From “A Hot Day in Paris”
by Christopher Adamson

Klaus and I step off the sightseeing boat at the dock on the Quai Anatole France and then cross the Pont Solférino under the blazing sun, the river below giving off a nitrous vapor. It’s not much cooler in the Jardin des Tuileries where elderly men wearing blue blazers have laid claim to the few benches that are in shade. I don’t speak German and Klaus speaks French ten times better than I speak English. So we converse in French. Except we’ve hardly said a word to each other this morning.

It’s now a few minutes past noon and we’re on our way to the air-conditioned Pompidou Center. Sweat collects between my breasts and trickles down my sides. It’s been the constant factor in our romance so far, our bodies soaked in it when we met on the dance floor in Knightsbridge…then later that night…and ever since during our epic sessions of lovemaking. Klaus seems to be at ease only when we’re in bed. He looks at me sweetly then. The visor of his Teutonic armor lifted, the iciness gone from those gray-blue eyes of his.

At Châtelet, almost there, I tell him I really don’t feel like seeing any of the modern art in the Pompidou. The truth is I’m suddenly exhausted and need to lie down. I suggest he go on alone. It’ll cool him down. But he insists on coming back with me to our un-air-conditioned hotel room on Rue Jacob in the sixth arrondissement. A twenty-minute walk from here.

The white-hot sun has heated the facades of the buildings on the Île de la Cité to the point you can’t touch them for longer than a second. Two uniformed gendarmes stand smoking in the shade of the arched passageway leading to the bright cobblestone courtyard of the Prefecture de Police. The monumental chestnut trees along the Boulevard du Palais are withering; the sidewalk is littered with shriveled brown leaves as if it were autumn. It’s much too hot to hold hands. Too hot even for the hippies and voyous who usually congregate on the banks of the Seine below the Pont St. Michel. As for the voyeurs who stare at the young women crossing the bridge, they’re out of luck, for there are virtually no passersby.

People who haven’t left the city are living behind closed shutters. The beggars and gypsies are nowhere to be seen, and no students brush past one another on the lower half of Boulevard St. Michel, though the sidewalk trash containers are overflowing with beignet wrappers and plastic bottles from last night. The cafés around Place St. André des Arts are deserted, the waiters in white aprons standing around like undertakers’ apprentices. No sudsy water from the mops of shopkeepers runs in the gutters, for the mayor has issued a plea to conserve water. At the Carrefour de Buci, a panting poodle, discomfited by the heat, seeks out a canopy of shade to do its business. Not a day to be dressed in curly white wool, I think, noticing that the skin beneath the poodle’s coat is bright pink.

Klaus’s cheeks are reddened; sweat puddles and glistens on the back of his bull neck. His eyes are hidden behind large wraparound sunglasses that make him look like an extraterrestrial being. But his passions are of this world—politics and football. Munich, the team he roots for, is playing an important match against Barcelona in Turin at five o’clock. There’s no television in our hotel room. But we can always find a sports café where the game will be televised. If it’s important for him to watch, I’ll go along. Why not? My mind wanders easily. I can always tune out. Which reminds me: I must be more careful with Mariana and David in Hyde Park, make sure I don’t lose track of what they’re up to.

The heat wave has drained the soul of the city. Reminding us of our frailty, slowing the flow of blood through our swollen capillaries. You can see it in the eyes of the unfortunates who must work today, a kind of vacancy that’s partly due to being overheated and partly feigned, a way of staving off hysteria. The retail shops are closed except for those that cater to the tourist trade. A few elderly vendors of antiques, costume jewelry, prints and rare books are open for business, but they seem to have lost the taste for making money; in their darkened establishments, they sit slumped behind desks and stare out into space, remembering how things used to be, or perhaps calculating how much time they have left to live.

At the Crédit Lyonnais opposite the Mabillon métro stop, Klaus withdraws money from a bank machine. Does he do it on purpose to make me feel badly? He’s paid for everything so far—the hotel, our meals, the Eiffel Tower, our excursion this morning on the Seine. His pockets are full of fifty- and hundred-franc notes. Well, Klaus is a software engineer, handsomely paid for his work, whereas I’m a…what?…an au pair who’s used up her savings to pay for the plane ticket from London. At the age of twenty-three, I spend nearly all my time with two American children aged five and three, bathing and dressing them, wiping their noses, washing their clothes, making their beds, putting away their toys, taking them for walks in Hyde Park and making them snacks. French nannies are popular in London at the moment but the Conways could replace me with one quick call to the agency.

Now and then Klaus gazes (surreptitiously he thinks) at the pretty, lifelike mannequins in the windows of the chic clothing stores along Boulevard St. Germain. Last night, after an expensive dinner at the Closerie des Lilas, he took me to a nightclub on Rue de la Huchette where an Italian rock band was playing. In between sets, we danced to Huey Lewis and the News (an American group that’s all the rage in Paris these days). As long as the music has a beat, Klaus just has to get up on the dance floor and shake, shake, shake his booty—it’s an American word, his rear end, he means. His eye was wandering last night, I could tell. Well, what of it? My eye wanders too. There’s a field near the Serpentine in Hyde Park where young men play football in the late afternoon. In shorts and bright jerseys, the players are a colorful sight, their laughter and British banter infectious. The children and I often stop to watch for a while. I find myself looking greedily at their muscular legs.

I know why Klaus decided not to go to the Pompidou alone. He wants to make love…it’s all we seem to do. But it’s time to think of more serious things. It’s been fourteen months; long enough, I’m coming to think. It was in May of last year we met; we’ve known a summer, an autumn, a winter, a springtime and now another summer. This is the first time we’ve gotten together where we can really relax. Until now, Klaus has come to London…our trysts have necessitated sneaking behind the backs of my employers. They’d fire me in an instant if they knew that shortly after midnight (by then their lights have been out almost an hour) I creep out of the apartment and take the stairs (not the lift) down to the ground floor and out to the street. Klaus leaves his hiding place among the lilac bushes in the middle of Cadogan Square. Usually we’re too aroused to catch up over a drink in one of the clubs on the King’s Road. So we hail a taxi in Sloane Street and go immediately to his musty, low-ceilinged hotel room in Earl’s Court….

Ontario Review #66