the shoulder.

“Good man,” he said. “Qui est notre cocotte?” The tall blonde girl turned away. Jimmy didn’t understand the last word, something Magee had got wrong. He moved Nelli toward the heavy doors and the street.

As they stepped out onto the sidewalk, where raining had ceased and a file of taxis was at the curb, their drivers standing outside their vehicles, chatting up the whores, he became conscious of footsteps — behind him — the sound of the bar’s doors opening, warm air brushing his neck. Some

instinct said move, stand out of the way. He gripped Nelli’s hand more tightly to pull her to the side.

“You’re the silly fuck who needs to have a lesson taught to him.” A male voice. An American.

Jimmy turned to see a man not larger than himself, but dressed as they all were, white shirt sleeves, bright suspenders, dark hair tousled, but with his fists balled, shoulders squared, small turbulent eyes. “Could be you’ve...” Jimmy said.

The man hit him then, in the face. Two times. First in the right temple, then on the side of his other eye, almost in the same place. The blows made hollow, socking noises in his ears, and didn’t particularly hurt. Though they were stunning blows and made his knees watery, while the young man who’d hit him — there were stars and stripes on his suspender bands — began instantly to recede, suggesting to Jimmy he himself might be falling, hands reaching behind, fingers out toward the pavement. Like being on a see-saw.

What he fell against was not pavement, but the yielding side of a taxi, painted to portray zebra stripes. His fall was further cushioned by the hard ass of one of the prostitutes, who was in the way. “Incroyable,” he heard someone say, as he sat onto the wet sidewalk more than fell, not feeling hurt, only very, very dizzy. He did not want to get up right away.

The man who’d hit him was already walking back into the crowded bar. People were looking out through the open doorway. He heard music, the noise of bottles clinking, the barbershop quartet singing “Auld Lang Syne,” people laughing. At him, he supposed. It was really not so bad.

Nelli was kneeling beside him, they were all — the prostitute, another prostitute, a female taxi driver — helping him up. The seat of his trousers was wet through. His head was booming. His knees were uncertain. He seemed to have twisted his little finger on the taxi door.

“Cocksucker,” Nelli said.

“It’s fine,” he said. He felt drunk, more than hurt.

The prostitutes had already begun drifting away up Général-Leclerc, looking back warily, their patent boots shining in the car headlights. He could smell the woman driver — mealy, sweaty hotness. To vomit seemed inevitable.

Other men were now leaving the bar in business suits, striding into the early dark. They looked at him and smiled. Though the night was now in jeopardy of becoming sad. Not what he’d wanted. His gaze roamed the misty, yellow-black sky. Pigeons wheeled above then disappeared beyond the building tops.

lights swam across the taxi ceiling like film frames. Jimmy let his head loll against the plastic seatback. This particular taxi smell was apples. Pommes. Getting busted up really felt not so bad, almost relaxing. His jaw, though, was swelling on both sides, the flesh tight across the bones. His skull throbbed. Possibly his finger was broken. It could all be tolerated. He only needed to go home.

The driver, as she drove, spoke French softly to Nelli, who was directing them to a place she liked. Brasserie Grenelle. Nelli was hungry.

“I’ll just go home,” Jimmy said.

She sat beside him, staring out at the streets at 1am, busy and attractively bright. She was not eager to touch him or address him. Some not good quality in him had become apparent. Something disappointing. Distance from him was called for. Their brief closeness, when he’d kissed her in the bar, had been extinguished by being knocked down.

“But if you want to eat something…” he said. She looked over, her crisp, tinted bangs making her face heavy and serious. “I don’t want your whole night to be spoiled.” He smiled in a way that made the bones in his face ache. She seemed not to want to pay attention.

Outside the taxi door, in front of the Brasserie Grenelle, which was closed, he vomited into the kerb gutter, hands against the taxi’s side, while the driver explained to Nelli through the window that they were no longer privileged to be her passengers. “Desolé, madame, mais non, non.” Jimmy wished to speak, to take command. But when he stood the taxi departed, its roof light fast growing dim. Nelli watched it without speaking.

“I really should go home.” He was very sorry to have drunk gin, sorry to be sick for her to see, sorry she was no longer glad to be with him as earlier she had been.

