June 21, 1990 - Paris - Journal Entry

Hiding Behind Fats - Paris - 1983

Back in 1983 I worked the door at the Bains-Douches in Paris.

The owner suggested hiring new blood for security to deal with allowing people of color other than whites into the club, since the original bouncers barred all blacks and arabs, males, although not females.

My first choice for back-up was Big Jacques.

Jacques Negrit was a tall, handsome and good-natured Martiniquean twenty year-old from the projects of the peripherique.

His gang was called Les Bufalos.

I liked Jacques and didn't trust the French bouncers, who had been working since its inception and thought they ruled the door. They weren't wrong. Eveerything they said went, until I got there and they turned their backs on me. Once I had been shot at by a Sentier mafia who I had refused entry. They didn't even bother to stop playing billiards

My boss agreed to hire Jacques, although he was surprised by my suggesting, Jacques' pote, Fats.

"What can he do? He eats like a horse."

My patron was right, but I said, "Jacques, stand behind Fats."

The big man's real name was Philippe. He was smarter than most everyone at the Bains-Douches and like Jacques gentle as sleeping bears

Jacques crouched behind Fats, who was munching frites from the nearby merguez stand.

"Can you see Jacques?"

"No."

"So when anyone attacks us with a gun, we hide behind Fats. He'll block any bullets."

Better we don't open the door.

The glass was an inch thick. ."

"Give him a job." My boss green-lighted hiring Fats, who was upset by my demonstration of his worth, but I said, "Fats, you're one of us. You're smart and funny, but more importantly you're a Bafalo."

"Same as you, Pete Johnson." Jacques loved calling me that and I turned to Fats. "I got you a job. I was just kidding about blocking the bullets."

"Casse-toi." He didn't stop eating the frites and smiled at the thought of having a real job.

It was his first

Now he's a head of a security firm in France.

The Bafalos handle all the concerts and big shows.

And I get into them for free, because I'm a Bafalo too and we are all brothers to the end.

ps hiding behind Fats was a good strategy.

GHOUL OF PARIS by Peter Nolan Smith

The 1980s were thirty years in the past from the 2010s and when I recounted stories at the 169 Bar, my young listeners might suspect that I was lying about jumping off the Quincy Quarries cliffs or nearly making love with Darryl Hannah in Jamaica or watching bears eat garbage at a Maine dump.

Sometimes I wondered if they are right, but my memory was spot on about many things like how in 1983 every night a Paris friend and his girlfriend left the Bains-Douches nightclub high on heroin to sleep in the cemetery of Pere Lachaise. Guilhomme was a cold-wave musician. His lead singer Eric was squeamish at the sight of blood in needles and tolerated Guilhomme for his talent at the keyboards.

Their crow-black band never possessed a name. A model/friend from LA suggested Les Mortes D'Aube.

"I love The Dead of Dawn," Guilhomme trilled, who resembled an unburied cadaver. His chubby copine was a Pigalle dancer with orange hair and skin as white as chalk. She dressed like an bloated cadaver, her dress in tatters. Sex had nothing to do with their relationship. He was gay and Claudine was asexual. The two shared a love for drugs.

Neither junkie had money for a room,. Everything went to score Persian Brown, so after they scaled the high stone walls of the Pere Lachaise Cemetery, they squatted in a tomb not far from Jim Morrison's grave.

"It's even closer to the plinth of Jean-Francois Champollion," Guilhomme told me one night, as if the name meant something.

"Who?"

"Champollion was the man who deciphered the Egyptian hieroglyphics." Guilhomme was enthralled by anything dead. His favorite band was Black Sabbath. "The Khedive of Egypt gave him the obelisks standing in Place de Concorde. It came from the Luxor Temple."

"A smaller version is on his grave." Claudine had dropped out of lycee at age fourteen. She admired Guilhomme for his brains. He was her tutor in all things good and bad.

"It's a nice tomb, but Mssr. Les Doors attracts too much of the wrong crowd." Guilhomme's snobbery was more based on LA WOMAN than French pride.

"They wake us in the morning with their crying. Boohoo, Jim."

"And he isn't even dead. The cemetery workers tell me that the grave is empty."

"Ouais, Jim Le Grosse is eating cheeseburgers in Marbella." Claudine didn't like American pop stars either. She was in love with Jacques Dutronc.

"So who's the famous Frog buried in your crypt?" I asked with anger, since I loved the Doors' CRYSTAL SHIP.

"Frog?" Guilhomme looked blankly to Claudine. The French haven't a clue that les estrangers call them 'Frogs'.

"The dead person."

"There are a lot of bodies buried there. It's a family crypt, but none since 1919," answered Claudine.

"They must have been wiped out with the Spanish Flu." Guilhomme was making up a story and I was listening since it was almost the end of another long night at Paris' premiere boite de nuit. "Their remains are guarded by neglect and that obscurity allows us to live in marble splendor."

"It's quiet in our crypt at night. Cold too." Claudine was ready to leave.

"But not the cemetery." Guilhomme was waiting for his man. Omar had good Persian brown. "We have to keep an eye open for grave robbers. They hunt for the bodies of the newly dead. Normally they only take the head, since it's easier to hide in a bag than a corpse."

"Plus heads are 3000 new francs, while bodies are 5000 francs. Not worth their weight," Claudine said, then stop seeing Guilhomme's glare. "We only go there to sleep."

"Like Dracula."

"No, more like the dead." Guilhomme obviously loved the macabre atmosphere of the ancient graveyard and painted his fingernails black to hint at a frantic clawing from the depths of the dirt. "I love my sleep."

"The grave robbers are quieter than the devil worshippers on the full moons."

"Ssssh."

"Sssssh what? It's true."

"They hold rites in the clear of the moon. They gather at the graves of the wicked and dance to a music from another time. They ask us to join them. Naked. Sweating. Pagan. A knife slipping into a dog as sacrifice. I don't like them." Guilhomme painted a tapestry of horror, tainted by the French people's love for their dogs.

"They scare me." Claudine's breasts slipped in and out of her ragged attire. She sometimes worked the streets of Pigalle. Guilhomme liked to think of himself as her pimp.

"Do not worry." He brandished a long stiletto. A tourist shop sold them near Notre-Dame. "I will cut them first."

"They are no fools." Claudine knew the limits of Guilhomme's protection. "The devil worshippers are many and the ghouls are even more."

"Let's go." Guilhomme spotted his Moroccan dealer. Ali worked all hours.

"Come visit us and we'll show you the sights."

"Thanks." I had no interest in joining them. The stone walls of Pere Lachaise were fifteen feet high.

Guilhomme's sojourn in Pere Lachaise lasted a summer. The crypt offered cool comfort during the hot season. Autumn brought the damp and junkies hate the wet. The two broke up and Guilhomme went back to live with his parents in Versailles. Claudine disappeared completely. No one wanted to say where.

They both hailed from le haute-class. His eccentricities were a family trait. He quit drugs and became a businessman, although Guilhomme disappeared over the weekends. Eric, his singer, said, "He still frequents Pere Lachaise with the ghouls. I hope he grows out of it. It is so perverse."

My 90s and 2000s were spent in Asia, but in 2011 my benefactor invited me to come down from my writing residence in Luxembourg to act as a translator for his trip to City of Lights.

We stayed at a four-star hotel on the Rue de Rivoli. Our meals were epicurean adventures. Our days were spent in galleries and museums. I called on old friends. Most of them were busy with work. A few met us for dinner. My benefactor made them very welcome. He ordered vintage wines and picked up the check. I had very little time to myself, but one morning I escaped to wander through the Marais.

The old Jewish quarter had changed in my absence. Stores were boutiques and my old hotel particular had become a townhouse. The Jews had succumbed to become Hassidim. By midday I wanted a drink and headed over to Rue Vielle du Temple, hoping that the Le Petit Fer Cheval was in business.

I was in luck. The small bar was dedicated to the unchanging character of Paris. The bartender was old enough to have been serving 'pression' thirty years ago and he greeted me with a nod, saying I was not a stranger. Neither was the man in the black suit across the bar.

It was Guilhomme.

He hadn't aged a day in thirty years and I checked for a reflection in the mirror before calling out his name.

He lifted off his sunglasses to grin with green teeth.

