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Chapter 14: Trainfrotting Once again, the noon sky threatened to dump its bilious cloudbladder on the anxious faces of Parisian scurriers below. Among them, Olney Garkle rushed down the steps of station Charles Michels for a day on his own--or an afternoon; he was starting late. Time off from the Old Boot, enthused the Gleeful Meany, as he entered the uterine promise of the métro. And the old boots as well, for today he was sporting his shiny Florsheims. Earlier, Maggie had questioned his wisdom. Passing the shoehorn and puzzled to the point of irritation, she noted, "But look at the weather. It's going to pour. Of all the days not to wear those shoes." Olney jammed the horn into his heel. "Don't care, can't bear those goon boots another day, not wearin' 'em." She called him one or two names suggestive of perceptual distress as he made for the door. "Never mind and au revoir," he said, closing it firmly. Too impatient to wait for the elevator, he tripped and slipped down the stairs, nearly breaking his neck in smooth-soled haste. Olney was off to Montmartre to review the cobbled lanes of bygone artistry. He also entertained the thought, borne of a night's insomniac lust, of chatting up some creamy girl over there in Pigalle or somewhere. Just a feather-light fantasy, he observed, waiting for the train. The métro thrilled him with its efficient, captive energy: the sound of trains just breaking into earshot from deep inside their dark hurtleways; the immense and garish affichages announcing lurid new films on the high, inward curving walls; the unobtrusive clochards sprawled on benches; the waiting commuters, intent and motionless, coiled inside and ready to spring at the opening of automatic doors; and oh, the beautiful women. Each station was a statuary of feminine grace, to circle and appreciate from every esthetic angle. After an hour's tour of some of the major lines and the lovely passengers riding them, Olney came to at Abbesses, ascending by elevator from the bowels to the butte of Montmartre. It was pouring. He looked at his thin-skinned Florsheims and ran to the nearest bar. From a window seat he ordered coffee and watched the rain pelt the square. The Place des Abbesses was small enough to fit in the frame made by the window. An immense plane tree dominated most of the space; it rose beyond the roof of the curtain-rod world. Montmartre. Olney felt like a character in a French movie. Contrails of steam meandered from his petit café. The rain slowly washed the window in competing runlets. Old people hurried past, bent and purposeful under umbrellas. The young, immortal from inexperience, huddled under awnings to await a break. A Solex sped by, its little canister engine propelling a hunched and hand-held, newspaper-hatted man whose story the director of the movie Olney felt like a character in could just as easily have followed. Mid afternoon beyond the dim cafe was dark with the dead of winter. Olney looked out with an exhausted, manly acceptance. No, he thought, that's not right. Manly of course, but acceptance? Never. The look, the gaze, should combine a cool readiness to act with just a hint of orphelin despair held deep within his suffering soul. He felt the late actor, Patrick Dewaere, quietly stepping into his Florsheims. Music filled his mind's cafe. Wistful strings and old accordéons played ahead to a tragic future, to moments of intense nostalgia recalling the scenes of today, when hope and confidence still held sway. Olney looked around for the orchestra and its splendid conductor, Georges Delerue, for only Georges composed such haunting musique de mouchoir. Maybe they're playing in the toilet, he thought, reaching in his hip pocket for a packet of Miss Helen paper hankies to wipe away the tears that would have caressed his cheeks had he not just become cool assassin Alain Delon . . . He ordered another coffee, this time with a cognac back. He drank slowly while the rain beat faster. Alain stared out the window. Pensively, he gripped his jaw with thumb and forefinger. Glimmerings of perilous solution appeared in his portentous eyes. He pulled on his stubble until, with an apery of recognition, his lips formed the expression of . . . a quizzical guppy. No, no, he bellowed silently, that's not it. My life is not a farce. Now, let's try again. Georges! From the top. Alain stared out the window. Lost in enigmatic thought, he lit a cigarette without blinking or losing his world-penetrating glance. Oh, maybe he glanced down once, just to make sure the match was near the striker. "Encore un cognac!" Olney called out irritably. His Florsheims were canceling the tour of Montmartre. Salt deposits already marred their gloss. Might as well call off the day's shooting too, he thought. Director should have taken the crew and followed that little Solex, Pareezhun fellow no doubt sitting now with his Pareezhun wife, caressing her olive skin or something. Anyway, I'd rather have an Italian in the title role. 