“Where you are living?” She’d put on her scarf and was irritated. She’d forgotten he’d said already. Waiters were putting chairs onto tables inside the brasserie. No one was walking on the block. It had begun to be colder now that the rain had finished. Across the street a small truck with lawn mowers in the back had paused at the curb. A man in green coveralls climbed into the truck bed to rearrange things.

“By the Sulpice. I’ll walk.” He could smell his terrible breath. In the dream of fighting, you didn’t lose, couldn’t possibly. You were hit, but you felt nothing. You rained blows.

“You are stinking,” she said, beginning to walk away down the boulevard, much as she’d done in the gallery the same afternoon. It was the thing she did. “But come on. I am close to here.”

“No. I’ll walk home,” he said.

“Yes,” she said, departing. “Maybe someone won’t rob you in one minute.”

Her pumps made little detonations on the pavement. He thought again of her kissing him in front of her ex-husband’s building, in the rain, before any of this had gone the sad little way it had. As if he’d dreamed it.

the flat on avenue de lowendal was lightless and silent. Heat had come on, the air close and stuffy. Out the windows, the sky was still yellow with mist, the little park dripping. Only two lights were on in other flats. Earlier, there must’ve been noises — voices behind walls, water falling through pipes, music, floating sounds from elsewhere. The tiny birds fluttered in their wicker cage. The dog who believed he looked interesting stood in the bedroom doorway, sniffing.

Nelli became businesslike. She would be going to work soon. As she moved about in the glow of a table lamp, she began to disrobe, as if no one was in the room with her. She made a call to hear messages, then entered the bedroom. He could hear her shoes drop, the scrape of hangers, the sound of talking softly to herself.

He was wet to his skin, hair slick, his body stiffening, as if there’d been a car wreck. The flat had a smell it hadn’t had. Something in a sink or a pail, not completely disposed of.

Nelli re-entered barefoot, wearing only white underpants and a black brassiere. She was pinning her hair back for a shower, wearing glasses, as she had in the postcard picture of herself as a girl. Her body didn’t attract light, but he could see how slender and elongated were her hips, thighs, shoulders, arms — younger-appearing than he’d imagined. Nothing of childbirth.

“Could you take the dog to do a pee, please?” she said, hairpins in her mouth. She opened a coat closet and produced a leash. “When my daughter is no here…” She started to say more then stopped. The black dog began wagging its tail and looking up at Nelli. It had assumed a position beside the door. Nelli put the leash on the table. “You can bath when you come back. I’ll put a bed for you on the canapé.” Her face looked puzzled. “I don’t know. Canapé? What is it?” Canapé meant something else.

“OK,” he said. His feet were numb, his back and shoulders and jaw seizing. The dog produced a sigh. Nelli went back to the bedroom, turned on the light and shut the door.

in the garden the air was frigid. his clothes had warmed indoors, but now were awful again. He couldn’t stop shivering in his damp coat. The dog nosed the wet grass, unhurried. In a window opposite, a man stood beside a blue-lit aquarium, peering down as if Jimmy were an intruder. Rain always demarked the season’s change. Now the famous Paris winter was commencing. He should stay longer, he thought. Perhaps he would see this woman. All didn’t have to stay ruined. Good was possible.

They were celebrating in America now. Willard B Burton of St-J would be in his bed, doubtless alone. He, Jimmy Green, could rightfully say he’d now paid the price of victory on a foreign shore. Though being here, in the freezing night, in this bit of misery, he could never have imagined. Here, of course, was never the point you attained (a view he often reminded himself of) but the point you’d already passed and didn’t realise.

That was what optimism meant. Seeing where you found yourself to be inevitable. It made him recollect his partner’s young daughter, someone he hadn’t thought of recently. In California, or had been. Working in TV. Patricia. None of it should’ve caused what it caused — all the calamity. The embittering loss, the disassembling of things. Though that had been inevitable, also. He’d thought it at the time. It had happened before it happened.

Above, in the cold plane trees, unseen wings fluttered. The dog didn’t look up. His hurt finger was throbbing now. Another light opened in the flat he was soon to return to, as though a door had been pulled back. Nelli stood with this light behind her, wearing a white bathrobe and making a beckoning gesture. Her lips were moving.

How long had he been in the garden? He’d lost the time. It was the moment to go in. Behind the low clouds, sky was lightening. He turned.

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