Archive for April 2010

28 Apr, 2010 | Posted by: photosource







News
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TOBY MAKES PHOTO OF ROHN




Party
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AT JAZZ PLACE




Cafe
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MOULINROUGE




Cafe
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DERELICT IN BOIS de BOULOGNE



My Story




# 16







Toby returned to work on his painting in the early evening. He kept his colors in beer bottles, the kind that has a ceramic top on them and a little rubber washer and then a wire contraption that let’s you snap it shut real tight so the tempera color inside doesn’t dry up. When he was ready to start his painting he would pour a dab of each of the five colors into five glasses like a martini glass or Manhattan glass and mix his colors on a board beside him. “I like this tempera,” Toby said. “Oils are too messy. It’s hard to clean the brushes. And they’re smelly. And it takes too long to dry. Tempera dries fast. You can paint right over top of it if you don’t like how the color turns out. ”
Toby was a meticulous guy and his paintings were kinda like that too, all detailed and correct. I didn’t tell him about my painting exhibition back in Sommerhausen when I was still in the Army. Like Rudi says, “Play dumb, you can’t learn anything when you’re talking.”

Toby was a real good salesman. One thing I learned was that he took all of his paintings down by the river (he had fifteen completed) and stood them up alongside the bridge. “I always go to the same location every time, so if any of the tourists are in Paris for more than a week, they might come back a second time to the same spot to see if I’m there. I’ve sold two of them that way. One guy and his wife from Indiana, and a young girl and her mother from San Francisco.” Toby said.

He really didn’t need the money, so he aimed high with his price, like $250, (about 38,000 1957 francs francs) but he’d always come down $10 when they started to haggle.

“I didn’t want to lose respect so I never came lower than ten dollars,” Toby said.

So, it was early evening and Toby had returned to his work on the painting.
I left him alone to go out wandering in the streets. The outdoor cafes were closing down and with them went that wonderful fragrance. You could tell by the fragrance if a breeze was blowing through Paris if there was an outdoor café coming up in your walk by the coffee aroma. If you’re walking in the early morning, you could tell that with the bakeries too in Paris and they have a lot of ma ‘n’ pa Patiseries and Boulangeries because the French love those ‘just out of the oven’ long loaf baggetts. And you can also smell the chocolateries and the cosmetic shop. They all run together sometime which makes a groove in your memories of Paris.

It was dusk and I strolled along the Seine for a while. It was like strolling along the surf in my hometown back in Ocean City, Maryland. I’d wave to a beach patrol guy up in his high tower watch chair, or I’d wave to his girl friend sunning on a beach towel below, or I’d wave to whoever I wanted to and the girl would wave back, sometimes.

This was different. How’re you going to wave to strangers in Paris when you take a stroll? They’d probably think you were a creep or something. I felt lonely as I passed among couples stretched out along the sloping banks of the Seine. It was just before sundown and with a setting sun off to the west, it all reflected the skyline of Paris in the river. It was growing dark and I walked until the reflections disappeared into the dark of night.
I wondered what Rudi was doing at this time. He no doubt was with that girl, probably a German girl. Who knows? When girls are involved anything could happen. I thought about it. What if I were to be left alone in Paris? I didn’t like the thought. He’ll come back, I thought. If nothing else, all of his belongings were all back at Toby’s. This’ll be a test.

It was dark down by the river. I headed up for a section of Paris called Pigalle, the quick-fun, quarter of Paris, like Coney Island. I stepped down into a bar called, “The Three Brothers,” and took a seat between two strangers at an empty bar stool. There were five people sitting at a table near the bar. I watched their happy conversation. One attractive dark-skinned girl kept catching my eye. When the jukebox began to play, her friends left the table to dance and I went over to her.
“Dance?”
“O.K.” she smiled.
As I embraced her, I felt her warm body snuggle against mine. And I decided she was interested in more than dancing with me. As the song lingered on, she danced with increased passion and as I talked with her I felt the firmness of her tapering torso and rounded limbs.
“My name’s Rohn, what’s yours?”
“Lullalia,” she said, drawing back suddenly to look at me with black enchanting eyes, and a coquettish smile.”
“Where do you come from?” I said, holding her at a distance, enjoying her gypsy beauty.
“I’m from Budapest, and I’ve been in Paris one year,” she said, drawing me in to her as the music was ending.
She joined me at the bar after dancing, and we spent two beers convincing each other what nice people we were. “I like you very much, Rohn” she said drawing little figures on the back of my hand that lay on her thigh. “Let’s go home.”
“Hone? But what will your parents say?” I said a little confused.
“They live too far away she said modestly, cocking her head and looking up at me blushing. I don’t mean that kind of home, ” She smiled, squeezing my hand.
I figured out which home she meant. I paid the bartender and we left.
We turned the corner by the bar and walked up the narrow street toward a lamplight. When we reached the light there was another light over a door to a small hotel that read “Hotel Dubois”.
We started walking up the stairs and Lullalia stopped. “Wait, you stay here…” she whispered, “They’ll never believe we’re man and wife.”