"L'Americain."

"Good to see you."

We exchanged fingernail bio of the last decades. He worked for a bank. He laughed to hear that I was writer in residence in Luxembourg.

"A boring town."

"Boring is good at my age." I had stolen too many people's share of excitement over the years.

"Tu a raison." Guilhomme wore his years with a studied heaviness. He ordered an absinthe.

I asked for a demi.

The other patrons of the bar sniffed the air.

Guilhomme's dirty black suit smelled of the grave.

"Did you go to work today?" I meant grave-robbing.

"Are you with the tax man?" Nothing frightened a Frenchman more that an audit from a fiscaliste.

"No, just that you seem a little dusty."

"Ah." He lifted his sleeve to his nose. "You know it wasn't me who liked the tomb. It was Claudine. She liked sleeping with the dead. She took off their clothes and lie with them. She liked nothing better than to fondle their cold flesh. I think she even made love to some of them, but I never watched. Sex was not my thing."

"And what happened to her." I feared the worst.

"Claudine?" He touched a tooth like he was searching for a morsel of yesterday's meal stuck in a gap. "She turned out like all women. She married a lesbian transvestite farmer and moved to the Haute Savoy to be a peasant. They had three enfants. I send them Christmas cards."

"And you?" I didn't question any of the oddities of his last statement.

Everything was within the bounds of normal with Guilhomme.

"Moi, I don't sleep in Pere Lachaise anymore, but I like to lay on the ground before closing to remind me that we will all sleep in the dirt one of these days."

"But not today." I toasted the truth of his prediction, but Guilhomme had too much of the fragrance of death on him to be healthy and I drank down my beer fast. I didn't bother to say 'plus tard' and walked out of the cafe, my heart beating with life.

Later that evening at dinner I entertained my benefactor with a tale of the walking dead. My friends were thrilled by my encounter, but I neglected to mention Claudine's love of the dead.

Some secrets are better left to the grave.

Especially about those about the living, because they might die, but their secrets live forever.

Le Hotel Louisiane 1985

The corner third-floor room of the Hotel Louisiane on Rue de Seine in St. Germain 1985. Maybe room 204.

During the early 1980s I had lived all over Paris with accommodating amis amies et amants, while working les portes or doors at nightclubs such as  le Rex, Bains Douches, Balajo, Royal Lieu et Nouvelle Eve as le physionomiste or doorman. Sometimes a videur or bouncer.  For a change it was good to live alone at hotels; le Ecouffes in le Marais, le Nelle, et le Louisiane in St. Germain. 160 francs per night. $20 with a petite dejeuner.

Not a quiet street. Le marche on Rue de Seine opened early. Shouts of the grocers.

Returning from the clubs at dawn I took advantage of its hours by lowering a weaved pannier by rope to the fruit seller with a 100-franc notes, a list of desires; clementines, baguette, fromage, et une cafe creme from the corner bistro et the Herald Tribune for basically $3. The phone rarely rang. Friends visited unannounced. I read away the days. Books from Shakespeare and Company on the Seine. Walking the back streets to le Cafe Flore. A glass of Sancerre in the late afternoon watching Paris become the fabled City of Light or le Ville de Lumierie.

 Oh, for the simple life.

THE WRONG SIZE SHOES by Peter Nolan Smith

Twenty-five minutes after the stroke of Twelve New Year's Eve 1982 a masked assassin shot dead the main investor a block away from the Continental Club on West 25th Street. The FBI and NYPD Internal Affairs investigating Viktor Malenski's murder and quickly drew lines between the dots. My ex-girlfriend was living with the dead man’s partner. My boss had been wearing a wire. I had paid bribes to cops in patrol cars. The scandal hit the papers. My name had been mentioned twice. Everyone thought I knew something. They were more right than wrong.

I avoided turning state's witness thanks to a phone call from Paris saved me from turning state's witness. A nightclub owner was offering a position of 'physionomiste'. My inability to speak French was considered a plus. A ticket waited at the airport and the next day I left New York without leaving a forwarding address.

Paris was a relief. The nightclub on the Grand Boulevard was popular. I was cuffed free food, drinks, and the right to treat the French as badly as necessary. They loved me for this rude behavior. It was the perfect job for an American in Paris.

Any time I had thought about returning to New York, I had called my friends. They had warned that the Internal Affairs investigation was in full swing. The FBI had asked several people my whereabouts. For the conceivable future Paris was home and I made the best of it.

Young models from foreign lands and svelte dancers from the Folies Bergeres dragged me to flats throughout the various arrondissements. My troubles seemed 3000 miles away and I had no intention on closing that Trans-Atlantic distance. 1982 became 1983 and 1984 arrived without any commitment to a conventional life.

All that changed when a mischievous teenager with a froth of golden brown hair accompanied me to my hotel room in the Marais.

I attributed our having sex five times in one night to her half-Puerto Rican/half Jewish blood. Candia didn't leave the next morning and two days later the long-legged model/actress asked me to live with her in La Ruche, an artist commune.

Staking my heart on the whims of a girl fifteen years my junior was dangerous, however the atelier in the distant 15th arrondissement overlooking the Lost and Found bureau of the Paris Taxi Commission was a welcome change from the Marais Hotel. Famous artists had lived ant La Ruche. I started writing a novel about pornography in LA.

My friends, Albert and Serge, opened a dance club in the Bastille. I was the doorman. Black Jacques worked as the bouncer. We were a good team.

The Nouvelle Eve was popular with the young rich. Candia modeled in Germany, Italy, and Paris. We laughed, fought, made up, and went on vacations. Life was bliss. The summer was spent in love. Our lust tapered off in the fall. After an October trip to Milano, the phone rang at odd hours. If I answered, the caller hung up.

Candia slept far from my touch.

The art dealer Vonelli said that the happiness of a relationship was measured by the distance between a man and woman in bed.

Ours was a meter. There was someone else. I said nothing. She would have resented my accusations. The well-bred girls frequenting La Reve offered solace, yet I remained true to Candia, hoping one day for a response to my faithful dedication.

Two days into 1985 Candia left Paris for a photo shoot in the Alps.

Three 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 spent the weekend drinking heavier than normal. Candia called on Sunday to say she was staying an extra day. I envisioned her naked in bed with another man.An Italian.

She hung up and I told myself this was just a fling. Candia would come back 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 a night of coaxing her heart into my arms.

She arrived late.

The shimmering silver fur coat accented cinnamon skin untouched by the alpine sun. It was new 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 a client at the Hotel Crillion for dinner."

Stopping her was impossible.

"Go ahead."

She left without mentioning the time of her return. I went to the nightclub. By 3AM I had drunk myself partially deaf and dumb. My partner stopped my dancing on a stool to Chic's LE FREAK.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing another whiskey-coke wouldn't cure," I shouted for a refill and Serge annulled my order. "Why don't you go home and sleep this off?"

"Because a house is not a home." I staggered to the entrance. A runway model from Baltimore accosted me with an obscene proposition. The redhead was beautiful. My girlfriend was probably making love to another man. The hotel across the street charged 200 francs for a room. I opted for the high moral ground.

"Another night."

"Another night?"

She blinked in disbelief. No male in their right mind had ever refused her favors.

Leaving the club I weaved through the errant snowflakes to the Seine. The water lay like between the two banks like an oil spill. Candia's betrayal shielded me from the cold. Nearing the 15th arrondisement, I realized while I might not forget this trespass, I could forgive her sin. I just needed a chance.

On the Impasse Dantzig I lifted my eyes. The lights in the atelier were off. I prayed she was asleep in bed. She had chosen another course. Inside the door lay a pair of shiny Gucci loafers. They were not my size or style. A man's moaning answered any question about their ownership. I charged into the bedroom with a wounded roar. A balding man lifted his arms too late to deflect my fist. He tumbled unconscious off the mattress.

The venom geysering through my veins transported me 300,000 years to a fire-lit cave. I seized Candia by the hair and threw her on the floor. The girl nursing my cold, the lover cuddling me after sex, the dinner companion laughing at my jokes were gone.

"Why?"

"If you have to ask why, then you will never know the answer," she spat with an unrecognizable hostility.

