An excess of free time can make the mind misbehave. Last month, I was laid off from my job. I worked and spent every waking minute underground in the Paris metro, checking people’s tickets. “J'fais des trous, des petits trous, encore des petits trous,” is what I’d sing to myself. The wordsmith who first uttered these lyrics punched holes into tickets in the ‘50s - which has more of a romance and elan to it, don’t you think? On the contrary, I spent my days checking the validity of tickets with the robot that resided in my right hand. I’d catch, and then be expected to fine, poor people or confused foreigners, both of whom I could relate to greatly. The halfwits let me go because apparently my French was incomprehensible, but I don’t believe that to be the truth. I think they’d caught me winking at civilians when it was their cue to do a runner.
I hated the job anyway. On some days, I would start work before sunrise and exit the station when the stars and the escorts were coming out to play. The inability to tip one’s beret to the sun and bid it adieu on its departure makes a soul start to decay. The skin on my face had become pale, my veins blue and present, akin to the very metro map that I carried around in my back pocket.
Since then, my time was spent gently wandering amongst the Parisians whilst they’d speed past me with great purpose. I’d forgotten the pace and rhythm of the city. The days began blurring into one, and I’d fail to tell you how my hours were being spent. Each morning, I’d prowl the web for job opportunities, but other than that, I’d walk and walk until an appropriate time to have a drink or go to sleep. When I wasn’t meeting a friend or a potential lover, I’d sit in a café's terrace and people watch. I would observe them telling stories with passion and wit; I’d think of the shapes and colours they were envisioning and reliving as they’d share their memories with those happy to listen. But all I saw were innumerable pairs of bashing together lips and the occasional drop of saliva that would leave their mouth and splashes onto their friend’s cheek. I’d envy their enthusiasm. Aside from making faces at the city’s many gargoyles and waiting for the day they’d make them back, I was rather bored.
I realised that I should pick up a new hobby, something that didn’t involve walking, moping or drinking. I decided that swimming was a suitable choice, so I went to a Lido close to my favourite wine spot. I repeated “un billet réduit” over and over in my head. When the words left my mouth, I made an indeterminate gargle as, on that day, French pronunciation was too much for my foreign mouth. After some confusion, I entered the changing room and stripped down to my one piece. I went to wash the public transport off my hands and was thrown by the soap on offer. It had been rubbed down into the shape of a tooth. As had all the other bars of soap I’d come across that week, all in different places. Each of them beige, stained and molar-like. I feared the tooth would start eating away at my skin if I washed hard enough, so I left with germ-ridden hands and headed for the pool.
I’d done a couple of lengths and was out of breath as I’m aggressively unfit, when a middle-aged man wearing glasses started yelling at me in French. I couldn’t work out how a man wearing eyewear that wasn’t goggles had any authority, but I heard him out. After deciphering next to nothing, through a heavy pant I declared, in French, that my grasp of his language was poor and could we switch over to my mother-tongue. He alerted me to the fact that I was breast-stroking in the fast lane. This insulted me as I wasn’t aware that I was going particularly slowly. I was wearing goggles and spent the majority of the length underwater pretending to be a fish. I didn’t have the energy to argue my case so, with my mermaid-tale between my legs, I switched lanes.
I started my next length above water and was about twenty metres in when I noticed a new presence in front of me. It was a boy about my age who sported a nice tan. His hair was the peroxide sort, that appeared yellow and poorly dyed when wet, a bit like mine does really. As I was wearing goggles, I could see his patchy locks whilst looking through either of the elements. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the boy; his arms flailing, legs squirming. His nose and joints were spear-like and, though they writhed, it was as though they were pointed towards me. I felt unsettled by the boy. He’d popped up in front of me, out of nowhere. I convinced myself that he was an incarnation of my unkempt and, also, flailing mind. Both of us were in the centre of the pool, trying with all our might to stay afloat. I wondered if he’d come across the tooth-like soaps and innumerable pairs of bashing together lips. Had he managed to conjure up a response from the stone figurines that watch over the city? I felt my mind spiral, and my legs could no longer tackle the breast-stroke frog kick, so I exited the pool.
That afternoon, I walked along the Seine until the evening settled in. The sun was beaming down on the back of my neck and cigarette smoke from late lunchers was getting caught in the thick summer air. The smell made me long for company. The Seine was winking at me as I stood transfixed on the different shades of sparkly white. As my eyes refocused and I came to, I noticed what looked like the tip of a nose and the ends of somebody’s toes. Next, I spotted a head of bleached hair and an arm, flailing. It was the boy. I knew that peculiar presence anywhere. Once again, he’d appeared unexpectedly, and it was only I who stood puzzled by this writhing fool. It was unclear whether he was drowning or enjoying himself. I stepped towards the edge and offered out my hand. The boy seemed to be slowly swimming towards me. The rim of my long-sleeved t-shirt was now soggy, but I decided to stay put a few moments longer. As the boy approached me, he ignored my congeniality and dived out of the water.
He emerged with might and purpose, alerting me further to his other-worldliness. The sun reflected against his wet physique making it difficult to decipher whether he was wearing clothes. He began to run with great speed, and I felt compelled to follow him. He surged up the stairs, away from the Seine’s bank. He darted in between the unstirred locals, yet it was my matched disarray that began to cause upset. I looked up, bemused, at Notre Dame’s famed gargoyles. Were they seeing the same things I was? As I squinted in a desperate attempt at communication, the grey figures began to shake and nod their heads in equal measures. I felt more confused than ever.
We cat and moused through the fourth arrondissement, until I noticed him head below ground. He was making his way into the Hôtel de Ville metro station. Paris’ evening rush hour was in full swing with crowds pouring into the station with force. I entered the madness with great trepidation, though a driving determination to find the boy. The crowd began to engulf me whilst the boy successfully weaved in and out of the nine-to-fivers. I stepped aside to gain perspective. The boy was now out of sight, and I didn’t want to waste my remaining wage on a single trip to nowhere. I began to rock myself in an attempt at finding sanity. I felt a tap on my shoulder. I prepared to confront my blonde headed pest. To my utter shock, it was my former boss. She looked at me with pity as my fragility loomed large. She turned to me and through bated breath offered me my job back. The offer was prefaced with the caveat that I had to rejoin the force at that exact moment.
My grasp of reality skewed, I nodded to keep her from talking to me. She handed me my old uniform, which smelt of the perfume I thought I’d no longer be able to afford. I headed towards the staff toilet to change into my workwear and to wash the chlorine off my clammy hands. As I reached for the soap, though it was beige and stained, it no longer resembled a tooth. Or maybe it did, but the threat was no longer present. I washed with no fear of being eaten away at. I felt a minor sense of calm enter my skin as I moved the bar in between my fingers. I decided to have one last cigarette as a free woman, so I entered daylight, for potentially the last time for a while. I stood facing the stairs of the station and took a long, much needed inhale. As my mind began to clear, I felt confident that I was being watched and mocked. The eyes felt beady and potentially made of stone. I knew they were in motion, the gargoyles. Furiously sticking their tongues out at their neglectful new friend.
Love this. Brilliant writing kid. Happy New Year. Uncle F xx
Intrigue upon intrigue!! Next episode, please! Gimme more. Loving it, Sadie-Rose. Keep em coming!!! Ole A. Jo xxxxxxx