Impresario

I can’t remember exactly when we met, but it was long enough ago to think of Jean-Pierre and me as kids at the time.  And now we are middle-aged gents, complimenting one another on how fit we have managed to remain after all these years—and only one of us is lying.  He’s an honest man and interesting, sure enough.  But I also think Jean-Pierre keeps coming back like a bad penny.  He just turns up, year after year.  No matter where I’m walking or what I’m doing, the odds are I’ll run into him after two or three weeks in Paris, though once I passed by him when I was just off the plane and thought it was a jet-lag mirage rather than Jean-Pierre and almost didn’t stop.  He tried to trip me, then said at the top of his lungs, “Ignoring me? Where’s my money?”  I can’t remember if I answered “Your sister is infected” or “That so-called dope was oregano,” but it served, everyone within ten metres of us running for cover and everything between Jean-Pierre and me being just as it was.

But it’s hard to tell what it was and still is, except it’s always like this exchange.  A straight line—or a weird and crooked one—from him gets the game going, then it’s up to me to give it a good shove.  It was on the Pont St. Michel when we were young that it first happened.  We had just met a day or so before and were hanging out with the wannabe wise guys, les louches aspirants, who choked up the sidewalk most evenings.  A girl walked by, and one of the hangers-out asked how to say putain in English.  Without a pause, Jean-Pierre said whore, and that’s what the creeps started yelling at her.  Bad enough, but then they started chasing her and one of them was throwing some stones or some junk he’d picked up.  Jean-Pierre, looking alarmed, shouted à la rescousse at me, and we bolted down the street, gleaming in armor, lances at the ready.  Being the faster runner by a good three strides, I bumped one of the punks into the parapet of the bridge and kept going after the girl who had stopped, too frightened to move.  Jean-Pierre belted the second, and took his time joining us.  By the time he had sauntered up, the girl was busy thanking me and had taken my arm.  He beamed at the two of us, made an observation about a third wheel on a bicycle—or maybe a fifth leg on a horse—and waved us goodbye.  You see what I mean?

There’s no telling if Jean-Pierre has always been an impresario of street theatre or a trouble-maker, but he likes to make things happen.  In this case, I learned from him a few days later, he had guessed the girl really was what the jerks on the bridge said she was and wondered, if after stirring the pot, whether a péripaticienne would thank a sterling young hero, like me, with a free sample or two.  Three, I told him, but he wouldn’t believe me—and anyway, no harm done.

But harm and embarrassment did not mean much to him, at least mine didn’t: the show had to go up and then go on, and it’s a fair guess that I was not the only regular in his repertory company.  I didn’t, and still don’t, care about the others, but he has always had a way of getting to me with one or the other.  A couple of years after the Battle of Saint Michael’s Bridge, he and I were walking a few blocks from Les Halles.  A man stopped us and asked if we would like some women.  Jean-Pierre pointed at a grimy table at a café across the street and suggested we go there to talk it over.  I should have known better, but all three of us sat down and asked for coffee.

Jean Pierre asked him how many women he had and what’s the price?  The pimp said as many as we would like and a hundred francs a head—or whatever part—per hour.  Too much, Jean-Pierre said, and besides—he pointed at me—il fait travailler les femmes and cheaper. This way of saying I too was a pimp didn’t go over well with me, but even worse with the real pimp who let me know that he didn’t need me horning in on his turf, that only Corsicans like himself could do the job properly, and maybe we should go somewhere quieter and talk it over.  He reached into his coat pocket.  I shoved the coffee cup, which had just arrived at the table onto his lap, put my right heel down on his right instep as I got up from the table, and beat the hell out of there as fast as I could, hoping Jean-Pierre would become the star of his own improv production.  When he caught up with me no more than ten minutes later—undamaged, sorry to say—he was laughing as usual, but congratulated me on still being able to run so fast.  This time, I put my right foot right into the center of his rear end.

This had no historical effect on Jean-Pierre.  We met and other things happened, but one production was a minor work of art.  It must have been fifteen years ago at least that I was sitting on the crowded terrace of brasserie, when an aging tante who had been wandering among the tables, asked to share mine since, he explained, there was no other place to sit.  I gestured to the seat and went back to my newspaper.  After a few seconds, the old boy excused himself for interrupting me and explained that he had hesitated to speak to me because I looked so distinguished.  I assured him I was no such thing.  He told me he had recently arrived in Paris, was a really excellent cook, knew good wines and had a decent supply, and was un sacré jazzman on the piano, accompanying this bill of sale with an acrobatic bouncing up and down of his bird’s-nest eyebrows.

The newspaper became more interesting, and I thought the old queen had got the message when a very loud voice hailed me by name, though with something of a lisp, and Jean-Pierre, limp wrists and all, came swishing up to the table, kissed me on the mouth, and wondered what I was doing with another man, especially an ugly vieux schnoque like this one, and ushered me out onto the street.  If this was, again, his idea of a rescue, I told him it could have been done better or preferably not at all, but he was laughing enough to pee in his pants—and so was everyone on the terrace of the brasserie.

Harm, embarrassment—it’s all the same to him as long as he winds up laughing.  If there was sex somewhere in the act, so much the better, but anything would do.  I remember running to catch a bus after we had said goodbye, and he began hollering Au voleur, au voleur.  Swell: the good bourgeois of Paris will form a flying wedge and run down the thief.  I did the only thing I could do and started yelling Stop thief myself at a man who was running for the bus ahead of mine.  He looked back over his shoulder and sprinted past his bus and, as far as I’ll ever know, off the face of the earth.  I felt sorry for him, but Jean-Pierre wondered why since I had played my part so well, as I always had.  It never worked to tell him that life without spontaneous combustions of cinéma verité was normal: he didn’t believe me then, either.

My knees won’t let me sprint the way I used to, whether to run to the rescue or for my life.  The last time I saw him, nearly two years ago now, I braced myself, not for the first time.  His face had gotten rounder and his smile, which used to shift from angelic to wicked—and the angelic, I had learned, was the one to watch out for—was flatter.  We walked  around for a while, this being the semi-profession of both of us, not to mention the best way for Jean-Pierre to find a proscenium and the dramatis personæ for his next production.  We talked about nothing special and after I’d say about twenty minutes he said he was really tired and needed to sit down.  I pointed to a bench under some sycamores, but he wanted something to drink and a glass of water to take a pill.  He smiled sadly: “Morning, noon, and night.  Age, you know.”

We found a café, ordered coffee, water—and, Oh, he added as the waiter was heading back inside, bring us some sandwiches… you have rillettes?  Black olives?  Oh, and a cognac each.  He barely spoke while we waited, but he seemed a little better after pill, coffee, sandwich, and the first sip or two of cognac.  I told him so.  “Well, thanks,” he said, “but, Joe, it’s just not the same.”  I didn’t want to agree.  Jean-Pierre without drama was depressing enough—why else would I consent to spend time with him?—but Jean-Pierre quoting Horace on age being disease itself was too far out of character.  I shrugged, he sighed.  He got up, heading for the toilettes, I thought.

He stopped two or three tables away and said in croaking but loud enough voice, “Excuse me, but me and my pal Poing-poing le cogneur”—great: now I’m Knuckles Hardpunch—“just got out of prison.  No money, none at all.  Could you, do you think, help us?”  Show time.  I got up and scowled.

© Joseph Lestrange

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