Go for the body, p.10
Go For The Body, page 10
“By God, the French Chamber of Commerce ought to hire you as a drum beater!”
Paquita asked in French, “What do you two argue about in English so much?”
“Bud claims French horse manure smells so sweet it can be bottled for perfume!” I said sarcastically. “In fact, everything about France is too too perfect.”
“Stow that crap,” Bud cut in, angry. “I'll tell you something about the French. A legend has been built up over the years that French women are the most beautiful, that all French people are terrific lovers, French fashions are the smartest, French cooking the greatest, and French wine tops. Even the French believe it, but—”
“And it's a lot of bull.”
“Sure. The truth is they're no more accomplished in anything than any other country. World is too small and smart today for any one nation to be best in anything for long. But—”
“I was waiting for thebut, the big sales talk,” I cut in.
“For me the sales talk is I'm a man here—not a Negro, but just a man. France is dying, becoming a tourist resort instead of a nation; like most of Europe is. One of these days France will snap out of it, become a nation again. I'll be part of that, it will really be my home. That's the difference between us—you'll always be a tourist here, and in America too!”
I began to burn and maybe that started it—from that night on the old sharp restlessness began to build up, spoiling the trip for me. It didn't make sense, I was ruining what should have been a swell vacation.
In the morning Bud and I went on the road and I guess Negroes were a novelty around Lyon. Lot of people turned to stare at Bud, call their children to the window to see him. It didn't bother him much.
Freddy decided not to drive through the Alps. Instead we went through the Rhone Valley. It was run-of-the-mill countryside but Freddy and Paquita kept raving about everything as though they'd never seen grass or cows before. Just before we came to Montelimar, where everybody works at making or selling sticky nougat candy, we came upon a German military cemetery. There were several hundred black crosses, enclosed by a low wall. Stopping the car, Freddy swore, said, “A stinking waste of land.”
“They rot the worms,” Paquita said, sticking her head out of the car and spitting. Gonnet further showed his patriotism by peeing against the cemetery wall.
“They'll give him the Legion of Honor for this,” I told Bud, but couldn't get a rise out of him.
When we came to Avignon, the walled city where the last French pope used to live in the days when there were several popes, Freddy got very religious and had to shop around for several holy pictures.
We stopped in Aix for lunch, after Freddy and Paquita discussed detouring about seventy miles to Marseilles to get bouillabaisse, and I got them both mad by saying no fish stew was worth driving one hundred and forty miles and they'd be in Marseille in a week anyway. It seemed that telling the French bouillabaisse was simply fish stew was almost as much an insult as stepping on their flag.
When we started driving along the Cote d'Azur, even I had to admire the clear blue water of the Mediterranean, and I didn't have the heart to quibble and remind them it was just as clear and blue off Capri and the Italian coast.
The sun was hot and we took off our coats, and drove by palm trees and orange trees and some of the villages around Cannes looked like movie sets and Nice itself was strictly a luxury town. We put up at the Ruhl, the most expensive hotel, a squat old building facing the Promenade and the sea, and Paquita was quite impressed. When Bud said something about the cost, Freddy said, “From here on in we're riding a gravy train—part of our expenses—the promoter is paying.”
After we were settled and took a bath, it was dark, and pretty cold. We had supper at a gyp joint and then went into the Municipal Casino. I got a kick out of this, it was exactly like a movie—the hawk-eyed, dead-pan jokers in stiff tuxedos who ran the roulette tables. We had to show our passports or identity cards to get in, and chips started at 100 francs. There were a lot of tricky card games I couldn't understand, and the characters hanging around the table were astonishing because they looked exactly like characters—fat Chinese women in long black dresses, Englishmen who looked like they could use a decent meal, a lot of Americans acting like happy suckers, and even several wrinkled old women who played a system, wrote down every number that won. I dropped a couple thousand francs and Freddy was spreading himself. I saw a square chip that represented 100,000 francs and when I told Bud, “Hey, that's almost three hundred bucks,” he said, “Hell, that one chip is half a year's salary for the average French salesgirl.”
