But Paris – beautiful poor ugly opulent vast complex gray rainy & French. You see unbelievable women, umbrellas, beggars, tree-lined streets, bicycles, church spires, Africans, gloomy domes, balconies, broken flowerpots, rudeness that will ring through eternity, aimless pedestrians, majestic gardens, black trees, bad teeth, ritzy stores, socialists moving their hands up the thighs of intellectuals, protesting artists, bad drivers, pay toilets, visible cheese smells, witty scarves, shadows of body odors in the metro, fashionable cemeteries, tasteful transvestites, filtered light, slums, grime, desire, artistic lampposts, multicolored phlegm of passive chimney smokers, demented cobblestone faces in terrace cafés, high collars, hot chocolates, flashy gargoyles, velvet berets, emaciated cats, pickpockets running away with glittering entrails of rich German tourists, & great phallic monuments in the squares & the sex shops.

It’s no rumor: prancing arrogant Parisians sit cross-legged in cafés & philosophize uninvited- but why is it that when I hear someone make a great philosophical argument I get the same feeling as when I see someone has put clothes on his dog?

With me is Caroline’s last postcard. Typical Caroline. “I’m in Paris ” & an address, some grimy suburb just out of the city. I’ll go there & tell her my brother’s dead, the man she loved, and then…But NOT YET- clumsy love declarations are a high heart risk. Should I see her? Should I wait? The problem with most people is they’ve NEVER been torn in half, not really not right down the middle like I have, NEVER ripped themselves to shreds NEVER listened to the warring factions BOTH make their case so convincing AND so right & they don’t know what it is to have your brain & your body want TWO things each that’s FOUR compelling ideas all at once.

I wonder if I’m reaching out for Caroline in particular or just for someone who knew me before five minutes ago.

4 June

This morning woke to sound of children laughing- that shit me. Even worse- found decision had taken place in my head overnight-Today Martin Dean will go to Caroline Potts & declare undying love & devotion. I lay in bed stuffing stomach w/butterflies. Thought how all my life-altering decisions are command decisions made from the highest peak of hierarchy of self- when orders boom from commander in chief what can you do? I showered shaved drank stale wine & dressed. In head 2 fragmented Caroline memories 1. her smile, tho not her smiling face, just the smile like a suspended pair of dentures 2. her handstands- plaid skirt hanging down to her armpits- jesus how that innocent childlike act made me want to pounce on her in brutal tho heartfelt manner.

Went into bowels of city then suffocating metro ride out of Paris. Saw four horse-faced people. 14-year-old toughie tried to pick my pocket making me realize I don’t know French word for Hey!

Finally sat on low stone wall opposite small many-windowed building, all shutters closed as if forever. Hard to believe this dirty apartment building housed the woman I love. Commander sensing I was about to linger screeched in my ear so I marched to front door & pounded. Bit my lower lip too tho commander hadn’t ordered it.

Door handle turned slowly & insensitively to prolong immaculate agony. Finally opened to reveal short, stout woman as wide as she was long- in other words, a perfect square.

– Oui?

– Caroline Potts, she is here? I said in perfect English translation of grammatically correct French. The woman blabbered away in her tongue & shook head. Caroline was no longer there.

– And Monsieur Potts? The blind man?

She looked at me blankly.

– Blind. No eyes. No eyes, I repeated idiotically, thinking Well, can I come in & smell her pillow?

– Hello! a voice called out from the upstairs window. An Asian face was hanging there looking for a body to match. Wait there! the face said & ran down breathlessly.

– You are looking for the girl & the blind man?

– Yes!

– I’m Eddie.

– So?

– So nothing. The girl left a month ago, after the blind man died.

– Died? Are you sure?

– Of course I’m sure. I was at the funeral. What’s your name?

– Martin. How did he die?

– I used to watch them from my window. Every day she walked him to the shops so he would know where the holes were in the street, but this one day he went alone. He must have got disoriented because he walked right into the middle of the road and just stood there.

– He was hit by a car?

– No, he had a heart attack. He’s buried up at the local cemetery. You want to see his grave? I could take you. Come on, he said buttoning up his coat, but I hesitated. Something in his manner was unsettling: his hands made delicate gestures & in his voice a conciliatory tone as if we’d argued & he wanted to make it up to me.

– Shall we go and see your dead friend? he asked sweetly & I thought I don’t like this man not that I had any real reason for disliking him but so what? I’ve been disliked by people who couldn’t even pick me out of a police lineup.

Under gray sky we walked up the same color road in dead silence to the top of the hill. The cemetery was only 100 meters away- convenient place to die. The grave had only his name & lifespan & nothing else no little witticisms nothing. I wondered if Lionel died instantly or w/final breath made a banal plan like Must buy milk. Then I thought about all the deaths I knew- how Harry chose his & how Terry was probably shocked by his & how my parents’ deaths must have come to them as a disagreeable surprise like a bill in the mail they thought they’d already paid.

Eddie invited me in for hot wine. His small sparsely furnished room smelled like a combination of burned orange peel & old woman’s cheek you’re forced to kiss at a family reunion. Carpet covered in big oily stains, the room spoke eloquently of spills of the clumsy fuckers who’d once lived there.

We had sandwiches & hot wine. Eddie was one of those people adept at summing up their lives in less than a minute. Born in Thailand. Studied medicine- never practiced. Traveled widely. Now trying Paris.

Nothing to say to that.

Conversation flowed like water down flushed toilet. He stared at me so intensely I felt my eyes were pocket-sized mirrors & he was checking his hair.

Night came quickly- it unnerved me he didn’t put on lights. Glanced at switch on the wall but was afraid to move if this fool preferred the airless joy of shadows then so would I. Finally he reached behind him & put on a lamp. Small light burned & grew huge in my eyes.

– So, you had a disappointment today, he said.

– Yes, I thought she’d be here.

This made him laugh in violent spasms, a laugh like a congenital defect.

– I meant the death of your friend.

– Oh, yes, that too.

– You love this girl?

– She’s an old friend from home.

– Australia, he said blandly making the name of my country sound like an old thing he’d once owned but had since thrown away. I said Uh-huh & he continued w/questions. What was I doing in Paris? How long would I stay? Where did I live? Did I work? Why not? & so on. He offered to help me in any way I needed. Money or a job or a place to stay. I thanked him & said it was getting late.

– Would it bother you very much if I took your photo?

It would.

– Oh, come on. It’s just this little hobby of mine, he said smiling. I looked around the room for proof of this claim- a photograph maybe- but the walls were bare & when he went into the next room to get his “apparatus” as he called his camera that made me shudder because whenever someone says the word apparatus I see enormous gleaming pincers w/single plump drop of blood at its tip.

– I think I should be going, I said.

– Just one little photo. I’ll be quick, he said w/ fixed smile like a window painted shut.