I envisioned a deadly blow, police, and trial. Her infidelity wasn't worth a life sentence in the La Sante prison. I chucked her Mickey Mouse telephone through the window into the street and I scourged the naked couple from the apartment with the frayed wire.

Once alone I packed my clothes, journals, tape deck, camera, and photos. The man’s suit and shoes went out the broken window. The pettiness of the act felt good. I imagined police sirens in the distance and hurried from the apartment.

On the nearest boulevard I hailed a passing taxi. The hour and my bag explained the story. The unshaven driver shrugged knowingly, "Un hotel?"

"Ouais, le Hotel Louisiana." Stuttering images of my girlfriend's infidelity accelerated my breathing and the driver asked, "Mssr., vous etes okay?"

"Ouais." It was the one word I could managed between the gasps for air.

I lowered the window. The cold air failed to pluck the splintered razors from my lungs. A bottle of sleeping pills was lumpy in my coat. Overhead the sky glowered with a miserly gray dawn. The driver stopped at Rue Du Seine. I paid with a 100-franc note and said to keep the change. He drove away without a merci.

Waking the old woman at the hotel desk was almost a sin, except I had almost broken the 5th Commandment. I rang the bell. She blinked several times before recognizing my face from a previous stay. "Ah, Mssr., je imagine que vous voulez une chambre."

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

"Chambre 312." She passed over a brass key and pointed to the elevator.

The room was clean. The bed was soft. I dropped two sleeping pills and saved the rest for a more desperate occasion. Sleep collapsed on me as heavily as a tombstone. Five hours later I woke more from a coma than sleep. My first thoughts reflected on the previous evening.

She had brought back her lover on purpose. My hands mimicked the act of strangulation. Thin air was no replacement for a seventeen year-old's neck. French court had never convicted a man of a crime de passion, but I was only a murderer in my most grievous thoughts.

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 of dead love in the hotel ashtray. I set them on fire. The flames wrinkled her face and body. An acrid fume corkscrewed into my nose. Fearing Candia's soul had invaded my body, I flushed the flaming photos down the toilet and left the hotel.

An icy wind hurried me down the Blvd. St. Germain to the Cafe le Flore. No one was braving the sidewalk tables. I sat on a chair behind a glass wall. The waiter took my order of a cafe au lait, croissant, and a single shot of Calvados and disappeared inside.

Waiting for my breakfast, I viewed each passing couple with a jealousy bordering on hatred. Three Calvados numbed my disapproval, the wet wind, and my girlfriend's betrayal.

After the fifth Calva I barely noticed my partner sit beside me.

Serge looked like he had just woke up. "I've been looking for you."

"Why?" Rubbing my face was an ineffective method of erasing the effects of the alcohol.

"I called your house this morning and spoke with Candia." Serge lit a cigarette and signaled to the waiter to bring us another round.

"More like my girlfiend." Dropping an 'r' from friend was lost on the Frenchman. "What the bitch say for herself?"

"She is very worried about you." My partner’s eyes pursued two schoolgirls.

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

"You Americans treat women as men. They are not. They are women and we have to protect the double standard, otherwise the battle between man and woman will be lost." Serge waved to a model on her way to a casting call. "You allowed her to have affairs and she concluded you did not care about her."

"Not care? I almost killed her." My fists clenched white.

"C'est vrai, and now she appreciates you care about her. A woman is a horse. You hold the reins tight and the horse will throw you. Too loose and she will run away." His eyes beamed with macho pride. "You showed her that you are a real man."

"That's insane." My parents had reared me to not hit a woman.

Serge inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

"The caveman drags a woman by the hair to the cave. They have a little corps-a-corps. She stays with him. Not the man who lets her have an affair with another caveman."

The only examples of a caveman dragging a woman by her hair had not painted in Neolithic caves, but drawn in TV cartoons, however man's dominance over woman needed no historical anchor for its machismo in France. "This is the almost the 21st Century."

"Eh, alors, even more reason you must establish a 'rapport de force'." Serge stubbed out his cigarette. "Yell at her, hit her, and make love. She expects you to act like a man, not a mouse. If you let this wound bleed, you will be no good for the next woman you meet and believe me you will always have another woman. A plus tard."

To prove his point Serge stalked a fashionably attired woman in her thirties. Within a few paces she rewarded his boldness with a smile.

I shambled to the boulevard, foreseeing my kicking in the door, only every taxi was occupied by other couples. The chances of winning back Candia smoldered in the icy drizzle and I returned to the hotel room.

I sat on the bed. Twenty sleeping pills would provide an eternal blanket. My head fell into my hands and I spotted a photo on the floor. It had been taken almost twenty years ago.

My grandmother sat on the porch of her house in Westbrook, Maine. A simple string of pearl circled her neck. A cameo was pinned to her black dress. The stacks of the SD Warren paper mill rose over the neighbor's roof. I could smell the sulfurous stench from the mill with my eyes closed.

Maine called. People there spoke with my accent. My grandmother made the world’s best beef stew. I'd sleep in a four-poster bed under warm covers. My bank account was full of francs. I'd skate on Watchic Pond and sled down Blackstrap Hill.

I called the nightclub and told Serge I was leaving town for a few days, then bought a one-way ticket to America from a travel agency on the Boulevard St. Germain. A taxi got me to Charles de Gaulle Aeroport with an hour to spare. The change in my pocket weighed a ton and I fought the urge to phone Candia. We had nothing to say. Finally the ground staff called for the passengers to board and I left Paris, knowing I was headed for the USA.

The 747 fought the winter headwinds across the Atlantic and made landfall over the coastline of Maine. I peered through the plane's porthole. Watchic Pond was an icy white dot beneath the wing and I followed the white snake of the Presumpscot River to the SD Warren Mill in Westbrook. I took out the picture of my grandmother and turned over the yellowing photo to check the date.

The picture had been taken on the 4th of July of 1965.

I remembered the day minute for minute.

My brother and I were vacationing with my grandmother. We went to the lake for the weekend and came back to Westbrook on the 4th. I went into the drugstore to buy a comic book. The counter girl asked me to walk her home. I almost lost my virginity along the Presumpscot River. The girl laughed at my fear and I ran back to my grandmother's house. She had explained the birds and bees as she might to a grown man?and we watched THE SEVEN SAMURAI that night. Neither of us said anything to my older brother.

I landed at JFK and stepped out of the terminal. People wore snow parkas, hats, and scarves for survival. I hadn't crossed the Atlantic to appreciate the Tri-State weather and boarded the A-train to Penn Station, where I rode the Northeast Unlimited to Boston, arriving at Route 128 near Eleven O'clock. A taxi drove to my parents' house. They both asked if everything was all right. I lied about Candia and said I wanted to see my grandmother. They exchanged a secretive glance and my father announced, "Your grandmother is in a nursing home on the North Shore near your aunt."

"Why didn't anyone tell me?"

"Your grandmother didn't want you to worry being so far away." My father was clearly worried about his mother. This was more than a cold or flu.

"Can I visit her?" I planned to free her from this old age prison.

"We'll go tomorrow. She's weak, so we can only stay for a short time."

"That's all right. I still want to see her."

I spoke with my parents for a few minutes. We were tired and bid each other goodnight. I went upstairs to my bedroom. The airplane models, books, pictures, and trophies belonged to a stranger. I slept in the musty cellar. In the morning my father and I went to breakfast. He had divined the state of affairs in Paris.

"You should come back to Boston and settle down with a nice Catholic girl."

It was easy for him to say. My father had married the woman he loved, raised six children, and worked for the same company thirty years.

"I'll keep that in mind."

"How many more years you intend on messing around?"

"I don't know." I verged closer to tears.

"I'd expect 'I don't know' from a kid, not a thirty-two year-old man. Life goes fast. I'd hate for you to find yourself ten years from now, thinking it was a waste." My father wasn't the type of man to witness his son's breakdown and paid the bill at the cash register. As we walked to his car, I asked, "How's grandmother?"

"She has cancer."

"How bad?"

"Terminal. She had a lump and let it go."

"She must have known it would kill her." My grandmother had been a nurse.

"Probably." He didn't understand her neglect either.

The full extent of my grandmother's condition had to wait until the nursing home. She rested on a bed facing a window. Her breathing was pained. A morphine tube was attached to her vein. While she had lost weight, her face was a mirror of the woman in the photo sitting on the porch. She smiled with a drugged gentleness.

