Voices: Wedding Day

 

It is difficult to write non-fiction. By that I mean, I heard many compelling stories the day of Porter and Louise’s wedding. And their story alone is worth hearing in detail.

But I cannot tell you any of these stories without being indiscreet.

Porter and Louise were married amid the scaffolds in an eleventh century church, Notre Dame de Rigny, which Porter’s Birmingham, Alabama family is helping to restore.

This Notre Dame, built on an earlier eighth century church, was one of the stops on the pilgrimage route to Santiago de Compostela in Spain. It was the church where King Louis XI worshipped when he wasn’t slaughtering deer and boar in the royal forest of Chinon.

Their wedding dinner was held in a fairy tale castle, Chateau du Rivau.

Ah, the splendor of the wedding festivities. The bride and groom glowed. If you knew them, or even if you simply glimpsed them for the first time, you’d see that it was a marriage of kindred souls, of true love.

But that story is theirs to tell. I couldn’t do it justice in one short journal post.

What I wish I could tell you are the stories I heard from the wedding guests. Before the wedding, during the ceremony, on the bus to the wedding dinner, and at the chateau that night.

I’m tempted to turn back to fiction, which puts on clothes and names that disguise its origins, and allows you to say almost anything, just as the wedding guests, in donning vintage clothes, freed themselves to tell stories about their twenty-first century selves.

However, I have an agreement with you here on Paris Play. So I will simply weave some snippets of voices that linger in my mind since I heard them on the wedding day.

Voice of a man to the husband of a couple before taking their photos: “Put on your glasses, it’s sexier.”

The voice of the pastor:

    Père…[c]est toi le Seigneur de notre passé,
    de notre présent et de notre avenir.     
    C’est de toi que vient toute bénédiction.”

(Father… you are the Lord of our past, our present and our future. It’s from you that all blessing comes.)

The inner voice of a woman:  Père, Père, Père, and the son and the holy ghost. Where are the women in this spiritual vision which calcified long ago into a religion? In ancient times, vision came from the muses, all of them women. Where are the goddesses?

The voice of moonlight striking water on a warm summer night, Claire de Lune, the voice of Debussy coming through piano keys played by the groom’s oldest daughter.

The voice of the bride and groom’s two-year-old daughter, laughing as she races around in front of the altar.

     “Nous croyons en Dieu le Père.
     Nous croyons qu’il a créé le monde
     Pour l’homme et la femme.”

(We believe in God the Father. We believe that he created the world for man and woman.)

Where is there room in this creed for the voices of women who love women, and men who love men?

The murmuring voices of the bride and groom as they exchange vows.

The sweet innocence of the pastor’s voice in French.

The voices of the naked men and women who climb out of the underworld in a Judgment Day frieze high above the altar. The voices of the dead.

The voice of a man (who is talking to one woman) greeting a second woman outside the door to the church: “Have I ever told you what a fine specimen of a woman you are?”

The voice of a man saying about the groom (whose livelihood is helping people buy and renovate Paris apartments): "Wouldn’t he have to have been married on a construction site?"

The voice of a woman describing how they met:  “Come here,” he said. “Come here, so sexy.”

The voice of a woman who has recently moved from Paris to the country, to someone who has just moved to Paris: “How can you live in Paris? How can you? How can you live in Paris? How can you live in Paris?”

Voice of a single woman describing to a wife what her husband just said about her: 
“He said to me, ‘I’m looking for my wife.’
And I told him, ‘You can always find another one.’
Do you know what he said?
‘Not like this one, I can’t.’”

Voice of a woman who is newly single after many years of marriage: “One day he said to me, ‘I don’t want to be married to you any more.’ No warning. Out of the blue. I’m still in shock. I’d like to move to Paris, but how would I earn a living there?”

Voice of a man watching his daughter and her husband sip champagne together as the desserts are unveiled: 
“I’ve lost a daughter.”
“No, you haven’t,” two women say at once.
“Yes. I have.”

Voice of a woman telling her story of her divorce after a long marriage to an alcoholic: “After the judge heard all of us speak, he said to my husband, ‘You grew up in a good family, you’ve had good fortune in your profession, you have a wife and children who love you, and you’ve thrown it all away. Why? Why have you ruined your life?’”

