Less

Less French

Here it comes, the trip he dreads: the one when he turns fifty. All the other trips of his life seem to have led, in a blind man’s march, toward this one. The hotel in Italy with Robert. The jaunt through France with Freddy. The wild-hare cross-country journey after college to San Francisco, to stay with someone named Lewis. And his childhood trips—the camping trips his father took him on many times, mostly to Civil War battlefields. How clearly Less remembers searching their campsite for bullets and finding—wonder of wonders!—an arrowhead (time revealed the possibility his father had salted the area). The games of mumblety-peg in which clumsy young Less was entrusted with a switchblade knife, which he fearfully tossed as if it were a poisonous snake and with which he once managed to impale an actual snake (garter, predeceased). A foil-wrapped potato left to cook in the fire. A ghost story with a golden arm. His father’s delight flickering in the firelight. How Less cherished those memories. (He was later to discover a book in his father’s library entitled Growing Up Straight, which counseled paternal bonding for sissy sons and whose advised activities—battlefields, mumblety-peg, campfires, ghost stories—had all been underlined with a blue Bic pen, but somehow this later discovery could not pierce the sealed happiness of his childhood.) Back then, these journeys all seemed as random as the stars in the sky; only now can he see the zodiac turning above his life. Here, rising, comes the Scorpion.

Less believes he will head now from Berlin to Morocco, with a quick layover in Paris. He has no regrets. He has left nothing behind. The last sands through his hourglass will be Saharan.

But he does not head now to Morocco.

In Paris: a problem. It has been the struggle of a lifetime for Arthur Less to break the value added tax system. As an American citizen, he is due a refund of taxes paid on some purchases abroad, and in the shops, when they hand you the special envelope, the forms all filled out, it seems so simple: find the customs kiosk at the airport for a stamp, collect your refund. But Less knows the con. Closed customs offices, kiosks under repair, stubborn officers who insist he produce goods that were packed in his already-checked baggage; it is easier getting a visa to Myanmar. How many years ago was it when the information lady at Charles de Gaulle would not tell him where the detax office was? Or when he got the stamp but posted it in a deceptively labeled recycling bin? Time and again, he has been outwitted. But not this time. Less makes it his mission to get his damned tax back. Having splurged recklessly after his prize in Turin (a light-blue chambray shirt with a wide white horizontal stripe, like the bottom edge of a Polaroid), he gave himself an extra hour at the Milan airport, found the office, shirt in hand, only to have the officer sadly inform him he must wait until leaving the EU—which will take place when he concludes his layover in Paris and heads for the African continent. Less was undaunted. In Berlin, he tried the same tactic, with the same result (lady with red spiked hair, in mean Berlinese). Less remains undaunted. But at his layover in Paris he meets his match: a surprise German, with red spiked hair and hourglass spectacles, either the twin of the Berliner, or this is her weekend shift. “We do not accept Ireland,” she informs him in icy English. His VAT envelope, through some switcheroo, is from Ireland; the receipts, however, are from Italy. “It’s Italian!” he tells her as she shakes her head. “Italian! Italian!” He is right, but by raising his voice he has lost; he feels the old anxiety bubbling inside him. Surely she feels it. “You must now post it from Europe,” she says. He tries to calm himself and asks where the post office is in the airport. Her magnified eyes barely look up, no smile on her face as she says her delicious words: “There is no post office in the airport.”

Less staggers away from the kiosk, utterly defeated, and makes his way toward his gate in a numbing panic; how enviously he looks upon the smoking lounge denizens, laughing in their glass zoo. The injustice of it all weighs on him heavily. How awful for the string of inequities to be brought out in his mind, that useless rosary, so he can finger again those memories: the toy phone his sister received while he got nothing, the B in chemistry because his exam handwriting was poor, the idiot rich kid who got into Yale instead of him, the men who chose hustlers and fools over innocent Less, all the way up to his publisher’s polite refusal of his latest novel and his exclusion from any list of best writers under thirty, under forty, under fifty—they make no lists above that. The regret of Robert. The agony of Freddy. His brain sits before its cash register again, charging him for old shames as if he has not paid before. He tries but cannot let it go. It is not the money, he tells himself, but the principle. He has done everything right, and they have conned him once again. It is not the money. And then, after he passes Vuitton, Prada, and clothing brands based on various liquors and cigarettes, he admits it to himself at last: It is, indeed, the money. Of course it is the money. And his brain suddenly decides it is not ready, after all, for fifty. So when he arrives at the crowded gate, jittery, sweating, weary of life, he listens with one ear to the agent’s announcement: “Passengers to Marrakech, this flight is overbooked, and we are looking for volunteers to accept a flight late tonight, with a money voucher for…”

“I’m your man!”

Fate, that glockenspiel, will turn upon the hour. Not long ago Less was lost in an airport lounge, broke, robbed, defeated—and now here he is! Walking down the rue des Rosiers with a pocket full of cash! His luggage is stowed at the airport, and he has hours in the city at his own liberty. And he has already made a call to an old friend.

“Arthur! Young Arthur Less!”

On the phone: Alexander Leighton, of the Russian River School. A poet, a playwright, a scholar, and a gay black man who left the overt racism of America for the soigné racism of France. Less remembers Alex in his headstrong days, when he wore a luxuriant Afro and exclaimed his poetry at the dinner table; last time they met, Alex was bald as a malted milk ball.

