Babayaga

Though he had to admit, he had been growing a little wary of romance of late. When he had first arrived, he had quickly and happily embraced the ease of Parisian romance. Initially, he had only dated expat girls, but found that the British and Americans not only smoked too much (in fact, constantly) but also shared the habit of holding every cigarette in the same pronounced pose, as if they were about to say something of vital importance. Then, inevitably, they talked breathlessly and pretentiously and said nothing of interest to him at all. They were all young, overheated Rosalind Russells or Kate Hepburns, but without the scriptwriters on hand to supply them with decent material. Besides that, far too few of them remembered to relax enough to smile, and even when he got them into bed he found they were still affected, as if they were doing what they thought a woman was supposed to do, but nothing for which they had any instinct, or even desire.

Over time he built up enough confidence to start dating the local girls; they were more at ease with him, playing, teasing, and fun, and they enjoyed helping him improve his French. One girl called herself his “sleeping dictionary,” and, in the depths of many nights, his fumbling attempts to convert his rustic French-Canadian into cosmopolitan Parisian had provided a good laugh. The Paris girls did make him feel a little self-conscious, like a redneck newly arrived in the big city, but they were almost all kind and generous girls, thoughtful and easy to get along with. More important, he enjoyed their boldness and their sexual style: they were much more physically open than the Americans or Brits; some insisted on being spanked like bad girls and others wanted to be wrestled down like wild animals, while still others simply swooned and sighed like modern dancers and then shared a cigarette with him after. But it was all entirely comfortable; they came into his life and then wandered off again with an ease he found surprising.

There were two of them, Marie and Nicole, whom he had dated for lengthy stretches, taking one skiing up in Morzine, the other sailing along the coast of Brittany, but in each case, the girls had drifted away, taking longer and longer to follow up on the messages he left until ultimately his calling cards went completely unanswered. He did not mind, for while he had been happy enough to buy them the cigarettes, silk stockings, and chewing gum they desired, he sensed they were aiming for the sort of men who also came with their own ski chalets, open cars, and cruising yachts.

Occasionally, he would see a girl he had once been with riding along down the avenue on the back of a Vespa or drinking wine with another boy at a bar, and they would all innocently wave and smile. It all seemed perfectly natural, but after a while it began to wear on him, leaving him feeling as though all he had been to any of them was an exotic treat, “l’américain,” or, as the menus in town put it, “le dessert du moment.”

So, while he continued to date fairly regularly, going out dancing or catching a movie, he found spending a whole night with them to be what those pretentious British girls might have labeled an existentially empty event. He didn’t quite know what to call it. All he knew was that when he woke up with some new girl sleeping beside him, either in his flat or hers, he often felt substantially less whole, as though he was losing a piece of himself through every encounter, slowly dissipating, dissolving, bits of him vanishing into the vacuum of the world, and, with every conquest, becoming in some manner more hollowed out. It was exactly the opposite feeling he had expected to feel with these sorts of heady, libidinal victories. He had been raised to believe they would provide him with some sense of validation; that’s what he’d gathered from the way his uncles had talked about women (“babes,” “honeys,” “broads”) when the men took him hunting up in northern Michigan. They’d boozily spit out ribald stories of stag parties and bawdy burlesque shows involving generous fat-bottomed and bosomy women who would put two tits in your face for a quarter but whose names no one could ever recall.

The emptiness was easy to shake off and move on from, but it had its effect. He had lately found himself less inclined to chase the pretty smiles of Paris and spent more time wandering the streets alone, eating in the bistros and reading the paper or sitting up late with a book, a Herman Wouk novel, Hemingway’s Nick Adams tales, or a collection of Stephen Crane. He was not lonely, but he had grown isolated. He was ready for something different. Perhaps that was why he was here, he thought, glancing around the bar, waiting for his charismatic new friend who seemed like the sort who would come primed with volumes of trivial anecdotes, personal connections, and pertinent intelligence.