"There's a sight for sore eyes."

My father bent to kiss his mother and I held her frail hand. They spoke for several minutes and he said, "I have to speak with the nurses."

Once he left the room, my grandmother patted my face. "How's Paris?"

Her time was measured in days, not months. "Paris is Paris."

"You forget I met your grandfather in Paris during the Great War. We were young and in love, so don't tell me Paris is Paris." Her opiated eyes delved deeper into me.

"You can tell me your problem. It might be one of your last chances for my help."

"Don't say that."

"It's the truth, of course the doctors say I'll live to ninety.”

"They do?" I remembered my mother lying the night of her mother's death. She had said it was to soothe my Irish grandmother and Nana had accepted the lie to alleviate my mother’s sorrow.

"They lied to me. The end is closer than anyone says." She brushed her hand against my face, the skin smelling of lavender. "Let me guess. Your romance in Paris has ended."

"Romeo has no Juliette." I blurted out the entire story. At the end my grandmother said, "Hitting a woman is wrong no matter if she did something wrong."

"I didn't hit her."

"You came close."

"It's not the same thing." The madness in my blood was only defensible in a French court and my grandmother frowned through a mask of pain.

"What did you expect from such a young girl anyway?"

"She said she loved me."

"Maybe she did in her own way." My grandmother coughed and I stood to fetch the nurse. She said, "Not yet. Please give me a glass of water."

I gave her a few sips and she closed her eyes. I worried she might not wake up, but after several seconds the agate green orbs flashed with life. "It's been thirty years, since your grandfather passed away, but I can remember the first years together as man and wife."

"Maybe I'll never have that." I feared a life alone.

"Let me tell you a story. You remember my friend, Marie."

"She's still alive?" Marie chain-smoked and drank two bottle of rose wine daily. She was hard to forget.

"Marie will outlive me. Guess her drinking was her fountain of youth."

"You're not gone yet." I wished my caresses might cure her.

"It's only a matter of time, anyway Marie had been a beautiful woman. She married young, acceding to her father's choice. Her husband wasn't capable of giving her romantic love, but people stayed together those days because it was the thing to do. After the Great War Marie accompanied her husband to Germany. One trip she met a sea captain and fell in love. This time for real. Of course it was unrealistic. She was married and the war came. He served as a U-boat commander. When Marie heard he was missing in the Atlantic, she went to pieces and began drinking. Her husband tolerated her behavior. Guess he loved her in his own way. Anyway he passed away a year ago, making Marie a free woman."

Fearing she was ranting from the drugs, I fidgeted on the chair and she admonished me, "That is the problem with you young people. Always in a hurry for the ending, so you miss the good parts."

"Sorry, grandmother."

"You should be. Anyway Marie was sitting in her house and the doorbell rang. She opened the door to this old gentleman. Marie mistook him for a friend of her husband. He had a German accent. Only one man in her life did. It was her sea captain. He hadn't died during the war. He had married his childhood sweetheart. After her death he sought out Marie to tell her that his only desire was to spend the rest of his life with her. And they are living happily ever after. So as sad as you are, one day you?ll love again. Now give me a kiss and fetch that nurse."

I kissed her forehead and brought a nurse to the room. My father said it was time to go and in the parking lot he read the sadness piled atop whatever had happened in Paris. He had to say something. "Your grandmother wouldn't like you hurt."

"I know."

"She loves you very much."

Marblehead Harbor was mirror flat. I had sailed it with my grandmother in my uncle's little Sunfish. Soon she would only exist in memories of Maine.

"She loved you too."

"How about a plate of fried clams?" He opened his door.

"Sounds good to me." Winter wasn't the best season for fried clams and my father's offer wasn't a soothing hand on my brow, however fried clams were a good remedy to the sight of another man?s shoes, especially if the Barnacle in Marblehead was open for lunch.

My grandmother was right.

One day I was going to love again and until that day I would have to live like that moment might be the next or else it would pass me by and I was too young to wait as long as Marie to find love again. When was only a question of time. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing another whiskey-coke wouldn't cure," I shouted for a refill and Serge annulled my order. "Why don't you go home and sleep this off?"

"Because a house is not a home." I staggered to the entrance. A runway model from Baltimore accosted me with an obscene proposition. The redhead was beautiful. My girlfriend was probably making love to another man. The hotel across the street charged 200 francs for a room. I opted for the high moral ground.

"Another night."

"Another night?"

She blinked in disbelief. No male in their right mind had ever refused her favors.

Leaving the club I weaved through the errant snowflakes to the Seine. The water lay like between the two banks like an oil spill. Candia's betrayal shielded me from the cold. Nearing the 15th arrondisement, I realized while I might not forget this trespass, I could forgive her sin. I just needed a chance.

On the Impasse Dantzig I lifted my eyes. The lights in the atelier were off. She might have stayed at the hotel. I prayed she was asleep in bed. She had chosen another course. Inside the door lay a pair of shiny Gucci loafers. They were not my size or style. A man's moaning answered any question about their ownership. I charged into the bedroom with a wounded roar. A balding man lifted his arms too late to deflect my fist. He tumbled unconscious off the mattress.

The venom geysering through my veins transported me 300,000 years to a fire-lit cave. I seized Candia by the hair and threw her on the floor. The girl nursing my cold, the lover cuddling me after sex, the dinner companion laughing at my jokes were gone.

"Why?"

"If you have to ask why, then you will never know the answer," she spat with an unrecognizable hostility.

I envisioned a deadly blow, police, and trial. Her infidelity wasn't worth a life sentence in the La Sante prison. I chucked her Mickey Mouse telephone through the window into the street and I scourged the naked couple from the apartment with the frayed wire.

Once alone I packed my clothes, journals, tape deck, camera, and photos. The man?s suit and shoes went out the broken window. The pettiness of the act felt good. I imagined police sirens in the distance and hurried from the apartment.

On the nearest boulevard I hailed a passing taxi. The hour and my bag explained the story. The unshaven driver shrugged knowingly, "Un hotel?"

"Ouais, le Hotel Louisiana." Stuttering images of my girlfriend's infidelity accelerated my breathing and the driver asked, "Mssr., vous etes okay?"

"Ouais." It was the one word I could managed between the gasps for air.

I lowered the window. The cold air failed to pluck the splintered razors from my lungs. A bottle of sleeping pills was lumpy in my coat. Overhead the sky glowered with a miserly gray dawn. The driver stopped at Rue Du Seine. I paid with a 100-franc note and said to keep the change. He drove away without a merci.

Waking the old woman at the hotel desk was almost a sin, except I had almost broken the 5th Commandment. I rang the bell. She blinked several times before recognizing my face from a previous stay. "Ah, Mssr., je imagine que vous voulez une chambre."

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

"Chambre 312." She passed over a brass key and pointed to the elevator.

The room was clean. The bed was soft. I dropped two sleeping pills and saved the rest for a more desperate occasion. Sleep collapsed on me as heavily as a tombstone. Five hours later I woke more from a coma than sleep. My first thoughts reflected on the previous evening.

She had brought back her lover on purpose. My hands mimicked the act of strangulation. Thin air was no replacement for a seventeen year-old's neck. French court had never convicted a man of a crime de passion, but I was only a murderer in my most grievous thoughts.

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 of dead love in the hotel ashtray. I set them on fire. The flames wrinkled her face and body. An acrid fume corkscrewed into my nose. Fearing Candia's soul had invaded my body, I flushed the flaming photos down the toilet and left the hotel.

An icy wind hurried me down the Blvd. St. Germain to the Cafe le Flore. No one was braving the sidewalk tables. I sat on a chair behind a glass wall. The waiter took my order of a cafe au lait, croissant, and a single shot of Calvados and disappeared inside.

Waiting for my breakfast, I viewed each passing couple with a jealousy bordering on hatred. Three Calvados numbed my disapproval, the wet wind, and my girlfriend's betrayal.

After the fifth Calva I barely noticed my partner sit beside me.

Serge looked like he had just woke up. "I've been looking for you."

"Why?" Rubbing my face was an ineffective method of erasing the effects of the alcohol.

"I called your house this morning and spoke with Candia." Serge lit a cigarette and signaled to the waiter to bring us another round.