That was O.K. with me because I know back in Ocean City, it was against the law for hotel keepers to allow a man and woman who weren’t actually married to sleep in the same room in a hotel. I think the fine was $300. Pretty high! And they would set a court trial for you too.
“Well then, let me order the room,” I whispered back in a raspy voice.
“No, no, with your accent, they’ll charge you twice as much, she giggled”
“What’s it going to cost?” I said.
?? ?Not more than a 3000 francs,” she whispered.
That was fair enough but I only had a 5,000-franc note with me and gave it to her and she turned to go up the stairs.
“Wait,” I said. “I grabbed her waist with both hands and drew her in to me. I kissed her wildly. I drew my hand across her tight ass and then ran it up to her breast and with a soft feel said, “See you soon my beauty!” She went tripping up the steps, her black hair bouncing along with her excited steps.
Gad! I thought to myself, as she stopped and looked back at me and winked before she opened the front door. “How did I luck into this gypsy gal, so pretty and SO Paris!
I could see her trim figure disappear in silhouette as she opened the door and the light of the hotel entryway rushed out. It closed. And I waited.
And that was the last time I ever saw Lullalia.

I waited a few more minutes outside, and then, realizing what had happened to me I ran up the steps and thrust myself into the doorway to find a solemn set of crusty old men playing cards in the miniature lobby. A gray-haired desk clerk peered over the rim of his glasses when my entrance disturbed his newspaper reading. I started to ask him, “Did you see a girl..….?” And I thought how silly I would sound. I turned and left.

I walked and walked, sometimes laughing out loud at how easily I had been fooled, and then I howled, thinking of losing the 5,000 francs. I wondered what Rudi would have to say.
Well, I felt like getting drunk. What happened is I didn’t go out and get drunk. No. I did one better than that. Here’s what happened next. But let me give you a preview. It was still early evening. It wasn’t even midnight.

It began when I tried to find some good music. I still had some francs left. I wanted to find a place where I could curl up in a ball and listen to some good jazz.
If you know the music of Charlie Parker you know how it puts you in a trance if you’re not careful. That’s what I was looking for at this moment.
Let me backtrack.
During the late 40’s I had a high school girlfriend who had a record player and we used to play “Bird” and Dizzy Gillespie and all the top be-bop greats when her parents were gone for the weekend or on a trip. Parents in those days always dismissed anything new in music as evil and from the devil.
I guess this wickedness hung on with me because when I saw the signboard “The Mystique,” above the entryway to a Parisian jazz club down some stone basement steps into a cellar area, I was drawn by the sound inside. A lot of smoke greeted me at the door. It was easy to find a table in a corner; the late night crowd probably hadn’t arrived yet.
New music style takes a long time, sometimes, to get from one country to the next and while Rock ‘n’ Roll was just now getting established in the USA, be-bop was just getting going in Paris.
I was half finished with my red wine as the group came back from their break. They tinkered around with tuning and adjusting their equipment and lighting. There were five of them.
The boys were not bad, especially the alto sax kid. He had probably bought every record Charlie Parker ever put out. He was on a mission to do Charlie Parker one better. You could see some flashes of brilliance every now and then in his music. It was fresh and good-hearted music with a sense of warmth. The kid had talent.
And that’s what I hate to see in many brilliant musicians, they lead such an unhealthy life, drugs and all but they’re on to powerful statements, the kind you want to die for. You don’t have to understand it; you only have to receive it. They can open up a peephole and let you see things like the meaning of life and all that. And this kid could do it.
I wondered if he would ever make it past 30. He was probably an American,
I ordered an other glass of wine. A French girl with a red flower in her hair sat down in the chair next to me. I continued listening to the group, especially the sax player. She could see I was in some deep concentration and reached over and touched the back of my hand. When I didn’t respond, she got up and left.