And I remember the voice of Antonio Machado: “What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?” 

The Wind, One Brilliant Day

The wind, one brilliant day, called
to my soul with an odor of jasmine.

"In return for the odor of my jasmine,
I'd like all the odor of your roses."

"I have no roses; all the flowers
in my garden are dead."

"Well then, I'll take the withered petals
and the yellow leaves and the waters of the fountain."

The wind left. And I wept. And I said to myself:
"What have you done with the garden that was entrusted to you?"

—Antonio Machado (Translated by Robert Bly)

Gods and goddesses,

ancestors and muses,

a prayer for Louise and Porter:

May their garden be fragrant with jasmine and roses.

May they tend it together their whole lives long.

May they blossom.

May they thrive.

Terroir or Terror

Something odd happened at Kitty’s party, afterwards too, but first things first:

 

It was the second night of the Loire Valley wedding weekend. We hitched a thirty-minute ride with Alfonso and Gigi from Chinon to Bréhémont, the tiny village where Porter’s mother, Kitty, was giving a party for the wedding guests. 

 

Alfonso had flown in the day before from China. Seven time zones away. No jet lag, he said. Not if you’re in your late 20s, there’s not. Alfonso’s job takes him all over the world.

 

I sat in back with his girlfriend, Gigi, who looks like a French Gigi should look: young, fresh and full of zest. The element of beauty is often the anomaly, and in Gigi, it’s her slightly Asian eyes in a classical French face.

 

We described our ecstatic cheese experience at La Cave Voltaire. Gigi exclaimed that she had studied cheese-making in France for years, in college, no less. She had just returned from a year in Wisconsin as a cheese marketer, teaching cheese makers the concept of terroir. Terroir, she said, was both an agricultural region, and a practice of combining wines, cheese and other foods from the same earth that “go together” harmoniously.

 

I ask her if she knows the concept of synchronicity. Terroir sounds like the sensual counterpart to synchronicity, I say. No, she doesn’t, but when I describe it, we both agree that it’s somehow analogous to terroir, one emphasizing what goes together in space, the other in time.

 

Gigi was surprised at how excellent the Wisconsin cheeses were. She loved the United States, and wants to return there to live. Next time, try California, I suggest.

 

Kitty lives right next door to the bride and groom. She and Porter’s late father bought a house in Bréhémont.  After he died, Porter bought the house next door.

 

At Kitty’s house, Porter stands in the courtyard in a barbeque apron, greeting friends, radiating his native Birmingham, Alabama charm. Louise is in the living room in a sleeveless, low-cut long dress, bright flowers against a black background, pale Irish skin, orange hair tied in a chignon, looking more beautiful than I’ve ever seen her. Nothing like a wedding to bring forth Aphroditean splendor.

 

Kitty stands in peach shirt and white pants in front of the fireplace of her fine old stone house. At the opposite end of the room, a boar’s head is mounted on the wall, with a gold hunting horn above it. Kitty describes how she found it in a Paris brocante shop and carried it home on her lap in the Métro. How people did stare! You can see where Porter got his charm. The French kings used to hunt boars in the forests around here.

 

I talk for a while with David, Porter’s oldest friend at the party, an Andover classmate. David, in black tee-shirt and jeans, a red bandanna around his forehead, has a strong nose and a way of getting straight to the truth. He had made a short film while he and Porter were in boarding school, based on Crime and Punishment. Porter had played the part of the policeman, and he was very good.

 

David and his wife and children live in NYC, where both work in theater. David began by writing original plays, then discovered that his true talent lay in adapting others’ stories for the stage.  Next fall, Natasha begins four years at the High School of Music & Art/Performing Arts in NYC. “Flashdance,” David says.

 

Richard and I gravitate towards the big stone fireplace. David introduces us to his Greek-American wife, Erana, and their daughter, Natasha. Erana is as open and friendly as her daughter is closed and sullen. Nothing her parents say or do is right. Richard says later, “She’s a typical 14-year-old.” But judging from the sample pictures Erana shows on her iPhone of her daughter’s work, she has a true gift for painting.