“I heard you were traveling! You should have called me earlier.”

“Well, I’m not even supposed to be here,” Less explains, caught up in the delight of this birthday parole, knowing his words make little sense. He has emerged from the Métro somewhere near the Marais and cannot get his bearings. “I was teaching in Germany, and I was in Italy before that; I volunteered for a later flight.”

“What luck for me.”

“I was thinking maybe we could get a bite to eat, or a drink.”

“Has Carlos got hold of you?”

“Who? Carlos? What?” Apparently, he cannot get his bearings in this conversation either.

“Well, he will. He wanted to buy my old letters, notes, correspondence. I don’t know what he’s up to.”

“Carlos?”

“Mine are already sold to the Sorbonne. He’ll be coming for you.”

Less imagines his own “papers” at the Sorbonne: The Collected Letters of Arthur Less. It would draw the same crowd as “An Evening…”

Alexander is still talking: “…did tell me you’re going to India!”

Less is amazed how quickly intelligence moves around the world. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, it was his suggestion. Listen—”

“Happy birthday, by the way.”

“No, no, my birthday isn’t until—”

“Look, I’ve got to run, but I’m going to a dinner party tonight. It’s aristocrats; they love Americans, and they love artists, and they’d love for you to come. I’d love for you to come. Will you come?”

“Dinner party? I don’t know if I…” And here comes the kind of word problem Less has always failed at: If a minor novelist has a plane at midnight but wants to go to a dinner in Paris at eight…

“It’s bobo Paris—they love a little surprise. And we can chat about the wedding. Very pretty. And that little scandal!”

Less, at a loss, merely sputters: “Oh, that, ha ha—”

“Then you’ve heard. So much to talk about. See you soon!” He gives Less a nonsensical address on the rue du Bac, with two kinds of door code, then bids him a hasty au revoir. Less is left breathless below an old house all covered in vines. A group of schoolgirls passes in two straight lines.

He is certainly going to the party now, if only because he cannot help himself. A very pretty wedding. Bright promise of something—like the card a magician shows you before he makes it vanish; sooner or later, it will turn up behind your ear. So Less will mail his VAT, go to the party, hear the worst of it, make his midnight flight to Morocco. And in between—he will wander Paris.

Around him, the city spreads its pigeon wings. He has made his way through the Place des Vosges, the rows of clipped trees providing cover both from the light patter of rain and from the Utah Youth Choir, all in yellow T-shirts, performing soft-rock hits of the eighties. On a bench, perhaps inspired by the music of their youth, a middle-aged couple kisses passionately, obliviously, their trench coats spattered with droplets; Less watches as, to the tune of “All Out of Love,” the man reaches into his lover’s blouse. In the colonnades surrounding, teenagers in cheap plastic ponchos clump together by Victor Hugo’s house, looking out at the rain; bags of gewgaws reveal they have visited Quasimodo. At a patisserie, even Less’s incomprehensible French cannot prevent success: an almond croissant is soon in his hands, covering him in buttered confetti. He goes to the Musée Carnavalet and admires the decor of crumbled palaces restored, room by room, and studies a strange groupe en biscuit of Benjamin Franklin signing an accord with France, marvels over the shoulder-high beds from the past, and stands in wonder before Proust’s black and gold bedroom: the walls of cork seem more boudoir than madhouse, and Less is touched to see Proust Senior’s portrait hanging on the wall. He stands in the archway of the Boutique Fouquet when, at one o’clock, he hears a chiming throughout the building: unlike in a certain hotel lobby in New York, the ancient clocks have all been wound by some diligent worker. But as Less stands and quietly counts the chimes, he realizes they are off by an hour. Napoleonic time.

He still has hours and hours before meeting Alexander at the address he has given. Down the rue des Archives and through the small entrance to the old Jewish sector. The young tourists are lined up for falafel, the older ones seated at outdoor cafés with enormous menus and expressions of distress. Elegant Parisian women in black and gray sip garishly colored American cocktails that even a sorority girl would not order. He remembers another trip, when Freddy met him in his Paris hotel room and they spent a long indulgent week here: museums and glittering restaurants and tipsy wandering through the Marais at night, arm in arm, and days spent in the hotel bedroom, both in recreation and in recuperation, when one of them caught a local bug. His friend Lewis had told him of an exclusive men’s boutique just down the road. Freddy in a black jacket, seeing himself in the mirror, transformed from studious to glorious: “Do I really look like this?” The hopeful look on Freddy’s face; Less had to buy it for him, though it cost as much as the trip. Confessing to Lewis later of his recklessness, and getting the reply: “Is that what you want on your grave? He went to Paris and didn’t do one extravagant thing?” Later, he wondered if the extravagant thing was the jacket or Freddy.

He finds the black signless storefront, the single golden doorbell, and he touches its nipple before ringing it. And is admitted.

Two hours later: Arthur Less stands before the mirror. To the left of him, on the white leather couch: a finished espresso and a glass of champagne. To the right: Enrico, the small bearded sorcerer who welcomed him and offered a place to sit while he brought “special things.” How different from the Piemontese tailor (sea otter mustache) who wordlessly took his measurements for the second part of his Italian prize—a tailored suit—and then, when Arthur discovered, to his delight, a fabric in his exact shade of blue, said, “Too young. Too bright. You wear gray.” When Less insisted, the man shrugged: We shall see. Less gave the address of a Kyoto hotel where he would be staying four months hence and headed to Berlin feeling cheated of his prize.