"More like my girlfiend." Dropping an 'r' from friend was lost on the Frenchman. "What the bitch say for herself?"

"She is very worried about you." My partner?s eyes pursued two schoolgirls.

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

"You Americans treat women as men. They are not. They are women and we have to protect the double standard, otherwise the battle between man and woman will be lost." Serge waved to a model on her way to a casting call. "You allowed her to have affairs and she concluded you did not care about her."

"Not care? I almost killed her." My fists clenched white.

"C'est vrai, and now she appreciates you care about her. A woman is a horse. You hold the reins tight and the horse will throw you. Too loose and she will runaway." His eyes beamed with macho pride. "You showed her that you are a real man."

"That's insane." My parents had reared me to not hit a woman.

Serge inhaled deeply on his cigarette.

"The caveman drags a woman by the hair to the cave. They have a little corps-a-corps. She stays with him. Not the man who lets her have an affair with another caveman."

The only examples of a caveman dragging a woman by her hair had not painted in Neolithic caves, but drawn in TV cartoons, however man's dominance over woman needed no historical anchor for its machismo in France. "This is the almost the 21st Century.?" "Eh, alors, even more reason you must establish a 'rapport de force?'." Serge stubbed out his cigarette. "Yell at her, hit her, and make love. She expects you to act like a man, not a mouse. If you let this wound bleed, you will be no good for the next woman you meet and believe me you will always have another woman. A plus tard."

To prove his point Serge stalked a fashionably attired woman in her thirties. Within a few paces she rewarded his boldness with a smile.

He was right and I shambled to the boulevard, foreseeing my kicking in the door, only every taxi was occupied by other couples. The chances of winning back Candia smoldered in the icy drizzle and I returned to the hotel room.

I sat on the bed. Twenty sleeping pills would provide an eternal blanket. My head fell into my hands and I spotted a photo on the floor. It had been taken almost twenty years ago.

My grandmother sat on the porch of her house in Westbrook, Maine. A simple string of pearl circled her neck. A cameo was pinned to her black dress. The stacks of the SD Warren paper mill rose over the neighbor's roof. I could smell the sulfurous stench from the mill with my eyes closed.

Maine was calling. People there spoke with my accent. My grandmother made the world?s best beef stew. I?d sleep in a four-poster bed under warm covers. My bank account was full of francs. I?d skate on Watchic Pond and sled down Blackstrap Hill.

I called the nightclub and told Serge I was leaving town for a few days, then bought a one-way ticket to America from a travel agency on the Boulevard St. Germain. A taxi got me to Charles de Gaulle Aeroport with an hour to spare. The change in my pocket weighed a ton and I fought the urge to phone Candia. We had nothing to say. Finally the ground staff called for the passengers to board and I left Paris, knowing I was headed for the USA.

The 747 fought the winter headwinds across the Atlantic and made landfall over the coastline of Maine. I peered through the plane's porthole. Watchic Pond was an icy white dot beneath the wing and I followed the white snake of the Presumpscot River to the SD Warren Mill in Westbrook. I took out the picture of my grandmother and turned over the yellowing photo to check the date.

The picture had been taken on the 4th of July of 1965.

I remembered the day minute for minute.

My brother and I were vacationing with my grandmother. We went to the lake for the weekend and came back to Westbrook on the 4th. I went into the drugstore to buy a comic book. The counter girl asked me to walk her home. I almost lost my virginity along the Presumpscot River. The girl laughed at my fear and i ran back to my grandmother's house. She had explained the birds and bees as she might to a grown man?and we watched THE SEVEN SAMURAI that night. Neither of us said anything to my older brother.

I landed at JFK and stepped out of the terminal. People wore snow parkas, hats, and scarves for survival. I hadn't crossed the Atlantic to appreciate the Tri-State weather and boarded the A-train to Penn Station, where I rode the Northeast Unlimited to Boston, arriving at Route 128 near Eleven O'clock. A taxi drove to my parents' house. They both asked if everything was all right. I lied about Candia and said I wanted to see my grandmother. They exchanged a secretive glance and my father announced, "Your grandmother is in a nursing home on the North Shore near your aunt."

"Why didn't anyone tell me?"

?Your grandmother didn't want you to worry being so far away." My father was clearly worried about his mother. This was more than a cold or flu.

"Can I visit her?" I planned to free her from this old age prison.

"We'll go tomorrow. She's weak, so we can only stay for a short time."

"That's all right. I still want to see her." I spoke with my parents for a few minutes. We were tired and bid each other goodnight. I went upstairs to my bedroom. The airplane models, books, pictures, and trophies belonged to a stranger. I slept in the musty cellar. In the morning my father and I went to breakfast. He had divined the state of affairs in Paris. "You should come back to Boston and settle down with a nice Catholic girl."

It was easy for him to say. My father had married the woman he loved, raised six children, and worked for the same company thirty years. "I'll keep that in mind."

"How many more years you intend on messing around?"

"I don't know." I verged closer to tears.

"I'd expect 'I don't know' from a kid, not a thirty-two year-old man. Life goes fast. I?d hate for you to find yourself ten years from now, thinking it was a waste." My father wasn't the type of man to witness his son?s breakdown and paid the bill at the cash register. As we walked to his car, I asked, "How's grandmother?"

"She has cancer."

"How bad?" "Terminal.

She had a lump and let it go."

"She must have known it would kill her." My grandmother had been a nurse.

"Probably." He didn't understand her neglect either.

The full extent of my grandmother's condition had to wait until the nursing home. She was resting on a bed facing a window. Her breathing was pained. A morphine tube was attached to her vein. While she had lost weight, her face was a mirror of the woman in the photo sitting on the porch. She smiled with a drugged gentleness. "There's a sight for sore eyes."

My father bent to kiss his mother and I held her frail hand. They spoke for several minutes and he said, "I have to speak with the nurses."

Once he left the room, my grandmother patted my face. "How's Paris?"

Her time was measured in days, not months. "Paris is Paris."

"You forget I met your grandfather in Paris during the Great War. We were young and in love, so don?t tell me Paris is Paris." Her opiated eyes delved deeper into me. "You can tell me your problem. It might be one of your last chances for my help."

"Don't say that."

"It's the truth, of course the doctors say I'll live to ninety.?

"They do?" I remembered my mother lying the night of her mother's death. She had said it was to soothe my Irish grandmother and Nana had accepted the lie to alleviate my mother?s sorrow.

"They lied to me. The end is closer than anyone says." She brushed her hand against my face, the skin smelling of lavender. "Let me guess. Your romance in Paris has ended."

"Romeo has no Juliette." I blurted out the entire story. At the end my grandmother said, "Hitting a woman is wrong no matter if she did something wrong."

"I didn't hit her."

"You came close."

"It?'s not the same thing." The madness in my blood was only defensible in a French court and my grandmother frowned through a mask of pain.

"What did you expect from such a young girl anyway?"

"She said she loved me."

"Maybe she did in her own way." My grandmother coughed and I stood to fetch the nurse. She said, "Not yet. Please give me a glass of water."

I gave her a few sips and she closed her eyes. I worried she might not wake up, but after several seconds the agate green orbs flashed with life. "It's been thirty years, since your grandfather passed away, but I can remember the first years together as man and wife."

"Maybe I'll never have that."

"Let me tell you a story. You remember my friend, Marie." "She's still alive?" Marie chain-smoked and drank two bottle of rose wine daily. She was hard to forget. "Marie will outlive me. Guess her drinking was her fountain of youth." "You're not gone yet." I wished my caresses might cure her. "It's only a matter of time, anyway Marie had been a beautiful woman. She married young, acceding to her father's choice. Her husband wasn't capable of giving her romantic love, but people stayed together those days because it was the thing to do. After the Great War Marie accompanied her husband to Germany. One trip she met a sea captain and fell in love. This time for real. Of course it was unrealistic. She was married and the war came. He served as a U-boat commander. When Marie heard he was missing in the Atlantic, she went to pieces and began drinking. Her husband tolerated her behavior. Guess he loved her in his own way. Anyway he passed away a year ago, making Marie a free woman."

Fearing she was ranting from the drugs, I fidgeted on the chair and she admonished me, "That is the problem with you young people. Always in a hurry for the ending, so you miss the good parts."

