IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 9 By Peter Nolan Smith

Autumn came and leaves fell from the trees. I saw friends, drank at bars, and told stories about Paris. Their laughter proved that time transformed tragedies into comedies.

The night before Halloween I was sitting on my Triumph before Madame Rosa's Bar near the Holland Tunnel. The rest of the 6th Street bikers were scattered around the alley. The walls were tattooed with graffiti and piles of trash cluttered the gutter.

A yellow taxi rattled down the cobblestones and braked a foot from my bike. A blonde in a black leather cuirass and steel-strapped girdle emerged from the Checker. The Devil would have been proud how this sadistic apparition paralyzed every man on St John's Lane. Her unworldly eyes trawled for prey and settled on me.

For a second I thought the sadistic mirage was Lisa, but the blonde rearranged the wig and I said, "“Elana.”

“I’m happy you have not forgotten me.” She threw a leg over my bike. “Let’s go. Anywhere.”

I kickstarted the bike and my heart thumped through five gears. Within minutes we were on 10th Street. Twenty seconds after my apartment slammed shut, we were naked. It was like our first night. Neither of us held anything in reserve and the pleasure became a pain, which I quelled with a shuttered ejaculation.

As I strained to regain my breath, Elana explained, “You throw me out. These punks from the park live in a squat. We live as animals and are animals with each other. Not washing and eating food we find in the trash, fucking like savages. Soon the men only want me. The other women hate me. One day I meet this woman. She and I perform dominatrix shows for businessmen. They love us. We are the best. This girl and I start a business. I have a loft and a beautiful girlfriend. I thank you for throwing me out.”

“You didn’t come to tell me that.”

“No, the old senorita told me she had placed a curse on you and the only way for it to come off was for me to make love to you.”

“Thank you.”

"You fucked with me, but didn't deserve that."

“Why the stories? About Danny? About the man in Madrid. About everything? Did you really love Danny?”

“Yes, and you too. You both only wanted me for sex and I gave myself freely, but not anymore. Men pay me $500 for an hour. There is no way even a thousand free orgasms can add up to an hour, but life is way too long not to fall in love and I have that with this woman. The sex is good. Everything else is so much better. Maybe you helped me to understand that. Maybe you didn’t, but I’m almost happy now. Happy to be me and not a fairy tale for someone else like your stupid movie THE APARTMENT. Your friend Sherri told me to watch it, but it was just a movie. Nothing else and you’re not either man in the movie. You’re not bad and you’re not good. You’re just you and no one else.” She attached the leather and buckles and clips with the care of a samurai suiting for battle and slowly counted out $400.

“I owe you that.”

“Where are you going?” I felt more like me than I had in a long time.

“Uptown. A priest needs a succubus to a ritual crucifixion.” She offered a full view of her body, as her gloved hand reached for the door. “Do I look like a goddess ready to die for her sins?”

“You’ll have a million worshippers.” I was one of them. Saying I love her might change everything. I said nothing instead. She already had someone to love.

“I’ll be seeing you.” She went to the door.

“I hope so.” This was a good an ending as I could hope for the both of us, although for weeks afterward I searched the Daily News’ police reports without ever reading about the discovery of a crucified woman matching her description. Elana was still out there, but none of us saw her again. Not me. Not Danny. Not the old lady across the hallway. At least the chicken bones vanished from my doorstep and this said Elana was fine.

I started looking for a woman. I had been a fool to love a woman who didn’t love me. A greater fool to not love someone who loved me. Six years was a long time to learn this lesson, but I was happy to know in the future I would be a fool again. Any sinner will be as long as they’re willing forget the past, forgive the present, and live for the future.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 8 By Peter Nolan Smith

The spring rains washed the dirt from the streets. Thunder echoed across the city and lightning slashed jagged bolts through the sky like a celestial film crew was remaking THE LEGEND OF SLEEPY HOLLOW. Every song was written about Elana and I was tossed out of several bars for punching out the jukebox.

Other women had lips too thin and their eyes dead from too many boyfriends. I begged the old Puerto Rican lady to exorcise Elana from my soul.

“You tell her stay?” she asked in broken English.

“No, she wanted to go, so she went.”

“Stupido, you no say no go, she go. You say stay, she stay.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I am a witch.” The old lady slammed her door. “Not your mother.”

May plowed relentlessly into June. Couples strolled hand in hand and I woke day after day alone in my bed. Summer promised much more of the same, then one morning someone jiggled my front door. The East Village was overrun by thieves. I grabbed my baseball bat and ripped open the door.

”Don’t hit me.” Elana cringed in the hallway.

“I won’t hit you.” It took a couple of seconds to lower the bat.

“You mad?” She leaned against the door.

“No, surprised, that’s all.” She had a black eye and wore a thin cotton shift. Everything else was in a paper bag. “And Danny?”

Heart-rending sobs racked her body and the old senora leaned out her door, her left eye armed for a hex. Elana rattled off an explanation in English and added, “He’s not bad man.”

“You take care of her or else.” The wizened witch warned with a wavering finger.

“I will.” As a superstitious Irish-American I feared her ‘or else’ worse than any hell promised by the nuns and priests.

Elana was sitting on my living room couch. I joined her and she laid her head on my lap. Her tears dried on my jeans and she regained her breath. The window was open and music played from the dance studio. It was Issac Hayes' version of BY THE TIME I GET TO PHOENIX.

“I get to Gloucester and Danny is very happy." Elana wiped her nose with the back of her hand and then continued, "We move to an old boat in the harbor and make love for many days. After two months I ask him to marry me.” Her confession chipped at my heart. “Danny goes crazy. He throws me out of the boat. He beats me, telling me I am trying to steal his freedom. I stay on his boat and cry myself to sleep. I wake up, Danny is gone to sea. I wait one week. He stays at sea. He love the sea more than me. Where can I go? Not home. I come here. You are my only friend. Can I stay with you?”

“As long as you want.” Maybe forever.

“It has been so long.” She stripped off her clothes to reveal the fading belt marks and bruises, but she sighed, “They will leave. I will not.”

The door remained shut for days. She was my slave and I hers. Somehow the sex was different and I put my finger on this change one afternoon, as we lay naked on my bed.

Elana’s lips were moving in what I thought was a slattern incantation, but then I deciphered two syllables. With her eyes closed I was Danny. This substituted identity sobered my lust and I rolled off her.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’m tired.” Like that the end began.

Each time she tried to seduce me with her hands or mouth or body, I said I wasn’t in the mood. Frustrated she would storm off to the old senora. I quelled my discontent with drink and drugs, a deadly combination on a motorcycle. One night I fell through the door in a near-stupor.

“You should not drive in that condition.” Elana helped me to bed.

“Why not?”

“I was waiting for you.”

“Why? Couldn’t you find one of your little dancers or another version of Danny?”

Her face went white and she ran into the bedroom.

Comforting her was a small price to pay. Perhaps one day she might have called my name. My pride argued I didn’t need her. It didn’t take long to discover the penalty of my self-deceit.

When I crawled into bed around dawn, ready to repent, she showed her back. That afternoon I told her, “Elana, my sister is coming to the city.”

“I have to leave?” Her feet slowed across the floor.

“Do you have anyplace to go?”

“Yes, I will stay with friends.” She stood without mentioning who those friends might be and I left before I regretted my lie.

When I returned, she was gone. A quick check revealed that she had stolen a couple hundred dollars. It seemed a small price to pay for her leaving, only I was hiding the real cost.

The old lady across the hall asked about Elana.

“No se.”

Wicked Spanish hissed from her lips and I fled inside my apartment too late. Chicken bones were scattered on my door step and her cackling filled the hallway. Her curse sentenced me to another desert.

Some women sought to be friends and others thought I was gay. Mrs. Adorno seemed to shrink every week of this penance. I searched the streets of the East Village for Elana. No one would say where she was, even though I could tell they knew.

Sherri flew into town for a dance session at Show World. She patiently listened to my story and then said, “I used to think that sex was the answer, but I’ve learned that the sex is sex. Nothing more and people make too much of it. To sell movies. To sell TV time. To sell cars. It’s not about the sex. It’s about the way you feel when you have sex with someone you love. Everything else you can get from jerking off.”

“Everything?” I had my doubts.

“Well, only if you don’t think masturbation is a sin.”

“I was brought up Catholic.”

“Then you’re doomed to damnation.”

“And wouldn’t have it any other way.” Sherri and I were destined to survive our tribulations if only to tell people about them, since most of what we would have to say was unbelievable. We weren’t the only people with stories.

In early autumn I ran into Danny at a gallery opening for his friend, Jean-Michel. His face was weathered by the sea. I lunged at him and people had to hold us apart, but finally I calmed down and he asked, “What did Elana say to you?”

“That you had beaten her.”

“I never touched her.” Danny grabbed at a passing glass of wine. I took another. Like me he wasn’t a woman-beater. “I wasn’t pissed at you for taking care of Elana. When she came up to Gloucester I could tell it was different between us. We only had sex that first night and the rest of the time she would look out the window at the harbor.”