 

The four of us talk about a possible swap with their apartment in Manhattan. Do they like cats? We can’t swap places with anyone who doesn’t want to live with Marley. They have three cats. Erana shows us pictures. Perfect. And after the kids have grown they’re thinking about moving to Paris.

 

Soon we meet another couple, Richard and Margarita. Both have sculpted Nureyev faces, high cheekbones, are lean and good-looking. They live in Sligo, Ireland, Yeats country, our favorite part of Ireland. Richard’s family have been merchants there for years, and knew Yeats. Margarita is a Russian mathematician. When they marry, it will be a second marriage for each.

 

They have recently bought and renovated, with Porter’s help, an apartment in Paris. Margarita is ready to move here; Richard, not yet. “You must help me persuade Richard to move to Paris,” she says to me in the deepest voice I’ve ever heard in a woman.

 

We file around the buffet spread, then all bring our plates to the low table in front of the fireplace.

 

Mora and Ludovic join us. They’ve just driven from Paris to Bréhémont. Ludovic is a tall slender Frenchman; Mora is Venezuelan, refreshingly ample-bodied after all the skinny minnies in Paris.

 

Mora is an architect who’s helping Porter renovate a client’s recently purchased apartment in the sixième arrondissement.

 

Mora, in black with a star-scattered scarf, dark eyes and gleam, tells us how she came to live in Paris. She attended the Sorbonne for college, continued on for a Master’s in architecture, then went on for a PhD.

 

From time to time, she’d go home to Venezuela and feel depressed, homesick for Paris. She realized she was getting one degree after another mainly in order to stay in Paris.

We wax eloquent about our love for this city. The first six new people we’ve met at this party, by some quirk, all gathered by the fireplace—from NYC and Greece, Ireland and Russia, Venezuela and France—all have a passion in common, a conviction that there’s no better place on earth to live than Paris.

 

After we’ve eaten, and stacked our plates in the kitchen, the “play” begins. The bride’s Irish family and friends set the tone. Nicola, one of Louise’s bridesmaids and former schoolmate at Trinity College in Dublin, recites a poem about a girl who sits on a porcupine, and has to be taken to the dentist and upended to have the quills removed from her bare bottom. The dentist has taken “things” out of these regions before.

Louise does a dramatic reading about tooth decay in the persona of an ancient hag, folding her lips over her teeth to create the impression of empty gums.

 

Richard and I had each brought a poem of ours to read to the bride and groom, but quickly discover that the spirit tonight is one of broad humor, Irish humor, which our poems don’t match. We sit back on the couch and admire the Irish genius for memorizing long stories and poems, one after the other.

 

On the ride home, Alfonso suddenly stops the car. There is a spiny creature waddling across the middle of the road. A porcupine? Or more likely in these parts, a hedgehog. Alfonso shines a flashlight into its eyes, hoping to inspire the little guy to scoot over to the side of the road. But the hedgehog is now terrified, and curls up into a ball.

 

Is this terror or terroir? Comedy or synchronicity? Coincidence in time or space or both? It is odd right after the long poem about a porcupine.

 

What to do? Alfonso returns to the car.

 

Gigi says, “You can’t touch him; he probably has mites.”

 

Alfonso returns and gently, gently with the toe of his shoe nudges the hedgehog to the side of the road.

 

We drive back to the Lion d’Or, and dream about porcupines and hedgehogs, terror and terroir, Kitty’s house and Paris, Porter and Louise, and new friends from around the world.

Peaches and Cheese

 

 If you were to travel to the Loire Valley town of Chinon, here is what you would see:

      A low white train station with an elevated clock tower.

      A fruit and vegetable store, the Marché Rabelais, across the street.

      Many houses for sale, Tudor-style and stone, lining the cobbled-stone streets.

      A histrionic-looking Joan of Arc astride her horse, straining against the reins.

      A wide river with wooden skiffs moored along the banks.

     Many young people whipping along the sidewalks in state-of-the-art wheelchairs.

