Oh Boy

There should be warning signs: The dogs in Paris are adorable. Scary adorable—the kind of adorable that gets you wondering about your priorities in the event of a high rise apartment fire.

“That’s easy,” a friend told me the other night. “You save the fucking dog obviously.”

We were staring at a little black terrier with a spray of white across his face.

“But say you have kids,” I said. “You know, humans….”

“Look at those eyes. You don’t say no to those eyes.”

The dog chased its tail to the sound of trumpets and upright bass and brush-stick percussion. We were listening to live jazz in the 10^th district. The dog rolled onto its side and looked directly at me. “God you’re right,” I said. “I think I could die for that dog.”

Two minutes later we’d named it Charles, Charlie for short, and had devised one or twelve variations for getting it through Customs and safely back to LA with us.

The festival flyer had promised free food and drink at the jazz festival, but when I got there I discovered a foldout table with plastic bowls of peanuts and punch, a basket of unripe fruit, and a metal cash box with a sign taped to it, asking for donations.

I started in on a second plantain and my third cup of juice. In Paris, where the dollar to euro conversion rate is a steel-tipped boot kick to the crotch, I can make entire meals out of anything. Plus, ambiance is everything, and Paris has it down pat. For some strange reason, getting ripped off is a little easier in Paris. There’s a sense that you’re paying for the city you’re in. A six dollar half pint isn’t a rip-off like it is in the States. More so, it’s an investment in cliché postcard beauty, the City of Lights. Never visit Disneyland before you visit Paris. I’m still waiting for Mickey Mouse to parade down one of these streets to When You Wish Upon A Star….

But Paris, believe it or not, is a functioning city. And for me that’s hard to understand. For the foreigner from Texas, spending money takes on a sense of investment when surrounded by well-dressed Disney cast members speaking French next to you. There's magic in the trash in the streets, the public drinking fountains, the public drinking in the parks, the rotten good smell of the 9^th district, all of it swirling down a funnel toward the weird perfection that blooms out of every plume of smoke blown by the girl with the red lipstick….What’s her name, you wonder. I wonder how much she’s getting paid to look that good, you wonder. And then she walks away and you were half-expecting music to start up at some point.

Which is why there should be warning signs. I think that would help—the first night I was here I spent 20 euros, or thirty-something dollars, on dinner because I fell in love with the waitress. That night I went home and considered proposing. Then I came to my senses and decided to start with her name. Needless to say, it hasn’t come to anything. Worth mentioning: she’s my age and studying film and her name starts with an L but I didn’t catch the rest.

*

I went back to the fruit and peanut stand for my fourth cup of juice, third cup of peanuts, and second apricot. The server filled me up, but by this point he’d started with the sideways glances at the donation box—of which I’d yet to drop a cent in. He said something in French, to which I responded, Thanks. Then he said something else and I turned my head sideways and nodded okay. But he kept talking at me in French so I grouped up all my plastic and took off.

I found my friend playing patty-cakes with a tiny blond toddler. The little girl grabbed at my friend’s pearls and held on. My friend was polite, went along with it, and finally the mother came over and undid the little white hands. The girl threw a tantrum and started crying. She broke free from her mom and lunged at the pearls again, this time locking on with her mouth too. The mother moved quickly and removed her a second time. The girl wouldn’t stop crying. She spit on the floor, slapped her little feet on the pavement, pulled at her hair. Finally the mother produced an ice cream bar and it all stopped.

The music was still going, and when I looked over at the stage four or five guys in black and blue suits had taken the stage, replacing the previous musicians who sported Hawaiian-type shirts and about half the musical chops of the suited-up guys playing now. The jazz sounded much better, tighter, but I couldn’t recall when the switch had been made, and suddenly I toyed with the notion that my punch had been spiked. Maybe I was drunk.

The black terrier scooted over to me and rolled over onto its back. I gave it a good pet on the stomach.

“I’d take the dog over the little girl,” my friend said. “Kids learn to talk and it’s all downhill from there. Dogs only get wiser by the minute.”

“I think you’re on to something,” I said. “We better leave soon. The concession guy is getting frustrated. I think he wants a donation.”

The dog jumped up, went over to the little blond girl who was sitting on a curb with the ice cream bar. He took it right out of her hand. It was gone before the girl could start crying again.

“I would take a bullet for that dog,” we both said at almost the same time.