What I mean with jazz is, and I mean good jazz, not the textbook stuff, when it all comes together it hits me. This guy on the alto sax had it all together. When music is right it flows right to me and through me and around me. Tonight, it was all because of him. I can’t really explain it anymore than like when you see some girl and you’re immediately in love. No questions. No numbers. You’re just in love. And in the case with music there’s no explanation needed. Nothing to figure out. You just sit there, have another glass of wine and be transported.

Like anything else that’s creative, you see it, or you hear it, or you watch it, or you read it and you’re gone. You don’t question it. You quietly absorb it. You don’t analyze it, like you don’t listen to see if it’s in tune, or harmony or spacing or if it’s out of rhythm, those mechanical things; it’s almost like you’re hearing it without letting it come through your ears. I know this is true because I’ve been in places where there’s good music and my date will ask me a question and bam! She asks it again and pretty soon she’s talking to some other guy at the table next to me because I’m in a daze of some kind. I know I’m not the only one like this cause other guys have told me they get entranced like that when they’re reading a good book and they miss the bus stop or the train station where they were supposed to get off. And that’s the nice thing about good art because it truly does have the gift to transport you away from a life that’s getting tough or probably not very exciting.

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21 Apr, 2010 | Posted by: photosource






News
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TOBY AT WORK




Party
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JAZZ CELLAR




Cafe
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MUSICIANS AT WORK





My Story


#15






I was looking for the Paris that you see on posters or hear about in movies. It’s hard to get a handle on what Paris is.

Paris, and this is just my impression, and I’m not an authority. I feel Paris thinks it’s a bright and glistening new-world machine of fashion turned into business politics and the arts turned into politics and culinary ambitions turned into politics and all of this protected by guards parading around in shiny badges and important-looking funny hats and uniforms.

At other times, and it depends on the weather, Paris sometimes thinks it’s like a seaport city where sailors come in and trample all over town seeking out its pleasures and sexual delights and then leave the next morning without saying thank you.

At other times, I think Paris thinks it’s a college town with all the social intrigue you get with a bunch of intellectuals slippingly trying to get a hand grip on a level with each other slightly above the level of us student types. Us students are like children, recognize something’s wrong up there in the tower but we’re more interested in seeking out fun rather up than trying to solve the dilemma at headquarters.

Whew! I wanted none of those intellectual doings and maneuvers. Go-with-the-flow I always say.

Paris is also a self-conscious small town that’s flits by as you try to grasp it in one thought. That’s the thought I arrived in Paris with. It’s a small town, always looking at itself in a pocket mirror, always guarding and protecting its image of itself. A lot of people migrate to Paris because they want to be associated with this image that Paris has of itself.

I prefer this .

It’s light and gay as the song says. It’s a city where the moon is always shining, and it’s a full moon, too.
Maybe the description of Paris that the trolley car man for the tourist company gives, is the best one.

Rudi and I were bystanders in all of this.
Of course, me being a product of the art school background , I was looking at Paris in an artsy way. Rudi, well I don’t know. I hadn’t known Rudi long enough to figure out what he thought about all of this.

Although I knew the German language well enough to get along on a social level, I didn’t know German on a level to discuss inner meaning levels and that sort of thing. Plus I don’t know if Rudi ever got down to that level of discussion. He was someone to keep the level of conversation more like on replacing a part on the Vespa or keeping feelers out on where we could get our next meal. But that was O.K. ‘cause I think if we started disagreeing on some esoteric subject, we just might end up in a fistfight or so mething and the whole trip would get miserable. So this was O.K. with me. “Let sleeping dogs lie,” I always said. I wasn’t looking for companionship or affection, I was looking to see the world and get things straightened out in my own head of just what my part in the whole universe scheme of things was.

When we arrived in town, we both knew Paris would like us. We represented the free spirit that the French people love. Unlike in Belgium and Holland where the country folk we met up with thought we were breaking some sort of rule, or unspoken code, or breaking some actual law by traveling the way we were. The Parisians wondered why more people weren’t doing it.

