Too Much of the Stuff

Eduard speaks five languages. I only know this because I’ve heard him successfully yell at patrons from Italy, Spain, America, Lebanon and France to keep it down. I’d come to his bar each weekend, armed with a deck of cards, soon acquainted with France’s roi, dame, and valet – these new royal variants proved extremely confusing in an international game of Bullshit – and a half-smoked pack of Vogues. Men avoided asking for a smoke, they deemed the skinny ones “too gay,” and if anyone else asked, I’d say I was on my last one. 

I only shared with Cora, who I spent most of my time with. She, performative as it may have been, read Eve Babitz, avoided tourist trap restaurants around the Eiffel Tower, and curated vintage clothing from around Europe. I knew of her when I was still in high school, albeit not for great reasons. She was expelled from her Catholic all-girls private school for cursing at a male faculty member who told her that her tartan skirt was pulled up too high. I didn’t like her much, but I knew hardly anyone else in Paris. She was the second closest thing to home. We went out together, likely for both of us to find people that could replace the other. 

I struggled with the decision to leave home for Paris. Most of my friends were spending the semester in Australia, but that felt too far from home. I still felt like a kid, unable to find my way in my own country, let alone another.  

Though our first encounter with the bar was accidental, drunkenly stumbling into an unassuming place, Eduard’s bar soon became our place. If Cora could convince me to go out on a school night, we’d take the Métro 6 towards Étoile, transfer to the 5, and laugh all the way down Rue des Tournelles. We became possessive over the bar like a disgruntled ex-girlfriend – to be invited there, we felt, was to be initiated into a secret club. There was a hominess to the place, its whimsy unsuspected.

 It was just what I needed – a place away from home that felt like home. A place where unfamiliar faces and poor translations granted me the opportunity to cosplay adulthood. 

Upon their arrival at the bar, both newcomers and locals were family, Eduard kissing them on both cheeks, a proper French greeting. 

“The Queen of America!” he would say when Cora and I would walk in. I was unsure which of us he was referring to. I liked to think that it was me. 

A back room allowed for smoking and boasted a sense of exclusivity. Artists slung their trenchcoats over the wooden chairs, their faces anonymized by smoke and by shaven eyebrows. A projector played Old Westerns onto the back wall, faint enough that I could hardly make out a sheriff on horseback. The tables were too close together to maintain any distinction between parties. I played tug of war with the ash tray on the mosaiced table with a man from Japan, ultimately settling it just a hair closer to me.

Cora and I would play Egyptian Rat Screw, a game Eduard often tried to learn how to play, hovering over us. “What is this ‘slapping’ thing?” he’d ask in his thick accent, a cow-printed cowboy hat atop his head. I think he was just being polite. He preferred poker. Cora and I debated rules like “69 sandwich”: if a six and a nine ended up on top of each other in the pile, we’d race to slap it – immature, but it made the game more complex. 

The people beside us had no choice but to turn their ears towards us inquisitively. I tried to explain the rules through the language barrier, my cigarette rested between my lips as I used both hands to steal the pile from Cora. Soon, our party was doubled: The people to our left raced to slap the cards, and the people to our right chided each other at their slowness. Eduard would come over, his head tilted, his hands out wide. 

“The neighbors! Keep it down,” he’d scold us warmly. Was it the slapping or the camaraderie that was making all the noise? I assumed the prior. But we all giggled, slapping the table again with a little less force. 

In a moment of silence between the dealing of a new hand, Cora leaned in towards me.

“I feel bad that Rocky’s home tonight! But I feel like she just wouldn’t get it,” she said, motioning to the people around us. They weren’t quite Rocky-like. They donned makeup reminiscent of ACDC and spoke of boarding schools in Algeria. My roommate Rocky, on the other hand, was more traditional. She spoke sternly, her blonde hair softening the blows of her often harsh words. I had grown up with Rocky, but we’d drifted once we got to Paris. We hardly spoke, unless she wanted to use the drying rack I stored in my bedroom. However, she knew me when I was a kid and I still saw her as a hopscotching child. 

