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Ordinary
Oh brother, oh damn, why me? I’d know better than to ask the question if I came down with a disease or got hit by a car, but this is getting to me—and how. I wasn’t doing anything, nothing, minding my business, just taking a walk in Paris, I don’t deserve this. And I never saw it coming.
Not at all: it was feeling like a fine day, a day for something pleasing, a late winter day with a few clouds, a weak blue sky, not much wind to speak of—the kind of day when it’s hard to decide if I should keep my coat buttoned or open it up, when crossing the street from the sun into the shade means a drop of three degrees at least, and the cafés on the sunny side are crowded. It’s a nice street with trees on both sides, with stores, markets and bars meant to please the people from the quartier, what I think of as ordinary Paris for ordinary Parisians. The architecture is simply there, though a spectacular Art Nouveau entrance and a cartoonish giant stuck to the side of a non-descript building are worth staring at and can make you laugh out loud with surprised pleasure. It’s just ordinary. The one exception on this busy street is more than a dozen stores proclaiming déstockage.
They are only distant cousins, probably a couple of times removed, of the outlet stores that have become destinations and serious recreation in the States. They actually sell things this year their famous makers couldn’t sell last year in the department stores and the branded boutiques on Rennes and Rivoli, not bas de gamme clothes whose sole purpose is to keep a top-of-the-line label from falling on the ground. The locals from the neighborhood do not keep them in business, though I don’t imagine they’re allergic to a bargain either. These outlets are well known, and people from the fancier arrondissements and the suburbs know how to get here. And so do others, even unlikely and unforeseeable others.
Of course. Everyone’s welcome—entrée libre—even me, and in I go, passing under the name of an Italian designer, because amazingly I can’t quite make out the price on the label hanging off a scarf I like draped around a mannequin’s neck in the window. About two steps in from the door I see a man coming toward me. He is bulky, fair-haired, and blind with rage or something I do not know about and don’t want to. Whether it’s right to say he has a cloud in his face, blood in his eye, or his hair is on fire I still can’t tell, but I get out of his way as he rips the door open and bulls out into the street, sending the calm pedestrians on the fine late winter day dodging left and right. I look after him until he’s gone, then at the clerk, a nicely put together middle-aged woman, who is staring after him with her mouth slightly open and her eyes ready to start out of her head. She is terrified. I ask her what has happened. Not a word. I lead her over to her desk, help her sit down, then open a bottle of water she has left there and hand it to her. She drinks a little, then lets her head roll forward. Her shoulders heave as if she’s crying or trying not to. She slowly looks up, drinks a little more water, says merci.
Are you all right? She nods. What happened? “I don’t know.” It takes a while, but I think this is the story. He walked into the store looking normal, she smiled, greeted him, and immediately he looked angry, got red in the face, raised his fists, then began pounding them into the sides of his legs, said something she did not understand in a very loud voice, took a deep breath, turned, and nearly ran me over as I walked in the door. “I thought he was going to punch me.” She breathes hard and deep.
Supposing a little retail therapy might do her some good, I ask her, after a few minutes, about the scarf I saw in the window. She leans on my arm as she gets up, then goes slowly to the window, but comes back with a little more bounce and a smile on her face as she lays it out on the counter. “C’est belle, n’est-ce pas, l’écharpe?” I think so too, a beautiful red scarf that causes one of the many short circuits in my brain to think of the trademark color of the 1965 Mustang. I also think it’s a little too much like the scarf I left in the apartment when I went out this morning to let me spend forty euros on it and not feel wasteful. A sigh and no thanks, from me. I turn and ask her to wait a moment. I go out through the door a step or two, look up and down the street, then come back and tell her he is not there. I smile, thank her, and start to go again. She asks me to wait. “I want you to have it. A gift.” I can’t, but thank you. “You helped me.” Its own reward, like virtue, I think. No, I can’t. “Will you buy it for ten euros?” Don’t ask me to explain, but a bargain is sometimes better than a gift, which is often no bargain at all. Yes, I will. I hand her the money, she carefully writes out a receipt, puts the bill in the cash drawer, and hands me the scarf. I wrap my neck with it, she smiles, says we look très beau et très belle, and we say goodbye.
The scarf cheers me up, and I throw one end over my shoulder à la Aristide Bruant as I make my way to a café catching the sun on a corner for a glass of wine and a sit-down. As soon as I have both, I notice something to my right and look up at the wildman from the store. Oh brother, oh damn. Just what I need. His face, however, is twisted into an agonized apology, his body bent like a question mark. He approaches slowly and says, Pardon, monsieur... I look and say, Vous l’avez flanqué la frousse, which is the same, but much politer, than you scared the crap out of her. He doesn’t understand. Why did you do that? He starts to say something, I think about nearly running me over, but his French isn’t good. I ask: American? He looks annoyed, maybe angry, and I tell him to sit. He does. Napoléon, I think yet again, got it right: you can’t be tragic or even dramatic sitting down, and as Montaigne noted, no matter how high you are placed, you are still only sitting on your ass.
What, I ask him in pretty fair English, is wrong with you? You scared that woman, she was terrified. “She said hello.” So? That’s what people do in stores. A customer comes in, they say hello. This is news? “She said it in English. I hadn’t said a word.” And this made you mad enough to make her wet her pants? “You don’t understand.” No, I don’t. “I’ve spent a lot of time in France, on business, vacations. I like it here. I wear French clothing…” I decide not to tell him that French clothing is also made in Bangladesh and the Dominican Republic. “…and I think I have a French attitude.” Whatever that means. So? “So why, when I didn’t say a word did she say hello instead of bonjour?” I guess because she thought you were American or English-speaking, anyway. “But why? I try, I’ve tried so hard. It’s embarrassing. It makes me mad. Why? What am I doing wrong?” You’re not doing anything wrong.
He wants to know why, I want to know why me. I could tell him for a man of his age, around forty-five, I think, he is too tall and too beefy and corn-fed for a Frenchman, at least the kind who wears a suit. I could tell him his face is too broad and soft, his color too ruddy, his mouth too slack and inexpressive because he hasn’t spent forty-five years building all those little muscles you use to make the French u, his feet are too wide, his posture is not straight enough. He’s doing nothing wrong. He’s just being wrong, if being an American is wrong, and he can’t do anything about it. And even if he got all this right, his first two syllables in French would give him away. He’s an ordinary American who would sell his soul to be an ordinary Frenchman, or give it away for free—and nobody’s buying or even looking over the merchandise.
It doesn’t matter, I tell him. “It does, to me.” I could tell him to be himself, but he leaves, apologizing and angry. I sit in the café until the sun goes down and the afterglow of the whole day is gone, go home and don't turn on the lights.
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