But here is Paris: a dressing room filled with treasures. And in the mirror: a new Less.

From Enrico: “I have…no words…”

It is a traveler’s fallacy that one should shop for clothing while abroad. Those white linen tunics, so elegant in Greece, emerge from the suitcase as mere hippie rags; the beautiful striped shirts of Rome are confined to the closet; and the delicate hand batiks of Bali are first cruise wear, then curtains, then signs of impending madness. And then there is Paris.

Less wears a pair of natural leather wingtips, a paint stroke of green on each toe, black fitted linen trousers with a spiraling seam, a gray inside-out T-shirt, and a hoodie jacket whose leather has been tenderly furred to the soft nubbin of an old eraser. He looks like a Fire Island supervillain rapper. Nearly fifty, nearly fifty. But in this country, in this city, in this quarter, in this room—filled with exquisite outrages of fur and leather, subtleties of hidden buttons and seams, colors shaded only from film noir classics, with the rain-speckled skylight above and the natural fir flooring below, the few warm bulbs like angels hanged from the rafters, and Enrico clearly a bit in love with this charming American—Less looks transformed. More handsome, more confident. The beauty of his youth somehow taken from its winter storage and given back to him in middle age. Do I really look like this?

The dinner party is on the rue du Bac, in former maids’ chambers whose low ceilings and darting hallways seem made more for a murder mystery than a banquet, and so, as he is introduced to one smiling aristocratic face after another, Less finds himself thinking of them in terms of pulp fiction: “Ah, the bohemian artist daughter,” he whispers to himself as a sloppy young blonde in a green jumpsuit and cocaine-brightened eyes takes his hand, or, as an elderly woman in a silk tunic nods his way, “Here is the mother who lost all her jewels at the casino.” The ne’er-do-well cousin from Amsterdam in a pinstriped cotton suit. The gay son dressed, à l’Américain, in a navy blazer and khakis, still reeling from the weekend’s Ecstasy binge. The dull ancient Italian man in a raspberry jacket, holding a whiskey: secret former collaborateur. The handsome Spaniard in the corner in a crisp white shirt: blackmailing them all. The hostess with her rococo hairdo and cubist chin: spent her last penny on the mousse. And who will be murdered? Why, he will be murdered! Arthur Less, a last-minute invitee, a nobody, and the perfect target! Less peers into his poisoned champagne (his second glass, at least) and smiles. He looks around, again, for Alexander Leighton, but he is either hidden somewhere or late. Then Less notices, by the bookcase, a slim short man in tinted glasses. An eel of panic wriggles through him as he searches the room for exits, but life has no exits. So he takes another sip and approaches, saying his name.

“Arthur,” Finley Dwyer says with a smile. “Paris again!”

Why is old acquaintance ne’er forgot?

Arthur Less and Finley Dwyer have, in fact, met since the Wilde and Stein Literary Laurels. This was in France before Freddy joined him, when Less was on a junket arranged by the French government. The idea was for American authors to visit small-town libraries for a month and spread culture throughout the country; the invitation came from the Ministry of Culture. To the invited Americans, however, it seemed impossible that a country would import foreign authors; even more impossible was the idea of a Ministry of Culture. When Less arrived in Paris, thoroughly jet lagged (he had not yet been introduced to Freddy’s sleeping-pill trick), he took one woozy look at the list of fellow ambassadors and sighed. There on the list, a familiar name.

“Hello, I’m Finley Dwyer,” said Finley Dwyer. “We’ve never met, but I’ve read your work. Welcome to my city; I live here, you know.” Less said he was looking forward to all traveling together, and Finley informed him that he had misunderstood. They would not be traveling together; they would be sent off in twos. “Like Mormons,” the man said with a smile. Less held his relief in check until he learned that, no, he would not be paired with Finley Dwyer. In fact, he would be paired with no one; an elderly writer had been too ill to make her flight. This did not lessen Less’s joy; on the contrary, it seemed a small miracle that now he would be in France, alone, for a month. Time to write, and take notes, and enjoy the country. The woman in gold stood at the head of the table and announced where they would all be headed: to Marseille, Corsica, Paris, Nice. Arthur Less…she looked at her notes…to Mulhouse. “I’m sorry?” Mulhouse.

It turned out to be on the border of Germany, not far from Strasbourg. Mulhouse had a wonderful harvest festival, which was already over, and a spectacular Christmas market, which Less would miss. November was the season in between: the homely middle daughter. He arrived at night, by train, and the town seemed dark and crouched, and he was taken to his hotel, conveniently located within the station itself. His room and its furniture dated from the 1970s, and Less battled with a yellow plastic dresser before conceding defeat. Some blind plumber had reversed the hot and cold shower faucets. The view out his window was of a circular brick plaza, rather like a pepperoni pizza, which the whistling wind endlessly seasoned with dry leaves. At least, he consoled himself, Freddy would join him at the end of his journey for an extra week in Paris.

