French 75

Back Soon

Must dash. I have a date with a Mexican sunset -- eight of them, actually. Have a good week.

Smiling Leave I Saw You Taking

The number 4 train barreled into the Raspail station, a light melody trailing in its wake as it slowed to a halt. I took a few steps toward the edge of the platform, and before I had a chance to reach out for the door nearest me, it opened with its characteristic and amputation-threatening lurch.

A tall man stood there, with graying hair and a mouth full of gold teeth. Smiling at me, he held a clarinet in his left hand, and extended his right arm in a sweeping gesture of welcome, as if I were entering a nightclub.

A one-of-a-kind nightclub, I’ll grant you, and one that had seen better days: miserably lit, with cheap seats, terrible acoustics, and no sightlines to speak of. It was not much, this little club, but at the moment it was all his.

His bandmate -- a second, younger, fellow, who played saxophone and manned the pre-recorded backing track -- continued with the performance during this brief interruption. The tune was instantly recognizable, of course, as are all musics heard in the metro. There is a greatest hits roster, quite possibly pre-approved by the Mairie de Paris. Often it is played in medley form: “Besame Mucho;” “My Way;” “The Girl from Ipanema;” “La Bamba;” and the dreaded, interminable “Those Were The Days” (known in French as “Les Temps de Fleurs”). Whether these two were playing “It’s Now or Never,” or “Come Back to Sorrento” would have depended on where your loyalty resided -- with Dino or with Elvis -- or perhaps on when you were born.

My host was framed perfectly in the proscenium arch of the open subway door: his hair was combed neatly; his plaid shirt buttoned to the top. The navy sportcoat had most likely seen the rise to power of whichever Communist bloc dictator it was that had made its wearer’s life impossible and impoverished for many years. And of course, that same sportcoat had seen the despot’s fall, had had plum brandy and tears spilled on it in celebration of same, and -- when it was time -- had made the difficult journey west from wherever. And though the life of the fellow who wore it could still be described as impoverished, it was no longer quite so impossible, having, as it didn’t have during those long dark years before, hope.

I nodded as if to say, “a pleasure to see you, indeed, old friend, it has been too long,” and stepped onto the train.

Monsieur lifted his clarinet back up to his lips and picked up the melody where he found it.

Ovation

Au revoir to you, sky of March -- you are well and truly the moodiest, most pyrotechnic, and unpredictable of the whole year. I have long thought so, but my new vantage point on the top floor of my building confirms it.

The sky in March is a diva, capricious and powerful. You will catch it flinging fistfuls of hail (like the pearls of a necklace yanked off in a rage, they hit the floor, scatter, and bounce), then brightening without warning and yet so profoundly they can fill one with stupid, stupid hope (for nothing in particular).

A moment or two for a deep intake of breath, a moment's distraction, and then it's clouding over again as if recoiling at the sight of some thing or another (a dangling thread, a chipped nail, a cellist in the orchestra pit who dared make eye contact with her).

And with a frequency of costume changes in a given two-hour period worthy of Miss Diana Ross herself.

Leaving you always on that knife's edge between backing away uttering apologies or flinging oneself on the ground in tears of gratitude. I will miss you -- you and your forty shades of pink and fifty shades of gray and drive-by fits of pique.

Til next year, my sweet.