(he knew that as clearly as if she had told him) had been replaced by thin heels, the kind flappers wore with their knee-length dresses and opera-length pearls.
He woke up thinking of the difference between the smiling girl in his dreams and the dead woman on the walkway, her skin cold against his fingertips.
He stared at his typewriter, his fingers itching to finish that sentence.
The.
The woman discarded…
Discarded.
He got dressed, and stumbled out of his room, ostensibly searching for breakfast, but really on his way to get another drink.
Still, that day, he made it to midnight without taking a nip from the bottle he kept at the bottom of his desk drawer. He didn’t take the glass of wine offered with dinner, nor did he drink the shot of vodka offered to him by the White Russian he’d met while waiting for the American tourists he was supposed to interview in Le Procope.
He arrived at the Dome exactly at midnight, sober as a judge. Decker had pressed his suit and worn his last clean shirt, mostly as an apology for the way he had looked the night before.
He hadn’t examined himself in the mirror until this morning, but even then he had looked a fright-his hair standing on end, his nose bulbous, the capillaries in his cheeks bursting from too much drink. His eyes were red rimmed and he knew his breath was bad enough to kill any small rodent unfortunate enough to cross his path.
So he cleaned up, although no one at the
Thurber was busy making up the news. Root was working, trying to get someone at the copy desk to expand the notes his so-called reporters had turned in. Most everyone else was so bleary-eyed that they would think they were imagining Decker in his spiffed up clothes and slicked-back hair.
Alcoholic wave indeed. It had become an alcoholic ocean, and he was seeing it for the very first time.
The Dome had customers this night, at least a dozen sitting on the terrace, with more inside. The interior was grayish blue from all the cigarette smoke-it looked like a fog had blown through Paris and gotten stuck only inside the Dome.
Outside, a group of men crowded around one of the tables. Decker recognized some of them from the
Decker avoided them, just like he’d taken to avoiding Know-it-all Hemingway. Instead he circled to the other side of the terrace, near the taxi stand. This evening, one of the ubiquitous uniformed policemen paced, hands clasped behind his back.
The Dome seemed normal, not like something out of a painting, the way it had the night before.
Because Decker was concentrating on its normality, he almost missed the old man, sitting at the same table, his back against the cafe’s glass windows. Another man sat with him, younger, sharply French with his narrow face, black hair, and up-to-the-minute gabardine suit.
Decker wandered over toward them, as if they weren’t his destination at all. When he reached the table, he pulled out the only other chair and sat.
“You’re lucky I remembered,” he said.
“I knew you would.” The old man wore the same suit. His eyes were as clear as Decker had thought. “You have not had a drink.”
Damn that incontinent English. Decker couldn’t tell if the old man had asked a question or made a statement. “I told you I’d be sober. You told me you had a story.”
The younger man stared at Decker as if he thought he was rude. Maybe he was.
“I said, I had a story
Decker looked at the younger man. “Maybe some introductions would be a good place to start.”
“Maybe not,” the old man said. “We shall perform the-how do you say?-niceties after we have determined what disturbs you the most.”
“What disturbs me the most,” Decker said, “are people who waste my time.”
He shoved the chair back, about to stand, when the old man touched his arm. The old man’s skin was cold. In spite of himself, Decker shivered.
“Americans are impulsive,” the old man said to his companion. “And somehow they have come to embrace a lack of politeness as if it is a virtue.”
“Look,” Decker said, almost adding “old man” like he had done last night when he was drunk. That had been rude, but not intentionally rude. “I deal in hard, cold facts. The first hard cold fact you learn about damn near anybody is his name, which you’re not willing to tell me. So I’m not willing to stick around. See ya, pal.”
This time he did stand. He was going to repeat the same walk he’d made the night before, up the Boulevard St. Michel. Maybe he should walk around the Luxembourg Gardens instead, meander instead of go directly.
He was nearly to the group of
Decker stopped in spite of himself. A shiver ran down his spine. He hadn’t told anyone about those waking dreams. Not even when he was drunk. Probably not even when he was black-out drunk, since he got quieter and quieter-a man who knew how to keep secrets, Root used to say, when he was the one who poured Decker into a taxi.
Decker pivoted. He walked back to the table, as the old man had known he would. But the old man did not smile like a man who had won an argument. Instead, he remained grimly serious. The younger man continued to stare.
“The soldiers leaning out of the Hotel de Ville, do you not notice how blond they are?” The old man’s voice was soft.
The other man watched Decker avidly, as if everything depended on his response.
The Hotel de Ville was Paris’s city hall. And he’d only seen soldiers there once, in the middle of a summer afternoon, as heat shimmered on the boulevards and he sat outside, trying to find a bit of air in a city not used to extreme warmth.
“They wore helmets,” Decker said, knowing that was an admission.
“But they were fair-skinned, no?”
“Stocky,” he said, wishing he hadn’t responded. But that was what he had noticed, how stocky and square they were, as if the uniforms they wore with their unrecognizable helmets made them as solid as a boxer in the beer halls near Milwaukee.
“And they wore this symbol on their arms.” The old man pushed a piece of paper forward with a Fylfot drawn on it.
In spite of himself, Decker sat back down. “Who are they?”
“A nightmare,” the old man said. “One we pray we will not have. But our prayers will be for nothing. Because only strong nightmares leach backwards.”
“Backwards?” Decker asked, thinking of the woman. Was that a backwards nightmare? He had seen her six months after he arrived-years ago now-and he dreamt of her every night, awakening from those dreams unsettled.
“The soldiers,” the old man said. “They are little boys now, playing with battered tin soldiers from before the War. If, indeed, they are healthy enough to play. Most are hungry. Some are starving.”
Decker frowned. Even when he was sober, Decker didn’t understand the old man. The old man spoke nonsense. But a nonsense that Decker found enticing, in spite of himself.
“Starving?” Decker said. “Then why don’t you do something?”
“Why don’t you?” the old man asked. “Your country pushed for reparations. Your President Wilson. Somehow he knew how to cure the world. He made it sicker.”
“Congress never ratified that treaty,” Decker said, wondering why they were talking about the Treaty of Versailles conference from six years ago, from before he even arrived in the City of Light.
