Last Lovers. William Wharton

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      1

      ZAMBO!! Suddenly I’m on my hands and knees down on the asphalt next to a bench near the statue of Diderot in the small Place beside the boulevard Saint-Germain, across from the Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

      My precious thirteen tubes of paint are scattered all over the place. My prize easel, my hundred-franc easel I bargained for in the Marché Aligre, is knocked all galley-west with one leg bent under and another splayed out like a spavined camel trying to stand up in a windstorm.

      Shit! This is just what I didn’t need. I’m still holding a paintbrush in my hand, the top of it is snapped off about three inches above my knuckle. Luckily the canvas landed with the painting side up, so it could be worse.

      Then I notice. There’s an old lady all dressed in red on her knees beside me. We must look like two elderly clochards chasing after the same butt someone just flipped. My first reaction is, this whole thing is her fault; why the hell doesn’t she look where she’s going?

      So, still on my knees, trying to ignore her, I start scooping the tubes of paints toward me, before some other idiot steps on one of them. That’d be a real mess, colored footsteps tromping through the Latin Quarter, yellow, green, alizarine crimson. I scramble over to pick up my canvas and lean it against the bench, no serious damage I can see. Next time I’ll cozy myself up in the lee of that bench, safe from kooky old gals wearing red costumes.

      Then, finally, I go over. She’s swung herself around and is sitting on her duff rubbing one knee. Both her stockings are ripped where she hit the ground. One knee is bleeding and she’s licking her finger and rubbing it, the way a cat would. But she’s not looking at her knee. She’s looking at me.

      ‘Est-ce que vous êtes peintre, monsieur, artiste-peintre?’

      What the hell else does she think I am, a surveyor taking measurements of Saint-Germain-des-Prés so we can make a copy and build it out in the desert for some Arab prince to convert into a mosque? Hey, maybe they’d let me house my chevalet there, a horse turned camel. The French call easels chevalets for some reason, sounds like something to do with horses, at least to my semiliterate French-American ear.

      I lean down and try straightening my box up, lengthening the collapsed rear leg, slowly twisting one side leg that’s sticking out all cockeyed. Nothing seems to be broken, thank God. It could just possibly end my budding career as artist. Maybe that’s ‘grafted’ career, more accurate, probably.

      ‘Oui, madame, je suis peintre, artiste-peintre.’