Free Young and Revolting: The Continental Journals of Nick Twisp by C. D. Payne Page B

night at Madame Ruzicka’s. She gets a pretty lively crowd—for a bunch of old ladies.”
    Damn. Sheeni’s off carousing with three hunky Italians, and I’m the guy who gets the third degree.
     
    MONDAY, May 31 — Another post-weekend morning of industrious stair sweeping and trash hauling. Boy, people in this building sure booze it up with the wine bottles. And how come we’re not invited to any of the parties? When I returned from a groceries run for Madame Ruzicka, I alerted her that should my wife inquire, she had hosted a lively poker gathering the night before.
    “ Of course,” she replied, tipping me E5 to boot. What a pal.
    While I was swabbing down the lobby, Mr. Hamilton (Maurice’s dad) invited me into the wig salon to meet the staff. It seems he has commissioned a re-creation of Judy Garland’s henna tresses from Meet Me in St. Louis to augment his show-stopping rendition of precocious Tootie Smith’s Christmas Eve crying jag from that film. His weepy, doe-eyed Margaret O’Brien, apparently, has never been surpassed.
    Stout Madame Lefèbvre and her aging all-chick crew seemed extraordinarily pleased to make my acquaintance, considering the unbridgeable language chasm and my lowly janitorial status. The ancient proprietress directed her most youthful underling to serve us all cafes from a battered and blackened espresso maker. I smiled and gazed about the cluttered workroom. It was a hair fetishist’s paradise. Shelves clear to the ceiling were stacked with old woven baskets piled high with hair of every hue. More hair-laden baskets crowded the worktables where tall ovoid heads of lacquered oak modeled wigs in various stages of production. The entire scene was rather unsettling, as if stirring deep-seated hair loss fears. A few grimy windows and a couple of buzzing fluorescent tubes provided the only illumination. I wondered if the ladies realized they were all going to go blind sewing zillions of strands of hair in such crummy light.
    I sipped my coffee and turned scarlet as compliment after compliment was showered upon me—all translated by Mr. Hamilton.
    The lobby had never been so clean. Such neatness in arranging the trash cans. My wife was quite the beauty. And so young! I was so helpful to poor Mademoiselle Vesely. Not to mention little Maurice. My shoes looked very comfortable. And doubtless were well made. My struggles with French were so endearing. And on and on and on. Quite the boost to a guy’s flagging self-esteem, even if the source of my popularity remained obscure.
    Then it occurred to me that sitting around this dim room month after month, year after year, sewing their fingers to the bone, these ladies must run short of conversational topics. So lately a new subject has diverted them: the young American janitor. Jesus, they probably know all about my date with Reina. And have already debated whether in fact I have the hots for Babette. Apparently, to the wig- makers of this quarter my life was an open book.
    Giggling, the matronly coffee server made a remark, which everyone boisterously seconded. Mr. Hamilton translated: “Rick, before you go back to work, they want a kiss.”
    No time to bolt for the door. I was grabbed, pressed enthusiastically to corseted bosoms, and showered with kisses. In his nearly 15 years on the planet Nick Twisp had never been so popular. And who says the French are reserved?
    1:30 p.m. I was opening a tuna can for lunch when My Love stormed in with a newspaper. She thrust the copy of Libèration in my face and pointed to a small box at the bottom of page one.
    “ Read that!” she demanded.
    “ Sorry, darling. I have not spontaneously acquired the ability to read French.”
    Sheeni was obliged to translate. The headline read: “A ghost in Montparnasse?” It seems that visitors to the Cimetière du Montparnasse in recent days have reported witnessing a young man who resembles Jean-Paul Belmondo lurking in the vicinity of the grave of Jean Seberg.
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