The Gum Thief - Douglas Coupland [65]
For dinner I ordered mussels— moules marinère. Have you ever tasted those things? They taste like catshit scraped off a dock. I ate exactly one, then tried to wash the taste away with pastis (that licorice liqueur), but now I can feel the mussel in my stomach breeding, multiplying, expanding, having babies . . . I’m hoping it’s not a rough night tonight.
I just looked up at all the tiny yellowy-white lights they’ve lit for Christmas. They go all the way down the street, some brighter than others, some a different shade of white. Of all things, I’m remembering that astronomy book my mother left in the bathroom to try and lure me into the world of science and nursing. It described the asteroid belt. Most people don’t know what the asteroid belt is. It’s this gap between Mars and Jupiter where a planet used to be. To be more precise, scientists think there used to be a planet there with a big moon, but they got too closely entangled in each other’s orbits and they collided and shattered. How romantic, in a Japanese manga kind of way.
It’s so fucking old here, Roger, so fucking old. The concierge told me they don’t allow anything to be built that might prevent them from making Paris look like the seventeenth century if a movie were to be filmed.
I have to stop writing this now. Garçon!
Bethany
PS: Don’t forget, you can always email me at blackchandelier@gmail.com.
Bethany
VIA FEDEX
Roger,
I ran out of money staying at the swankypants hotel, pretending I was Mademoiselle Fifi. I don’t know what I was thinking—I sat there in the hotel, and I could feel the money leaving my body, but I didn’t move, and now I’m broke. I went to the airline office here and it turned out I couldn’t use my ticket to fly home early because it was some special fare deal, but I was able to switch it so I don’t have to go back to London to catch the flight. I’m stuck in a hostel again, except this one is in eastern Paris and it makes the hostel in Hampstead look like the Four Seasons. It’s full of Russian skinhead hash dealers who listen to nothing but reggae music. I’m convinced they spend their free time, when they’re not selling hash, stealing purses from French housewives. I’m afraid to leave my stuff here, so when I go out to get something to eat I take anything remotely valuable with me. I catch a train to Frankfurt tomorrow to fly home on a direct flight. If I don’t screw up, I’ll get back with one euro in my pocket.
Going outside here is torture—I can barely look at my clothes or wear them. They’re so shabby and passé and juvenile. Black clothes look good only when they’re brand new or recently dry-cleaned. When I put on my old clothes, I feel so deranged, and I’m convinced people on the street are staring at me like I escaped from a group home. A few weeks ago that would have made me happy. Now I feel like a loser.
But that’s not the biggest or weirdest news, which is this: I bumped into Mr. Rant yesterday! Wow, huh? He was in St-Germain-des-Prés looking into a florist’s window. He turned around, looked at me and said, “Hey, I need a replacement toner cartridge for an HP LaserJet 1320. Where do I find one?” I was so homesick and lonely that I hugged him. Him being him, he said, “Oh. You look different without your face all whited out. What are you doing in this nightmare of a country?”
I explained my situation to him. His name is Greg. Isn’t that old-fashioned? Imagine naming your kid Greg these days. I can see the woman typing the name on the hospital form pausing for a second and looking up at you to make sure you aren’t joking.
So anyway, Greg took me for lunch, and if you’d told me two months ago that a lunch with Mr. Rant would be the best thing in my life, I’d have thought you were insane, but there you go. He’s here to visit some stainless steel manufacturers. He works for a company in the shipyards back home, and he apparently has to come to Paris every other year for business.
So we went to a bistro where they served generic French food—steak frites, pâté and salade verte.