F. G. Gerson - 21 Steps To Happiness

Muriel is at home in here. She kisses the barmaid on the lips.

“C’est ta nouvelle copine?” the barmaid asks.

“She thinks you’re my girlfriend. Do you think we would be a nice match?” Muriel says, smiling at me over her shoulder.

Oh, God!

“She is not my girlfriend. Lynn is from New York.” She explains to the barmaid.

“Quoi? J’parle pas anglais, moi.”

“Do you mind talking in French, Lynn?”

Shit!

“Non,” I say.

The barmaid asks me something in French, so I just smile mysteriously. I do a smile that’s neither yes nor no. A kind of undecided smile. She asks me again, and looks at Muriel, seeking an explanation.

I decide to say oui, and they laugh. I laugh with them. And I nod, of course.

“So? What do you want to drink then?” Muriel asks.

Oh, I see.

“Just a coffee. A trim latte. Something like that.”

The barmaid looks at me as if I had just landed from outer space.

“Donne lui un café.”

That grants me a horrible short-black and a disapproving face. It’s 11:30 a.m. Coffee time is over. Muriel orders a perroquet. It’s like a strange anise cocktail with mint syrup. The barmaid takes the same thing but without the syrup. She doesn’t take it too sweet.

“Ça fait combien de temps que tu es à Paris?”

“Muriel, we need to talk. In private.” I take her glass and walk to a booth far away from the bar. I want to take her away from the barmaid and all this maddening French language.

She caresses the barmaid’s face and comes to sit with me.

“Do you like it in here?” she asks.

Two Japanese girls have just entered. They are dressed in school uniforms, only their skirts are far too short and reveal their underwear. Their faces are covered in colorful makeup. They look like two little porcelain dolls out of an sleazy old man’s fantasy.

“The place has character,” I lie. I feel so inappropriate. Hell, I’ve never been in a place like this before.

Once, with Delia, we went into a sauna parlor, but apparently they didn’t even have any real saunas and their masseuses were not really masseuses either. But that was an accident!

And I don’t want to judge anyone. Damn, I just feel very uncomfortable watching girls engaged in passionate kissing at lunchtime.

“Is this your kind of place?”

“Well…”

“See those two Japanese girls?”

I nod. They’re sitting right behind us, sharing a pink milk shake with two straws. “Yes, I noticed them.”

“Those two are really sick. They like weird games. They enjoy pain. I played with them last New Year’s Eve. I couldn’t sit for a week without shrieking.”

She smiles at me.

“Do I shock you?”

“Muriel, I am from New York,” I lie again.

In fact, I don’t know anyone like Muriel and yes, I am shocked and uneasy. Why did I think that all successful people should be elegant and refined like cheese crackers? Instead, I find myself with crazy young punks and unbalanced teenagers.

“Can we talk about the job? That’s why you flew me to Paris, isn’t it?”

“American women! Business! Business! Is there anything else that counts but your careers? Business was back there, when we talked to Pierre and you blew it. Now it’s time for something else.”

Like kissing sadomasochist lesbian Japanese girls dressed in school uniforms?

“It seems…” I start again.

Oh, just say it, Lynn!

“It seems that Nicolas wasn’t too keen on having me in Paris.”

“Nicolas! He has lots of neuroses, that boy. His mind is full of no, no, no! My mind is all yes, yes, yes!” She laughs like a hyena and the two Japanese girls turn to check what she’s drinking and order two of the same.

“I wanted to get a big name from New York,” Muriel continues. “A person that everybody would know in the business. Just like you.”

“Just like me? Muriel, nobody knows me.”

“Your name, Lynn, everybody knows your name. Your name is going to open all the doors. And I spent a fortune getting you here. So now you need to convince me that you were a good investment and that Nicolas was wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“To think you were a waste of our time and money.”

She drinks her perroquet with a large smile on her face. She really enjoys toying with me.

“After talking to your brother, it’s rather odd that you would try to convince me to stay, Muriel. It looks like you’re broke. And by the way, how come he talks with a French accent?”

“He grew up with Dad in Paris. I grew up with Mum, in London. Mum was a model.”

“That’s…very nice.”

“No, they’re horrible parents.”

“Oh…”

“Lynn, we’re not here to discuss my parents. We’re here to talk about me! Me! Me! Me! You see, I’m going to take off. I know it. It’s my destiny. I am the next Coco Chanel.”

That or locked up in a mental ward.

“I am not a businesswoman. I am an artist. I am crazy. I want to be crazy. And my company should reflect my personality. That’s why I need people like you. An American businesswoman with a big name that can help me reach the top.”

“I’m not sure that I’m the person you are looking for, Muriel.”

“Your mother vouched for you. Your mother is a genius.”

I have this picture of Jodie working in her little workshop when she was still unknown and broke. I was very young but I remember her hard face looking down at me, snatching the fabrics away from my hands. “I told you not to touch! You’re going to mess everything up again!”

Suddenly, someone’s singing a catchy French tune in Muriel’s pocket. She fishes out a sleek-looking cell phone. “Nicolas,” she sneers. “Work, work, work!” She throws the phone on the table.

“Aren’t you going to answer it?”

“He probably needs me to go back to the office and help him with something.” She finishes her perroquet shaking her head.

Actually, I would love to help Nicolas with something, like…anything. “Let’s go back to the office,” I say when the phone is done singing.

“Oh, no! We did enough work for today. Let’s go to my place. We can talk some more at my place.”

“What about Nicolas?” I ask, nodding toward the phone as if he was trapped inside and needed immediate attention.

“We’ll phone him back. We can meet him at my place. Nicolas loves my place.”

Mmm? Nicolas loves her place. I didn’t think of that. Nicolas and Muriel? She has such short hair. That’s definitely an advantage over me when taking a ride on his scooter.

I love privacy.

Being inside your home is like being inside a safe nest. You close the door and you can recuperate from the mad and stressful goings-on of the real world. Your home is your only chance to get peace and quiet. I love my home.

Muriel is completely different. Her home is like a train station at rush hour. It’s full of people from various walks of life, some of them she doesn’t even know by name.

Muriel lives in a huge modern flat not too far from the office. I swear, the minute she opened the door, it seemed more busy and hectic inside than on the streets below.

There is this guy from Spain. He wants Muriel to fix a meeting for him with Fjord Model Agency. Muriel met him in a club in Paris and doesn’t even remember his name anymore. She told him that she could help him become a model or, eventually, get him a part in a porn film. She introduces him to me as her beautiful Spanish Stallion.

He sleeps on her sofa.

“You are Fjord Agency?” he asks me.

“No, I’m Lynn Blanchett.”

Sprawled out in front of the giant TV screen are the Fat Breeders, a band from London. The whole band is crashing in Muriel’s apartment. From the drummer to the backup singers.