'The Life and Times of Olney Garkle,' starring . . . Vittorio Gassman! Life'd be easy if I had his girl-winning choppers. Filmed in black and white for heightened dramatic effect, it'll be the triumphant return of post-nasal realism. Now then, next step is to bring in Armando Trovaioli to write the score. Break their hearts at Cannes during the famous scene where Vittorio's Florsheims get ruined. Other scenes, well, how about young Vittori-Olney nosing around the old night time paese after a day of tit-squeezing in the sylvan compagna. Better yet, bring him to the big città. Parigi? No, Roma. Ah, there he is now, the sly devil, leaning against an Isetta convertible (hey, that's an Alfa Romeo, stupid) in a parking lot near the seashore. It's the wee hours, and standing next to him, smiling coyly, is the cute stenographer with a movie star's body he's just picked up in a bar, and with whom he has just driven to this romantic spot. (Idiot. You don't pick up cute stenographers using stiff pronouns like whom.) "Ça va, monsieur?" inquired the barman. "C'est évident, non?" Olney snapped drunkishly. The poor man backed away, lashed by the bitter tongue of our thwarted immortal. The rain was starting to slacken. Olney finished the cognac, disgusted with himself and the day. He apologized and paid for his liquid tour of Montmartre. Outside again, he made a run for the elevator and the ride back down to the swinish instincts he so loved. Failing to bridge a large puddle on the way, he was struck, just before a Florsheim came down in the middle of it, with a sudden image of timid Utrillo a few blocks away and long ago, pausing for a moment at his upper window to peek at the bizarre conneries downrue at the Bateau-Lavoir, where the cool dudes lived. §§§ At Marcadet-Poissoniers, Olney decides to change trains and head south toward the Porte d'Orléans. Excluding an empty car reserved for First Class passengers, the train is packed. Squishing his sopping-socked foot in a ruined Florsheim, Olney looks around in disbelief. He is squeezed in among every sort of Parisian, each of them arm to belly to hip. Some hold magazines and newspapers aloft, reading intently. Most stare into space; not an easy task, since nearly all eye-level horizons contain someone else's eyes. After the first stop much maneuvering takes place in anticipation of the Gare du Nord. There, dozens get off as dozens get on, more even, and among them . . . Lloyd Have Mercy . . . the Goddess of the Collective Dream. Heat-seeking missiles pop their silos all around her as Olney, passing it along to his own Peacekeeper, exclaims, It's She Who Must Be Laid, said Sidewinder replying, Dimwit. You think I don't know? Indeed it is the very She whom the painterly hands of the masters have long sought to frame; the Matrix Madonna to whom clergymen, alone in hands-on cloisters, have ever offered their secret and spunk-stricken prayers; the Princess Perfect from whom Mr. Preterite (and the Mrs. too) has eternally implored carnal redemption. Train under way, positions change, she is jostled to a hand pole near gibbering, whimpering Olney. Brazenly contravening the miserable conclusion to a cold and rainy January afternoon, she is wearing a little red dress made of . . . Oh, my God, it's silk. A small jacket, unbuttoned as it is meant to be, is hopeless at keeping her warm. In no way does it cover her breasts, which, Olney craning to see, appear to be exciting themselves against the silk. In the moving crush of people her cleavage is pressed to the hand pole and now, with Olney only inches away, it is certain her breasts are exciting themselves, nipples in pert particular. Taking the curve towards the Gare de l'Est, there is a further shifting of place as passengers are squeezed out of position and others vaulted forward. Accommodating Olney rolls with it and Thank you, Lloyd! finds himself pressed against her port flank. He swallows several times, trying to prevent the increased saliva from overflowing his lower lip like a cum