His escort, Amélie, a slim, pretty girl of Algerian parentage, spoke very little English; he wondered how on earth she had qualified for this position. Yet she met him every morning at his hotel, smiling, dressed in wonderful woolens, delivered him to the provincial librarian, sat in the backseat of the car throughout their tour, and delivered him home at night. Where she herself lived was a mystery. What purpose she served was an equal one. Was he meant to sleep with her? If so, they had mistranslated his books. The provincial librarian spoke better English but seemed burdened with unknown sadnesses; in the late autumn drizzle, his pale bald head seemed to be eroding into blandness. He was responsible for Less’s daily schedule, which usually consisted of visiting a school during the day and a library at night, with sometimes a monastery in between. Less had never wondered what was served in a French high school cafeteria; should he have been surprised it was aspic and pickles? Attractive students asked wonderful questions in horrible English, dropping their “aitches” like Cockneys; Less gracefully answered, and the girls giggled. They asked for his autograph as if he were a celebrity. Dinner was usually at the library, often in the only place with tables and chairs: the children’s section. Picture tall Arthur Less crammed into a tiny chair, at a tiny table, watching a librarian remove the cellophane from his slice of pâté. At one venue, they had made “American desserts” that turned out to be bran muffins. Later: he read aloud to coal miners, who listened thoughtfully. What on earth was everyone thinking? Bringing a midlist homosexual to read to French miners? He imagined Finley Dwyer entertaining in a velvet-draped Riviera theater. Here: gloomy skies and gloomy fortunes. It is no wonder that Arthur Less grew depressed. The days grew more gray, the miners more grim, his spirit more glum. Even the discovery of a gay bar in Mulhouse—Jet Sept—only deepened his sorrow; it was a sad black room, with a few characters from The Absinthe Drinkers, and a bad pun besides. When Less’s tour of duty was done and he had enriched the life of every coal miner in France, he returned by train to Paris to find Freddy asleep, fully clothed, atop the hotel bed; he had just arrived from New York. Less embraced him and began to shed ridiculous tears. “Oh, hi,” the sleepy young man said. “What’s happened to you?”

Finley wears a plum-colored suit and a black tie. “How long ago was it? We were traveling together?”

“Well, you remember, we didn’t get to travel together.”

“Two years at least! And you had…a very handsome young man, I think.”

“Oh, well, I—” A waiter comes by with a tray of champagne, and both Less and Finley grab one. Finley handles his unsteadily, then grins at the waiter; it occurs to Less that the man is drunk.

“We hardly got a look at him. I recall…” And here Finley’s voice takes on an old-movie flourish: “Red glasses! Curly hair! Is he with you?”

“No. He wasn’t really with me then. He’d just always wanted to go to Paris.”

Finley says nothing but keeps a crooked little smile. Then he looks at Less’s clothes, and he begins to frown. “Where did you—”

“Where did they send you? I don’t remember,” Less says. “Was it Marseille?”

“No, Corsica! It was so warm and sunny. The people were welcoming, and of course it helped I speak French. I ate nothing but seafood. Where did they put you?”

“I held the Maginot Line.”

Finley sips from his glass and says, “And what brings you to Paris now?”

Why is everyone so curious about little Arthur Less? When had he ever occurred to any of them before? He has always felt insignificant to these men, as superfluous as the extra a in quaalude. “Just traveling. I’m going around the world.”

“Le tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours,” Finley murmurs, peering up at the ceiling. “Do you have a Passepartout?”

Less answers: “No. I’m alone. I’m traveling alone.” He looks down at his glass and sees it is empty. It occurs to Less that he himself might be drunk.

But there is no question Finley Dwyer is. Steadying himself against the bookcase, he looks straight at Less and says, “I read your last book.”

“Oh good.”

His head lowers, and Less can now see his eyes above the glasses. “What luck to run into you here! Arthur, I want to say something. May I say something?”

Less braces himself as one does against a rogue wave.

“Did you ever wonder why you haven’t won awards?” Finley asks.

“Time and chance?”

“Why the gay press doesn’t review your books?”

“They don’t?”

“They don’t, Arthur. Don’t pretend you haven’t noticed. You’re not in the cannon.”

Less is about to say he feels very much in the cannon, picturing the human cannonball’s wave to the audience before he drops out of view, the minor novelist about to turn fifty—then realizes the man has said “canon.” He is not in the canon.

“What canon?” is all he manages to sputter.

“The gay canon. The canon taught at universities. Arthur”—Finley is clearly exasperated—“Wilde and Stein and, well, frankly, me.”

“What’s it like in the canon?” Less is still thinking cannon. He decides to head Finley off at the pass: “Maybe I’m a bad writer.”

Finley waves this idea away, or perhaps it is the salmon croquettes a waiter is offering. “No. You’re a very good writer. Kalipso was a chef d’oeuvre. So beautiful, Arthur. I admired it a lot.”

Now Less is stumped. He probes his weaknesses. Too magniloquent? Too spoony? “Too old?” he ventures.

“We’re all over fifty, Arthur. It’s not that you’re—”

“Wait, I’m still—”

“—a bad writer.” Finley pauses for effect. “It’s that you’re a bad gay.”

Less can think of nothing to say; this attack comes on an undefended flank.

