I had these romantic notions in my head back then about Paris being some kind of last bastion of true writers. You know, full of old haunts where you might brush up against the ghosts of Blaise Cendrars or Vallejo or Céline or Villon. You know—so I was kind of looking for these old hangouts I’d heard about; bars and—but I had no idea where they might be or what their names were, so I just kept stumbling into places that looked kind of old and seedy and ordering Pernod and sitting around watching people and listening, but since I couldn’t understand a word of French I had no clue what was going on and no way to ask anyone.

First step—learn the language. Always learn the language.

Right. It’s not my language. I have no affinity with it. The sound— all that guttural stuff. The spitting.

Spitting? There’s no spitting in French. It’s very precise.

Anyway, I kept this up all night, going from one bar to the next, drinking along the way, until I finally found a place where there were some people speaking English. The bartender spoke English and there were some girls—

Ah, more girls! You found them.

They were Scandinavian types but they were speaking perfect English, so I started talking to them.

Why not.

Anyhow, I was already half in the bag from drinking at all the bars along the way when one of these Scandinavian women comes up and sits down right beside me. Right off the bat like that. Then I thought, well, this must be the normal deal in Paris: women just coming right up and acting friendly like that. So, first thing she does is order a bottle of wine and two glasses. Real cheap wine, I could tell from the label, and she pours me a drink. I say no thanks because I’m drinking bourbon and Pernod and—actually I’d lost track but I knew wine would really mess me up at that point so I refused. But she insists and she’s got these sad eyes so—

Oh brother.

What?

“Sad eyes”?

Yeah. That’s right. Something very weary and touching about them even though she’s very young. So, anyhow, I sip a little wine with her and get to talking. Turns out she’s an ex-model, kind of over-the-hill; pushing thirty or something. That’s old for a model, I guess.

I thought she was very young? You said she had sad eyes but she was very young.

I thought she was very young but I was mistaken. I was pretty loaded.

Apparently.