“She doesn’t like to go out much. But, in a way, I feel like she would get it,” I said, knowing that if I insisted upon Rocky joining us on our next adventure Cora would cave. I was defensive of Rocky, despite my own feelings of annoyance towards her. I knew she had struggled intensely since Mali passed. Being in Paris surely didn’t make it easier, even though she believed the semester-long trip would mitigate her grief. 

“Yeah, in a way she could post about it on her Instagram story and ruin the whole thing,” Cora scoffed, rolling her eyes. She obsessed over exclusivity. She sucked on her cigarette a little too long, waiting for the man across the bar with the blonde buzzcut to come talk to her, finding her blue eyeshadow intriguing. 

Despite Cora’s reluctance, I told Rocky to come out with us the following Thursday. She was in Paris for a reason. When we were still in high school, her older sister was studying abroad here, too. Mali was a beautiful girl. She read novels on a picnic blanket in Place des Vosges and sipped chocolat chaud at Café de Flore before a tragic thing befell her. The details were unclear, the police were never able to figure out exactly what happened, but she overdosed on a night out with friends. Rocky hardly talked about it, but I knew that her time in Paris was in part to fill the void that she felt from her sister’s passing. She wanted to live out the rest of her sister’s experience. I knew that being here brought up hard feelings. Cora didn’t know this, so she was less forgiving of Rocky’s shortcomings than I was. Rocky’s grief anchored her in insecurity and a need for belonging. She needed to feel seen, but this manifested in her own weird – and often offputting – ways. 

Rocky and I got ready in front of a mirror too narrow to fit us both. I was able to draw the wing of one eye while she outlined her lips in taupe. She continuously turned to the side, admiring or detesting her body in the mirror, it was unclear which. She was very thin, but she’d make it a point to ask me, still looking at her figure in the mirror, if she had gotten fat. I usually just said yes, sarcastically. She knew that she had not, and I was much bigger than she was. 

“I’m excited to meet French men tonight,” she said, wiping off a smudge of lip liner that accidentally colored her cheek. 

“There’s usually a good crowd there, but I’m not sure if they’ll be your type,”  I warned her.

“Eh, I just need a drink. After a few, the bar goggles come on.” I laughed. It was true. She wasn’t a particularly picky person in terms of men, but she was especially forgiving after a bottle of Bordeaux.

We walked to the Métro in buttoned up trenchcoats, practically naked below that. She was quite frugal, despite her parents’ affluence: She jumped the turnstile while I bought a ticket for a euro fifty. 

We sat on the cobblestone outside the bar until Cora got there, a scarlet red awning shielding us from the light drizzle that suddenly fell.

“It still feels weird, you know?” Rocky said, staring at the light on in a nearby apartment, the silhouettes of its occupants visible. 

She rarely opened up to me about what happened with Mali, if about anything at all, but being out at night together, which we rarely were, felt heavy on both of us. 

“Yeah. This is what she would’ve wanted, Rock. That’s what tonight’s about." I took her hand and squeezed it. 

We were interrupted by Cora’s loud arrival. Her “Bonsoir!” to the cab driver snapped Rocky and I out of our depth. She stepped towards the curb, unwrinkling her red pants and fluffing her fur coat. 

We pushed the door open – it was oddly heavy – and walked in single file. Before I made my way to our table, Eduard approached us, handing me a glass of a bitter and cheap Sauvignon Blanc – he knew it’s what I would’ve ordered. “For you, superstar.” He hugged me tight, the smell of pipe tobacco stuck to his coat. 

Rocky smiled weakly, like she was expecting something more. I felt it my duty to impress her, to make her enjoy Paris. I knew though, too, she was trying to impress me, to go with the flow, to be a cool girl. She didn’t talk to me for a week when I refused to get pints and wings at O’Sullivans – the American bar –  for the Superbowl. This was her redemption. 