“It is our duty to show something beautiful from our world. The gay world. But in your books, you make the characters suffer without reward. If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were Republican. Kalipso was beautiful. So full of sorrow. But so incredibly self-hating. A man washes ashore on an island and has a gay affair for years. But then he leaves to go find his wife! You have to do better. For us. Inspire us, Arthur. Aim higher. I’m so sorry to talk this way, but it had to be said.”

At last Less manages to speak: “A bad gay?”

Finley fingers a book on the bookcase. “I’m not the only one who feels this way. It’s been a topic of discussion.”

“But…but…but it’s Odysseus,” Less says. “Returning to Penelope. That’s just how the story goes.”

“Don’t forget where you come from, Arthur.”

“Camden, Delaware.”

Finley touches Less’s arm, and it feels like an electric shock. “You write what you are compelled to. As we all do.”

“Am I being gay boycotted?”

“I saw you stand there, and I had to take this opportunity to let you know, because no one else has been kind enough.” He smiles and repeats: “Kind enough to say something to you, as I have now.”

And Less feels it swelling up within him, the phrase he does not want to say and yet, somehow, by the cruel checkmate logic of conversation, is compelled to say:

“Thank you.”

Finley removes the book from the bookshelf and exits into the crowd as he opens it to the dedication page. Perhaps it is dedicated to him. A ceramic chandelier of blue cherubs hangs above them all and casts more shadows than light. Less stands below it, experiencing that Wonderland sensation of having been shrunk, by Finley Dwyer, into a tiny version of himself; he could pass through the smallest door now, but into what garden? The Garden of Bad Gays. Who knew there was such a thing? Here, all this time, Less thought he was merely a bad writer. A bad lover, a bad friend, a bad son. Apparently the condition is worse; he is bad at being himself. At least, he thinks, looking across the room to where Finley is amusing the hostess, I’m not short.

There were difficulties, looking back, in the time after Mulhouse. It is hard to know how someone else will travel, and Freddy and Less, at first, were at odds. Though a virtual water bug in our adventures, in ordinary travel Less was always a hermit crab in a borrowed shell: he liked to get to know a street, and a café, and a restaurant, and be called by name by the waiters, and owners, and coat-check girl, so that when he left, he could think of it fondly as another home. Freddy was the opposite. He wanted to see everything. The morning after their nighttime reunion—when Mulhouse malaise and Freddy’s jet lag made for drowsy but satisfying sex—Freddy suggested they take a bus to see all the highlights of Paris! Less shivered in horror. Freddy sat on the bed, dressed in a sweatshirt; he looked hopelessly American. “No, it’s great, we get to see Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Pompidou, that arch on the Champs-Ély…Ély…” Less forbade it; some irrational fear told him he would be spotted by friends as he stood in this crowd of tourists following a giant gold flag. “Who cares?” Freddy asked. But Less would not consider it. He made them see everything by Métro or on foot; they had to eat from stands, not from restaurants; his mother would have told him he inherited this from his father. At the end of each day, they were irritable and exhausted, their pockets filled with used subway billets; they had to will themselves out of their roles as general and foot soldier to even consider sharing a bed. But Freddy got lucky: Less got the flu.

That time in Berlin, taking care of Bastian—the sick man he recalled was himself.

It is all, of course, hazy. Long Proustian days staring at the golden bar of sunlight on the floor, the sole escapee from the closed curtains. Long Hugonian nights listening to echoing laughter that rang inside the bell tower of his cranium. All of this mixed with Freddy’s worried face, his worried hand on his brow, on his cheek; some doctor or other trying to communicate in French, and Freddy failing, since the only available translator was on his deathbed, moaning; Freddy bringing toast and tea; Freddy in a scarf and blazer, suddenly Parisian, waving a sad good-bye as he went out; Freddy passed out, smelling of wine beside him. Less himself staring at the ceiling fan and wondering if the room was in motion below a stationary fan, or the opposite, much like a medieval man wondering if the sky moved or the earth. And the wallpaper, with its sneaky parrots hiding in a tree. The tree—Less happily identified it as the enormous Persian silk tree of his boyhood. Sitting in that tree in Delaware and looking out on the backyard and on his mother’s orange scarf. Less let himself be embraced by its branches, the scent of its pink Seussian flowers. He was very far up in the tree for a boy of three or four, and his mother was calling his name. It never occurred to her that he would be up here, so he was alone, and very proud of himself, and a little scared. The sickle-shaped leaves fell from above. They rested on his pale little arms as his mother called his name, his name, his name. Arthur Less was inching along the branch, feeling the slick bark in his fingers…

“Arthur! You’re awake! You look so much better!” It was Freddy above him, in a bathrobe. “How do you feel?”

Contrite, mostly. For being first a general, then a wounded soldier. To his delight, only three days had passed. There was still time…

“I’ve seen most of the sights.”

“You have?”

“I’m happy to go back to the Louvre, if you want.”

“No, no, that’s perfect. I want to see a shop Lewis told me about. I think you deserve a present…”

This party, on the rue du Bac, is going as badly as possible. Having been approached by Finley Dwyer and informed of his literary crimes, he still cannot manage to locate Alexander; and either the mousse is off or his stomach is. It is clearly time to leave; his stomach is far too weak to hear about the wedding. His plane is in five hours, in any case. Less begins to eye the room for the hostess—hard to pick her out in this sea of black dresses—and finds someone beside him. A Spanish face, smiling through a deep tan. The blackmailer.