“You lived in a house?”

“On a wharf really.”

I knew Gloucester and bet the wharf was on Rocky Neck. “She lied about that?”

“She tell you a story about her mother abandoning her?” Danny’s eyes went sad. “I met her mother and father in Madrid. Had a dance school. Nice people. The other story was what you needed to hear. What men wanted to hear, because she thought she wasn’t enough to be who she wanted to be?”

“I didn’t see her that way.”

”Neither did I, but she did.”

“So now what?”

“Let’s get drunk.” We drank whiskey at the Odeon. He slept over my apartment and in the morning left for Gloucester. I wished him luck. No one did the same for me, then again what else could expect from New York.

Amnesia was the best I could expect from a city of sleeplessness.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 7 By Peter Nolan Smith

I returned to Manhattan committed to finding solace as a bachelor. Life was comfortable. My job at a nightclub paid my rent and more. Friends were fun. No highs or lows. The sameness of the days could last forever in most of America, but not New York.

In late April I was driving the Triumph down 3rd Avenue. The asphalt was slick. It had just rained and was promising more. Not many people were on the streets; a trio of addicts on 14th Street, two junkie whores working the car traffic of 13th Street, and at 12th Street a raven-haired girl in a long leather trench coat struggling with a bald man in denim.

When he slapped her, I jammed on the brakes and the bike skidded on the wet pavement to halt a foot from the couple. Her assailant unbuttoned his jacket. A gun was tucked into his waistband. Any sane man would have roared away like an A-4 jet slingshot off an aircraft carrier deck, instead I warned, “Don’t touch the girl again.”

“You want a piece?” He wrenched apart her coat. She wasn’t wearing any clothes underneath. A vee of pubic hair fluffed below the pouting belly. The pimp forced her forward by a shank of hair.

“Sometimes we have force them into what they like?”

The streetlight hit the face.

“Elana.”

“You’ve met before?” The bald man relaxed slightly.

In Paris."

"You really do get around."

"Fuck you." Elana dug a high heel into his foot and she jumped on my bike. “Go, go, go.”

We burned a red light at St. Mark’s and she snuggled against my spine.

“You happy to see me?”

“Yeah.”

"Take me someplace."

I drove to a bar far from 3rd Avenue. The three old drunks on the stools straightened their postures for Elana. I ordered two beers from the bartender and led her into a dark corner. Lifting the tail of her coat, Elana sat on my lap and her rounded ass settled into my crotch.

“I liked your lips in Paris.”

“I haven’t forgotten yours.”

“We weren’t so lucky that night.”

“Where’s Danny?” I had to ask. He was a friend.

“Danny and me go to Brest. His boat comes in. He says to meet him in two months. I wave good-bye and cry. I work in a dance bar in Amsterdam.” The intonation on ‘dance bar’ meant a strip club. “I make money. You like my dancing?”

“Who can I forget?” Her dance at the Reve was acid-etched in my retinas.

“Never I hope.” Elana wriggled sinuously, as her reptile tongue slithered into my mouth and I fell without any safety ropes to haul me from the chasm. Finally she released her hold. “Many men love me in Amsterdam. I meet this bald man and he buys me a ticket to New York, so I can find Danny. We arrive this afternoon and this night two friends visit his place. They want a ménage a quatre. I refuse and he beats me.”

Elana pressed my fingers to the raised welts on her belly. The story was simple and they always are, if the worst parts are left out. My muscles tensed into knots. She opened my fingers and guided my hand underneath her coat to her vagina. The lips were wet.

“That doesn’t matter any more. I need you. You tell me where first.”

No man can retain his sanity after hearing such a confession, but I only had time to lose half my mind, for the bald man shouted from three feet away, “You bitch.”

How he found us was unimportant and I shoved Elana at him. She scratched his face. Her attack opened his defenses for a hard-swung beer bottle. Blood spurted from a gash in his forehead and he fell to his knees, pistol in hand. One kick to the skull and he flopped to the floor. The bald man had paid more for the sins of others as well as his own.

Elana deftly rifled the man’s pockets. The bartender shouted he was calling the police. Brandishing a wallet and keys, she jumped to her feet and grabbed my hand. We ran to my Triumph.

The bike started with a backfire and we roared away from the bar. My temples pounded faster than the pistons of the 650cc engine and I wondered if the entire episode had been a cheap thrill. A glimpse over my shoulder revealed the bald man wasn’t a joke.

“We go to his place, get my clothes, and then you can have me any way you desire.” Elana directed me to a decrepit three-story building in Chinatown. The streets were empty and she slipped off the bike.

"I’ll be a minute.”

The door slammed shut and my hand revved the gas. When she emerged with one bag she smiled, "I half-expected you to be gone."

"I'm not going anywhere this time."

"So this is a raincheck?"

"Yes."

"Good.” Her arms curled around my chest and she nipped at my ear. “Let’s go to your place. Fast.”

We reached East 10th Street in less than two minutes and climbed three flights to my apartment in thirty seconds. I opened the door and she scampered into the unlit bedroom. Shucking her leather coat she fell on the mattress to become a carbon-black shadow on the white sheets.

“Come to me.”

I knelt between her legs and she locked her ankles around my hips to guide me deep inside her, saying, “Oh, yeah.”

With each orgasm Elana shape-shifted from vivid temple whore to virginal lover to hardened streetwalker to an aging courtesan, and finally an old lover telling a dirty bedtime story. There was no bald man, no Danny, no New York, no Paris, no anything. When I tried to roll off, she held on. “Stay in me longer.”

She aroused me once more with a stroke of my thigh. Her fingernails feathered the tight flesh behind my testicles and her teeth scrapped my foreskin. She hadn’t learned this technique at dance school.

“You bitch.” I grabbed a length of hair.

“I’m whoever you want me to be.” Her hands peeled her ass cheeks and I followed her darkest wish, this time for an hour and the next time to dawn and sleep.

I woke in bed alone, but Elana was no Cinderella. The water was running in the bathroom. Elana rested under a steaming surface with her black hair fanned on the curved edge, so she resembled a fairy-tale princess in slumber. With closed eyes Elana asked, “Do you have a girlfriend?”

“It matter, if I did?”

“Not this time.” She lolled her head and I pressed my thumbs into the taut muscles of her neck. Her sibilant moan verified if I didn’t have a girlfriend, I did now and she stood up in the bath.

“Are you scared?” Elana was five foot-four and weighed a hundred pounds.

“I can deal with you.” I wrapped her in a towel.

“You know that story I tell you about that man. I go look for him everywhere last year. In the end I find is you.” She let the towel fall to the floor. “I will kiss your skin and kiss your heart. I will kiss your body.”

I could have asked why. There had to be more than one reason. Maybe more than two, instead I let her fulfill this promise during the next three days in bed. The number of times we spoke could be counted on one hand. Truthfully words would have rotted the bonds of flesh. On the fourth evening Elana dressed in a black plastic dress and a matching coat.

“We’re going for a ride. I’ll tell you where, when we get there.”

The night air was warm and the trees were budding bright green leaves. My bike sped us downtown to under the Brooklyn Bridge. Elana tapped my shoulder and pointed to the concrete bumper encircling the Manhattan support tower. Upon reaching the concrete causeway to the bridge tower, she ordered me to stop.

“I have a special place to show you. It was in this movie WOLFEN.

“WOLFEN had a scene on top of the bridge.” I had seen the urban tale of werewolves several times. “There’s nothing here.”

“Only you and me.” She crawled through a breach in the chain link fence and walked out on the corroding concrete bumper. A tug hauling a barge blew its horn and its wake lapped at the pier. Traffic hummed overhead on the bridge’s steel gratings.

“I saw this pier in the background of the movie.” Elana placed her hands against the tower’s base. “You can feel the power of the city in the stones. Vibrating with a hum. Feel it through me now.”

“Here?” No one was in sight.

“Now.” Now had one meaning and afterwards she said breathlessly, “I have some more places to visit too.”

Elana was wild and I had no intention of taming her.

Out on a fire-twisted Hudson pier we coupled with total rejection of self-preservation. Inside an elevator stopped between floors with the alarm blaring I brought her to orgasm with my tongue. During a downpour we fucked against a post office wall, her skirt pushed above her hips and shirt opened to the waist. Neither of us noticed the passers-by. Once we were joined together, nothing and nobody was pulling us part. After a handful of such episodes I understood that Elana’s insatiability was destined to break me and I was beyond caring whether the wreckage was my body or soul.

The word ‘love’ was forming on my lips and other people loved Elana too. The homeless people on Avenue A called out her name. She always had a spare change. The police cars whooped in passing. She flashed her ass. The kids in the park loved to see her dance. She befriended the old Puerto Rican lady across the hall. They would sit in her kitchen and laugh at the Latin DJ’s jokes. Whenever I asked what was so funny, they laughed harder.

Sherri met Elana and the exchange of sordid tales was almost painful, except they were both so funny.