      A statue of the French novelist Rabelais (who was born here) with a square cap on his head, at the end of a street that ends at the river Vienne. 

     A fortress high up on the town's highest hill.

 If you were to stay at the hotel, Lion d’Or, here is what you would notice: 

     A hot color scheme: not just the bright red Indian bedspread, but also pink walls, and burgundy carpet. You might think you’d been trapped in a box of Valentine’s Day candy.

     But then, when you opened the window, you’d feel as if you’d opened the box and bit into the tastiest little chocolate.

     Geraniums (more red!) in the window boxes.

     Plane trees arching above your room and the street. 

     A breeze of precisely the right temperature.

We had traveled by Métro to Paris’ Montparnasse train station.

We’d taken the high-speed TGV for just over an hour to Tours. 

We’d disembarked with our suitcases, and boarded a bus for a ride of equal length to Chinon, past rural villages and bright fields of sunflowers.

Friends were getting married. They got married each time they had a child, and the second one was now on its way. We’d missed the first wedding, but were glad to be here for this one.

The celebrations would begin the next day. Now we wanted to rest after our travel.

But first we needed to stock up on water and snacks. We unpacked, then wheeled our empty suitcases back along the cobbled street to the Marché Rabelais.

How can I convey to you the dearness of this market? It was so simple, mostly fruit and vegetables, with some nuts and beans and olives. Nothing fancy. Nothing slick. Neither a supermarket nor a farmer’s market. But the owners clearly had the most personal relationship with their vegetables and fruit.

They treated heads of lettuce like little people, friends of theirs.  A sign said, Touchez moi avec délicatesse.... Je tiens à mes feuilles. 

The shelves were stepped, with no refrigeration, each step containing just a few bouquets of broccoli or carrots, with plenty of breathing room. As if each were being displayed as a discrete offering, an individual life calling out, Pick me! No, me!

The peaches were fairly screaming, Adopt us! Take us home!

The figs were humming in low voices. I couldn’t resist picking up a container, though I hadn’t had a yen for figs in years. Richard was seduced by the trail mix.

The farmer-merchant stood among the potatoes, giving them his full attention. He called out a few gruff words to his stout wife at the cash register. She barked back, but was friendly, though shy, with us.

“Ahh!” she said, as Richard loaded the six packs of large water bottles evenly into our carry-ons. “That’s why you come with suitcases.”

We rolled our suitcases back to the Lion d’Or, and unpacked them onto the desk in our room.

I bit into a peach which dripped so that I had to lean out the window and "water" the geraniums.

Richard opened a container of trail mix so fresh that it seemed as if the nuts had been cracked that day.

We stretched out and listened: to the doves calling, “Amour, amour,” the crows engaged in a strenuous quarrel, the murmur of French and English in the sidewalk café below.

A breeze. A nap.

At 6, we went out to find dinner. In the section of town west of the hotel, we found cobblestone streets closed to traffic. We scanned the menus along the way. None served dinner before 7:30 p.m. Mais non! It’s France.

We were too hungry to wait. Meandering down a side street, I saw a wine bar, La Cave Voltaire. Inside was a big butcher block, with a freshly-baked loaf of bread on top. To tide us over till dinner, we’d have a bit of bread and cheese.

We settled at a table outside with a view of the fortress.

After a while, a young woman with abundant curly blond hair and a wholesome manner brought us a plate of cheese.

“Now I will explain the cheeses,” she said delicately in French.

They were arranged in an artful circle around the edge of the plate—five made from vache, five from chèvre. The waitress lovingly named each one.

  

By the time she had finished her litany (it was a song!), we were enchanted. Richard neatly divided the plate in half. “La vache pour moi; le chèvre pour toi.”

But on his third cheese with bread, he began to mew, and said (though he knows I prefer goat cheese), “You have to try this one.”

Obedient wife, I spread it on bread.

The taste began as mild, then turned slightly disgusting, then lingered, a delicate taste. It was the best cheese either of us had ever tasted.

We scoured the plate.

The girl came back and asked us brightly if we had enjoyed our cheese.

“What is the name of the cheese which has a slight aroma of garlic and onion?” Richard asked.