 Still, Eduard hugged Rocky like she was his own daughter. She bulged her eyes at me afterwards as if he was a creepy old man on the subway. I looked at Cora, whose face said, I told you so. I looked away. 

A group of men sat at the long table beside us. They looked French, but one spoke with a British accent. Their age range baffled me. Three bottles of red wine were splayed between them. 

“Where are you girls from?” The oldest man asked. He was about 70, in a turtlenecked sweater that was likely Cucinelli. Cards in hand, the heat of our game high, we could hardly look up to face him. Cora replied for the three of us, as she often did. She leaned over the edge of the table, seductively making something of a fan with the playing cards, unknowingly bleeding her hand. 

“Let’s see if you can guess.” Cora had a way of making everything into an intimate thing. They guessed right, of course, our accents evidence enough that we did not belong. Her seduction led them to scooch over in their chairs, feigning curiosity at our card game. Their curiosity wasn’t feigned exactly, but the fact that it was at our noisy card game was.

We taught them how to play. Seats shuffled like musical chairs.  We were now a checker board of passports – an Italian man beside an American girl who shared a beer with a German to her right. 

“Where are you from?” Rocky asked the boy closest to our age. 

“That’s my least favorite question,” he sighed. “I’ve lived in eight countries.”

The question seemed, contrary to his response, to be his favorite question, a segue into his telling the table of beautiful women about his multiculturalism. Cora and Rocky leaned in, impressed. 

“My parents have a house in Tuscany, but I was born in Germany. I went to boarding school in London as a kid, but have been living in Paris for years.” 

“Poor you!” I chided. He laughed dryly, unimpressed by my joke.

“Yeah, well, my parents couldn’t afford to take care of me and give me money and stuff once I turned 18, so I moved out here to get a job,” he retorted. 

 I blushed and looked away. Cora and Rocky pried him for more stories. 

Once our teeth were stained red, permasmiles on our face, haunted looking, the men offered us another bottle. And another. Soon, we were old friends, sharing stories about travel in Belize and infidelity.

“I never really cheated,” the oldest man said. The younger one laughed. Elio adjusted the wedding band on his finger. 

“So how do you guys even know each other?” Amongst the stories shared at the table, this detail of clarity came far too late into the night.

“I went to school with Elio’s son,” Marco explained. “He’s like a second father to me.”

“We all work together in Italy. Elio is our boss. We’re here on business,” the man in a button down, Umberto, said. 

“Let’s play a game!” Cora said, clapping, bored by the monotonous pivot of the conversation.

“Sure, what do you Americans play? We don’t have any guns here, so no roulette,” Umberto scoffed. 

We decided on truth or drink, a rather juvenile game reminiscent of Rocky and my middle school days in air-conditioned basements. We were already fairly drunk, Rocky now hung over Marco’s shoulder, whispering in his pierced ear. 

“Get a room!” Umberto said to the two of them. 

“Ok, I’ll ask first,” Cora said, in true Cora fashion. “Rocky, truth or drink?” 

“Truth. Always.” She smiled slyly. Marco watched her. 

“Don’t you have a boyfriend?” Cora said bluntly, looking around to gauge the group’s reaction.

“Uh, no, we’re not dating anymore,” Rocky sat up off of Marco, guiltily. They weren’t dating anymore, that was true, but they were still talking and had seen each other in London the week prior. Cora’s jealousy shone through the question. The group was visibly uncomfortable. The two men beside me exchanged words in Italian that I didn’t understand.

“Ok, I guess I’ll drink then!” Cora said, sipping on wine that she no longer needed. I nudged her under the table. She was always giving Rocky a hard time. 

“Elio – tell us this, or finish the bottle…” Marco leaned over in his seat. “Which of these arseholes would you let date your daughter?” 

“None of ‘em!” He said, chugging the bottle anyway. 