“You were made for the movies.” Sherri begged for Elana to come to LA.

“I’m happy right here.” Elana tore herself away from my cousin to sit on my lap.

“You got a good thing happening.” Sherri wore envy in her eyes, And don’t fuck it up by thinking of your ghost."

Ghost?" asked Elana.

Old story."

About the blonde girl."

You know about her?"

Everyone here tell me about Lisa.

You're not the same."

"No, I better." Elana wrapped her arms around me as if they were made for my shoulders.

“I’m her prisoner.” And a happy one too.

Elana attended the dance classes at the community center opposite my apartment. From my fire escape I watched her lewd spinning around a pole. This move offended the modernists, until a lascivious gesture dissipated their resistance and they gathered around the heretic like moths in a maelstrom for a reward of raw abandonment to which I was no stranger.

Elana returned from these classes to perform Salome to the music from the movie, VAMPYROS LESBOS, an earth nymph to Joni Mitchell or a jazzy angel to John Coltrane. Sapped of her reserves, she would collapse on the sofa and softly beckoned to take her.

One night as we lazed in the sexual afterglow, she said, “You not love me for me.”

“It’s not that I don’t love you.”

You are scared I can hurt you.”

“Sorry.”

“Not be sorry. You wanting my body is fine. I want you the same way. One girl in the dance class has seen you spying us. I told her you were my boyfriend. She wants to meet you. Can you handle two women at one time?”

“I can satisfy you, can’t I?” I dragged her into the bedroom and my heart nearly burst through my ribcage to prove my ardor.

She was ready for more and said, “I win.”

The proposition was forgotten, although I remembered her questioning my involvement. I wanted more from her. Walks in the rain and fireside chats were becoming more appealing than sex.

I returned to the apartment with flowers and found Elana was underneath a heavy-bodied female. She reached out with a rehearsed lethargy.

Powerless I dropped the flowers on the floor and days elapsed with the decreasing need for what she was more than willing to give without my telling her that I wanted something else. We were locked in the language of sex. My fingers entered secret passages, my tongue explored caves, and my penis was swallowed to the root, then the phone rang at dawn.

It continued throughout her free-fall of orgasms and I tried to knock the phone off the hook. She blocked my hand and held the receiver to her ear. Hearing the voice on the other end she squealed with an unbridled joy. “I’ll come to you.”

The caller was Danny and I smiled to hide my heart turning to dust.

“Where is he?”

“Gloucester.” She stroked my side. “Is it far?”

“Far enough? When are you leaving?”

“Today, if you give me the money for a bus.”

I swallowed hard. “Not tomorrow?”

“No, I have to leave today.”

“Get packed and I’ll drive you to the Bus Terminal.”

She collected her few belongings and informed my neighbor about her departure. The old bruja kissed her forehead. “Buena Suerta.”

Driving to Port Authority I contemplated leaving her on the street, except too many women had vanished from the bus station and I bought a round-trip ticket to Gloucester, thinking one day she might use the return half. At the gate for Boston, she said, “You knew one day he will call.”

“But not this soon.” I got no explanation how Danny knew she was at my place.

“I had fun.” Elana motioned for the driver to wait a second.

“Laughs too.” I was deaf to my heart begging her to stay. “You better hurry.”

She kissed my cheek and boarded the bus. It pulled away in a choking cloud of exhaust. I panicked and ran to my bike. The bus route was straight up 8th Avenue. I arrived outside to find a Midtown cop writing a parking ticket and he wasn’t buying any love story. Back on East 10th Street I purged my apartment of scent-saturated sheets, soiled panties, stray stockings, lipstick tubes, make-up, nail polish remover, combs, brushes, and hairpins.

Within two hours my place was as devoid of female accouterments as a Trappist monk’s cell. Not the way I liked it, simply the way it was. For now and a long time to come.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 6 By Peter Nolan Smith

At the beginning of 1986 Candia left for a photo shoot in the Alps.

Several days later She phoned to say her boss had invited the fashion team for a ski trip to Isola 2000. Having heard her opinion that skiers were too poor to vacation in the tropics, I bit my tongue and drank heavier than normal that weekend. Candia called on Sunday to say they were stranded by a snowstorm. After she hung up, I convinced myself this was a fling and everything would be like it was before, otherwise she would have never bothered with the call.

On the day of her return I cleaned the apartment, bought flowers, chilled a bottle of champagne, and sprayed a perfume on the bed for an evening of coaxing her into my arms.

Candia arrived late. A new silver fur coat adorned cinnamon skin untouched by the alpine sun and my heart crumpled like a cheap beer can. The telephone rang and she snatched the receiver out of my hand. After several whispers Candia announced, "I have to meet the Italian client at the Hotel Crillion for dinner."

"Go ahead." The look in her eyes said nothing I could say would change her plans.

She left without mentioning what time to expect her home. For certain it wouldn't be early.

I had dinner at La Coupole and took a taxi to the club. It was an off night and I ordered a whiskey-coke. By 3AM I drank myself partially deaf and dumb.

"What's wrong?" Bernard stopped my dancing on a stool to Arthur Lee's HEY JOE.

"Nothing another whiskey-coke wouldn't cure." I shouted for a refill and Bernard annulled my order. "Go home and sleep this off?"

"A house is not a home." I staggered to the entrance and a runway model from Baltimore waylaid my departure. "Care to join me for a nightcap."

"Where?" I had champagne waiting in a bucket of melted ice.

"Where is unimportant." And she whispered an obscene proposal. Her idea of a nightcap differed from mine. "So?"

My girlfriend was probably making love to another man, however I held the high moral ground. "Another night."

"Another night?" The beautiful redhead graced the cover of Elle. No male in their right mind had refused her favors and she said, "You're making a big mistake."

"It won't be the first or the biggest." I weaved out of the club into a flurry of errant snowflakes. My feet trudged across Place de La Concorde to the Seine. The river lay between the two banks like octopus ink and I lifted my leg onto the parapet.

Rue St. Honore. I ran off the bridge, as the fat flic yelled, "Arrete, arrete."

I easily outran the portly gendarme into a thick snow softening the night. Cars glided noiselessly on the streets, as I marched relentlessly to the 15th arrondisement, realizing while I might not forget this trespass, I could forgive Candia's sin. I just needed the chance.

Reaching the Impasse Dantzig I lifted my eyes. The lights in the atelier were off. My key turned in the lock. The door opened with a creak. An empty champagne bottle was on the floor between shiny Gucci loafers. They were neither my size nor style. A man moaned behind the nearest closed door and I charged into the bedroom with a roar. A balding man lifted his arms too late to deflect my fist and he tumbled semi-conscious onto the floor. I threw Candia on the floor. The girl nursing my cold, the lover cuddling me after sex, and the dinner companion laughing at my jokes were gone

"Why?"

"You know why," she spat with an unrecognizable hostility. “You never loved me. You loved a ghost. Your cousin told me about this 'Lisa' and she never loved you. No one will ever love you.”

I envisioned a deadly blow, police, and trial. No French court had convicted a man of a crime de passion, but my blow would have been revenge for her speaking the truth. I chucked the Mickey Mouse telephone through the window into the street, after which I scourged the couple from the apartment with the frayed wire. The man's suit and shoes followed it out the broken window as a petty act of vengeance.

I packed my clothes, journals, tape deck, camera, and photos. Five minutes later I fled the apartment fearing the arrival of the gendarmes, and hailed a taxi on the nearest boulevard. The hour and my bag explained the story and the unshaven driver shrugged knowingly, "Un hotel?"

"Ouais, le Hotel Marais." My accelerated breathing worried the driver, who asked, "Mssr., vous etes okay?"

"Ouais.

I lowered the window. The cold air failed to pluck the splintered razors from my heart. A bottle of tranquilizers rested in my coat. Three or four were on the menu. It took the driver 20 minutes to reach Rue Des Ecouffes. I paid with a 100-franc note.

"Keep the change." The sky was cloaked by glowering gray clouds. The day held no promise of a dawn.

"Merci." He drove away to pick up a couple holding hands.

I entered the hotel lobby with my hand gripping the bottle of tranks. The old woman was asleep at the desk. Waking her seemed a sin, except I had nearly broken the 5th Commandment twenty minutes before. I rang the bell and she blinked several times before recognizing my face from the previous stay.

"Ah, Mssr., je imagine que vous voulez une chambre."

"Une chambre pour un nuit." A room with a bath fulfilled my physical needs.

"Chambre 312." She passed over a brass key and indicated the stairs.

It was the same room from my previous stay. Nothing had changed. I sat on the soft bed and weighed my options. The pill bottle was only one route. The window was another. Neither would save my soul and I dropped three pills. The rest would have to wait for a more desperate occasion.

I woke to the shouts of the little gangsters on Rue des Ecouffes. The bells from a nearby church toned out the noon hour. The throbbing of my hangover was replaced by the resurrection of Candia's infidelity. She had brought her lover on purpose. Jack Lemmon must have felt the same way in THE APARTMENT when he realized Shirley MacLaine was having an affair with his boss, Fred MacMurray.

