Business, Casual

It gets me every day and even after all these years, the hair of Parisian men. I don’t think there’s a Hair Club for Men (France), yet so many of them have that after look, but without the bald before sitting next to it on the magazine page or television screen or rather walking down the street with them, sort of tagging along to make the soigné parisien look even better, the way a slightly plump woman pals around with a really fat girl friend. The coiffed Parisian cares: that long mane, pushed back with curls just so and blowing enough in the wind to look natural, but never, somehow, falling down in the face or standing up on end must require serious mirror-time daily and I can’t begin to tell how many hours chez le coiffeur, not merely in the operations of a haircut, which must start and stop with questions about angle and length, but in long preliminary consultations about the overall process, effect, and the maintenance to come. 

You’d expect (I would) to have artistic fellows or computer types, provided they are still in demand, letting their hair grow out and looking the part. But this is different. The guy behind the bar in the most ordinary of cafés in the Fourteenth Arrondissement has the mane, ditto another who stocks shelves in a small grocery, and—God save me—so does my dentist. They can’t all be movie stars researching their roles as ordinary Parisians or fashion models who long to mix with the less than equally beautiful in order to find their center before the adoring lens of the camera. Even the bald men, like Jacques Chirac, seem to tend to the skin of their skulls with a kind of loving tonsorialism that I can only stare at with my mouth open and, I confess it, admire. 

The two men seated a few tables to my right on the terrace of the very nice café where I am having lunch are proving my point. We are too many blocks away—one to be exact—from he place where you might see movie stars, models, or rich guys who can afford to be processed to look like movie stars and models as they turn their Lamborghinis over to the voituriers for these two to represent that class of hair. They seem ordinary enough. They are well dressed, more or less business casual which, these days, means a very nice blazer, not blue, good pants, black shoes that are too long and square in the toe, and a shirt (anything but white) and open at the collar without a hint of a tie or that one has ever been knotted around that collar, let alone that neck, except maybe a black one where good champagne is served. 

One has the complex mane. The other, who in fairness represents a larger segment of well-turned-out Paris, has the kind of hairdo we used to expect from Marcello Mastroianni—full, no suggestion of baldness or even gray, straightforward, parted, but every hair exactly in place, not a stray strand anywhere, not a sense that anything short of the sirocco could displace it, but still not beyond moving delicately in a sweet summer breeze (what other kind of wind would even consider mussing such a head of hair?) before settling gently back in perfect order. 

I have no idea what they are, but they were seated and already halfway through their drinks when I arrived. I’m in no hurry over my lunch today. Ordinarily, I barely eat at all during the day, so when I consent to sit down and part with half again as many euros as I think the meal will be worth, I figure I’ll do something to amuse myself. But the café is not amusing. It is serious, the waiters almost pleasant, the air soft and beautiful, the sun warm, and river not far, just visible, and bright with little nervous starbursts. I just sit back, enjoy my wine, my terrine, my salad—and feel utterly glum. 

Everything is so right, so comfortable, so put-up-your-feet-and-relax that I’m afraid I’ll fall asleep and miss something interesting, and that always counts as a bad day in my book. But no one is misbehaving or bizarrely dressed. There are no especially obnoxious tourists or bad smells from a sewer. No couple se faisant des gros câlins, the smooching you pretty much can expect in a café in Paris, or worse tearing apart that third member of every couple called love or, more dismally, “the relationship.” No one spills a glass, drops a plate, or even yells for the waiter to come over with some mustard, s’il vous plaît. In despair, I turn to look at the two men with the wonderful Parisian hair. 

They are too far for me to hear a word they’re saying, just the undertone of two normal male voices, slightly blended with a few between them and me: nothing there. They are talking freely back and forth like friends comfortable with one another, but aside from an occasional modest laugh or the inevitable shrug or the out-turning of the perpendicular hands, nothing especially animated: nothing there either. They could be discussing something bland, but that in itself is a wonder.  