So, we were welcome in Paris. The guitars on our back, the beards, the precisely packed motor scooter ready for adventure, it all invited a welcome from people. It also helped that the newspaper announced we were in town. At bistros, a drink would arrive at our table from someone across the room with a “thumbs up” sending us a smile. Even the ticket vendor at the Ferris wheel slipped us a ‘free pass’ reserved for celebrities. It all was heady stuff, but we both knew it had to be handled with a delicate touch. And we both knew that when we left Paris and headed south, it would be a new ball game.

Toby worked on his oil painting at nighttime so he excused himself and suggested we go out to see Paris at night. We quickly learned the ‘Paris at night’ that you hear about and read about is elusive. In other words the popularity of the favorite spots are continually changing. Parisians make it a game in trying to escape the tourists.
We followed the winding back alleys of Saint-Germain-des-Pres in search of Gertrude Stein or Henry Miller’s 1929 Paris. Well, this was 1957, would it be any different?

In one cellar and out again. Typical Parisian nightlife, where are you? We thought we had found it when we heard strains of Dixieland music coming from a cellar called the “Huchette”. We went down in there to find a mass of university students wildly dancing to something that sounded like New Orleans jazz performed by Parisian musicians. It brought a smile to my face and brought clear to me why French people smile when they see American art students trying to paint another picture of Monmarte or the Eiffel tower the way we Americans smile when we hear foreign musicians trying play jazz. The effort is there but something is always missing.

We turned around and left just as a tour group from American Express tour Office was entering with its crowd of customers on a ‘visit to typical Parisian night spots’ as we left.
Down a side street, and beside the church of Saint-Germain-de la Pres, we heard the soft harmony of a male voice singing an American folk song. The music came from inside a thick Tudor door that had an Elizabethan sign hanging above: “L’Abbaye”.

Inside it was actually two guys entertaining, --one a Negro the other a White. They were seated at a small, spotlighted stage in the corner. They were both American, but sang folk songs in several languages according to the brochure in the entryway of the oak-paneled 18th century-looking hall. When the song was finished, as if by instruction, the crowd showed their approval not by applause but by snapping their fingers.
To me, there was something curious about the lockstep fashion of the audience snapping their fingers like that. First of all, how do you get the initial audience of the evening to snap their fingers? Do you put up a sign in French, “No applause please, snap fingers only.” Or what if they don’t read French? Or what if they’re from Texas? Can you get cowboys to do that?
And besides, how ‘bout me? I can’t snap my fingers, left-handed or right. I never learned how. That would mean I could never show my appreciation for anything that required applause if this finge r snapping thing spread world-wide!
I wondered what Rudi thought of the finger snapping. I couldn’t help feeling that Rudi, growing up in Nazi Germany as a youngster was very familiar following a code that came from somewhere above. You don’t question it. You just do it.
The fellows were good singers. But we left when the waiter informed us drinks were 350 francs a go. That’s about a dollar. The fellows were good, but not that good.

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14 Apr, 2010 | Posted by: photosource




News
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THE ANNOUNCEMENT




Party
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THE CAFE




Cafe
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PARISIANS







My Story




14









Two fellows and the girl with pig tail lingered with Toby over in one of the corners of the room. It was late, and I wondered when they were going to leave so we could turn out that light in the ceiling. They started mumbling among themselves, and occasionally looked over at us. I felt uneasy. I don’t like that when people you don’t know or you just met start talking just low enough that you can’t quite make out what they’re saying. .
“You cats ever smoke any pot? The one guy said.
“Wass?” Rudi said.
“Grass, man!… weeds!”… Like marijuana ! “He walked over to us, shouting, but in a loud whisper, as though he thought the police were next door or something.
Rudi saw the rolled up weed in his hand. “Ah! You mean kiffen.” Rudi said. "Ich bleib weg von dem Zeug. Ich versuchte es einmal in Indien. "
“What???”
“He means he knows what it is. He tried it in India. But it’s too expensive for him.”
“But this is free!” The fellow said loudly in a throaty whisper as though shouting would make things understandable.

