Closerie Part Two

The bartender put ice in a martini glass to chill it. Then he put lime juice and tequila and Grand Marnier and more ice into a shaker and shook it with a certain showmanship and then emptied the glass of ice and poured the drink through the strainer. Whitman asked him what the drink was called.

« Une margharita, » he said. « C'est speciale. »

I didn't know there was Grand Marnier in a margarita.

***

I wanted to order a fine a l'eau, or brandy and water, because that was the drink that Ford Maddox Ford had ordered but didn't finish, so Hem had to finish it. I was too scared to, though, because I had never had it and I wasn't sure people still drank that kind of thing, and if the bartender didn't know what I was talking about, I didn't know how to explain it in French.

Also, I thought it was corny and I knew I wasn't Hemingway and I couldn't even grow a beard and I certainly didn't want to be Ford Maddox Ford who was an ass and used the same name twice. In the end I ordered an espresso, which was good because I was tired.

Aside from the pictures of Hemingway, there was a picture of how the place used to look. There was an American bar in the picture, so it must have been after Hemingway stopped going there. Indeed it looked very similar to the way it looked now, and it was only the sepia tones that made it look old. For all I knew, they could have taken the picture 5 years ago and photoshopped it to look antique. A lot of things were fake in Paris.

There were some men who, like me, were alone. But I didn't pay much attention to them. I was focused on the women, women with cigarettes held lightly in their fingers that were painted with dark nail polish.

There was a man who was sitting alone in a booth who I noticed as soon as his lover came in and put her coat on the chair across from him. She didn't sit in the chair, though. She sat next to him, on the booth, even though the table was narrow and was clearly meant to have two people sitting face to face.

Throughout the late afternoon and the early evening she caressed his face and he kissed her hand and they kissed as the French do, unapologetically. At one point she went to the bathroom and he sat there uncomfortably alone, tugging at his collar. I imagined he was wondering if she would ever return, even though she was only in the bathroom.

It ocurred to me that, though I was missing the kisses and the caresses, I was also missing the awkwardness of being alone. I had no choice but to sit alone at cafes and I was ok with that. This man could hardly sit still just moments after his date left.

When she returned from the bathroom they continued their gestures and murmurs and they smoked and she ate all of the olives that they put on the tables and on the bar.