Paris Noir: Capital Crime Fiction by Dominique Sylvain, Michael Moorcock, Jerome Charyn, Jason Starr, Cara Black, John Williams, Barry Gifford, John Harvey, Scott Phillips, Stella Duffy, Maxim Jakubowski, Jean-Hugues Oppel, Dominique Manotti, Sparkle Hayter, Jake Lamar, Jim Nisbet, Romain Slocombe Page B
Authors: Dominique Sylvain, Michael Moorcock, Jerome Charyn, Jason Starr, Cara Black, John Williams, Barry Gifford, John Harvey, Scott Phillips, Stella Duffy, Maxim Jakubowski, Jean-Hugues Oppel, Dominique Manotti, Sparkle Hayter, Jake Lamar, Jim Nisbet, Romain Slocombe
Tags: Fiction / Crime
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delaying things now as you can see, reluctant to move forward. Tiens indeed. After dinner we – Beth and me, Laurent and his friends – walked through the Marais till we came to Les Bains Douches. It looked from the outside like what it was, an old swimming pool. Except there was a man on the door checking names and a gaggle of beautiful people offering themselves up for his approval. We had no problem, the guy on the door even favoured Beth with a small bow and a
Bonsoir Mam’selle.
It was a vision of the very near future. Inside a year there would be places like this in London, New York, Berlin, but right then there was nowhere cooler on earth than Les Bains Douches, nowhere where the new worlds of fashion and music and film were more inseparably intertwined, creating what… ‘The Eighties’, I suppose, with all their flash and filigree.
I loved it. I was in raptures. I could see everything ahead of me. I was talking to a friend of Laurent’s, he said he was sure he could find work for a cool guy like me, making music for films. I wanted it all, to swallow it whole. I wanted to live here forever and I was so grateful to Laurent, so in awe of his command of this world, and so coked off my face that, later that night, when we were sat there on a banquette, watching Beth dance to Grace Jones, and Laurent leaned over and said, ‘You mind if we share?’, I didn’t even hesitate, just nodded like I’d known all along that this was the price on the ticket.
I mean, I should say I knew she liked him, and it wasn’t as if I forced her. It’s only that when she looked at me, like she was asking if I was sure this was OK, I just smiled again, a smile I hope to Christ has never passed my face again.
It was simply managed. They left together. I stayed on for an hour or so, maybe more, you know how time flies when you’re with M. Cocaine, and I had my new friends to talk to, my new career to plot. Then I came back to the Ile de la Cité. Rang the bell and went up and straight away Beth left the big sleigh bed and joined me on the floor. In the morning Laurent went to work, and Beth cried in my arms and said not a word.
That was the end of us. It wasn’t the real end, of course, there was a coda, a tailing off, the same old sad decline, but that was the end. Of course.
And I did at least receive my rewards. A month later I had a job as musical director for the first ever French punk-rock movie, and I was living in an attic flat of my own, on the rue de la Roquette. I saw Laurent from time to time. Once at the Palace he leaned over to me, said, ‘You still see that girl? You know she really liked you, man. She told me I could only fuck her in the ass, said the other place was strictly for love.’
There are things, you know, you prefer not to hear. More than that there are lessons you prefer not to learn. Like this one: that some things, when they break, they stay broken.
That’s enough. I have, as I mentioned, been drinking, and if I stay in any longer I will become maudlin, listen to more records I shouldn’t. Instead I shall go out, take a
petite tournée
around the bars. I’ll see if there’s a girl who would like some new shoes.
THE REDHEAD by CARA BLACK
We must never let the new generations forget what happened here during the Occupation, in their own neighbourhood, the horrors, the deportations,’ Monique, the lycée teacher, said, her eyes sombre. ‘Your presentation on the Resistance will be so welcome… Your work is so important.’
Lucien had just handed the young brunette their Resistance Association pamphlet and smiled. ‘We’re proud to speak with your students,’ he said. ‘That’s our mission here.’
They stood in the small Association office overlooking Canal Saint Martin, with the carved woodwork ceiling, a non-working marble fireplace, and second-hand file cabinets. Mina, a widowed great-grandmother, sat at the worn metal desk affixing address labels on envelopes. Lucien combed back
Bonsoir Mam’selle.
It was a vision of the very near future. Inside a year there would be places like this in London, New York, Berlin, but right then there was nowhere cooler on earth than Les Bains Douches, nowhere where the new worlds of fashion and music and film were more inseparably intertwined, creating what… ‘The Eighties’, I suppose, with all their flash and filigree.
I loved it. I was in raptures. I could see everything ahead of me. I was talking to a friend of Laurent’s, he said he was sure he could find work for a cool guy like me, making music for films. I wanted it all, to swallow it whole. I wanted to live here forever and I was so grateful to Laurent, so in awe of his command of this world, and so coked off my face that, later that night, when we were sat there on a banquette, watching Beth dance to Grace Jones, and Laurent leaned over and said, ‘You mind if we share?’, I didn’t even hesitate, just nodded like I’d known all along that this was the price on the ticket.
I mean, I should say I knew she liked him, and it wasn’t as if I forced her. It’s only that when she looked at me, like she was asking if I was sure this was OK, I just smiled again, a smile I hope to Christ has never passed my face again.
It was simply managed. They left together. I stayed on for an hour or so, maybe more, you know how time flies when you’re with M. Cocaine, and I had my new friends to talk to, my new career to plot. Then I came back to the Ile de la Cité. Rang the bell and went up and straight away Beth left the big sleigh bed and joined me on the floor. In the morning Laurent went to work, and Beth cried in my arms and said not a word.
That was the end of us. It wasn’t the real end, of course, there was a coda, a tailing off, the same old sad decline, but that was the end. Of course.
And I did at least receive my rewards. A month later I had a job as musical director for the first ever French punk-rock movie, and I was living in an attic flat of my own, on the rue de la Roquette. I saw Laurent from time to time. Once at the Palace he leaned over to me, said, ‘You still see that girl? You know she really liked you, man. She told me I could only fuck her in the ass, said the other place was strictly for love.’
There are things, you know, you prefer not to hear. More than that there are lessons you prefer not to learn. Like this one: that some things, when they break, they stay broken.
That’s enough. I have, as I mentioned, been drinking, and if I stay in any longer I will become maudlin, listen to more records I shouldn’t. Instead I shall go out, take a
petite tournée
around the bars. I’ll see if there’s a girl who would like some new shoes.
THE REDHEAD by CARA BLACK
We must never let the new generations forget what happened here during the Occupation, in their own neighbourhood, the horrors, the deportations,’ Monique, the lycée teacher, said, her eyes sombre. ‘Your presentation on the Resistance will be so welcome… Your work is so important.’
Lucien had just handed the young brunette their Resistance Association pamphlet and smiled. ‘We’re proud to speak with your students,’ he said. ‘That’s our mission here.’
They stood in the small Association office overlooking Canal Saint Martin, with the carved woodwork ceiling, a non-working marble fireplace, and second-hand file cabinets. Mina, a widowed great-grandmother, sat at the worn metal desk affixing address labels on envelopes. Lucien combed back
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