So far on the trip, Rudi and I had not talked about drugs or alcohol because neither of us seemed to need anything like that in the way of priority. We both seemed to look at it the same way; it was a luxury, if you could call it that, which we couldn’t afford. It costs money, and it was that way on the trip, too Drugs and booze were O.K. but they were so expensive. It’s not that either of us had some moral thing against it. It wasn’t one of those “avoiding temptations” problem kind of things That’s not to say we avoided it entirely. And one of those times was coming up.
Toby’s friend, he was a French guy, moved closer to us. “We’d like you to join us. I came into a good supple today.”
Toby came over, “You ever smoke any marijuana, Rohn?”
“Sure,” I said, surprising myself with my answer. I tried to appear nonchalant. But you know what? I don’t even smoke cigarettes. I guess, with the answer I gave him, I didn’t want to appear non-friendly. I was looking for approval. After all Toby was our host. He was letting us stay overnight at his place. My “too expensive” argument wouldn’t hold up. .
Back in art school in Maryland there was plenty of pot smoking. And if you didn’t smoke pot you were usually an outcast, not “part of the gang”, so to speak. But there was one student that avoided pot altogether. He was one of those life-of-the-party fellows but he didn’t touch it, so he was my example to follow and he wasn’t ostracized or anything. I don’t know what his reason was but mine was a practical reason; cigarettes, pot, it was just not i n my budget, what little budget I had I put it to a beer now and then.

Paint brushes, oils, and other art materials took every cent I had. Besides I was on a scholarship, and losing that because of breaking the house rules would have not pleased my mother who had encouraged me to follow a career in art.
So here I was, in Paris, with an invitation to a pot party. To get wild. To be the Bohemian. But you know something? All that was secondary to me. I realized the voyage Rudi and I were on was already a “high” for me and I’m sure if Rudi thought about it too, it was a high for him too. We were on a mission. Why should I put this trip at risk? Rudi probably had similar decisions on his trip to Calcutta and survived by not getting engaged in dizzy activities that could end the whole thing.
With this attitude, we probably came across as prudes. But it didn’t matter. On our trip we were always “leaving the next day”.
Did I refuse Toby’s invitation? No. I accepted. So did Rudi.

After several sucking ins of the burning smoke, I began to sink into a sleep-like mode. There have been many descriptions and odes to smoking marijuana so I don’t need to repeat them here. With me, and I hear it affects all people in different ways, it was an experience of watching myself fall asleep, but at the same time, struggling to keep from falling asleep, or waking my self up. It was like I was driving on a busy two-lane highway knowing that if I continued to fall asleep I could cause the car to go to the right and go into a ditch and roll over, or I could veer off to the left into oncoming traffic. So it was a constant struggling to keep awake, a tension, the whole experience this time.
Toby and his friends were sitting on the floor in a corner. I bid them “Bonne nuit…” The sun was just coming up. I stood by the fifth floor open window, looking over a quiet Paris skyline where touches of sunlight were glancing off a nearby church steeple. The sky to the east was pale blue with tinges of pink along the bottom. The silhouettes of a couple of birds heading south glided off in the distance. And nearby, the silence was broken by a pigeon that fluttered and landed on a nearby ledge.

The pot was working its ways. I was secretly appreciating the newness of the day, a horizon of morning cleanliness from my Paris overlook.

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07 Apr, 2010 | Posted by: photosource






Vespa
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PARIS PARTY



Vespa
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ARTISTE FRIEND



Vespa
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CAFE IN PARIS



Vespa
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AT THE WESTERN UNION






My Story




13

The address said “Toby’s, 88 Rue Jacob, St. Germain-de-Pres.
I checked our guidebook. “That’s across the river. On the left bank, it says here.” I said. “Let’s try to make it. You want to?” I turned to Rudi.
Rudi answered, but not in a convincing way. “Ja, Engh, if you want to.”
I could see he wasn’t exactly thrilled by my suggestion, and I suspect it was because this guy, Toby, this “artiste” was not the element he had run into on his way to India on his bicycle, and certainly not the social strata he encountered among the hard-working coal miners in Duesseldorf. I think he would have rather spent the time checking out the tire pressure or the wheel alignment on the Vespa. Rudi wasn’t anti-social, it’s not that, it’s just that in the life he knew in Germany, it was a social environment that was very class divided.

He was aware of the carefree life that college students enjoyed in Europe. He had seen it in the movies. And he’d seen it in his travels through the mid-east and he’d seen these class divisions in India. He didn’t fit in. So he migrated more to the lower classes in the cities and the peasants in the countryside.

