After three days of wandering the hotels and casinos he finally found her, sitting at a dollar-minimum blackjack table at the Sands. Same black hair, same perfect body, even the same red dress he’d once ripped in a moment of shared impatient lust on the living-room sofa of her little duplex.
'Hi,' he said. 'My name’s Jeff Winston.'
She smiled her familiar seductive smile. 'Sharla Baker.'
'Right. How’d you like to go to Paris?'
Sharla gave him a bemused stare. 'Mind if I finish this hand first?'
'There’s a plane to New York in three hours. It makes a direct connection with Air France. That gives you time to pack.'
She took a hit on sixteen, busted.
'Are you for real, or what?' she asked.
'I’m for real. You ready to go?'
Sharla shrugged, scooped the few chips she had left into her purse. 'Sure. Why not?'
'Exactly,' Jeff said. 'Why not?'
The sweetly harsh scent of a hundred smoldering Gauloises and Gitanes cigarettes hung in the air of the club like a rancid fog. Through the haze, Jeff could see Sharla dancing alone in a corner, eyes closed, drunk. She seemed to drink more this time around than he’d remembered; or maybe it was just that she was keeping pace with him, and he was drinking more now than he ever had. At least the liquor made him gregarious; there were half a dozen people at his table tonight, most of them ostensibly 'students' of one sort or another, but all more interested in the city’s never-ending night life than in their books.
'You have these clubs in U.S., hein?' Jean-Claude asked. Jeff shook his head. The Caveau de la Huchette was a Parisian jazz cavern in the classic mold, a rock-walled dungeon full of music as smoky and pungent as the cigarettes everyone here seemed to exist on. Unlike the newer discotheques, it was a style that would never catch on in the States.
Mireille, Jean-Claude’s petite red-haired girlfriend, gave a wry and lazy smile. 'C’est dommage,' she said. 'The blacks, no one likes them in their home country, so they must come here for to play their music.'
Jeff made a noncommittal gesture, poured himself another glass of red wine. America’s present racial troubles were a major topic of conversation in France right now, but he had no interest in getting involved in that discussion. Nothing serious, nothing that would make him think or remember, held any interest for him now.
'You must to visit l’Afrique,' Mireille said. 'There is much of beauty there, much to understand.'
She and Jean-Claude had recently returned from a month in Morocco. Jeff kindly didn’t mention France’s recent debacle in Algeria.
'Attention, attention, s’il vous plait!' The owner of the club stood on its tiny stage, leaning close to the microphone. 'Mesdames et messieurs, copains et copines … Le Caveau de la Huchette a le plaisir extraordinaire de vous presenter le blues hot … avec le maitre du blues, personne d’autre que—Monsieur Sidney … Bechet!'
There was wild applause as the old expatriate musician took the stage, clarinet in hand. He kicked things off with a rouser, 'Blues in the Cave,' and followed that with a soulfully sexy version of 'Frankie and Johnny.' Sharla continued her solo dance in the corner, her body undulating with the visceral thrust of the music. Jeff emptied the wine bottle, signaled for another.
The old blues man grinned and nodded as the second number ended and the young crowd roared its appreciation of his alien art form. 'Mercy, mercy, mercy!' Bechet exclaimed. 'Mon francais n’est pas tres bon,' he said with a thick black-American accent, 'So I just gots to say in my own way that I can tell y’all knows the blues. You heah me?'
At least half the audience understood enough English to answer enthusiastically. 'Mais oui!' they cheered, 'Bien sur!' Jeff gulped his fresh glass of wine, waited for the music to carry him away again, to wipe out all the memories.
'Well, all right!' Bechet said from the stage, wiping the mouthpiece of his clarinet. 'Now, this next one is really what the blues is most about. You see, there’s some blues for folks ain’t never had a thing, and that’s a sad blues … but the saddest kind of blues is for them that’s had everything they ever wanted and has lost it, and knows it won’t come back no more. Ain’t no sufferin' in this world worse than that; and that’s the blues we call
The music began, deep-throated sounds of evanescence and regret in a minor key. Irresistible, unendurable. Jeff slumped in his chair, trying to blot out the sound of it. He reached for his glass, spilled the wine.
'Something?' Mireille said, touching his shoulder.
Jeff tried to answer, couldn’t.
'Allons-y,' she said, pulling him to his feet in the smoke-filled nightclub. 'We go outside, to breathe some air.'
A light drizzle was falling as they stepped out onto the rue de la Huchette. Jeff raised his face to the cool rain, let it trickle across his forehead. Mireille reached up, put a slender hand on his cheek.
'Music can hurt,' she said softly.
'Mm.'
'No good. Better to … comment dit-on
'
'Oui, c’est ca. Better to forget.'
'Yeah.'
'For a while.'
'For a while,' he agreed, and they set off toward the boul’Mich to find a taxi.
Back in the living room of Jeff s apartment on the avenue Foch, Mireille filled a small pipe with crumbly brown hashish and an equal measure of opium. She sat beside him on an Oriental rug, lit the potent mixture, and passed the pipe to him. He inhaled deeply, relit it when it went out.
Jeff had smoked a joint now and then, mainly in his first existence, but he’d never felt such a deep rush of blissful calm as this. It was, as Malraux had described the opium experience, 'like being carried away on great motionless wings,' yet the hashish kept his mind active and open, kept him from drifting off entirely into dreams.
Mireille lay back on the carpet, her green silk dress rising to her thighs. The rain against the window beat an insistent cadence, and she lolled her head in a rhythmic circle to the sound, her lustrous russet hair falling now across her face, now upon her naked shoulders. Jeff stroked her calf, then her inner thigh, and she made a soft murmur of acquiescence and desire. He leaned forward, undid the front of her dress, slid the smooth fabric away from her girlish breasts.
There on the floor they used each other’s bodies wordlessly, almost furiously. When they were done, Mireille filled another pipe with the opiated hash, and they smoked it in the bedroom. This time they came together languorously beneath the down-filled blanket, their legs and arms entwining with newly familiar ease; and later, as the bells of Saint-Honore d’Eylau called early Mass, Mireille climbed atop him once again, her slim hips riding his in playful joy.
Sharla let herself back into the apartment with the drab dawn. 'Morning,' she said as she opened the bedroom door, looking spent. 'You guys want coffee?'
Mireille sat up in bed, shaking her tousled hair. 'With perhaps a little Cognac?'
Sharla pulled off her wrinkled dress, fished in the closet for a robe. 'That sounds good,' she said. 'Same for you, Jeff?'
He blinked, rubbed the drug haze from his eyes. 'Yeah, I guess.'
Mireille got up and padded casually to the bathroom for a shower. When Sharla came back with the breakfast tray, the little redhead was sitting on the edge of the bed, still nude, drying her hair. As they sipped their coffee laced with brandy, the two women talked pleasantly about a new lingerie shop on the rue de Rivoli.