“You are a friend of Alexander? I am Javier,” the man says. He holds in his hand a plate of salmon and couscous. Green-golden eyes. Straight black hair, center parted, long enough to push behind his ears.

Less says nothing; he suddenly feels hot and knows he has flushed bright pink. Perhaps it is the drink.

“And you are American!” the man adds.

Nonplussed, Less turns an even brighter hue. “How…how did you know?”

The man’s eyes dart up and down his body. “You are dressed like an American.”

Less looks down at his linen pants, his furred leather jacket. He understands that he has fallen under the spell of a shopkeeper, as has many an American before him; he has spent a small fortune to dress as Parisians might rather than as they do. He should have worn the blue suit. He says, “I’m Arthur. Arthur Less. A friend of Alexander; he invited me. But he doesn’t seem to be coming.”

The man leans in but has to look up; he is quite a bit shorter than Less. “He always invites, Arthur. He never comes.”

“Actually, I was about to leave. I don’t know anybody here.”

“No, don’t leave!” Javier seems to realize he has said this too loudly.

“I have a plane to catch tonight.”

“Arthur, stay one moment. I also know nobody here. You see those two over there?” He nods toward a woman in a backless black dress, her blond chignon lit by a nearby lamp, and a man all in grays with an oversized Humphrey Bogart head. They are standing side by side, examining a drawing. Javier gives a conspiratorial grin; a strand of hair has come loose and hangs over his forehead. “I was talking with them. We all just met, but I could…sense…very quickly that I was not needed. That is why I came over here.” Javier pats the stray hair back in place. “They are going to sleep together.”

Less laughs and says surely they didn’t say that.

“No, but. Look at their bodies. Their arms are touching. And he leans in to talk to her. It is not loud here. He is leaning in just to be close to her. They did not want me there.” At that moment, Humphrey Bogart puts his hand on the woman’s shoulder and points to the drawing, talking. His lips are so close to her ear that his breath blows her loose wisps of hair. Now it is obvious; they are going to sleep together.

He turns back to Javier, who shrugs: What can you do? Less asks, “And that is why you came over here.”

Javier’s eyes remain on Less. “It is part of why I came over here.”

Less allows the warmth of this flattery to wash over him. Javier’s expression does not change. For a moment, they are silent; time expands slightly, taking its deep breath. Less understands it is up to him to make a move. He recalls when, as a boy, a friend would dare him to touch something hot. The silence is broken only by the sound of a glass, also broken, dropped by Finley Dwyer onto the slate floor.

“And so you are flying back to America?” Javier asks.

“No. To Morocco.”

“Ah! My mother was Moroccan. You are going to Marrakech, to the Sahara, then to Fez, no? It is the normal visit.” Did Javier just wink?

“I guess I’m the normal visitor. Yes. It seems unfair you have me pegged, while you’re a mystery.”

Another wink. “I’m not. I’m not.”

“I only know your mother was Moroccan.”

Sexy continuous winking. “I am sorry,” Javier says, frowning.

“It’s good to be a mystery.” Less tries to say this as sensually as possible.

“I am sorry, I have something in my eye.” Javier’s right eye is now blinking rapidly: a panicked bird. From its outer edge, a rivulet of tears begins to flow.

“Are you okay?”

Javier clenches his teeth and blinks and rubs. “This is so embarrassing. The lenses are new for me, and irritating. They are French.”

Less does not fill in the punch line. He watches Javier and worries. He once read in a novel about a technique for removing a speck from another’s eye: you use the tip of your tongue. But it seems so intimate, more intimate than a kiss, that he cannot even bear to mention it. And, being from a novel, it is possibly an invention.

“It is out!” Javier exclaims after a final flurry of lashes. “I am free.”

“Or you’ve gotten used to the French.”

Javier’s face is blotched with red, tears shine on his right cheek, and his lashes are matted and thick. He smiles bravely. He is a little breathless. He looks, to Less, like someone who has run a long distance to be here.

“And there vanishes the mystery!” Javier says, resting his hand on a table and faking a laugh.

Less wants to kiss him; he wants to hold him and protect him. Instead, without thinking at all, he rests his hand on Javier’s. It is still wet with tears.

Javier looks up at him with those green-golden eyes. He is so close that Less can smell the orange scent of his pomade. They stand there for a moment perfectly still, a groupe en biscuit. His hand on Javier’s, his eyes on his. It feels possible that memory will never be finished with this moment. Then they step apart. Arthur Less has flushed as pink as a prom carnation. Javier takes a deep breath, then breaks their gaze.

“I wonder,” Less begins, in a struggle to say almost anything at all, “if you have any tips about the VAT…”

The room, which they are blind to, is papered in green-striped fabric and hung with preliminary drawings, or “cartoons,” for a greater work of art: here a hand, here a hand with a pen, here a woman’s upturned face. Above the fireplace mantel, the painting itself: a woman paused in thought while writing a letter. Bookshelves go to the ceiling, and if he looked, Less would find, besides one of H. H. H. Mandern’s Peabody novels, a collection of American stories in which—surprise of surprises!—one of his is featured. The hostess has not read it; she kept it because of an affair she had long ago, with another featured writer. She has read the two books of poetry two shelves above, by Robert, but she does not know that there is any connection to one of her guests. Yet here, again, the lovers meet. By now, the sun has set, and Less has found a way past the European tax system.