“Ca n’existe pas,” she said. (Really? It doesn’t exist?) “Only our fromager makes it. It’s called a Coulouvier mascarpone ciboulette.” (Only their personal cheese-maker makes this particular cheese? Ooh la la.)

I took out my small Moleskin, and asked her to list the cheeses in the notebook. She carefully wrote down each one, with a “(v)” for vache, or a “(c)” for chèvre beside each.

The sidewalk café had filled, perhaps with people who’d smelled our ecstatic food trail pheromones. We heard German, English, Dutch, Spanish, French all around us.

The restaurants were open now.

“Do we want to eat any more?” Richard asked.

“I need an omelette,” I said.

We returned to At’ Able, an inviting restaurant we’d passed on rue Rabelais. 

The hostess brought us menus. Cold. A brusque waitress came to take our order. Cold. She had all the humanity of a rock. Opaque, not a trace of kindness about her.

The omelette had local mushrooms, tiny buds. It’s a simple dish—how could you ruin it? But they did. “It was almost inedible,” I said, as we walked back to our room. “Runny in the middle, tasteless, and gray.”

“My pasta sucked, too,” said Richard.

Back at the Lion d’Or, I tried a fig. It was exquisite. I began to sing.

All day, the food had matched the spirits of the people serving it. Cold and lousy at one restaurant. Warm and astonishingly good from the Marché Rabelais and La Cave Voltaire.

Maybe it was the spirits of the writers hovering over their namesake food purveyors. Perhaps it brings good luck to name a restaurant or market, Le Café de Beauvoir, or Le Marché Baudelaire. What do we really know about the magical links between the material world and the spirits, anyway?

Empty Nest

Around here, it's not just a syndrome.

The baby doves we've been watching in our neighbors' window box successfully fledged, and are gone from the nest, along with their parents, although we spotted the scissor-billed mom yesterday wandering around on the zinc roof a couple of floors above the nest, as if she was visiting an old homestead from a discreet distance.

This was one of their many feedings on August 1st.  Note that both have full juvenile plumage (putting a wing around mom just to try it out), and are slowly losing all of their golden down.

 

And this is the last picture we have, on August 3rd, just before they took off to be adult Parisians.  We had asked them when they were born what we should name them, and they replied that they didn't want to be named, because having names would only increase the grief when they left.

Surrealist Café Opens!

On today's menu, the results of our first Surrealist Café community collage.  Readers will recall that we asked you to walk into a cafe precisely at 1 p.m. on Saturday, July 30, and record, in whatever medium you chose (poetry, prose, photography, etc.), what you observed.  These contributors seized the time, and amazed us with their originality, fecundity and talent.  All contributions are (c) 2011 by their individual creators.

This post is dedicated to the memory of our friend, mentor, role model, and surrealist creative, Jane Winslow Eliot, who died at home in Venice, California on Sunday, July 31.

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Margo Berdeshevsky, Starbucks, Rue de Rivoli, Paris, France:

 

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John Harris, Les Deux Magots, Boulevard Saint Germain, Paris, France:

Hemingway would have called her "a well built woman," meaning sturdy and with a good shape. Her long hair, cascading in multi-colored curly strands reflects light like the leaves of Paris' majestic plane trees. She is reading Sartre's Nausea in French, and I know she is French because she wears her clothes well, and not the other way around--as with many chic American women. If there is a "seduction" factor in France that goes deeper than sex, it is here in the café, where Hemingway and his women float through like ghosts, making my heart beat faster.

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Diane Sherry Case, Starbucks, 26th and Wilshire, Santa Monica:

I wanted this to be playful. But in came a girl with a bashed-in face. Her remorseful boyfriend spent the night in jail, bloody fists and bloodless heart. He remembered their love way too late as his fist flew toward her face and he just couldn’t stop it, he just can’t stop it. I wanted this to be fun. But here she is, her lips caked with blood. Her son came home all hyped up and wired, swearing, You stupid bitch. Then out flew her truth. I never wanted you to begin with, I was sixteen years old. I just wanted to be playful. But here she stands with a bruised green nose. Plastic surgery, what are credit cards for? A new nose, some pouty lips, as if men will come running with hard-ons for her, a hundred hard-ons, she could choose. She picks up her purse, afraid to be seen, and leaves, as the kid with the derby stands there calling her name, Stella, chai latte, Stella, chai latte. 

