Trouble in Truffle Land
Can truffle gatherers in Périgord continue their traditional way of life?


Patrick Bruel Goes Retro...
A fun musical flashback to
the 1930s


A Dog's Life...
In a search for cleaner sidewalks an expat looks at pampered Parisian pooches


Disappearing Concierges...
Is the typical Parisian concierge becoming an endganered species?


Paris Street Music...
The sounds of the Paris street are the sounds of the world


France's Legion of Honor...
A
look at France's Legion of Honor from a personal perspective


In a Green Haze of Absinthe
Absinthe inspired a generation of artists before it was banned in 1915. Will it make a comeback?


A Search for the Ideal Cafe
A ramble through Paris via the corner cafes


SPECIAL REPORT ARCHIVE

 

what's
happening
and what
we think
about it


understanding those
serious issues


cool stuff to do

 

Want to know more
about Paris Tempo?


Read this message from the Paris Tempo Team

Original writing: Follow the adventure in A Toast to Excitement, the latest installment of Joe Jones goes to Paris... See how this city can change your life in To Kiss Paris... A visit to literary Paris remembered... A memoir of a dreary Paris winter redefines the grey mood... A tale of Paris dreams in New York...

Classic books: The Little Prince is not just for kids... Down and out with Orwell... Hemingway's Parisian adventures...

Music: Some new sounds for the new year... More music selections from Paris...



Joe Jones Goes to Paris: A Toast to Excitement

by Brian Benjamin,
copyright © 2001, 2000, all rights reserved

Joe Jones spoke slowly. "Perhaps I have been mistaken, Monsieur."

The table froze, a tableau of forks, spoons, glasses hovering in mid-air. A flickering light danced on the floor-to-ceiling windowpanes – too irregular, too savage for simple headlights. It would not fade – just kept stabbing through the night with jagged patches of buttery yellow. Jones looked. His eyes darted to the light’s source. He watched, scowled. ‘I’ve got my Glock 9mm,’ he thought. ‘The Bentley’s inside the gate. Buy us some time from that lot.’

 

Read the First Installment of Joe Jones Goes to Paris


Jones exhaled, picked up his champagne glass. Stopped. Anastasia Bardot gasped. Claude Marchant, host, bon vivant, potential partner, slicked his hair back, looked at his plate. Bringing his trembling hands back to the table, his eyes darted around, wild and low, hoping that no one had seen the shaking. In fact, no one had missed it.

The maid jumped when Jones finally spoke, but it was alright because he caught her gravy bowl without spilling a drop, set it on the table. "Perhaps I am mistaken, monsieur" he repeated slowly.

 

Marchant looked down again, then out the window to the rue Pigalle, his brow furrowed. A fat bead of sweat broke free, trickled down his face onto his cheek, disappeared under a pocked chin. He swallowed.

Joe Jones sipped champagne, eyes still. "Perhaps I am in the wrong home. Perhaps I am mistaken even about your intentions, or my . . . sources were . . . faulty, shall we say." His voice dropped an octave. Bardot reached for her glass, finished it with a gulp.

Jones set his down. "You see, I was given to understand that you were a man of intention, a man of action." He was like a detective performing an interrogation. Marchant felt another globe of sweat slide down his face. Transfixed, he did not move, he just listened.

"Yes. You see monsieur, I was given to understand that you were a man who wanted to make money. But, perhaps I was mistaken. Perhaps I am not in the right place." Jones drank, never taking his eyes from the Marchant’s sweat-slicked face.

"What do you mean!?" Marchant exploded, thrilled to be able to wipe his face with his silk handkerchief, smooth his hair. He snapped his fingers for cognac, stalling, thinking.
"What do you mean!?" he repeated. "I, I, am a man of substance! Integrity!!" he tossed back the cognac. "C’est vrai!" he shouted in French, flustered. He caught himself, switched back immediately. "It’s true! Action. Of course I believe in action! Vraiment! Vraiment! Mais . . ." he caught himself, looked around, at his plate. His voice dropped. "These things you propose, monsieur" he abruptly looked, as if seeing it for the first time, at the bulge in Jones’ tuxedo coat, swallowed, blundered on. "These . . . ventures you would…undertake…"

The light on the windowpanes flared wild and savage. A hoarse, ragged chorus of shouts, howling curses, accompanied it. "Etranger! Etranger!" and "Auslander Raus!" were the only things that Jones could make out. Yet his companions remained cool, aloof, enthralled by the gorgeous food. Jones turned toward the light, the backdrop of hot voices. He touched Bardot’s small finger, nodded towards the street. Went back to the conversation. Quickly, smoothly. Anastasia thought she had imagined his touch. But then she realized that she hadn’t, because his energy changed, subtle as a shift in the breeze, from calm to aware.

"Oui" he rumbled slowly. "These ventures I am going to undertake, with you, or not, Monsieur, will place the whole of Paris nightlife in your front hip pocket. Nothing that happens after the sun sets will happen without passing by you, first. Monsieur. One way or another, you will set a trend that will run for at least the next ten years – you will become the reigning crown prince of Paris at night."