French conversations tend to generate heat, not hostility, but a warming of the spirit over practically anything. When the grocer, not the one with the great mane of hair because he only stocks the shelves, explains to Madame why there are no tomatoes, he takes two minutes, minimum, with references to weather, strikes, pricing problems, and the time of year, all of which are beyond his control and his knowledge. Ça ne lui fait rien because it is part of conversation which may not make love, but certainly makes the time pass. My two lunchtime neighbors seem in no hurry: the time will pass them by, or they will pass it.  

So, you see, I’ve fallen back on what they could possibly be talking about with so little animation. They are not grim, not negotiating something dark where any sign of life would suggest weakness. They seem pleased with themselves, each other, their second drink, unless I’ve lost count. I’ve been here over an hour, and getting nowhere, and figure they must be closing in on two. I give up and start to pay for lunch. Bless them, they do the same and now I have a clue. Each reaches into his wallet and pulls out some notes—but the are not euros. They are what are commonly called chèques restos and disbursed by employers—out of the goodness of the state’s heart, not their own—and known officially as un Ticket Restaurant, nothing more than scrip accepted everywhere and available to the employee for less than fifty centimes on the euro. This is not movie-star currency. 

So, they are working stiffs, out for lunch during the working-stiff day—it’s not a holiday—and this is too good to pass up. Each adds a few small coins to the chèques, they get up, amaze me by not touching up their hair—would it really need it?—and begin to make their way out. Closer to the passage between the tables, I beat them to the sidewalk, step a bit away from the café and do a poor mime of deciding which way to go. My peripheral vision picks them up over my right shoulder and, just to complete the drama, I mime a determination to go the right, and off I go in their wake, ten metres behind. They don’t go far, but in this part of Paris a few streets in one direction or the other can make a great deal of difference. After going right, they go right again then left, then right and right into a building you’d more expect to be inhabited by pigeons that had lost their self-respect than by well-coiffed, well-dressed, well-fed, and well-subsidized bourgeois parisiens. I think it could be a tech incubator, an independent film company, the last surviving publisher of Franco-Romanian poetry, an outpost of Médecins sans frontières—something, anything that could justify the casual dress, the two-hour lunch, and the chèques restos to crank up their panache.  

Once they’re safely in, I walk up to the door. There’s small dirty brass sign with a name that means nothing to me—I’m not sure I got it right, but Baldacci will do for me—and under that  

Comptables Agréés

SàRL. 

Jesus, my lunch pals, the source of my wonderings, work for a firm of Certified Public Accounts, LLP. That’s even less charisma than the guy who stocks the groceries or my dentist, a lot less. I feel cheated and I start going back the way I came: a couple of green eyeshades over a casual lunch, in no hurry to get back to work, if work is what they do, because who’d want to do that? I’d hoped for something, something to justify all that elegant simplicity of their measured conversation, so controlled, so camera-ready, so perfect for…for what, depreciation schedules, accruals, what…? 

“What?” I hear myself saying. Two women, American tourists by their look and sound and very bad French are saying, “Oh, we’re so glad we found you.” Actually only one of them is saying that. I tell her in my worst English that she doesn’t have to mangle French with me. “Oh, good,” she says. “We saw you in the restaurant…” It’s a café, madame. “Oh, I’m sorry. We saw you in that bistrot just now, but you left just before we could get our check and… well, my friend thought she would like to take your picture.” My picture? “Oh, yes, she thought you looked so very French, you know, with your black sweater and coat and wine…” The wine was red, Madame. “Well, yes, but you know what I mean.” I do and I know what I see: a middle-aged woman abusing simultaneously the idea of middle-age and womanhood, and in hopes of doing the same to me. “Could she take your picture, Monsieur…?” 

“Baldacci, madame,” I manage to say with a look so somber I’m afraid my jaws will crack or lock, “but hélàs, I am having the bad hair day. It would spoil everything for you. It always does for me. Especially today. Au’voir.” I will never know if they photographed my bald spot. 

© Joseph Lestrange

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