Rounds kept coming, and rounds kept coming. The questions got deeper.

“I’m too drunk for this,” Umberto shouted, climbing over the table. “I’m headed to the bathroom. I need some sobering!” He patted the outline of a dime bag in his pocket. Rocky’s face paled. I looked at her and shook my head. When he returned, still sniffling his nose, Rocky took her turn in the bathroom.

“I’ve just gotta pee,” she said, excusing herself. 

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever done?” I asked Marco in an attempt to distract the table from Rocky’s sudden departure with a loaded question. 

“I’ve watched this lad grow up. He’s thrown parties at my house since he was in grade school. He’s a naughty one,” Elio said.

Marco shifted in his seat. He swept his blonde hair away from his face. He leaned side to side, cracking his neck audibly.

“I dunno,” he said. It seemed like he did know.

“Come on, loser, tell us! You’ll never see us again, anyway,” Cora flirtaciously kicked him under the table, taking pure advantage of Rocky’s bathroom break. 

“Hah, I guess you’re right, then.” He finished his glass of wine and poured another. He took the lighter, decorated with a French flag from a touristy kiosk by the Métro, and began rolling himself a cigarette with the bag of tobacco he had on him. Elio’s face tightened as he realized that Marco would likely tell the truth in his drunkenness. The worst thing he’d ever done. 

“A few years ago, I guess, I was at a party. American broads, like you all, came. My friend was DJ’ing. It was a fun night.” 

The group leaned forwards, pausing their sips, to indulge in Marco’s confession. 

“This girl, she couldn’t have been older than 20, but a bit older than me, came to me asking for pills. I made fun of her, you know. She looked like a good girl,”

The music paused, suddenly. I heard nothing but the sound of my own ringing ears. 

“She was drunk, but I gave her one. My girlfriend at the time kept calling me, though, her roommate needed a ride. So I left the flat. Told the girl, ‘good luck, enjoy Europe,’”

“Marco, you don’t have to,” Elio told him.  

“Nah, it’s chill. I’ll never see them again.” He was drunk now, his words slurring. He lit his rolled cigarette and between puffs, finished his confession.

“I just left, I don’t know. And I hear from my friend later, the girl was dead. She OD’ed right on Rue Oberkampf. Too much of the stuff, I guess.” 

The bar was suddenly quiet. The music stopped.  The game was done.

“I’m sorry to hear that man, it wasn’t your fault,” the adjacent men told him.

“Yeah, it was,” Marco insisted, dryly. He began to put his coat on, clearly upset at his own recollection of the story. 

Yeah, it was. 

“Come on, man, sit down,” Elio insisted.

“Nah, it’s late, I’m gonna go. Pleasure meeting you all.” He saluted us. 

Cora sighed. “Well, that was dark.”

Rocky returned to the table, unknowing of what transpired. She stared at the empty seat beside her, disappointed that her fling ended early. 

“Let’s play cards instead. What’s the game you guys had going on? Egyptian Mouse?” Elio suggested, fatherly. 

“I think we’re going to head out too, I’m getting tired,” I said, grabbing Rocky’s hand. She was drunk. I didn’t want Cora to say anything stupid. 

“Lame!” Cora whined. “I’ll stay!” 

We walked outside, kissing the men on both cheeks as a goodbye. She threw up on the cobblestone, a red concoction of wine and hardly any food landing in the grout. I rubbed her back. Through the paned glass, I could see Cora pouring herself more wine, pulling her hair back into a ponytail, unchanged by what had been said.

Rocky and I started to walk towards the Bastille station. 

“Well, he was nice. Marco,” she said, her words slurred, extending the syllables of his name in a poor British accent. 

 If ever a time to prove to myself I was an adult, it was now.

“Sure, yeah, but you could do better. Next weekend, for sure,” I replied, guiding her stumbling self out of traffic with the palm of my hand on her back. 

We disappeared down the stairs into the Mètro station. A train whirred by, we had just missed it.