For some reason Paquita felt uneasy in the place. “All these people, they look like they belong in a graveyard,” she said.
We went downstairs where they were playing boule, which is like roulette except a large rubber ball is used. Here you could play for as little as twenty francs and the people seemed more like the types you passed on the street. Paquita won a couple of hundred francs and was happy. By ten-thirty Bud wanted to hit the sack. I went up and told Freddy we were leaving. He said he was 15,000 francs ahead. “Stay around. I'm checking on some girls later. You want, we spend the night —free. They show Gonnet all the love he wants.”
“I bet.”
“Things are quiet now, but when the American Navy is here at Villefranche, girls do big business. And in the season, if a girl is lucky, she can make real money with one trick.”
I'd heard that Freddy had an interest in a string of whores, but at the moment seeing Freddy browbeating a couple of gals into giving it away wasn't as good as getting a full night's sleep.
Bud and I were up early, ran along the boardwalk and then came back to the hotel and ate. Freddy drove us to Monte Carlo and as far as the Italian border at Ventimille. Seeing Italian soil made me more restless than ever—reminded me of Gina and Milan.
We were back before noon, and after lunch walked along the rocky beach. Between noon and two p.m. the sun is real hot, and even though it was November, a lot of people were sunbathing, some of them even swimming. Although Bud was' against it, Paquita undressed to her bra and pants and stretched out to get the sun. She had a stocky figure and with her flaming copper hair, she looked very exciting.
Bud sat with her, his shirt open, telling her to stop it before she got a cold, while Freddy and I sat on some clumsy looking fishing boats and smoked.
Freddy said, “That girl is sitting on a million dollars.”
“Don't let Bud hear you talk that way.”
“But it is true, she gives out that sort of sexual sunshine that makes a man dizzy. I've seen many women, and I know it is wrong to mistake beauty for sex. Women feel the same way—a man can look like nothing and still women go for him.”
“They go for you?” I asked.
“I do good. A man sees Paquita on the street—if he knows nothing about women, he maybe turns to a prettier face, a slimmer figure. But if he has had experience, his—mind will tell him here is a good lay. Best girl I ever had was a Pole and she had a face like Rocky Marciano—one of these wide-open big faces. But in bed—I tried to buy her from her pimp. Wish I'd known you then.”
“Why me?”
“This pimp was an idiot—a wild man, dangerous because he was full of dope. It would have been nothing for you to kill him, dispose of the body.”
Freddy's talk gave me the shakes. Everything seemed so unreal: here I was in Nice without any real money, sitting with a pimp-thug who respected me because he thought I was a killer, watching a Negro who'd spoiled my ring career, and his white wife who was suspicious of me because I was an American. I seemed to be living a weird dream.
When Paquita dressed, we walked over to the harbor where the water was so clear you could see under the yachts, even see the fish. Several men were fishing, their lips white with some dried fish they chewed to make soft, then rolled it into a ball and put it on their hooks. Even though they could see the damn fish, as usual in France, we didn't see anyone make a catch.
The gym was even worse than Paris and Bud and I had a long workout before supper. We spent the next couple of days like that, watching the sunworshippers on the beach, the phony exercise and muscle hounds showing off—walking or riding around the seashore, wondering at the fantastic wealth—for a Frenchman—the villas and big cars represented.
Whether because I was restless, or what, I didn't like Nice. This was strictly a tourist town and everybody seemed to be bowing and over-polite and waiting for a tip.
The fight club was surprisingly modern and large and Bud fought a plump Frenchman who thought boxing was just firing your left, then crossing your right. He managed to bloody Bud's nose before Bud's right slammed the wind out of him and a left dropped him for the count.
The fight in Marseilles was only four days away, so we decided to stay in Nice and train, and drive to Marseilles the afternoon of the bout.