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Janelle Balnicke, mobile sidewalk cafe, Worthing-on-Sea, England, UK:

See Worthy Widow Walking by Worthing-on-Sea, Saturday July 30th 1PM

 

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Tara Ison, Steve's Espresso, Tempe, AZ, USA:

A chalkboard whiteboard blank-parchment fresh-drywalled neck nape, this faceless fetus-soft young boy sitting there back to me, young man man-boy, spread sheet of buttered filo leaves asking to be rolled stuffed baked tasted swallowed whole, a new-shelled pink abalone steak slab smelling of weed and salt and waiting to be licked and nipped by wolves, sniffed and gripped by some mean old bitch who has gone from buttery young flesh herself to crusty dry talon’d owl, who who who is she anymore to taste wet plump tongue and will he leave flee finish his coffee and leap upon his hyped-up hipster sneakered feet and buoyant himself away, will the back of his young man boy neck escape so easily my horned veined crepe’d hand before I am over and done? 

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Stuart Balcomb, Rose Café, Venice, CA, USA: 

TEN CITIES: See how the scene and circumstances change with each new location:

Los Angeles: the Player, in his requisite Hollywood black, pitching a script to a hot, young actress.

Seattle: art dealer in Pioneer Square, lunching with his gallery assistant.

Buenos Aires: metal sculptor in La Boca, tourists from Florida at next table.

Boston: jazz club owner, discussing his lease with landlord's wife.

Seville: meeting his daughter-in-law for the first time, his only son having died last week.

Perpignan: owns four fishing boats, wants to sell one.

Albuquerque: Hitman, flown-in to find former mob member, now in the Witness Protection Program.

Munich: Belgian tourist, imploring his estranged niece to stay and have a litre of Hefeweizen.

Palm Springs: retired airline pilot, moved here for his asthma condition.

San Francisco: bartender on his day off, lunching with waitress he secretly loves, but won't ever tell her.

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Scott MacFarlane, The Bunker, Mount Vernon, WA, USA:

“Bunker”

One o’clock      
     home      
     from the inferno, from her      
     duodenum raging            
          like Der Führer concussed in his bunker, 
          like a pickax impaling the blue iris of her mortality,
          like stillbirthing.

“I can’t live like this.” Woe and tears
     drip
     drip
     drip of drugs
          end her Third Reich of agony,
          extract the axe
          resurrect the old her,
     day-to-day. 
          Saturday’s
          peace of 
          acquiescing
          pain.

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Ann Denk, Café Inconnu, Newport Beach, CA, USA: 

 

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Joanne Warfield, Rose Café, Venice, CA, USA:  

Little Kenzo

Ahh, little Kenzo, full of pure joy,
What’s to become of this four-year-old boy?

A rocket scientist or a priest yet to be?
What lies in his future, the world will soon see.

There’s hope, I do glean, in his backpack of books,
and in the kind eyes of his mother’s sweet look.

With all of our children so gently embraced,
This surely would foster a true state of grace.

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Steve De Jarnatt, Food, Pico Boulevard, West Los Angeles, CA, USA:

A familiar face.  A face that feeds me. On the Westside now. But it had given sustenance mid-town for years. It all came back one day. Judy, Judy – Judy’s.

I’m a regular — tri-salad to go, meatloaf from heaven. Comfort. FOOD. And idle, always interesting chat. The Eames—ADD—locavores. Today I go by ruled by time, on an expedition to capture a moment. But she’s not in today far as I can see. I scour the faces. Families picking crusts like any other, the solitary ones who homestead a table for the day—the Gort glow of their MacBooks winking. Nothing to write home about. Or to Paris.

There she is — in the kitchen. Judy’s reddened mug. Overseeing something emerging from the oven? Crying. With someone else who’s crying. Through the portal square, framed beside The Specials. String hair down from the bun. Moving from the frame, off stage—unknown.