Less’s endearing backward laugh: AH ah ah ah!

“Before I came here,” Less is now saying, feeling the champagne taking possession of his tongue, “I went to the Musée d’Orsay.”

“It’s wonderful.”

“I was very moved by the Gauguin carvings. But then out of nowhere there was Van Gogh. Three self-portraits. I walked up to one; it was protected with glass. I could see my reflection. And I thought: Oh my God.” Less shakes his head, and his eyes widen as he relives the moment. “I look just like Van Gogh.”

Javier laughs, his hand to his smile. “Before the ear, I think.”

“I thought, I’ve gone crazy,” Less goes on. “But…I’ve already outlived him by over a decade!”

Javier tilts his head, a cocker Spaniard. “Arthur, how old are you?”

Deep breath. “I’m forty-nine.”

Javier moves closer to peer at him; he smells of cigarettes and vanilla, like Less’s grandmother. “How funny. I am also forty-nine.”

“No,” Less says, truly bewildered. There is not a line on Javier’s face. “I thought you were midthirties.”

“That is a lie. But it is a nice lie. And you do not look close to fifty.”

Less smiles. “My birthday is in one week.”

“Strange to be almost fifty, no? I feel like I just understood how to be young.”

“Yes! It’s like the last day in a foreign country. You finally figure out where to get coffee, and drinks, and a good steak. And then you have to leave. And you won’t ever be back.”

“You put it very well.”

“I’m a writer. I put things very well. But I’m told I’m ‘spoony.’”

“I am sorry?”

“Foolish. Tenderhearted.”

Javier seems delighted. “That is a nice phrase, tenderhearted. Tenderhearted.” He takes a deep breath as if building courage. “I am, I think, the same.”

Javier has a look of sadness about him as he says this. Then he stares directly into his drink. The sky out the window is lowering the last of its gauzy veils, revealing bright naked Venus. Less looks at the gray strands in Javier’s black hair, the prominent rose-tinted bridge of his nose, the bent head over the white shirt, two buttons open to reveal his date-colored skin, flecked with hairs, leading into shadow. More than a few of the hairs are white. He imagines Javier naked. The gold-green eyes as the man peers up at him from a white bed. He imagines touching that warm skin. This evening is unexpected. This man is unexpected. Less thinks of when he bought a wallet in a thrift shop and in it found a hundred dollars.

“I want a cigarette,” Javier says, with a child’s abashed face.

“I’ll join you,” Less says, and together they step out of the open window, onto a narrow stone balcony where other smoking Europeans glance back at the American as on a member of the secret police. At the corner of the house, the balcony turns, offering a view of slanted metal rooftops and chimneys. They are alone here, and Javier takes out a pack and pulls on its contents so that two white tusks emerge. Less shakes his head: “Actually, I don’t smoke.”

They laugh.

Javier says, “I think I am a little drunk, Arthur.”

“I think I am too.”

Less’s smile has expanded to its full size, here alone with Javier. Is it the champagne that makes him emit an audible sigh? They are side by side at the railing. The chimneys all look like flowerpots.

Looking out at the view, Javier says, “Here is something strange about growing old.”

“What’s that?”

“I meet new friends, and they are bald or they are gray. And I don’t know what color their hair used to be.”

“I never thought about it.”

Now Javier turns to look at Less; he is probably the type to turn and look at you while he is driving. “A friend, I have known him for five years, maybe he is in his late fifties. And I asked him once. I was so surprised to find he was a redhead!”

Less nods in agreement. “I was on the street the other day. In New York City. And an old man came up to me and hugged me. I had no idea who he was. He was my old lover.”

“Dios mío,” Javier says, swallowing a gulp of champagne. Less feels his arm against Javier’s, and even through the layers of fabric his skin comes alive. He so desperately wants to touch this man. Javier says, “Me, I was at dinner, and an old man was beside me. So boring! Talking about real estate. I thought, Please, God, do not let me be this man when I am old. Later I find out he was a year younger than I.”

Less puts down his glass and, bravely, puts his hand again on Javier’s. Javier turns to face him.

“And also,” Less says meaningfully, “being the only single man your age.”

Javier says nothing but just gives a sad smile.

Less blinks, removes his hand, and takes one half step away from the railing. Now, in the new space between him and the Spaniard, one can make out the Erector-set miracle of the Eiffel Tower.

Less asks, “You’re not single, are you?”

Smoke leaks from Javier’s mouth as he shakes his head gently side to side. “We have been together eighteen years. He is in Madrid, I am here.”

“Married.”

Javier waits a long time before he answers. “Yes, married.”

“So you see, I was right.”

“That you are the only single man?”

Less closes his eyes. “That I am foolish.”

There is piano music inside; the son has been put to work, and whatever hangover he has does not show in the bright garlands of notes that come out the window, onto the balcony. The other smokers all turn and walk over to see and listen. The sky is now nothing but night.

“No, no, you’re not foolish.” Javier puts his hand on the sleeve of Less’s ridiculous jacket. “I wish I were single.”

Less smiles bitterly at the subjunctive but does not move his arm. “I’m sure you don’t. Otherwise you would be.”

“It is not so simple, Arthur.”

Less pauses. “But it is too bad.”

Javier moves his hand up to Less’s elbow. “It is very too bad. When do you leave?”

He checks his watch. “I leave for the airport in an hour.”

“Oh.” A sudden look of pain in those gold-green eyes. “I am not to meet you again, am I?”

He must have been slim in his youth, with long black hair, colored blue in certain light, as in old comic books. He must have swum in the sea in an orange Speedo and fallen in love with the man smiling onshore. He must have gone from bad affair to bad affair until he met a dependable man at an art museum, just five years older, already going bald, with a bit of a belly but an easy demeanor that promised escape from heartbreak, off in Madrid, that palace of a city shimmering in the heat. Surely it was a decade or more before they married. How many late dinners of ham and pickled anchovies? How many arguments over the sock drawer—blacks mixing with navy blues—until they decided at last to have separate drawers? Separate duvets, as in Germany? Separate brands of coffee and tea? Separate vacations—his husband to Greece (completely bald but the belly in check), and he to Mexico? Alone on a beach again in an orange Speedo, no longer slim. Trash gathering along the shoreline from cruise ships, and a view of Cuba’s dancing lights. He must have been lonely a long time to stand before Arthur Less and ask such a thing. On a rooftop in Paris, in his black suit and white shirt. Any narrator would be jealous of this possible love, on this possible night.

Less stands there in the furred leather jacket against the nighttime city. With his sad expression, three-quarters turned to Javier, his gray shirt, his striped scarf, his blue eyes and copper-colored beard, he looks unlike himself. He looks like Van Gogh.

A flight of starlings goes off behind him, headed to church.

“We’re too old to think we’ll meet again,” Less says.

Javier rests his hand on Less’s waist and steps toward him. Cigarettes and vanilla.

“Passengers to Marrakech…”

Arthur Less sits in the Lessian manner—legs crossed at the knee, free foot fidgeting—and, as usual, his long legs find themselves in the way of one passenger after another, with their rolling suitcases so enormous, Less cannot imagine what they are bringing to Morocco. The traffic is so constant that he has to uncross his legs and sit back. He still wears his new Parisian clothes, the linen of his trousers slackened from a day of use, the coat suffocatingly hot. He is weary and drunk from the party, and his face is aglow with alcohol and doubt and arousal. He has, however, succeeded in mailing his tax-free form, and for this he wears (having passed by his nemesis, the Tax Lady) the smug smile of a criminal who has pulled off one last heist. Javier promised to mail it in the morning; it is tucked inside that slim black jacket, against that firm Iberian chest. So it was not all for nothing. Was it?

He closes his eyes. In his “distant youth,” he often comforted his anxious mind with images of book covers, of author photographs, of newspaper clippings. These things he can now call easily to mind; they hold no comfort. Instead, his brain’s staff photographer produces a contact sheet of identical images: Javier pulling him toward the stone wall and kissing him.

“This flight is overbooked, and we are looking for volunteers…”

Overbooked again. But Arthur Less does not hear her, or else he cannot consider a second stay of execution, a second day of possibilities before he turns fifty. Perhaps it is all too much. Or else just enough.

The piano piece ends, and the guests break into applause. From across the roofs comes either the echo of the applause or that of another party. A triangle of amber light catches one of Javier’s eyes and makes it gleam like glass. And all that goes through Less’s mind is the single thought: Ask me. With the married man smiling and touching Less’s red beard—Ask me—kissing him for perhaps half an hour longer, and here we have another man fallen under the spell of Less’s kiss, pushing him against the wall, unzipping his jacket, touching him passionately and whispering beautiful things but not the words that would change everything, for it is still possible to change everything, until Less tells him at last that it is time to go. Javier nods, walking him back into the green-striped room and standing beside him as he says his good-byes to the hostess, and to the other murder suspects, in his terrible French—Ask me—taking him to the front door and walking him downstairs as far as the street, all done in blue watercolors, blurred by the mist of rain, the carved stone porticos and wet satin streets—Ask me—and the poor Spaniard offers his own umbrella (refused) before smiling sadly—“I am sorry to see you go”—and waving good-bye.

Ask me and I will stay.

There is a call on Less’s phone, but he is preoccupied: already inside the plane, nodding to the beaky blond steward who greets him, as they always do, in the language not of the passenger, steward, or airport but of the plane itself (“Buonasera,” for it is Italian), bumping his awkward way down the aisle, assisting a tiny woman with her enormous overhead luggage, and finding his favorite seat: the rightmost, rearmost corner. No children to kick you from behind. Prison pillow, prison blanket. He removes his tight French shoes and slides them under the seat. Out the window: nighttime Charles de Gaulle, will-o’-the-wisps and men waving glowing wands. He closes the shade, then closes his eyes. He hears his neighbor sitting down roughly and speaking Italian, and he nearly understands it. Brief memory of swimming in a golf resort. Brief false memory of Dr. Ess. Brief real memory of rooftops and vanilla.

“…welcome you on our flight from Paris to Marrakech…”

The chimneys all looked like flowerpots.

There is a second call, this time from an unknown number, but we will never know what it contains, for no message is left, and the intended receiver is already deep in takeoff slumber, high above the continent of Europe, only seven days from fifty, headed now at last to Morocco.