shot. Two other men, having also thrown themselves to the shifting swells of fate, now cover her stern and starboard. The top of her head comes just under the chins of her bodyguards, who are now so close they could kiss. The man on Olney's right is moving against her buttocks; he nearly buries his face in her hair. For all their closeness, the six eyes never meet, yet on tacit and trembling cue take turns nuzzling her fragrance. With an effort she wriggles her body this way and that in order to glance at each in turn, caressing, in the process, each gulping neck with her hair. Olney reads a fiery surrender in her eyes. He notices too, a slight esophoria, each eye pointing with its own code to the creamy source of that surrendering fire. The asymmetry buckles his knees. She's the Goddess, all right. Say, did you know, lecturing here to who else but Countdown Cock, that only true Madonnas suffer eye deviations? You bet, sez Cock. And that the Mayan culture fawned over cross-eyed women to the extent that mothers hung little wax balls in front of their infant daughters' noses so the girls grew used to focusing on them? Absofuckinlutely, affirms Cock. Olney wants so very badly to hang his little balls in front of her nose, or just below her chin, to be oh, so exact. For the next five stops the quartetto lubricato are locked together. Olney can barely restrain himself from caressing those bonbons de Babylon; they are just where his hands would be if he held on to the beaming, steaming hand pole. He is falling in love, wants to whisper arias of ardency into her ear, is, in fact, about to when another thought strokes his She-mad mind: Maybe I'm a psychopath! Who cares? throbs Cock, this is pure heaven, don't be a fool, she's not complaining, heave to. Yes sir! salutes Olney, the two of them joint bodyguards with the stiffest security force in Paris. The shuttling rhythm of the train pushes Olney firmly against her, then pulls him slightly away. Touch and release and bump and brush finally give way to a moment of gut-rippling ecstasy as he comes like an incunabula in its prime, the dragon-lunged sperm shooting down his pantleg to ruin another Florsheim. Hose that Florsheim! chants Cock, bubbling over with joy. Let my 'gasms go! adds Olney, reaching for the champagne. Glasses filled, its all together now (to the Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies theme song): We're just a coupla guys Glasses fly midst raillery on the stage of glory. The Cock and its Olney embrace and guffaw and stomp around and chomp huge mouthfuls of roast fowl. Just a-hosin' down the megaplasm! hip-hips the one. And look, Great Mother, no violence! hoorays the other. Glasses filled once again, robust voices burst forth anew, this time to a Twenties riff: Too bad, taboos They fall over each other in drunken depletion, grasping at chairs, tables, pillars, and finally the hand pole, the one gobsmacked, the other . . . hey, I'm gettin' stiff again! The train keeps pushing him against her hip: another spasm of sperm rockets to Florsheim earth. Olney is almost delirious. Did Our Lady of the Métro feel the volcanoes erupting on all sides? If so, did she . . . like it? Olney is wax-faced and waxing: May the glory of her consenting heat be writ in all genetic codes of future time. May her experiences flourish and multiply. May the fires in her body forever be tended. O Goddess Frottee, O Goodness Me! And look, Great Mother, no guilt. At Les Halles she joins hundreds of disembarking passengers. Is she meeting a girlfriend and will she tell? "These men pressed against me . . . " The very sound of her imagined voice pumps yet another dollop of fetch to his shoe. So where have I been all my life, only now popping my cherry? With all kinds of sexually transmissible diseases about to answer the reactionary's prayer and isolate everyone, could this be the sex of the future? §§§ Olney's accomplices melted into the fleshwork as the train sped on. He had no idea what they looked like. Now, in the post-ejacular event, he was more concerned about his pants. Fortunately he'd worn his dark gray corduroys; the stain was hardly noticeable. Discreetly, he wiped his shoe with a few leaves of Miss Helen. He changed trains at Odéon and by the time he emerged again, at Charles Michels, the telltale streak had completely disappeared. Olney still quivered. The tour of Montmartre had been a bust, but progress in the Cinema of Life was certainly forthcoming: A hard day's shooting well spent. §§§ Chapter 15: Litanies |