Free Fly-Fishing the 41st by James Prosek Page B

raced naked up and down the path along the pond with a casquette on his head, charging pigeons with a sword of green willow. Meanwhile, Carole lit a cigarette and prepared lunch, unwrapping a checkered cloth on a picnic table.
    We ate sugar melon and ham with baguettes and drank ice-cold beer. After lunch, Pierre went back to sleep. I stood with May Fario on the bank. She was an attractive and astute fourteen, with dark brown hair and freckles.
    â€œHe always does that,” she complained, looking to her sleeping father. “But he’s been better since Marlin was born.” Just then, MayFario was pulling up one of her traps and I noticed, as it emerged from the dark water, that a condom had settled in the bottom of it. “I’ll reset this one,” I said to her.
    Carole seemed more comfortable here in the bois. As she smoked she shared childhood stories about crayfishing with her father on the shore of Lake Michigan, where she grew up. Marlin whipped his sword at pigeons and then sat with his bare butt on the picnic bench to look at the captured crayfish in the creel.
    â€œBe careful, Marlin,” Carole called.
    â€œ Eclwewisse, eclwewisse, ” he repeated, reaching with his fingers into the basket of olive-and-orange-colored crayfish. They snapped at his fingers. Venice came up to the creel to show Marlin how to hold the crayfish.
    When we had caught three dozen large crayfish, enough for dinner, we wound the lines around the traps, gathered the food, and returned through the congested city to rue Mazet to unload the gear.
    Carole boiled the crayfish in salted water until they turned a savory red color. Then the crayfish were steeped in a sauce of butter and cream.
    â€œYou don’t know how to eat them?” Pierre asked me when we sat down to eat and he saw my puzzled look. “Don’t you have them in Connecticut? You take them like this with your hand and twist them like this and suck the meat out,” he said, smiling, and looked at Marlin. “You must make as much noise as possible, slurp, slurp, but the best is this with the bread.” He soaked up the creamy pink sauce with baguette hunks and poured more wine in my glass. “It’s a good chardonnay,” he said.
    The children looked at Pierre as if he were crazy and laughed. Pierre and Carole argued over what wine Hemingway drank with goujon, a small sweet fish often fried whole, whether Sancerre or Chablis. Pierre corrected himself, “No, I’m sure it was muscadet.”
    F ISHING THE M OST B EAUTIFUL P OOL IN THE W ORLD
    T he home of the artist–tax inspector François Calmejane was 41, rue de Seine, not far from Pierre’s office.
    â€œYou will love François’s apartment,” Pierre told me as we waited outside his door. “We will have dinner there tonight after the fishing.”
    The street was silent except for the sound of clinking glasses, clanking silverware, and muffled conversation from La Palette restaurant. It was Saturday evening.
    This part of the sixth arrondissement was known for harboring artistic and creative, sometimes eccentric, people. (Picasso painted Guernica in his studio here.) Even so, it was not every day that you saw a man step from a door in the stone façade dressed in fishing clothes.
    François held his pipe handsomely in his teeth. A knowing smile crept across his face. He knew he looked ridiculous. He was wearing a bowler hat, a flannel shirt and jeans, and his fishing tackle was strapped to his body by old leather belts tied together so comfortably that it seemed he was never without them—a net, a box with bait, a creel, a tackle bag, and rods, each rigged with hooks and heavy lead sinkers.
    â€œâ€™Jour, Pierre,” François said, and they shook hands. I took François’s creel and Pierre took his net. In front of La Palette, where people were taking their dinners, François bent down to pick up a copy of the Financial