My hands mimicked the act of strangulation. I choked her ghost dead. Thin air was no replacement for a seventeen year-old's neck, except I was only a murderer in my most grievous thoughts and Candia's wrongs were forgiveable to a lost man, but I tore up the photos of Candia naked in the changing cabinets of the Piscine Deligny, singing in Clermont-Fernand, and visiting her grandmother in Vichy. The shreds built a pyre in the hotel ashtray and burned with a chemical speed. The flames wrinkled her face and an acrid fume corkscrewed into my nose. Fearing Candia might invade my body, I flushed the flaming photos down the toilet, then left the hotel for a drink.

The icy wind hurried me to the Tartine on Rue Du Rivoli and I sat on the terrace sheltered by a glass wall. The waitress wrote down my order of a cafe au lait, croissant, and two shots of Calvados before disappearing inside.

Waiting for my breakfast I viewed passing couples with hatred. Two more Calvados numbed my senses to the grisly weather and diminished the bite of Candia's words, Vanessa's coldness, and Lisa's disappearance. After a fifth applejack I failed to register someone sitting beside me, until he lit a cigarette.

"I've been looking for you." Bernard's stubble indicated taht he had not woken at his apartment.

"Why?" My face was numb from the alcohol.

"I called your house this morning and spoke with your girlfriend." Bernard signaled to the waiter for another round.

"More like my girlfiend." The change from dropping an 'r' from friend was lost on the Frenchman. "What she say for herself?"

"She is worried about you.” Bernard's eyes pursued two schoolgirls.

"If she cared about me, why she bring home that man?" I blew into my hands.

You Americans treat women as men. They are women and we have to protect the double standard, otherwise the battle between man and woman will be lost." Bernard waved to a model heading to a casting call. "You allowed her to have affairs and she concluded you did not care about her. She said you were still in love with another love. Some blonde."

I had told Candia the story once. I hadn't thought about Lisa since then. At least I didn't think that I had thought about her.

"I struck that man."

"He deserved The French like stories of hot blood. "Excellent, and now she respects you."

"Respects me?"

"Yes, a woman is like a horse. You hold the reins tight and the horse will throw you. Too loose and she will run away." He slapped his hands together. "Yeehaw."

"You've been watching too many cowboy movies. I wasn't raised to ht a woman. A man without a problem. Especially if he is in my bed." Not striking a woman was my parents' one rule that I obeyed without question. I was sadly learning that there should have been more.

"The caveman drags a woman by the hair to the cave." Bernard inhaled deeply on his cigarette. "They have a little corps-a-corps. She stays with him. Not the man who lets her ugh-ugh with another caveman."

"There are no drawings of Neanderthals dong that, only TV cartoons, however man's dominance over woman needs no historical proof in France. Women are not horse. This is the almost the 21st Century."

"Eh, alors, the collapse of classic family structures reinforces the need to establish a rapport de force," Bernard stubbed out his cigarette. "Yell at her, hit her, and make love. She expects you to act like a man, not a Mickey Mouse."

"Couldn't I be another Disney character? I really like Pluto."

"No, you are not a dog, you are not an ape. You are a man." My passivity ignited his machismo for my own good. "I saw you throw Brigitte Bardot out of a nightclub. Your friend Danny talked about your fights with the Russian mafia. Are you going to let a teenager push you around?"

"Sometimes you have to know when to do nothing."

"If you let this wound bleed, you will be no good for the next woman you meet."

"I'm done with women."

"Ha, there is always another woman. Even for you. A plus tard."

To prove his thesis Bernard stalked a fashionably-attired woman in her thirties. Within a few paces she rewarded his boldness with a smile and they linked arms.

Bernard was right. I had sung I'M A MAN a hundred times.

Restrengthened by the Yardbirds song, I shambled to the boulevard, foreseeing my kicking in the door, except every taxi was occupied and the urge to reclaim Candia was humbled by the icy drizzle.

I called Brigitte. She came across the bridge for lunch. Angus was happy to see me.

"I knew this would happen."

"I knew you would say that."

"Philippe said she was too young to be faithful." This was hard to take coming from an adulteress, but my problem with Candia had nothing to do with her infidelity.

"I was faithful."

"Only in body. That blonde in New York has a lock on your heart. She hasn't thought about you in years. Fool." Brigitte offered my old place on the sofa. Sleeping with Angus might accelerate the healing process, however I opted to remain at the hotel.

The owner brought me tea and a baguette every morning. Candia came to the club and asked for a second chance. It was more like the fifth. We slept together three nights and I got a venereal disease. She said it came from a toilet seat. Our final good-bye was at the VD clinic.

I bought a typewriter and wrote a novella about a nightclub owner being offered fame and fortune by Satan. A French production company invested money in a script of GO-GO GIRLS FROM HELL. Bernard hired three models to cut a record TAKE ME HIGHER. The three models got pregnant from their boyfriends and blamed me for the miracle of Immaculate Conception. The hundred sample records of TAKE ME HIGHER arrived warped as potato chips and the film company lost interest without the girls.

Worse Vadim and Lisa showed up at le Reve.

"Surprised to see me here." I bought a bottle of champagne.

"No, everyone said you were here." Her eyes were distant.

"They said it was fun here." Vadim held her hand.

"Some nights it is." Usually the ones Bernard and I drank too much.

"You ever get back to New York?" Vadim ordered a better bottle of champagne.

"Only once. I was told it was a good idea to stay away. No one has told me different."

"I followed the same advice." Vadim's eyes followed the waitress to the bar.

"Vadim can't go back to the States." Lisa ignored his surveillance. Her beauty was still breathtaking, but that gift was endangered at age thirty by the passage of youth.

"But we are welcome in Russia.” Vadim toasted me with a nearly empty glass.

"Back in the USSR."

"You should come out there. Moscow is wild like New York." Vadim glowed with pride. "Another few years and communism is dead."

"Yeah, you two were made for Russia." Lisa's disdain extended to both of us and I wondered how Vadim had survived the last four years with her.

"I like any place fun."

Bernard joined our table. We drank more champagne. Lisa kept saying she wanted to leave. Vadim wasn't in the mood to sit in a hotel. Bernard and he became friends that week. Lisa never came to the bar again.

Bernard accepted Vadim's invitation to vacation over the holidays in Ibiza. He wanted me to come too, but instead I bought a one-way ticket to America from a travel agency on the Boulevard St. Paul.

A taxi got me to Charles de Gaulle Aeroport with an hour to spare. I dumped my spare change into the charity bowl for children. There were no good-byes.

My parents didn't question my unannounced return and I celebrated a family Christmas with all the trimmings. My brothers and sisters sensed my smiles were superficial and asked me to stay, except Boston was too small after Paris and New York.

The Amtrak train took 5 hours to reach Penn Station. A taxi drove me to East 10th street. My apartment seemed tiny after living in Candia's atelier, but the pizza at Stromboli's was good and TV was in English. My friends initially greeted me with suspicion, since any absence from the city was regarded an act of treason to New Yorkers.

No one mentioned the Continental, Viktor Malenski, or Lisa, for Manhattan moves too fast to allow scandals to take permanent root. My mail from the past year held nothing from the NYPD and the phone messages complied by the subleasee were from friends and not Internal Affairs.

At the end of January I instructed Bernard to sell my share of the club. He warned this was an imprudent business move. I needed the cash. The money arrived the end of January.

An albino producer hired me to write a screenplay. We spent the winter in the Berkshire Hills, fleshing out a tale about a young mistress inheriting an offshore island in the Keys. He had me sign over the rights to WHERE THE HIGHWAY ENDS for $10,000 and a 1964 Triumph Tiger. The movie was made it to film.

"You should come out to LA," Sherri said XXX companies were paying good money for porno scripts.

"You said that before."

"And you said 'no'."

"Give me a good reason to come out."

"Maybe you can meet a nice girl."

“In the porno industry?"

"Well, maybe not nice, but sexy." She never lied to me, except about herself.

"I'll come out there."

I flew out to the valley and wrote several screenplays, however the industry was switching from film to video for the fast-forward action crowd and starlets would rather fuck a car valet than a writer. North Hollywood was hell for writers.

Without Che's star quality my cousin's films had degenerated to sloppy free-for-alls. Her name dropped from star to supporting roles and Sherri's condition worsened with an arrest for indecent exposure. After I bailed her out, she drove her battered Skylark directly to the dealer in Sunland.

"Maybe you should cool out. We could go to the desert."

"So you can fuck me for free like everyone else?" This was the drugs speaking.

"No, so you don't die." Her arms and legs were stitched with tracks. She was nodding behind the wheel and we narrowly missed a semi-trailer on the Ventura Freeway.

"Let me drive."

"No."

"You're going to kill us." I was desperate, but not that desperate.