"Sorry, grandmother."

"You should be. Anyway Marie was sitting in her house and the doorbell rang. She opened the door to this old gentleman. Marie mistook him for a friend of her husband. He had a German accent. Only one man in her life did. It was her sea captain. He hadn't died during the war. He had married his childhood sweetheart. After her death he sought out Marie to tell her that his only desire was to spend the rest of his life with her. And they are living happily ever after. So as sad as you are, one day you?ll love again. Now give me a kiss and fetch that nurse."

I kissed her forehead and brought a nurse to the room. My father said it was time to go and in the parking lot he read the sadness piled atop whatever had happened in Paris. He had to say something. "Your grandmother wouldn't like you hurt."

"I know."

"She loves you very much."

Marblehead Harbor was mirror flat. I had sailed it with my grandmother in my uncle's little Sunfish. Soon she would only exist in memories of Maine.

"She loved you too."

"How about a plate of fried clams?" He opened his door.

"Sounds good to me." Winter wasn't the best season for fried clams and my father's offer wasn't a soothing hand on my brow, however fried clams were a good remedy to the sight of another man?s shoes, especially if the Barnacle in Marblehead was open for lunch.

My grandmother was right.

One day I was going to love again and until that day I would have to live like that moment might be the next or else it would pass me by and I was too young to wait as long as Marie to find love again. When was only a question of time.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA by Peter Nolan Smith on Kindle

Most relationship end at the same point and throughout the 1980s my romances t-boned with fate in New York and Paris. I fell in love time and time again with the right women in the wrong places, but also never realized what I had until it was gone.

My long novella IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA recounts my inability to see past skin-deep beauty into the souls, although I was no angel.

Nightclub owners, crooked cops, porno actresses, and runaways were my friends.

No one had two feet on the ground, unless they were in the grave, but I learned nothing from it all and that's because anyone who has all the answers has not heard all the questions.

Here are the women in question.

New York.

Paris.

New York.

We were all so much younger then and we are still younger than now.

To purchase my novella IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA, please go to the following URL

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EXCERPT from IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA

Chapter 1

New York in the summer of 1981 was everything it hadn’t been in the winter. The 90+ temperature boiled the asphalt. New Wave had replaced punk and somehow the city had escaped bankruptcy. Money flowed on the streets and even the East Village exhibited signs of regeneration, since abandoned tenements can only be burned so many times before their ashes won’t catch fire.

People had work. Mine was menial construction on an after-hours club along the Hudson River. After paying rent I had enough money for Chinese take-out and beers at CBGBs. I lost weight and thought about robbing a bank. Whenever I entered one, guards placed their hands on the guns like they were armed with ESP.

I was no Jesse James.

Daytime employment was the logical solution to my desperate situation. I had a college degree. My permanent record was clean. I had worked nine-to-fives before and real jobs didn’t kill you, however Arthur, the nightclub owner, had promised the construction crew various jobs once the International opened its doors.

At our previous gig I had coined $500-700 a night. We hoped to open before Labor Day. On August 13th the club was $20,000 short of our goal and construction lurched to a halt, however the International was saved by a cash infusion from a criminal refugee from Odessa. His money was rumored to come from smuggling Tsarist icons. The source was unimportant. The club was a dead issue without his help.

Arthur said that Vadim had a beautiful blonde girlfriend.

“Almost cover girl pretty, but too short to succeed on the runways.”

“Sounds like your old girlfriend.” Danny Gordon, the DJ, had heard that the gangster’s girl came from Buffalo.

“No, that would be too much of a coincidence.”

Last November Lisa had left for a modeling job in Milan.

I hadn’t heard from her since.

No calls.

No letters.

When I spotted her in a French lingerie magazine, I almost flew to Paris, except she could have been in London, Milan, or Munich, so I remained in New York to be haunted by her imagined footsteps on cobble-stoned European streets.

“Coincidence is destiny crossing paths.”

“No chance of that. Lisa’s gone for good.”

“No one leaves the City forever.” Native New Yorkers like Danny considered anywhere other than Manhattan to be purgatory. “She’ll be back.”

“I’ve been dreaming of that day,” I said, but in truth I had been forgetting her piece by piece.

The smell of her skin after sex.

Her mocking laugh after I told a bad joke.

Buying leather jackets together. Hers white, mine black, yet some memories had lives of their own.

No matter how many drinks.

No matter how many days.

“Still it would be funny if it was her.” Danny wasn’t letting go either. He had a thing for her. Any man would if she looked his way.

“Funny, but not ha-ha funny.”

“Not for you, but me. I can’t wait to see your face when she walks through the doors.”

I chucked a hammer at his head. It missed by a foot and put a dent in an op-art sculpture from the 60s. Arthur noticed the damage a week later.

We denied any knowledge of how it got there.

The Russian’s money accelerated the final stages of the construction. The walls were painted lilac purple and the sound system was wired through the club. A Labor Day opening appeared realistic and on the hottest day of summer Danny and I were tearing down a last section of the ceiling. It was a dirty job and rat dust caked my sweating flesh.

The door opened for three shadows.

We lowered our tools.

“Guys, I want you to meet Vadim.” Arthur shouted from the entrance.

A muscular man in his late-20s entered the club wearing a pastel linen suit. We muttered hellos. Mine was silenced by the sight of a slender blonde in snug Versace. Lisa’s b-grade beauty was as haughty as a dethroned princess checking into a Holiday Inn.

“So much for the lack of coincidences.” Danny nudged my ribs.

“It’s a small world.” My throat tightened to a knot. “And a long life.”

“Think she recognizes you?” Danny wiped a layer of grime from his face.

“Not unless she looks my way.” My body was black with soot

Her head turned to our perch.

She recognized me and the dice roll of jade green eyes indicated my lack of social progress had not disappointed her low expectations for a punk poet.

“No, she hasn’t forgotten.” Danny laughed at my pained expression, as Vadim, Lisa and Arthur disappeared into the office.
Right before our lunch break, Lisa and Vadim exited from the office.

She covered her mouth with a scarf.

Vadim shielded his a thick hand and they left the site without a glance in our direction.

By 4pm the ceiling had been replaced and Arthur called it a day.

As the rest of the crew filed from the club, Arthur pulled me aside.

“This isn’t going to be a problem?”

“What?” I played dumb.

“You and Vadim’s girlfriend.” He was serious. Émigré Russians from Odessa were notoriously violent.

“Lisa?”

Over the past year her name had floated in my mind a million times.

This was the first time I had said it.

“No, she’s nothing to me.”

“Good, then stay away from her.” He lifted a finger. “Vadim is a piece of work.”

Obeying his advice wasn’t hard.

On every visit Lisa ignored me and I couldn’t blame her.

I was a failed poet at 28.

The International might change my status. Three months as the doorman would earn $5000 in tips and salary. That amount could finance a winter in Maine to write my first novel about a free love community in the 1840s.

WATCHIC POND was destined to garner the best-sellers lists. The world would worship my words and Lisa would return to my arms. Self-delusion rarely offers the true options.

Two weeks after Labor Day the Continental opened its door without a liquor license. Limos lined West 25th Street well past dawn, as models, actresses, and strippers dancing with abandon to the city’s best DJs. Movie stars snorted coke with two-bit dealers and national politicians seduced Amazonian TVs on pop-art sofas. The club was an immediate success.

Few revelers cared about the illegality of an after-hours club. Everyone knew that the police were on the take. Some people were always on the list. Sanitation inspectors glommed drinks with big-hair wives, plainclothes cops strong-armed bribes, and Jimmie Fats siphoned the cash cow for the firemen.

Greed blinded the bagmen to Arthur’s wearing a wire for Internal Affairs and the FBI investigating our Russian investor for counterfeit twenties. A myopia from $50 tips blotted out my better judgment.
By Halloween I had my $5000. $5000 became $6000 by mid-November. Vadim sold his share to three men in cheap suits. He still hung around the club, because no one wanted to go anywhere else after hours.

“I thought you were leaving town,” asked Arthur, as the month near its end.

“I don’t know where to go.” Wintering in Maine had lost its appeal. So had leaving.

“Anyplace, but here.” Arthur nodded at our new partners. They looked like cops.

“I’ll leave after Christmas.” Another month was worth $3000.

