Free The Girl From Nowhere by Christopher Finch Page A

on her face, and I could almost see the insults bounce off her back and plop to the floor like stewed prunes. Janice and her friends gathered themselves together with bruised dignity and exited toward Commerce Street amid much-vexed muttering, to which Sandy responded by hissing, “Ta gueule!”
    “Which means?” I asked.
    “It’s a way of telling someone to shut their face. Not in a nice way. I save it for special occasions.”
    “And what did that bitch say that made this occasion special?”
    “I wouldn’t pollute the atmosphere by repeating it. They didn’t think I understood French, did they? They thought they could make fun of me.”
    She went on to deliver the opinion that I was probably well rid of Janice. Instinctively, I tried to come to my ex’s defense.
    “She’s not so bad when you get to know her.”
    “She told me you still sleep with her,” said Sandy.
    “She did? I guess she was warning you off.”
    “Do you? Sleep with her, I mean.”
    “Occasionally. Once in a great while.”
    “She’s quite attractive, in her way,” said Sandy, seeming happy to leave it at that.
     

EIGHT

    During dinner, Sandy did most of the talking. From time to time I attempted to remind myself that she consorted with artists and gangsters, took her clothes off for a living, and had been known to pose for photographs that our sitting president’s favorite demographic group, Middle America, would probably condemn as pornographic. For all I knew she might even have voted for Nixon. Worse yet, she might be—knowingly or otherwise—an alluring strand in a web intended to entrap some unsuspecting cockroach. Namely me. For the moment, none of that made a monkey’s worth of difference.
    Since her demolition of Janice’s pals, another side of Sandy had emerged—the bonne vivante .We washed our lamb chops down with a Côtes de Bordeaux she pronounced “quite intriguing,” and she chatted about a working stiff’s brasserie in Paris—a bo î te as she called it—decorated with art nouveau murals, a place where for a few francs you could dine on venison or quail.
    We skipped desert, but she suggested we share a cognac.
    “I don’t drink liquor very often,” she said, “but it will remind me of the rue Jacob .”
    After a couple of sips of Courvoisier I asked, “So what did you do while you were in Paris? Were you stripping?”
    “Not all the time,” she said.
    “And what took you there?”
    “A big airplane.”
    We were arriving at another of those impasses, but I persisted.
    “And where were you coming from?”
    “You have to promise me not to ask that kind of question—not now, anyway.”
    “Unfortunately,” I said, “I can’t forget completely that someone out there wants to hurt you, maybe worse. If you won’t tell me about your past, how can I figure out who that might be? Are you by any chance married? Is there an angry hubby lurking in the shadows?”
    She giggled and shook her head.
    “I need to know these things,” I told her.
    “Not now,” she said. “I’m having too nice a time. Can’t we just be boy and girl for a while?”
    This was exasperating, but I was having a pretty good time myself. I asked her if she still wanted to catch a movie.
    “Of course. We’re on a date.”
    I asked what kind of film she fancied, hoping that Julie Andrews wouldn’t figure in the answer.
    “Do you think Midnight Cowboy is still playing?” she asked.
    “You haven’t seen it yet?”
    “Six or seven times.”
    “I guess when you like a movie you really like it,” I said.
    “If it wasn’t for movies,” she said, “I think I’d die.”
    I borrowed a newspaper from the bartender and checked the listings. Midnight Cowboy was playing uptown at the Hauptman, a theater I’d never heard of. Outside, the evening had become a good deal cooler and as we walked east Sandy cuddled up to me. It felt nice. When I stepped off the sidewalk to hail a cab, she said, “No. Let’s take the subway. I love