“I survived being abandoned by my mother. I survived adoption. I survived these films. I survived Che leaving me." She cried for an hour by the side of the road. I held her in my arms. Worst was sure to come.

"You can't die on me. You promised you would push me down the stairs when I need to die."

"I’ll live that long." Sherri sniffed away the tears. "Even if it kills me."

Several days later Sherri dropped me at LAX and I wondered whether I would see her again. Our friends and enemies died from AIDS, ODs, suicides, and stupid accidents. Natural causes were for the rest of the world and so were normal relationships.

New York women were looking for millionaires. I didn’t stand a chance against bald-headed bankers or loud stockbrokers. On a visit to Boston my mother suggested visiting Ireland to find a woman like herself or my sisters.

"I’ll even pay the ticket. I know you want to marry and have kids."

"I do." It was the first time I admitted this goal.

"You'll never meet a girl like that in New York."

"Other people do. Maybe I'll be lucky."

"Lucky is for horse races." She believed more in prayers than casinos. "What about Ireland?"

“I’ll save it for a rainy day.” Every Irish woman left the Emerald Isle once she's old enough to breed or else she'll have a brood of five by age 20. I would go when the time was right and that time was not now.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 5 by Peter Nolan Smith

When a French worker says, "A month." he usually meant six weeks, so I arrived at Rue Faux, expecting no change after a two-week absence. Instead a new wall had been erected, the entrance had been restored to its gaudy glory, liquor bottles hung over the bar, and the dance floor shined from a new layer of lacquer.

"Where have you been?" Bernard cued up Willie Bobo’s SPANISH GREASE at the refurbished disc jockey booth.

"The bombs." I shrugged my excuse.

"Eh, alors?" The new speakers favored the clean sound of the Latino Swing.

"I didn't expect this much progress."

“A phone call here. A phone call there.” His brother held office in the socialist government, the club's liquor came tax-free from a military base, and our new bouncers were off-duty marines. Neither of us deemed these 'favors' inappropriate.

"Opening date is in five days."

"Damn."

"Problems avec ta copine?" Bernard nodded to the flute hitting a high note.

"Big problems. I promised Candia a trip to Disneyworld." I rolled my eyes. "Now we're opening I have to cancel."

"Ah, quais, Mssr. Mickey et les filles." Having known Candia since she was 14, Bernard was surprised that I had lasted longer than her other boyfriends and played Maurice Chevalier's THANK HEAVEN FOR LITTLE GIRLS.

"If you want to go, go. We have one more week at least."

“Thanks.”

I went upstairs to telephone Candia. She hung up a dozen times. Finally she answered and I blurted out, "I have a surprise for you. We’re going to Disneyworld."

"I can't. I have a job in Milan."

"Then we can go to dinner at La Coupole tonight."

"My plane leaves this evening." ADDICTED TO LOVE was playing in the background. She hated Robert Palmer's hit, since she hadn't been chosen as an android model for the video. Another man had bought her the record.

"Oh." I suspected that he was in the apartment and told Bernard that I would see him tomorrow.

"Embrace your chouchette for me."

I exited from the nightclub to a carless street resembling a scene out of the 1870s. A tent had been erected under a balcony. A young clochard was cutting vegetables into a pot. The thin bum was better clothed than most derelicts sleeping under the Seine bridges, yet a tremor sizzled in my spine, as he lit his stove. It didn't explode and I flagged a taxi, elated to have survived my fears.

At the atelier Candia was alone. A cigarette lay in the ashtray. The tip was bare of lipstick. Candia threw it in the trash and packed her bag for Italy. Her good-bye kiss was a peck.

Bernard and I worked twenty-hour days. Sleep was our only respite. Five minutes before the doors opened, the electricity blew the fuses. Bernard found the breakers and switched on the lights. We were ready for business.

Fun-loving Parisians flooded into Le Reve. Bernard’s DJing drove the teenagers onto the dance floor and they drank with an apocalyptical abandon. Candia showed up unexpectedly with her father. Johnny ran a small boite de nuit in St. Germain. He was considered a gangster. I bought a bottle of champagne. Candia's kiss was warm, but before I could hold her in my arms, Jacques tapped my shoulder.

"Someone to speak with you."

I accompanied him to the door and Jacques pulled apart the curtains.

The young clouchard was struggling with a lighter.

"He say why?"

"No," Jacques had only worked breaking and entering before my hiring him. All I had to do was say the word for him to prove his gratitude. "You want I make him go away?"

"No." Twenty francs would buy the bum a bottle of wine and good luck for le Reve. "I’ll see what he wants."

Jacques unlatched the ropes for the quartet of well-heeled youths from the 16th Arrondisement and I pulled out a few spare coins.

"Hey, you don’t recognize me?" The bum raised a smiling face.

Squinting I scrapped away the filth and hugged Danny Gordon for a short-lived embrace.

"When was the last time you bathed? You smell like a corpse."

"I didn't think the French cared about personal hygiene."

"I’m an American." Parisian men’s one bar of soap per annum didn’t excuse his smelling like week-old garbage and I opened the ropes to the amazement of several customers dressed a la mode. "We have a shower in the basement. I’ll cuff you a couple of drinks afterwards."

"That’s an offer I can't refuse," Danny broke out of his slouch. “I ran into your cousin in New York last year. She said you were here. Didn't you leave right after Viktor Malenski got killed at the Continental?"

"About then." My three-year exile hadn't lessened the danger of telling the truth.

"You were lucky. Another Russian was killed and twenty cops were arrested for an assortment of crimes."

"What about Arthur?"

"He was wearing a wire for the FBI."

"And he was shot?"

"Not at all. He's still the Prince of the Night."

"As you are here."

"My partner and I started this club. I get paid to act rude to the French. Can it get better than that?"

"You’re my new hero." He nodded to the cashier, who held her nose, as I led the DJ to the basement changing room.

"So how about a shower?" I opened the taps of the washing room.

"I'll be a new man after that." Danny stripped off his clothes and climbed into the steam-filled shower stall.

"You didn't see Lisa when you in New York?"

"Ha, I was wondering when you were going to ask that." Danny soaped his body. "Aren’t you over her yet?"

"Yeah, long ago."

"Right.” He didn’t believe me either. “I saw her once. She was with Vadim.”

“She ask about me?"

"Didn’t get a chance to speak with her." He soaped his hair. "Someone said she and Vadim were living in Russia."

"I haven't heard a thing." I left the washroom with his tattered clothes and dumped them in the trash bin. They had outlived their usefulness several people ago and I rummaged through a backstage closet. I hung a musty suit from the 1950s on the door and went upstairs with two cases of champagne. None of it vintage. Bernard was waiting at the bar.

"You throw Brigitte Bardot out of the club, then you let in a clouchard." Ordering drinks Bernard asked, "So who is your guest?"

"He’s a friend from New York." I ordered a whiskey.

"So the Americans are exporting bums to France." My partner scoffed with the immense pleasure of hearing that an Amerlot had plunged to the bottom. His happiness was short-lived, for a twenty-minute shower and a suit transformed Danny into a modern-day Casanova for Le Reve’s haughty female clientele.

"A new man." I led him to the bar.

"Same old me, just cleaner."

We toasted the East Village. Candia danced with him twice. Her father knew Danny's dad from the Korean War I had another drink. It wasn't my last.

Candia announced her departure and I gave her a sloppy goodnight kiss.

"You are not so handsome as a drunk."

"Everyone else is pretty when I'm drunk, but me."

"Fool."

"A fool in love with you."

"You say those words so easy."

"I mean every syllable." I escorted her to a taxi.

"Then what is love?" She shut the taxi door before my reply and I stood on the sidewalk tryiing to come up with answer.

I drank the rest of the night with her father, trying to gather insight into his daughter. Instead he recounted his falling out of plane in the Korean War. "I didn’t die either.”

He had a lot of stories like that. So did Danny and me too. As the night drew to a close, I asked Danny. "You have anything in your 'room' you want to keep here?"

"No, ain't nothing worth stealing."

"What about your trumpet?"

"I hocked it in Spain."

"Pawn it? You lived for your music."

"Like you used to live for your poetry." Danny chugged his whiskey.

"I couldn’t even write in meter." The illiterati might have overlooked this fault, however grammar school nuns had beaten a respect for classical cadence and proper grammar into my knuckles and editors came from the same school.

"Your stopping partially inspired my dumping the horn."

"Please don't follow my failures." My blame plate was full. "You could have been another Chet Baker."

"I'd rather be Freddie Hubbard, but who was I kidding? Our band sucked and no one cared if we sucked. We were young and pretty. I don't regret quitting music and DJing and I bet you don't regret stopping writing either. All that 'art' shit was a monkey on our backs. Now we can live as real men are supposed to live.”

Danny spoke with the coolness of a man who had abandoned a woman he didn't love after seeing her with another man.

"Better than pretending to be Hemingway." Ghosts of stories lurked in my skull as half-built ships in dry docks.

"Or Chet Baker." He pushed back his wavy hair.

"But why are you living on the street. You belong to a cult giving away their possessions?"