I don't know; it was warm and sunny and we were making money, and it was interesting to watch the gals on the beach or take a ride in a helicopter, and there was always gambling at the casinos in the evening; yet I was nervous as a cat.
For one thing, Bud and I couldn't even say two words without arguing—petty stuff. Some Spanish dancers were at the casino and Paquita met them in a cafe and became friends as they came from the Spanish side of the Basque country. We went to see them perform one night. They were all slim, hand-:some men in tight black pants, strutting and stamping around the stage as they snapped their fingers, and the women seemed, to get angry trying to stamp on the floor hard “enough to break either the wood or their feet. The men had very slim waists and when I mentioned this to Bud, he said, “A skinny ass is no good for punching.”
“Or in bed either,” I said, to make conversation.
“That's bunk,” he said, and off we went into some silly argument neither of us could prove.
I was glad when Bud went ten fast rounds in Marseilles against some muscle-bound clown who did nothing but wrap his arms around his head, and keep them there, round after round. Bud even won the decision, the Frenchman was so lousy.
Paquita and Bud took off to see her folks. Freddy was going to spend a few days in Marseilles, and I was happy to hop the train for Paris. We'd made $1150 in two fights and I had over $600 in my money belt and sent Franzino the other fifty I owed him.
I slept all the way to Paris in a second-class coach. I got into Paris in the evening and left my bags at my room—the old couple were out—then I found Jack and took him to supper and we had several hot rums and I sailed home at midnight and went to sleep without any trouble.
The next thing I knew my old landlady was shaking me and it was seven in the morning and she said, “Monsieur Francine, we are glad to see you again.”
“Yeah,” I said, my mind a sleepy fog and sore she had awakened me.
“A woman has been here twice to see you. A Madame Severn.”
I sat up and asked, “Who?”
I sleep in the raw and the old woman grinned at my muscles and said, “Ah, to be young and so strong. This woman left a note for you. I thought it might be important, that is why I wake you before I leave. Here.”
She gave me a neatly folded slip of paper and went out. In the early light I read:
Ken darling—
Call me soon as you get back. I'm at the Hotel de Parme on Rue Clichy
Marion (P.S. It's Marion Severn)
The letter was dated two days ago and I wondered what sort of jam she was in. Anyway, I finally knew her name—a big deal.
It was too early to call and I stretched out and fell into one of those half-awake sleeps and had a crazy dream I was back in Nice and I suddenly saw Gina in the sea and she smiled at me and I was in bathing shorts and swam out to her, only she kept swimming farther out and I never did quite catch her. About the time I started to worry about being able to swim back, I awoke. I went down and had a couple of glasses of coffee and a brace of rolls and felt I was living again.
The French phone system being one of the world's biggest gambles, it only took me three calls to get Marion's hotel, then they took so long getting her, I had to put in another token.
Marion sounded different over the phone, her voice had none of its bitchiness. “Ken, I'm so glad you're back. Are you free—now?”
“As free as you are.”
I heard her suck in her breath at the other end of the phone, then a quiet giggle and, “Darling ox, let's stop the cracks. Meet me at that sidewalk cafe up the street from the Galleries Lafayette—be about halfway for both of us. Make it in half an hour?”
“Yeah.”
As I was about to hang up she said, “Ken, Ken—I love just hearing your voice. A half-hour, dearest.”
I stared at the phone, wondering what had come over her.
She was sipping a Cherry Rocher and didn't look too well, with dark circles under her tired eyes. I'd taken my time, even stopping at the American Express a block away for a drink of water, and casually asking if there was any mail for me. I didn't expect anybody to write me. Nobody had.
I sat down at her table and ordered some more coffee and a slab of plain cake. Marion squeezed my hand and smiled at me, a deep, warm smile. “Ken, for the last few days I've been wanting to see you something fierce.”
“That's nice,” I said cautiously. “Broke?”
“I'm loaded. You need money?”
“No,” I said and didn't know what to say. She looked like Marion but sounded like a stranger. “You—eh—look like you've missed a lot of shut-eye. Bottle stuff?”
