Richard Ford - Women with Men

Something seemed familiar about rue Duguay-Trouin, which he reluctantly started down, following the policeman's indecipherable order and wave of his machine gun. He of course had never been on this street in his life. It was only one block long and ended bluntly in a busy, wide avenue Matthews assumed was Boulevard Raspail again.

On both cramped and shadowed sides rue Duguay-Trouin was a solid establishment of not terribly old, sand-colored apartment buildings with set-back, modernized glass entries giving onto courtyards where Matthews could see coldly sparse flower gardens and a few parked cars. It was a street that had been revitalized, unlike rue Froidevaux. No cars were parked along the curb, and only a couple of overcoated pedestrians were on the sidewalk, walking dogs, and the street was sunless and therefore colder than when he exited the toy store. A few crusts of last night's snow had survived in the concrete crevices of the building fronts, and the whole aspect of the street was slightly inhospitable. He couldn't imagine why rue Duguay-Trouin would seem familiar — possibly some reference in some novel he once taught, or a house where James Baldwin or James Jones or Henry James had lived and done God only knows what, and which someone had to record and pretend to be fascinated by. He was happy to forget it.

But when he'd walked almost to the end of the street, where it entered the lighter-skied, wider street at a large, crowded intersection, his eyes happened to fall on the number 4 and another small brass plaque, inscribed with Éditions des Châtaigniers. His eyes passed over the plaque once, unalerted, but then returned. Éditions des Châtaigniers. No. 4 rue Duguay-Trouin. 75006 Paris. This was his publisher. It was only a small shock.

From the pavement he gazed up at the building's tan stone facade. Four floors, with a rank of little balustraded windows near the top, and above that a skimpy level of dormered ateliers with chimneys and what looked like geranium boxes. The offices might be one of the ateliers, he thought. Undoubtedly the whole operation was more modest than one might imagine. Yet it was satisfying to realize that Paris was a sufficiently small and knowable place that he should simply happen accidentally by his publishers on his second day.

Here, of course, was where he'd have met François Blumberg for a brief but solidifying conversation before adjourning up to Le Dôme or La Coupole for a long, memorable lunch that might've lasted until dark and where a staunch friendship could've been forged, ending with him strolling the Boulevard du Montparnasse back toward the hotel (a better hotel, in this revised version), smoking a Cuban cigar as the evening traffic thickened and the yellow lights of the brasseries and tiny bookstores and exclusive side-street restaurants began to warm the evening sky. Those had been his private thoughts, and they had been wonderful thoughts. He'd told no one, because no one would've cared except possibly his parents, who wouldn't have understood. Châtaignier— he'd looked it up — meant chestnut tree.

Yet here it was. At least. And he felt, in fact, certified in this small contact, closed though the offices were for the holidays. He was this near now and would someday most assuredly come nearer — when someone knew him in Paris.

He stepped over to the glassed-in arched entrance of No. 4 and peered down the interior passageway to a small bricked courtyard, where one car was parked and a man was sweeping snow, like fallen leaves, toward a drain grate, using a handmade broom with enormous straw bristles. The man paid him no attention and after a moment passed out of sight.

Beside the glass door was a brass panel with numbered buttons 1 to 10 and lettered buttons up to E. No names were listed, as there would've been in the States. You needed a code even to gain entry. France was a much more private place than America, he thought, but also strangely freer. The French knew the difference between privacy and intimacy.

He looked up again at the building's steep facade — smooth buff-colored stone ending in a remarkably blue sky. He checked back up rue Duguay-Trouin. Only a blond woman with a small Brittany spaniel on a leash stood talking to the policeman with the machine gun. They were shaking their heads as if in disagreement. Muffled traffic noise hummed from the other direction, on the avenue.

Just for the touch, he wanted to push the brass buttons. Nothing, of course, would happen; though he could get lucky and ring the publishing office. He quickly pushed C for Châtaigner, then his own birth date, 3-22-59, then waited, staring into the shadowy passageway toward the parked car and where snow crust was heaped on the drain. He didn't expect anyone to turn up. C-3-22-59 meant nothing. Yet he wouldn't have been surprised if someone — a young secretary or a pretty but overworked assistant editor — had suddenly rounded the corner, smiling, a little out of breath, not recognizing him but happy to let him in, bring him up to the offices. In his working out of these fugitive possibilities he would speak French, just like in his dream; the assistant would be charmed by him, eye him provocatively, and he would later buy her dinner and (again) walk in the evening down the Boulevard du Montparnasse.

Only nothing happened.

Matthews stood outside the door, looking in, his hands in his trench-coat pockets, his presence making no reflection in the glass. He had the sudden sensation he was smiling; if he could've seen his face, it would've worn an almost beatific smile, which would certainly be inappropriate if someone should appear. He studied the panel again, shiny and cold. Impenetrable. He firmly pushed F-1-7-8-9, then waited for some sound, a faint, distant buzz of entry. He looked back at the policeman at the top of the street, where he now stood alone, staring Matthews’ way. No buzz sounded. And he simply turned and walked away from his publisher's door, hoping not to seem suspicious.

The Jardin du Luxembourg seemed like a lost opportunity now. The large, congested street at the end of rue Duguay-Trouin turned out to be rue d'assas, but on his Fodor's plan, rue Duguay-Trouin didn't even appear, so that he wasn't sure where the park was but didn't now care if he walked its spacious lawns or under its chestnut trees. It would be there when he came back to Paris. The Sorbonne too. The Panthéon, the same. He'd never seen them. He couldn't be said to have missed them.

He didn't, however, feel absolutely certain what to do now. Helen would've gone for the guillotine site, a boat ride, possibly the Louvre. But on his own he lacked curiosity for these. A boat ride would be cold. The Louvre had the Japanese. (Most Parisians, he guessed, had never set foot inside the Louvre and couldn't tell you where the Sorbonne was. Most Americans, of course, never saw the Grand Canyon or the Empire State Building.) He believed he could probably find his way with the map to St.-Sulpice and the remains of 21 rue Vieux-Colombier, and then, if there was time, take a walk along St.-Germain for the experience. And he could also, along the way, find a public phone to make a call he'd assumed he wouldn't have the chance to make but now did — a flight of fancy, a single indulgence.

In his last three bleak years of Wilmot College (he couldn't actually remember the date, except Bush was the President), he had allowed himself a brief excursion outside his marriage. This was acknowledged to be nothing lasting, just a sudden careening together of two human beings in otherwise unexpressed and unexamined need (several of these careenings occurred in his Mazda hatchback, a time or two on his cold office floor, once in his bed at home, once in hers). She, in this instance, was Margie McDermott, wife of a professor in the history department, and a woman who was quietly going crazy in eastern Ohio, not so different, Matthews understood, from how Penny felt not long afterwards and probably with the same justice.