“I’m waiting for my ship to come in.” The ex-trumpeter nearly swooned off the stool. “The whiskey kinda went to my head. I’ll be fine once I’m out at sea.”

“Your parents bought you a boat?” A 50-foot catamaran was not beyond their means.

“I’m not taking their money anymore.”

“Yeah, fuck money.” I said, while wishing that his parents adopted me.

"I'm talking about fishing and not the rod-and-reel shit either. Nets and trawlers and thousands of hooks capable of tearing the flesh off your bones. And tons of fish on the wild sea." His voice climbed an octave with an imagined voyage to the North Atlantic. "Fishing ala Captain Courageous for cod on the deep. Hacking fish from a line, as the ship plows into the sea and resurfaces streaming foam. Fishing in the black of night, the wind___"

"Stop already, I’m seasick."

"Mal de mer has two cures. Land or drowning." Danny possessed a convert's devotion for his new profession.

"If you love fishing so much, what are you doing in Paris? I mean hanging a line off a bridge into the Seine isn't that exciting."

“No, the sea gives the fears and the fears are many, but a long-line boat from Gloucester is supposed to dock in Brest and I'll fish the Georges Bank." Danny picked at a front tooth.

“When are you going to sea again?” I had lived in Gloucester. Fishing was a tough both on and off shore.

"Maybe a week. The wait is unimportant, if I'm on a boat in the end."

"I wish I could offer you a place to stay." A week was a long time on the street. Even longer at my place.

"Thanks, I'm fine in my humble hovel." Danny lifted a hand to forestall any more of my apologies. "You remember what your cousin said about men wanting a virgin or a whore. Well, I have my girl coming from Madrid. Crazy girl. Young like your girlfriend. Her mother was a flamenco dancer. Likes having sex. Her body is insatiable____" Limb by limb Danny reincarnated an ancient sex cult's goddess, finally accusing her of nymphomania. "It's no Roman orgy. It's hard work. You'll see. Believe me, you'll see."

His prediction was almost a curse and that night as I was having sex with Candia, a super 8mm porno movie flickered in the shadows. The teenager noticed my distraction and asked, "What are you thinking?"

"About how much I want you." I thrust harder into her vagina.

"Ouais?" She rolled out of bed to vainly examine my clothes for the telltale signs of infidelity without success, since the only traces of another woman were in my mind.

"I'm tired of living with another woman's ghost." She lay on the bed, fiercely clutching her Mickey doll. "If it's not the skinny blonde from America, then it is someone else."

"There’s no one, but you." I reached over to Candia. She wasn't having any of me and I fell asleep on my side of the bed, as dreams of Lisa were replaced by those of Danny's girlfriend.

She sounded too good to be true, but whenever models, dancers from the Paris Ballet, French actresses, artistes, and svelte students from the Sorbonne tried to seduce Danny, he told them, "I'm saving myself for Elana."

One night Danny didn't show at his usual hour and I checked his shack. His canvas sea bag was gone. After the club closed I began to worry, since Paris was as tough a town as New York. When I reported his disappearance to the police on the third night, the gendarme joked that people disappear in Paris all the time.

I didn't laugh, but should have.

Two nights later Danny approached Le Reve, newly shaven and with his haircut. When he hugged me, I smelled a woman’s perfume. "Let me guess. Your girl came into town."

"I told you she would." He beamed the joy of a sailor midway through his shore leave.

"I was beginning to believe she was a fragment of your imagination."

"No, she's the real thing."

A slender female in a cotton shift was crossing Rue Faux. Her black hair was disheveled; several buttons had been popped from her dress, and her cheeks were flushed from exertion. She personified the wraith from my dreams and even more so when Danny whispered, "We had sex on top of the Opera house."

"Good view." Two bodies atop the art-deco palace.

"I didn’t go there for the view." Danny introduced us.

"He talks about you." A serpentine arm encircled his waist.

"What he say?"

"That you’re a genius for not wanting to be a genius." The two appeared deep in love.

"I specialize at failurology." I ordered three glasses of champagne at the bar and fended off my jealousy. "Here’s to making Danny happy."

"To everyone's happiness." Elana stopped my raising the glass. "Yours, mine, and Danny's."

"Watch out, my friend." Danny slapped my back. "Elana has you in her sights."

"I have a strict rule about sleeping with friend's girlfriends or wives."

"I like a man of principle." Her body melted into his and I feebly excused myself to count cash in the office.

When I returned, the staff and customers had vanished from the bar. Plastic Bertrand's JET BOY JET GIRL was playing underneath my feet. I descended the spiral staircase and pushed my way through the bustling crowd to the dance floor.

Danny was in the DJ booth and Elana writhed against a shining steel pole, then the song segued to The Kingsmen’s raucous MONEY and she stripped off the cotton shift and flung it to a wide-mouthed Bernard. She deftly popped a flimsy bra to bare cupcake breasts and her fingers salaciously beckoned the men to join her in a dance.

My attempt to break through the mob came too late, for Danny leapt into the circle and yanked Elana by the hair. The club-goers were delighted by the impromptu Apache dance. Danny seized the girl like a Roman taking a Sabine woman. I advanced one step to cut in, then the song stopped and the crowd applauded the two dancers.

Bernard segued into Gainsbourg's LOVE ON THE BEAT and Elana bowed her head. A string of black hair bisected her face. This apparition of a lost Mayan princess paralyzed nearly every man in the room and Danny held up an empty glass. "Hey, man. You'll break your eyes that way."

"I liked her dancing." It had emptied my soul.

"Only liked?" Elana stepped into her dress and stuffed the bra into Danny's pocket

"He loved it."

Danny laughed hard.

"And you owe us a drink for the show."

"More than one." I ordered the bartender to give Danny and Elana whatever they wanted and left the nightclub to clear my head. The air was cold and I prayed against any more temptations. God averted his gaze, for a voice said with a Castilian lisp, "I saw your look."

"What look was that?"

“The devil was trying to buy your soul.”

"What's the temptation?"

"You and me naked in warm weather so sweat will form on my belly and___”

"You're Danny’s girl." I thought he was in love.

“Relationships don't stop the work of the Devil." Her hand grasped mine. "I tell you a story. I was born in Madrid. My mother she worked as a flamenco dancer and also took men home too. Una puta. One night she didn’t come back. Where she went, I never found out. My aunt took care of me. We moved to Barcelona and she worked the Ramblas. Men came to her room and I hid in the closet. At first I shut my eyes, thinking they were killing her. After a while I watched. It was better than TV. Sometimes I had to wait in the corridor with the other children. We played the same games as our parents; only it was a joke, then when I’m twelve a man comes to my aunt. He is handsome. He wants me to watch. Nothing more. My aunt tells me to leave. I say I have already seen her do everything. The man gives us both money. I think one day he will take me too. He never does he touches me. Not when I was thirteen fourteen or even fifteen. I watch and he wouldn't let me touch myself either. Watch. Nothing else and then one day he stopped coming to see my aunt. Maybe she was too old or I was too old. You know what?"

"What?" I was helpless as a turtle on its back.

"You look a little like him?"

"I've had never been to Spain."

“That shouldn’t stop you from making my dream come true.” She rubbed her body against mine like a stray cat seeking a home and then slinked into the club, murmuring, "Moi et toi."

I bit my lip and followed her into Le Reve.

Elana pushed a handsome boy off a stool. His frustration was almost audible, as my hand trailed up her thigh hiking the short dress higher.

"You touching me while other men watch thrills every atom in my body." She arched her neck back with eyes searing the ceiling. "They want to be you and I want you in me. Can we go someplace?”

A cheap hotel was across the street. No one would miss me for an hour, however my answer died with Candia's entrance. She stormed out of the club and I leaped off the barstool in pursuit.

"What about us?" Elana caught me at the door.

"I'll have to take a rain check."

"Rain check?" I didn't waste any time on translations and chased Candia to the corner. Our fight continued on the cab ride and in front of our atelier she tried to hit me with her high heels. I grabbed her arms and begged her forgiveness.

"Why?"

"Because I didn't do anything wrong. I've never been with another woman since I met you and you're more to me than a warm bed."

These words granted a temporary absolution and we went upstairs to make love so frantically that our ardor massacred every woman in my life to a first kiss in kindergarten, however in my sleep Elana danced out of the mist, wearing a sheet of sweat. My tongue must have been licking my lips, for Candia punched my arm, "If you dream about other women, sleep in another bed."

I wandered into the living room. I was trapped by another ghost. This time one in the future.

The next night I constructed a bed of pillows in the nightclub office. My preparations were wasted. Jacques handed a note from Danny. The New Yorker was going down to his ship in Brest. Elana had also left Paris for good. I was staying in Paris. I had no idea what for.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA - Chapter 4 by Peter Nolan Smith

That night I stopped at a disco on Rue Montmartre, intending to wait out Brigitte's early morning departure. Philippe's previous girlfriend danced with a natural wantonness to WARM LEATHERETTE. Her partner was a famous French singer. My eyes x-ed him from the club.

Honey-hued skin covered the teenager's long lean limbs. Lisa had possessed the same boyish body. Candia noticed my staring and I turned to the bar. The cold beer in my hand was empty and I would have left, if Candia hadn't accosted me.

"Your friend Che says you're good in bed."

"She was exaggerating." Lying was more like it.

"She didn't seem the type to joke about sex." A finger toyed with a froth of golden hair. "And I saw the way you looked at me."

"My cousin says you can tell how someone fucks by the way they dance." I was trying to scare the half-Puerto Rican/Jewish teenager from any entanglement with someone almost twice her age, but Candia simply smiled and said, "Long and hard."

"Shouldn't you be home?"

"Girls like me aren't expected to be Cinderella." A kiss led to my hotel, where she stripped off my clothes with teenage hunger. She emerged the victor. On sweat-damp sheets Candia said, "You weren't half-bad."

"Not the best?" My flesh was scrapped raw.

"My ex was huge." She stroked me to a painful hardness and lay on her stomach with her ass in the air. "I like it from behind. It makes you seem bigger."

I attributed the marathon to her half-Puerto Rican/half Jewish blood. As she got dressed, I thought that was it, instead she said, "You have no one and I have no one. Everyone else does. Winter is coming on. I don't like sleeping in a cold bed. You want to live with me?"

"What about love?" Staking my heart on a teenager's whim was a risky proposal. My other choice was more of the same of the months before last night. I played the long odds.

"I think you know the difference." She kissed my cheek once and went to the door. "Most men do by your age. So what will it be? Me or a long cold winter?"

"Warm in bed sounds good."

Candia went home to inform her mother, while I crossed the river to Brigitte's apartment. She considered my moving as a betrayal of her dog's love. As a friend she should have wished me good luck, stead she said,

"What does a man want from a woman? To be his bride? The mother of his children? What can that little bitch know about love?"

"About as much as anyone." No formula predicted the paths of the heart.

"You think sex will help you forget that girl from Buffalo?" Brigitte's jealousy was more deep-rooted. "Fucking is not the answer."

"Neither is sleeping alone." I packed my bags in five minutes. Angus whined his good-bye and Brigitte asked for the keys. One word would have saved my long train ride to the 15th arrondisement, except the door shut and I heard the TV telling the news. I walked out of the building and caught a taxi on the bridge.

The driver knew the address. Candia's atelier at the artist refuge La Ruche was located across from Paris' Lost and Found Bureau. Her airy 1930s artist loft contrasted with the quartier's dreary buildings. My house-warming gifts were a stereo tape deck and an unspoken vow of fidelity. Candia slept in my arms surrounded by Mickey Mouse dolls. My French improved in bed, although the honeymoon period had a short shelf-life.

I stole books about love and sex. The millions of words failed to answer any question about love. Candia sensed my malaise and suggested a psychiatrist, who prescribed pills. The downers offered more emptiness and I threw them into the gutter.

We ate boudin with her mother on Sundays and dined at cous-cous restaurants on Monday. We vacationed twice in Normandy. Our reflection in the store windows mirrored those of content couples as long as I didn't look in our eyes.

Bernard and I opened a dance club near Opera. Le Reve's plush decor harkened back to the 50s. The young rich loved the mix of soul and classic French hits stitched together by Bernard's world hits. We hired a young black bouncer to handle the voyous. Jacques had run with several gangs from the outer suburbs. A two-year stint in prison had not soured his smile. The young girls from the good neighborhoods thought the muscular Martiniquean handsome and came in droves to try their luck.

These beauties in turn attracted men who brought them drinks. A glass of champagne cost $20 and Le Reve coined money.

A week after the opening an older man entered with two dowdy women in fluffy coats. His nose was splayed across his upper lip like a wet sox. An argument ensued with the cashier about the cover charge.

"Give one reason you don't have to pay and you can come in for free." I could tell he had been someone once. "All you have to say is you're friends with Moses and you're in."

"We never pay," the ex-fighter rasped in a punished voice. "Not to un putain Amerlot."

"Fucking American." The insult was rewarded with an immediate response. "Jacques, escort these frogs out of the club."

Puzzlement mired on Jacques' face and the fiftyish blonde woman glared with disbelief. She looked very familiar and I ran out to say they could come in, except they had already reached the boulevard.

"So can you explain why you threw out Brigitte Bardot?" Bernard asked at the door.

"Brigitte Bardot?" The boxer’s companion re-assembled into the legendary sex symbol as would any woman who was Brigitte Bardot.

The story of her rejection hit the morning papers and I expected the Paris Police to institute deportation proceedings, instead the passage of time had rendered the animal lover's beauty passe to today's youth and our business doubled with their appreciation of my indiscretion, though Bernard suggested that I be more tact in the future.

"We will be old one day too."

At home the story between Candia and me was fraying at the edges, for the happiness of a relationship can be measured by the distance between a man and woman in bed and my arrivals near dawn earned Candia's back. Our lovemaking diminished to a monastic stalemate and her silence indicted every man as a potential threat.

We needed time apart and Candia spent the summer modeling in Japan. I called Tokyo every night. Her rare pick-ups mimicked Lisa's vanishing act in Europe and my imagination painted of a pantheon of Japanese men eating sushi off her body. Sherri came to perform a series of lesbian films in Versailles. This time she was alone. Che had run off with a man.

"Why are we unlucky in love?" I asked at La Coupole Brasserie.

"We are lucky in love. It's relationships we suck at," Sherri eyed a fresh-faced Sorbonne student, then her lids drifted across her irises. She was treating her pain with drugs. "At least long relationships."

"Any time I've been faithful to a woman, it's ended badly." Most of my romances had ended like a 747 cartwheeling into an Iowa cornfield.

"Any time you have been unfaithful you've achieved the same result." Her remedy for a broken heart was an orgy of women topped by heroin.

"Meaning?" My remedy was more wine.

"Meaning you shouldn't worry so much about love." Sherri autographed a waiter's bill. "You can't do anything about the things you can't do anything about."

"So nothingness is easier to achieve than somethingness." I envisioned sitting in bed alone with the clock ticking out the seconds at the speed of a 45 spinning at 16 RPMs.

"No, some things you can't change, because they're beyond your power."

"So I should do nothing."

"Something will happen when you least expect it."

"And if it doesn't?"

"Then I'll push your wheelchair down the stairs when you're 80."

"That a promise?" Earlier would be better.

"We're family. Remember?" At least Sherri had Boo although parrots usually outlive their owners.

"Cousin and cousin."

"Forever."

Sherri huffed some Persian Brown and nodded into the brasserie banquet.

I ordered another bottle of Sancerre. I leaned against Sheri after the second. I don't receall how I got back to Candia's home, but she wasn't there yet. I slipped into bed and thought about my life.

At my age I should have had a wife, a car, and kids plus a dog and bills.

I probably should have drunk another bottle of wine.

I reached over for Candia. The bed was empty. She was still in Japan. I dressed quietly and went to the phone booth in front of the Bureau Des Choses Trouves et Perdus. I dropped several 10-Francs cons and the slot and came home. My father answered and asked, "When are you going to settle down?"

"You mean move to Boston and live like everyone else?"

"It worked for your mother and me."

"I'll give some thought."

"You're only thirty-two. Don't throw the rest of your life away."

"I won't." I didn't have the heart to tell him that living with a teenager in Paris was as settled as I could manage in 1984. He was a 9-to-5 guy and loved my mother at first sight.

Candia returned in late August. We didn't have much time left. The phone rang at odd hours. If I answered, the caller hung up.

Suspicions bred accusations bound by resentment and we would have probably broken up, except Middle East terrorists bombed Paris to gain freedom for three imprisoned comrades.

A Sunday night explosion on Rue Faux barely scratched its target and no one had been injured, however the rest of the street got off less fortunate than the Israeli bank. The blast shattered every window on the block, charred a dozen cars, and shoved our nightclub's ornate entrance onto the dance floor.

"On a la chance." Bernard gingerly ran his finger over the blistered woodwork.

"Yes, we were damn lucky." If Le Reve had been open, the casualty list would have topped a hundred. The possibility of a thirty-two year-old American heading the 'dead' list didn't deter a police inspector from interrogating un estranger as the primary suspect.

"Merely a formality."

"Do I need a lawyer?" I asked the policeman and he shook his head with a laugh. "Not unless you are guilty."

Bernard agreed with this assessment and advised to do nothing until charged or arrested. As a French citizen he was familiar with the Napoleonic legal aberration of guilty until proven innocent. His nonchalance demeanor evaporated with the contractor's estimate that the repairs would take at least a month.

"This is impossible." He ranted against the sloth of French workers. A few glasses of cognac redirected his rancor to the real culprits. "C'est le guerre."

And the war killed and maimed innocent people throughout the French capitol, while the socialist government played tough guy. Having escaped one bombing I imagined lightning wouldn't strike twice and resumed my normal walks around the city.