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Suki Kitchell Edwards, 8100 feet up Animas Mountain, Durango, CO, USA: 

 

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Dawna Kemper, Pat’s, Topanga Canyon, CA, USA:

Bright yellow bandana-print muumuu fringed bottom smocked bodice you keep pulling up to cover the bikini top with the cacophony of black and white letters pressed against each other. What do they say? (I can’t tell without staring.) Speaking Spanish to the waitress to your husband to God. Unruly waves of dull brown hair pushed free of your face by a wide stretchy black band bold in your pockmarked makeup-free beauty. Flip flop dangles and falls from your pink lacquered toes and stays off, foot dangling free naturally expressive the hands, too, painting words while you speak chopping smoothing waxing the air in front of you. You eyed my boyfriend’s plate when it arrived, then back to talking niños with your husband hands still moving pausing only when your own plate of eggs was delivered, latching hands with your man to offer up a whispered rezo a Dios.

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Bruce Moody, Café Inconnu, Crockett, CA, USA:

The Crimson Jumper

She walked a hundred miles in one week, once. From a disappointment in love. She didn’t know where she walked. Those old roads. Her head down. Just walked. Until love fortified itself in her, and dropped off its silver lamé of being duped. Now she sits guarded by her garments, which are unremarkable, which fit, which are comfortable and offer neither disguise nor invitation. She bends over her gadget. It does not mean anything to her, but it works for work. This is a strong woman, the air around her declares. Or a stronger woman. Stronger than before. She does not trumpet it. It is just in the air, like oxygen is in the air. Useful. Wiser. Benevolent.

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Lorie Adair: Steve’s Espresso Café, Tempe, AZ, USA:

He scratches behind an ear, cups his chin in a hand pale as a fish. He speaks to a friend; his mouth is thin, teeth the color of dishwater. Reaching into his pocket, he shifts to stand. At 6’ 3”, his thin legs poke from blue scruffs. He removes an I-Touch, rubs his fingers along the screen. He listens to his friend, grunts, holds the Touch 8 inches from his face. He sets it on the table, nods at his companion then lifts the screen again. He tilts it; a background beat of Soul. He stands, signals the barista. “Another to go.” He flips open courier bag, placing Touch in its pocket, angling laptop in its slot. Humidity like sex. Later, he reaches for the Touch, scrolls through the list, his forefinger sliding along glass. Caressing black space, he forgets the color of her eyes, the brand of lipstick she wears.

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Patrice Bilawka, Café Literati, West Los Angeles, CA, USA

Dusty Brogues

The Stranger strolled into the café and took his place across from me. Every day, same time—10 a.m. Just like me. He rarely looked around, but when he did he would sometimes cringe. His eyes were a blue, watery abyss. We never spoke. But I thought, “Maybe today… yes, maybe I should say hello.” Would I smile, or nonchalantly stammer a quick greeting? I would just do it. And whatever came out would be fine. I was looking at his shoes. Dusty brogues. Then I brought up my glance, and…the Stranger disappeared. He didn’t get up and leave, or switch to a different chair. I looked around to see if anyone else noticed. No. But he was gone. Do crazy people know they are going crazy? Do they keep things to themselves, like seeing people disappear? That was 7 weeks 2 days and 4 hours ago. The Stranger has not returned, and I have not seen anyone vanish since.

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Jon Hess, Café Literati, West Los Angeles, CA, USA:

"We close in five minutes," says the cricket behind the counter at Café Literati. Her fabulous gold hoop earrings sway, patting her neck. Her freckles are peach colored. "Well?" Her smile is nice -- her sadness deep. Her guitar is waiting for her in the trunk of her beat-up old Honda Civic. Chairs are put on tables. I'm the last customer. I wanted to tell her that I came here to write about her for my friend's blog "Paris Play." But then the seductive mystery of not knowing would be shattered and she would no longer be a stranger. Then I want to tell her to never stop singing, because her music heals her. The room is quiet for a moment. Minutes later, I step onto the LA street and imagine Paris.

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Richard Beban, Café André Breton, Paris, France: