but I’d always had jobs, whether packing boxes or answering phones in my father’s factory, bookkeeping for Raul the baker and Juanita the seamstress, or filing at Hector’s law firm. Our parents never understood the American way of kids going to summer camp or just loafing around waiting to get into trouble, and were deeply afraid our cushy livesput us at risk for being useless to society. Papi insisted we weren’t children of privilege but children of sacrifice. He said work made us honest, work made us human, and service was the rent we paid for the space we occupy on this planet.
My father’s rule was always that the only free bed and free meal is at home. With my coming to Paris, he agreed to cover my rent, tuition, and food, but I’d have to work for anything extra. I imagined it would be easier to find work in Paris, but I quickly learned that the limitations on my student visa and the national deadlock on foreign workers made it impossible for me to find much paid work beyond under-the-table babysitting, housecleaning, or nude modeling like Giada did, though it earned her a thousand francs an hour. But Tarentina got me an audition as a candy-and-cigarette girl at a club owned by Gaetan, a former tennis pro turned nightlife impresario whom she dated her first year in Paris. I was supposed to roam the club strapped with a tray of smokes and lollipops, and I’d only earn tips, but at the last minute he assigned me to the coat check instead. I was expected to stay until closing at five in the morning, but the boss caught me dozing on the wooden stool in the corner sometime after three and told me I was not cut out for the nightlife after all.
I asked Romain if he could find something for me to do at Far Niente, but he said I’d have to be at least Corsican if not a thoroughbred Italian to work there because the owner was a bloodhound for legitimacy. At the end of one of our
Martin Eden
afternoons, he took me to check out job offers posted on the bulletin board at the American Church and together we combed the
FUSAC
, circling ads looking for English tutors. I called a few numbers but every single person, upon hearing I was American, said they wanted to learn from a Brit because they preferred the accent.The one guy who did agree to interview me asked to meet me all the way in Porte de Montreuil. Romain and Loic both offered to accompany me but I decided to go alone, which in the end was a bad idea because the man, a white-haired Czech with a half-open pants zipper who seemed to speak English just fine, kept grabbing my thigh under the café table and saying smarmy stuff I was too embarrassed to repeat when I later reported to Romain.
The only income I’d made in Paris so far was the five hundred francs Dominique offered me to write her a paper on the Fauvists for her contemporary art class—a bargain for her because the Sorbonne PhD she usually paid to do her papers charged two thousand a pop.
Naomi’s boyfriend, Rachid, assured me he could find me a job at the Puces market where he worked weekends. The other girls said they wouldn’t be caught dead working at a flea market, except Naomi, who considered herself the most open-minded and democratic—the aspiring photojournalist who defied her Israeli parents by openly keeping an Arab lover, and who, before Rachid picked her up outside the Pompidou, had a brief affair with the young Senegali who sold fruits outside the rue du Bac métro and another with one of the Cuban defectors who got paid to dance by the song at a Latin disco on boulevard Saint-Michel. There was no point in coming all the way to France just to date another muted square like the boyfriend she had at home, she proclaimed, or worse, waste her time being faithful to him when she had the chance to try on other lives through the men she met here in Paris.
The morning after Florian’s party, Naomi and I made our way through the sleepy streets of Saint Germain and boarded the métro to meet
My father’s rule was always that the only free bed and free meal is at home. With my coming to Paris, he agreed to cover my rent, tuition, and food, but I’d have to work for anything extra. I imagined it would be easier to find work in Paris, but I quickly learned that the limitations on my student visa and the national deadlock on foreign workers made it impossible for me to find much paid work beyond under-the-table babysitting, housecleaning, or nude modeling like Giada did, though it earned her a thousand francs an hour. But Tarentina got me an audition as a candy-and-cigarette girl at a club owned by Gaetan, a former tennis pro turned nightlife impresario whom she dated her first year in Paris. I was supposed to roam the club strapped with a tray of smokes and lollipops, and I’d only earn tips, but at the last minute he assigned me to the coat check instead. I was expected to stay until closing at five in the morning, but the boss caught me dozing on the wooden stool in the corner sometime after three and told me I was not cut out for the nightlife after all.
I asked Romain if he could find something for me to do at Far Niente, but he said I’d have to be at least Corsican if not a thoroughbred Italian to work there because the owner was a bloodhound for legitimacy. At the end of one of our
Martin Eden
afternoons, he took me to check out job offers posted on the bulletin board at the American Church and together we combed the
FUSAC
, circling ads looking for English tutors. I called a few numbers but every single person, upon hearing I was American, said they wanted to learn from a Brit because they preferred the accent.The one guy who did agree to interview me asked to meet me all the way in Porte de Montreuil. Romain and Loic both offered to accompany me but I decided to go alone, which in the end was a bad idea because the man, a white-haired Czech with a half-open pants zipper who seemed to speak English just fine, kept grabbing my thigh under the café table and saying smarmy stuff I was too embarrassed to repeat when I later reported to Romain.
The only income I’d made in Paris so far was the five hundred francs Dominique offered me to write her a paper on the Fauvists for her contemporary art class—a bargain for her because the Sorbonne PhD she usually paid to do her papers charged two thousand a pop.
Naomi’s boyfriend, Rachid, assured me he could find me a job at the Puces market where he worked weekends. The other girls said they wouldn’t be caught dead working at a flea market, except Naomi, who considered herself the most open-minded and democratic—the aspiring photojournalist who defied her Israeli parents by openly keeping an Arab lover, and who, before Rachid picked her up outside the Pompidou, had a brief affair with the young Senegali who sold fruits outside the rue du Bac métro and another with one of the Cuban defectors who got paid to dance by the song at a Latin disco on boulevard Saint-Michel. There was no point in coming all the way to France just to date another muted square like the boyfriend she had at home, she proclaimed, or worse, waste her time being faithful to him when she had the chance to try on other lives through the men she met here in Paris.
The morning after Florian’s party, Naomi and I made our way through the sleepy streets of Saint Germain and boarded the métro to meet
Similar Books