“Doing research on some old pre-war papers, reading myself blind. Ken, really, seeing you is a—a kick.”
“Well. Want to go up to my room?”
“No darling, no hurry for that. Every time we've talked it's been in bed. I've been waiting to take a day off till I saw you. I want us to sit here and sip drinks and watch the people pass and—oh, make all the small talk of normal people.”
“What were we before—subnormal?”
She smiled softly. “Ken, don't make fun of me. I'm feeling so—healthy—for now. And you're big and handsome in a rugged sort of way. And crazy, as it seems, I'm very much in love with you.”
I stared at her like a dope. “Okay, this is a dream and when does the alarm awake us?”
“Was I that bad? Ken, I hope our dream never explodes.”
I searched her eyes. They looked bloodshot but didn't have the watery glaze of a snowbird. “Okay, Marion, when do you slip in the sneak punch?”
She reached over and kissed me lightly on the cheek and either her perfume, or her own odor, left me all excited. But I still wasn't leaving myself open for a sucker punch. I tried to laugh it off by making a cornball play. “What happened,” I asked, “fall on your head?”
She laughed till she cried, worked a tiny handkerchief over her wet face. I felt like I'd said something terribly clever, except it was over my own head.
“Ken, don't you notice anything about me? Something different?”
“Got a new bag and shoes, and new stockings,” I said running a finger along her slender leg.
“Sold a piece to a travel mag in the States for a thousand bucks! Silly article about how honest Europeans are. Traveled all over and never had a thing stolen from my room, stuff like that.”
“Sell something more often; it does things to you.”
Marion shook her head. “That didn't snap me out of it. Ken, I'm excited. On a story that will be sensational, real dynamite. Lucked up on it by chance through a drunk that... Well, never mind how, but it's the kind of yarn will be reprinted on the front page of every newspaper in the world. May be too big for me, but I'm trying it.”
“What's it all about?” I asked politely.
“Can't tell you because I'm not sure of all my facts—yet. Oddly enough it's something in your line. When I have a final draft I'll let you read it before I mail it. Usually, when I get a couple of dollars ahead, I take it easy, but for the past two weeks I've been working harder than I ever did in my life—and I feel simply wonderful. Do I sound like an idiot?”
“Don't know what you sound like, but it's good, whatever it is.”
We sat there for a long time, getting a glow on and talking. I told her what happened in Oran, and about Nice. We even got her name straightened out. Her maiden name was Marion Severn, the name on her passport, but sometimes, to get rid of pests (although she swore I wasn't one) she used her married name, Marion Allen—which was why I had never been able to locate her.
It was great, sitting and making small talk with her, the drinks leaving us nicely warm. I felt just fine.
Along about noon, the sun came out and we walked along the banks of the Seine, kissing each other now and then. I didn't spoil things by asking her to my room—without asking her I knew we were both enjoying the sensation of wanting each other, a delicate teasing feeling that for the moment seemed sweeter than any physical satisfaction.
We had a lot of raw oysters and white wine for lunch, then dropped in to see a French movie, which I could just about follow. We kissed in the darkness like kids. Whoever thinks up the French movie shorts advertising various products must be all brains and zany humor. We laughed ourselves sick.
It was dark when we came out and we went from cafe to cafe, drinking all sorts of sweet aperitifs, making snide remarks to each other about the tourists we saw. We were both a little drunk and hungry as hell, so we knocked off a tremendous amount of snails and mussels and two bottles of wine, then steak and potatoes and Marion quit but I ate cheese cake till it seemed to be coming out of my ears.
We walked this down and then took a long cab ride and necked like teen-agers and I guess we were both a little nuts, sure I was, because when we finally got out of the cab and sat in a cafe on the Montparnasse, I asked her to marry me. “We can either try it in the States, or stay here. With Gonnet as my partner I can start a stable of pugs. Already got one who...”
She said gently, “Thanks for asking me but... no.”