Marchant dabbed his brow. "Monsieur" he faltered, ". . . where, how . . . how would you begin this . . . scene??"

Jones’ eyes softened then constricted as they darted back out to the street. There was the sudden bite of breaking glass and a frayed chorus of electronic yelps, barks, shrieks from errant car alarms. Joe Louis Jones shoved out of his chair and headed for the door.
Anastasia shoved the new French francs deeper into her purse, glanced at Marchant, who sat still as a statue, then she jumped up and ran out after Jones.

In the street, a mob of youths with bloodshot eyes and paratrooper boots, were setting fires. "Auslander Raus! Auslander Raus! Auslander Raus!" they crowed, hoarse, feral. One boy took a baseball bat to a Citroen. Someone tossed a flaming bottle of rags which exploded into flames that licked the indifferent night sky. "Auslander Raus!" the boy shrieked, fist in the air. He cocked the bat and started for the Peugeot across the street. "Merde!" Anastasia snarled. Skinheads!

The boy with the bat double-cocked it, was about to swing – and there was a ripping flash of white light – and then the bat was in Joe Jones’ hand, and the boy with the swastika on his jacket stood there for a second, blankly staring at Jones. Then he turned and ran away.

Jones moved forward with the growling efficiency of a main battle tank. And Anastasia knew that she was not the only one who had seen the boy Nazi fly through the night air like a child’s toy, because before her, the skinheads broke, ran with wild abandon, dropping their weapons as they ran.

Anastasia felt dizzy. There, behind a minivan, a buxom, red-haired olive-skinned woman in a bright red miniskirt, red fishnet stockings, was involved in a loud tug of war with three sneering skinheads. The object of their mutual interest was her gold lamé purse. The Nazi boys yanked hard at the purse, but she bared her teeth, refused to let the battered bag go. Then there was that flash again, bright as a dozen laser beams. Anastasia crooked her arm up in front of her face to shield her eyes. It was reflexive, and when she looked back the three skinheads were gone. . . .

The sirens grew more insistent. Against the dull, ancient stone wall, the svelte, buxom redhead clutched her purse with both sinewy arms, now shouting at Joe Jones in a torrid, burbling river of heavily accented, almost unintelligible French. In spite of everything, Anastasia giggled as she trotted over to rescue him.

"Croatia! Zagreb! Zagreb!" the woman held the purse with one hand, shook her fist at him. "ZaGREB!!!" she shouted.

"Dontcha think we oughta get ouda here, sister?" Jones rumbled, lapsing back into his dense New York street idiom. "Things are about ta get a little hot, dontcha think?"
The woman’s face went blank. She narrowed her eyes into two tight slits as she once again wrapped both arms around her purse. "Zagreb!" she hissed. Broken glass crackled as she stomped her foot on the dented pavement.

Anastasia Bardot giggled. Jones whipped his head around. His eyes relaxed about one millimeter. "I wuz wonderin’ what happened ta you. I thought you mighta skipped. Not enough action to keep you occupied!" Anastasia hit him with a mock frown, looked at the disheveled woman, at the flustered Jones, then giggled again. "She is trying to tell you that she is from Zagreb, Joe. Croatia. The nation of Croatia. OK, Joe?"

Joe backed off, looked at the woman, at Anastasia, scratched his head.

"Oui, Joe Jones, Americain tough guy?"

He cracked a grin for the first time since they had hopped out of the sparkling Bentley limousine. He counted his words. "OK. So…she’s from Yugoslavia…"

"Croatia, Joe!"

"Zagreb!" the woman shouted.

Joe Jones smirked at the woman, who was making no attempt to leave, took Anastasia, led her further away. Closed his eyes, let out an exasperated sigh. "OK. Certainly east of the Seine. So?. What’s that got ta do with us?"

"She is considered a foreigner, Joe. Skinheads – very mean, very bad – obviously –" She pinched Jones. "Very xenophobic. Don’t like foreigners. Don’t really like anybody, monsieur tough guy."

The air was still acrid with burning tire smoke, burning steel, burning glass as they moved quickly to Marchant’s gate, and the abruptly abandoned dinner party. Then the rushed sound, deliberate, like a bike on loose gravel, of someone darting after them, and the Zagreb redhead was with them.

Jones entered last and Marchant closed the door behind him, putting a full glass of champagne into his hand at the same time. Marchant offered him a Gauloise.
"Quite the display, monsieur" he spoke low as he struck a match.

Jones’ eyes flipped up as he puffed at the cigarette. He let his lungs fill with smoke, relaxed. "Indeed. We did not want you to be bored, monsieur."

"A toast, then." Marchant, shuddering, held Jones’ gaze as best he could. "To excitement." The two men drank slowly, eyes burning, in silence. Marchant wiped his sweat- slicked brow with his hand. The hand shook. He did not hide it anymore. "I will sign a contract for at least two events, monsieur." He wiped his face, took a deep breath. "I hope I am not signing the warrant for my own destruction" he whispered into his glass.


Go back to Part 1: The Adventure Begins

Go back to Part 2: Argent Sauvage

discuss this story

   
     all contents copyright 2003, Paris Tempo. contact us at paristempo@aol.com.