Two days later I had a coffee at the Cafe Tartine in St. Paul. I visited the Eglise St. Gervais and lit a few candles for peace. I might have been an atheist, but childhood habits died hard. I walked across the courtyard of the Hotel de Ville, enjoying the spring sun on my skin.

A powerful detonation knocked me off my feet. The ringing in my ears was replaced by the cries and I ran to the post office to wrestle the wounded from the debris. At home I washed off the dust and decided to not give the terrorists a third shot and bunkered for the siege's duration at Candia's apartment.

Two days later the modeling agency cancelled her bookings. The seventeen year-old was more bored than scared by this enforced confinement. Her phone conversations were conducted in whispers.

"We should go to America." Only one hope existed for us.

"You think I can work in New York?" Candia's career was in a state of stagnation, since the better-paying commercials and editorial work in France were reserved for girls with Caucasian roots.

"They love girls like you there." A mulatto stood a slightly better chance in America, plus a friend was the photo editor for Details and another comrade shot photos for Elle.

"New York has to be safer than Paris."

"Fantastique. I want to visit Disneyworld." She squealed with teenage delight.

"Yes, we can go see Mickey." I didn't explain Orlando was over 1200 miles from New York and reaped the benefits of that deceit in bed.

In the morning I opened the atelier windows. A soft breeze carried the traces of Africa. I listened for anything else and heard no explosions. At noon Radio Nova announced Mitterand's government had freed the Lebanese prisoners. Hearing the news, Candia hugged a Mickey Mouse doll.

"What about Disneyworld?"

"We can go after the summer." I had a business to run.

"You promise we see Mickey." Her feet stamped on the floor.

"I have to check on the nightclub." I dressed quickly. Dishes flying at my head completed her rage.

"You can sleep at the club tonight, if you love that place so much."

Her suggestion was an order to be disobeyed. Flowers and a nice dinner would earn a reprieve, but she wouldn't forget my promise to visit Disneyworld until passing through the turnstiles of the Magic Kingdom. Women have an unforgiving memory and I had learned to regard that a blessing as much as a curse.

Burning Credit Cards

The Mayor of LA has accused the Occupy LA protestors of damaging the grass in their campsite. Riots police have been deployed to protect the lawn from further harm.

"After 56 days of not enforcing three city laws that prohibit the use of that park, the time is now," announced Police Chief Beck, however the midnight deadline passed without the planned eviction, thus disrupting the security of the nation. Tear gas, billy clubs, and officers trained by Homeland Security to quell violent demonstrators remain at the ready.

Banks are worried that the protests will disrupt the holiday buying frenzy, but shoppers faithfully swarmed to the malls on Black Friday to outspend 2010's orgy of consumerism by 7%. ATMs were flooded by consumers eager to rescue the economy from the recession, each time getting hit by a charge of $1.50. The banks reap over $2 billion from ATMs along with another $36 billion in fees from the masses. All of this is profit and in this country profit is the bottom line for the corporation.

Carry cash, comrades.

Never buy what you can't afford, unless the aim is to never pay the credit card bills.

Don't worry you credit rating is shit.

Burn the cards to the limit.

You have nothing to lose but a good time.

PETER NOLAN SMITH READING AT MoMA 02 08 18 Club 57 Show

FIRST CHAPTER OF THE END OF MAYBE READ BY PETER NOLAN SMITH - VIDEO BY ERIC MARCIANO - MUSIC BY ANDREW POLLOCK

RULES OF KLAUS READ BY WILLEM DAFOE - VIDEO BY ERIC MARCIANO

BAD POETRY OF PETER NOLAN SMITH READ BY LARRY FLEISCHMAN

DUELLING JOURNALS BY ANN MAGNUSON AND PETER NOLAN SMITH

THE END OF GAYBOY READ BY PETER NOLAN SMITH

To view show, please go to the following URL

https://youtu.be/yDd4WfrPh58

FDTrump's Million MAGA Parade

I'm 68 years old. I have been to every state other than North Dakota and Kentucky, where my fther served in Lexington testing radar-directed 20 mm cannons on B-25. The casualty rate was 20-30% depending on weather. He and I have been to Florida, Virginia, New York, Washington, Oregon, Wyoming, Montana, and all of New England. Our roots are deep.

During the 2020 election season I told Trump supporters that I possessed the right to vote seven times due to my Mayflower heritage. None of them researched the fallacy of my claim and expressed outrage at this privilege. My Democratic friends were also astounded by this arcane honor.

My Irish grandfather and anamesake was a ward healer for Jamica Plains in Boston and our great mayor James Michael Curley said often, "Vote early and vote often."

That is politics.

THere is no democracy otherwise there would be no electoral college.

In my lifetime there have been several stolen elections.

All it takes is one county in one state coupled with a little political devilry.

Chicago in 1960 for Kennedy.

The landslide of Nixon in 1972.

Watergate and worst.

In 1980 Reagan's henchmen convinced Iran's leaders not to release the US Embassy hostages until his inaugeration.

His reward was his wife giving Sinatra a blowjob in the White House toilet.

Bill Clinton won in 1992 for having helped the CIA traffick cocaine into Fort Chafee, Arkansas and stated the War of Drugs.

George Bush Jr. was awarded the presidency for test cocaine during the Iran-Contra years.

Al Gore lost by less than 600 votes and not a single white democratic congressman protested the closure of the vote count in Palm Beach County.

John Kerry never stood a chance.

Now we are now.

Trump supporters are rejecting the popular vote with cries of fraud.

In the 2016 election there were only four fraudulent votes amongst the hundred votes cast.

Trump called for them to descend on Washington.

8000 showed up.

Not a million.

Even if you can't count on all your fingers and thumbs.

FDTrump supposedly drove through the crowd on his way to play golf, even though eight thousand loyalists is enough to overthrow a country.

The Bolshevicks ended the rule of the Tsars with three-thousand supporters and a simple slogan - Bread Land Peace.

Sorry, but I'm going golfing doesn't cut it.

ps The Proud Boys?

Feh.

Joe Biden won. Deal with it. Heal with it. Let's get back to eating hot dogs and drinking beer.

My son Fenway loved beer.

Drinking With Golem

Facing the New Year.

I may be moving to Paris to pursue my poetry career,

Unless I get a teaching job in Nunavut

An Arctic Capitol.

My belief in no commercial sell-out and bad grammar and worst typing skill

Has achieved defectum sin laude

Or failure without praise

Leading to exile from a room without scent

Like a dead body never meant for a grave.

No one lives forever.

Some don't live at all.

Last week Rebbe Shane spoke about the Golem at his shul.

I didn't understand a word of Hebrew,

After his lecture the rebbe explained that Adam was also created from mud.

I remembered the legend of Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the late 16th century rabbi of Prague, and said, "It is all a myth."

One of his taktil took offense.

"Golem is a legend waiting for his time and as long as there is evil the Golem will walk the earth."

"What about Dachau?

"גולם. Where was Yosselethen?"

One of his students One the courage to say,"מְעִילָה"

I said, "Not sacrilege. Truth. and there is only one truth."

"And what is that?"

"That there is no truth other than what we find in wine."

Rebbe Shane said, "In vino veritas."

We left his disciples and he said, "Sometimes you are a shegutz arseloch."

"Fuck em if they can't take a joke."

"No poems can please for long or live that are written by water drinkers."

Horace."

"Rechtig."

"And the Golem drinks with us tonight."

"And all our ghosts."

He will be a quiet friend."

Dank Himmel for that.

I was doomed to drink Kosher wine, but after a few glasses even yayin kacher tasted good and even

An angel of death always thirsts for wine after blood.

Especially if he is made of clay.

As the Inuit say in Nunvut.

Inuuhiqatsiaq.

Superstitions a la Carte

Thais have more superstitions about food than the Irish have about beer. Here’s a short list of don’ts. Eating a double banana will give a woman twins, which must be tough for those showgirls doing the banana tricks at go-gos. Eating before your elders will reincarnate you as a dog. This rule is waved for disasters and fast food restaurants. Eating food without rice will give you rickets. Eating salt under a tree will kill the tree. Eating other people’s food without permission will swell your throat, so schnorrers beware. Schnorrer is a Yiddish term for people who eat from another person’s plate without permission. I’m sure there’s lots of Yiddish superstitions too. Eating a kids’ left-overs will make them naughty. Eating before monk during the day will turn you into a ghost. Eating corn with the flu will raise your temperature. Never eat all the rice on your evening plate. Leave a little for the ghosts. Eating chicken feet will give you bad handwriting. My wife loves chicken feet. Yech. Eating chili sauce from a mortar bowl will give your kid big lips. Eating turtles will make you walk slow. Eating chicken feet make me sick. The last is about eating dog. I’ve feasted on dog in Indonesia. It doesn’t taste like chicken feet. It’s actually delicious, but Thais think if you eat it, then you will be possess by the dog’s spirit. Arf Arf. Is that such a bad thing?