“Don’t wait too long.” He was trying to tell me something only I wasn’t listening as long as Lisa’s Nordic profile, blonde hair and sculptured shoulders dogged my peripheral vision.

She was a siren and to other men as well.

Vadim’s bodyguards exhibited violent Slavic etiquette to these suitors in the alley. The previous week one of them had punched Danny and broken his nose. My obsession rejected fear and I cornered Lisa once, when Vadim was out of town.

“All I want is explanation.” It was Thanksgiving.

The anniversary of her departure.

“Of what?” She had embraced the comfort of amnesia.

“Why you left and never came back.” I had told myself a thousand excuses. None of them added up to one plus one equaling two.

“If I explained that, then I would have to tell you everything.”

She looked through me, as if I were clear glass and said wearily walking away, “Sometimes you don’t get answers.”

I stood there for several seconds.

I hadn’t foreseen that answer.

Arthur came up to me.

“I told you to stay away. It was for your own good.”

“No one listens to anyone’s advice after hearing their own lies.”

I went to the door.

Snow was falling on the street. I let everyone into the club. Many of them tipped me $20. A few gave me C-notes. I didn’t bother to count it.

Money meant nothing, especially since Lisa’s neglect was a game and she chose to exploit a pawn in December.

To continue reading IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA by Peter Nolan Smith: to purchase this tale of love for $2.99, please go to the following URL

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JQSIZZ4/ref=rdr_kindle_ext_tmb

MOSES' BEST FRIEND by Peter Nolan Smith

New York City showed its teeth the winter of 1980. The police were racketeering our after-hours nightclub. One of the Continental’s backers was a gangster from Odessa, Russia. Vadim was going out with my old girlfriend from Buffalo. The tough zek smuggled stolen icons and passed bad paper. Lisa looked good in his furs.

Only problem was that our newest investor in illegal enterprise looked like the FBI mostly since they were the FBI investigating the dirty cops.

Arthur had hired me to work the door, however his partner, a poster boy/model for herpes, didn’t like my attitude and Paul Garcia wasn’t alone. Arthur apologized, “I got to let you go.”

“No worries.”

The microphone wire on Arthur’s chest was never a good sign and I accepted the offer from a Paris nightclub to work the door as a physionomiste i.e. doorman. Jacques and Fabrice paid my plane ticket to France. I got to choose a DJ. Vladmar was my choice. He arrived one day after me. The dance crowd loved his spinning of cold wave hits. I was another story.

“I don’t know how to speak French.” Two years of grammar school French from a nun with a lisp had taught me how to ask, “Ou est le Bibliotechque?” I explained to the owner.

“Pas de problem.” Jacques shrugged with ease.

The previous door person had been Farida, an Algerian Amazon. She was leaving her post to pursue a modeling career. She was that beautiful.

"I want someone not French. You only have to say two words. ‘Ouais’ or ‘non.”

“Okay.” I had learned that trick at CBGBs, Hurrah, and Studio 54. “But I don’t know anyone in Paris. Not the famous people. Not the people who go to nightclubs.”

“Bien.” His partner was tired of everyone getting in for free. “Make them pay. I don’t care if it’s Brigitte Bardot.”

“But how shall I treat them?”

“Like shit.”

“Like shit?”

“Comme le merde.”

I followed those orders to the tee, except I treated my favorites with glory and I built a new clientele for the old bathhouse off the Avenue Sebastopol; rockers, punks, models, gangsters, pop stars, and just normal people too.

For the most part the owners liked the mix.

It was edgy.

One night a decrepit clouchard approached the entrance to Les Bains. The bouncers moved to prevent the derelict's climbing the stairs. They were off-duty Legionnaires. I ordered them to stop and asked the grizzled drunk in Boston-accented French,"Why are you here?"

“Because I’m a good friend of Moses.”

"A personal friend?"

"From birth. He told me to meet him here."

"Come on in."

"Are you serious?"

"Mais ouais." I had heard plenty of excuses from people seeking to enter the Bains-Douches. None of them were as good as that offered by this 'friend of Moses'.

"I have no money." The clouchard patted his pockets.

"A friend of Moses doesn't need money. Here are two drink tickets. Have a good time."

His raison d’etre granted him entry to the elite boite de nuit and I went inside from time to time to make sure that he was having a good time. The clientele of the Bains-Douches opened their hearts to the Friend of Moses. He wasn't one of them. They liked different. I considered him harmless, until my boss stormed up to the front door.

"What's wrong?" I didn't have an idea what, but I was sure about the 'who'.

"Your friend drank a bottle of wine from Thierry Mugler’s table." My boss had a sweet spot for the fashion czars of Paris.

"Really?" I regarded the designers as a little full of themselves and laughed at the situation.

"You think it's funny."

"Just a little. I'll show him out."

“Why did you let him in?”

“Because he’s a friend of Moses.” The excuse wasn’t so funny to the patron, but he had never seen Charlton Heston part the Red Sea in THE TEN COMMANDMENTS.

I know it was special effects, but the real thing must have been very impressive.

I had the bouncers or 'videurs' escort the clouchard from the dining area and he cried out, “You can’t treat the friend of Moses like this.”

“Sorry, I'm just doing my job."

"Pas de problem." Then he cried out, “Just wait till I talk to him. He has more plagues up his sleeves than I have fleas.”

Nothing as bad as the killing of the first born visited the Bains-Douches and several nights later I spotted the friend of Moses in Les Halles hectoring passers-by about the 27 Commandments. I wish that I could remember his 'thou shalt nots', except I’m lucky if I can repeat Moses’ 10.

One afternoon he cursed everyone with damnation at the very popular Cafe Pere Tranquille.

The junkies and drunks laughed at his predictions of doom.

I looked to the sky.

The madman pointed a finger at me. “That Amerlot loves God.”

And I wish it were true, but I had been a non-believer since 1962 and I gave him 20 francs, for it wasn't such a bad idea to have the friend of Moses saying good to the Grand Seigneur, even if the drunk is completely mad, for while their Lord moves in strange ways, so do the mad.

IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA by Peter Nolan Smith on Kindle

Most relationship end at the same point and throughout the 1980s my romances t-boned with fate in New York and Paris. I fell in love time and time again with the right women in the wrong places, but also never realized what I had until it was gone.

My long novella IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA recounts my inability to see past skin-deep beauty into the souls, although I was no angel.

Nightclub owners, crooked cops, porno actresses, and runaways were my friends.

No one had two feet on the ground, unless they were in the grave, but I learned nothing from it all and that's because anyone who has all the answers has not heard all the questions.

Here are the women in question.

New York.

Paris.

New York.

We were all so much younger then and we are still younger than now.

To purchase my novella IN ABSENCE OF AMNESIA, please go to the following URL

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00JQSIZZ4

I Love France

During the 80s I was lucky enough to live in Paris. I worked as a doorman at Les Bains-Douches, la Balajo, and Nouvelle Eve. The French treated me right and my many friends of then are les bones amis of now.

I was also lucky enough to make love to several French women.

I am still friends with them.

Viva La France, especially Francoise Hardy, la plus belle chanteuse des 60s.

A bas l'ancien regime.

IN THE ABSENCE OF AMNESIA by Peter Nolan Smith on KINDLE

New York in the summer of 1981 was everything it hadn’t been in the winter. The 90+ temperature boiled the asphalt. New Wave had replaced punk and somehow the city had escaped bankruptcy. Money flowed on the streets and even the East Village exhibited signs of regeneration, since abandoned tenements can only be burned so many times before their ashes won’t catch fire.

People had work. Mine was menial construction on an after-hours club along the Hudson River. After paying rent I had enough money for Chinese take-out and beers at CBGBs. I lost weight and thought about robbing a bank. Whenever I entered one, guards placed their hands on the guns like they were armed with ESP.

I was no Jesse James.

Daytime employment was the logical solution to my desperate situation. I had a college degree. My permanent record was clean. I had worked nine-to-fives before and real jobs didn’t kill you, however Arthur, the nightclub owner, had promised the construction crew various jobs once the International opened its doors.

At our previous gig I had coined $500-700 a night. We hoped to open before Labor Day. On August 13th the club was $20,000 short of our goal and construction lurched to a halt, however the International was saved by a cash infusion from a criminal refugee from Odessa. His money was rumored to come from smuggling Tsarist icons. The source was unimportant. The club was a dead issue without his help.