To get anywhere in the upper level job market in Germany you had to have an abitur – a high school diploma, and he had never gotten past the 8th grade. Back in Wuesterheide he was destined to become what his father did for a living, and what his grandfather was –a dirt farmer.
“You’ll like these guys and girls,” I said. But how did I know? I just said it anyway. I’ve never known anyone who didn’t ever graduate from high school. We all gravitate to our position in life, I guess. I realized then when I saw Rudi’s hesitation that he felt he would be out-classed at the party, just like I felt the strange feeling back in Holland and Belgium that I was outclassed -but this time it was by working people, the people who lived in housing projects or toiled in the fields.
This would be Rudi’s chance. He was being thrown into the fire of “upward class mobility” we used to say back in Maryland. It would be interesting to see how he would handle these exchange students.

Most of them would be American “beats” who had come to Paris to study. Those people are the dropouts, the young people who choose not to go along with society, at least, and the way they saw society was headed.

We did some more grocery shopping and spent some time ‘til late evening in the Bois de Boulonge, a big park in Paris. Rudi got a chance to straighten a minor problem on the Vespa’s steering mechanism. We weren’t really supposed to be doing motor scooter repairing in there and a gendarme came by and told us so but he let us stay when Rudi showed him the newspaper article.
When it started to drizzle we got under the protection of the chestnut trees in the park. Someone told us the aroma from the sweet smelling scent from the wet chestnut trees in the rain was really strong, like the aroma in a cigar store, but I’m not sure if that smell didn’t come from the fast women that were roaming the park for customers. Two of them were intrigued by our scooter voyage and each helped by shielding us from the rain with their umbrellas. We gave them each an apple from our grocery bag. Charming ladies!
On to Toby’s place. Rue Jacob was more an alley than a street. We rang the bell downstairs in the dimly lit vestibule. A concierge came to the door and squinted at us. “They’re in Number 5,” she said, “staring at our beards. She pointed at a window three stories up. It was closed but we could see shadows of people moving against the tan window shade.
We passed through a dark patio and entered into an even darker doorway that led to a narrow stairwell that creaked as we climbed. At the fifth floor we heard voices coming from behind a green door that had at one time a number 5 tacked to it. We paused for a moment and listened to the commotion. A late night party sound, like the fraternity house party from college days. I thought about turning around and leaving. I knocked on the door. No one answered. I heard the sound of a harmonica above the crowd noise and a guitar. Again, no one answered. We tried the door. It was unlocked. So we went in.
Two people had been sitting on the floor near the door. “C’mon on in” a girl shouted over the noise and she and her friend made room for us. “The more the merrier!” She said in English in an English-sounding accent.

Every one was so engrossed in their own personal conversations, no one noticed us. The room was about the size of a 2-car garage. People were scattered about. So much you could hardly see where the floor was. There was no furniture available to sit down so we walked over to a corner. No one looked up. No one paid attention to us. They all kept talking.

All of us were swallowed in a thick cloud of gray cigarette smoke. We stood there for a moment, wondering if we should stay. I don’t think anyone would have noticed if we would've walked back out.

Figures reclining on floor mats, cushions, and boxes. It looked like a frantic auction, with each person there the auctioneer. Girls with long uncombed straight hair. No cosmetics. Tight dark leotards. Men wore striped t-shirts or corduroy pants. Some with berets. I think those were the "artistes."

Most of them had beards some had goatees. The atmosphere was electric but it wasn’t happy. Serious, depressing looking expressions flashed about the room.

Posters, calendars landscapes, and sketches covered fading wallpaper that covered a cracked wall in need of repair. Some of the sketches were done right on the wallpaper. The room did have two windows, but there’s little chance that the renter saw any sunlight. Daytime was the time to catch up on sleep from the night before.

Toby came over and greeted us once he recognized us from earlier in the day. He had a wine bottle in his hand and two cups.
“You made it!” he said. “Cool!”

Toby waved over to a thin guy pouring the last drip of wine from a bottle. “Kurt, come over here.” Toby said.

Kurt was a tall, skinny, gaunt-looking American student studying in Paris, well-shaven and with a shock of black hair that was combed forward to meet his bushy eyebrows. He had been talking with a petite local French girl with short black hair. I figured she was either a dancer or an actress.
“Are you going to recite tonight?” Toby asked Kurt.
Kurt looked down at the girl who had wandered over after him. Before she answered, the room quieted down. A blond bearded guy opened a window and with a Clint Eastwood movie poster began chasing clouds of smoke out of the room into the Paris sky.

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