It was another miserable night in Paris. The Muslim and the Jew had stolen my Chinese Swiss watch and hidden under a deux Chevaux while the flicks pretended to look for them. I was drunk on miserable wine and my foot was nothing but a blister, so as I limped with a sort of Frankenstein gate back to the bar and Fuad laughed at me, because the two of them were well known thieves.
“Why do you go with them Monsieur? I could have told you they are thieves.”
“They seemed nice and they talked about Jim Morrison and they had beer and hashish.”
“We have beer here, Monsieur… and I love the Jim Morrison… he is burried here in Paris…”
“Yes Pierre La Chaise… the rock of the chair… or whatever… I have no money.”
“I make you a wine is good?”
“Very.”
And then the sun started coming up over the city and I could look out the window at the changing color of light and think about history and art history and those bastards under the car with my fake watch that cost less than the wine and know that Fuad would see me till breakfast and the cheap hotel and sleep and then I noticed that with the cominng light, the sillouhettes of countless t.v. anteannnas poking up all over the city below Montmartre and I thought that these wire sculptures were the only thing that made Paris look new, or different from the old pictures of Paris and then I thought about computers and satellites and I realized… soon it would look brand old again… like a picuture of itself.
“D’accord?” asked Fuad.
“Do you have pistachios?,” I asked him.
“But of course,” he said, in the perfect imitation of a Frenchman.