Arthur said that Vadim had a beautiful blonde girlfriend.

“Almost cover girl pretty, but too short to succeed on the runways.”

“Sounds like your old girlfriend.” Danny Gordon, the DJ, had heard that the gangster’s girl came from Buffalo.

“No, that would be too much of a coincidence.”

Last November Lily had left for a modeling job in Milan. I hadn’t heard from her since.

No calls.

No letters.

When I spotted her in a French lingerie magazine, I almost flew to Paris, except she could have been in London, Milan, or Munich, so I remained in New York to be haunted by her imagined footsteps on cobble-stoned European streets.

“Coincidence is destiny crossing paths.”

“No chance of that. Lily’s gone for good.”

“No one leaves the City forever.” Native New Yorkers like Danny considered anywhere other than Manhattan to be purgatory. “She’ll be back.”

“I’ve been dreaming of that day,” I said, but in truth I had been forgetting her piece by piece. The smell of her skin after sex.

Her mocking laugh after I told a bad joke.

Buying leather jackets together. Hers white, mine black, yet some memories had lives of their own.

No matter how many drinks.

No matter how many days.

“Still it would be funny if it was her.” Danny wasn’t letting go either. He had a thing for her. Any man would if she looked his way.

“Funny, but not ha-ha funny.”

“Not for you, but me. I can’t wait to see your face when she walks through the doors.”

I chucked a hammer at his head. It missed by a foot and put a dent in an op-art sculpture from the 60s.

Arthur noticed the damage a week later.

We denied any knowledge of how it got there.

The Russian’s money accelerated the final stages of the construction. The walls were painted lilac purple and the sound system was wired through the club. A Labor Day opening appeared realistic and on the hottest day of summer Danny and I were tearing down a last section of the ceiling. It was a dirty job and rat dust caked my sweating flesh.

The door opened for three shadows.

We lowered our tools.

“Guys, I want you to meet Vadim.” Arthur shouted from the entrance.

A muscular man in his late-20s entered the club wearing a pastel linen suit. We muttered hellos. Mine was silenced by the sight of a slender blonde in snug Versace. Lily’s b-grade beauty was as haughty as a dethroned princess checking into a Holiday Inn.

“So much for the lack of coincidences.” Danny nudged my ribs.

“It’s a small world.” My throat tightened to a knot. “And a long life.”

“Think she recognizes you?” Danny wiped a layer of grime from his face.

“Not unless she looks my way.” My body was black with soot

Her head turned to our perch.

She recognized me and the dice roll of jade green eyes indicated my lack of social progress had not disappointed her low expectations for a punk poet.

“No, she hasn’t forgotten.” Danny laughed at my pained expression, as Vadim, Lily and Arthur disappeared into the office.

Right before our lunch break, Lily and Vadim exited from the office.

She covered her mouth with a scarf.

Vadim shielded his a thick hand and they left the site without a glance in our direction.

By 4pm the ceiling had been replaced and Arthur called it a day.

As the rest of the crew filed from the club, Arthur pulled me aside.

“This isn’t going to be a problem?”

“What?” I played dumb.

“You and Vadim’s girlfriend.” He was serious.

“Lily?”

Over the past year her name had floated in my mind a million times.

This was the first time I had said it.

“Is it a problem?” Émigré Russians from Odessa were notoriously violent.

“No, she’s nothing to me.”

“Good, then stay away from her.” He lifted a finger. “Vadim is a piece of work.”

Obeying his advice wasn’t hard.

On every visit Lily ignored me and I couldn’t blame her. To contunue reading IN THE ABSENCE OF AMNESIA please purchase this novella for $3.99 on Kindle, please going to the following URL http://www.amazon.com/ABSENCE-AMNESIA-Peter-Nolan-Smith-ebook/dp/B00JQSIZZ4

Last Meal In Les Halles

Back in May 1982 Walter Durkacz and I were celebrating my 30th birthday with a luncheon at our favorite Paris cafe, which served the gourmands of Les Halles. I ordered the steack au poivre and Walter had the sole. He was a very slow eater, so I drank wine waiting for him to finish his meal.

"You want dessert?" Walter asked between a thoughtful chaw on the soft fish.

"No, I'm good." The carafe of wine was half-full. Walter was a slow drinker too. I turned my head.

The man next to us was dining alone. His face was more than a little red. He coughed and fell forward onto the table.

I snatched his plate of duck before he could face-plant in his meal.

His head thocked the table and he sighed his last breath.

Everyone in the restaurant regarded the man; knives and forks in hand.

I felt his pulse.

There was none and I told the waiter the same in my Boston-accented French.

"Merde," said the waiter since the dead man had yet to pay his bill.

The rest of the diners shrugged and tucked into their lunch.

"Dessert?" Walter repeated his offer.

"Creme Brulee."

Life goes on.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST by Peter Nolan Smith

Punk died before Disco. The next alternative defender of rock and roll was the New Wave, which combined electronic and experimental music with a minimal beat. Bands such as The Psychedelic Furs, Simple Minds, and Echo and The Bunnymen achieved critical and financial success during the early 80s, however American New Wave acts were shut out of the surge. TuxedoMoon, a San Francisco Post Punk group, had attained a modicum of fame within the USA, although not enough to satisfy their egos or pockets and the band emigrated to Belgium hoping to break into the European market.

Sell-out concerts Paris, Berlin, and Milan did not translated into box office boffo in America and the group toured the States in abject poverty. Battered vans and second rate-hotels were complemented by long road trips to isolated college towns always in hope of a lucky break. Few came their way in the Lower 48.

The group played the Bains-Douches in 1983. I was working the door at that fabled Paris nightclub. I saw two great SRO shows. After a tumultuous encore the band retired to dining room. I offered drinks to Steven Brown and Blaine L. Reininger. We knew each other through mutual friends.

"How was your last tour?" I was avoiding America. Reagan was in power and the NYPD Internal Affairs had a few questions to ask me about pay-offs to the 20th Precinct. The Atlantic acted as a good buffer zone between me and them.

"College campuses loved us. New York and LA too. Only problem is that the record companies could figure out what to do with us." Steven was eying the blonde bartender. She smiled at him. Corinne was a darling.

"It's not like you're Top 40." I loved their songs The Stranger, Scream With a View, and What Use?/Crash. No Tears should have been a hit in 1978, although 'no tears for the creatures of the night' stood little chance against Andy Gibbs SHADOW DANCING.

"We never said we wanted Top 40." Steven protested, starting an argument between Blaine and him about band direction. Within a minute they agreed that they were not destined to replace the BeeGees.

"Strangest Top 40 experience on the trip was during our drive through Tennessee. Wintertime in those hills the roads get dangerous. Snow, ice, and fog." Steven sounded like he did most of the driving.

"Don't forget the mountains." Blaine held the horror of the suicide seat close to his heart.

"One afternoon I'm driving from Knoxville to Johnston City."

"I know that highway." I had hitchhiked it in the summer of 1975. "Pretty country in August."

"Bare trees and blowing snow in January." Steven's words were a granite testimony to the highway's treachery in bad conditions.

"Fog too." Blaine was feeding lines to Steven. They were poets as well as musicians. "No one else on the road."

"Hit a stretch where I could see much, except a glow in the mist. Then we spot an accident. Three cars torn to shreds. One was on fire and a man lay on the highway."

"We missed him by inches." Steven and Blaine had transported me to that interstate by imitating the screech of brakes. "We stopped and walked back. Everyone was dead. Four people. Couldn't tell what had happened, only something bad. We drove another mile to the exit, where we pulled into a diner. There were two waitresses, a cook, and a few customers inside. Blaine called the cops, as I told them what we had seen and the waitress put down her apron said accidents happen there all the time. She went over to the jukebox and dropped in a quarter."

"Played B-5." Blaine was the straight man.

"Queen's ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST."

"Biggest crossover hit in 1980.

"Number 1 in the USA and UK."

"You could always do it as a cover." I loved covers.

"We don't do covers."

And they never had another #1 hit like ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST, but I loved them still.

To hear NO TEARS go to this URL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z-DC66THOU