An American Airman in Paris: A Short Story from Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and the Great War
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About this ebook
New York Times bestselling author Beatriz Williams introduces Octavian Rofrano, from her forthcoming new novel, A Certain Age, in this short story about a lonely American pilot in 1920s Paris and those he’s never forgotten.
Octavian Rofrano has never met the girl whose photograph was his constant companion through the long days and nights of the Great War. The promises he made to himself and that far-away image in the silence of his cockpit have never left him, but the anguish and loneliness of post-Armistice Paris has crept into his bones. One night, Octavian finally decides to lose himself in the sad beauty the City of Lights offers, but as reminders of that 11th day of November fill his mind, can he let go of past hopes or does the promise of salvation still have a hold on him?
Originally published in the moving collection Fall of Poppies: Stories of Love and The Great War, this e-book also includes an excerpt from Williams’ new novel, A Certain Age, coming in June 2016.
Beatriz Williams
A graduate of Stanford University with an MBA from Columbia, Beatriz Williams spent several years in New York and London hiding her early attempts at fiction, first on company laptops as a communications strategy consultant, and then as an at-home producer of small persons, before her career as a writer took off. She lives with her husband and four children near the Connecticut shore.
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An American Airman in Paris - Beatriz Williams
Contents
An American Airman in Paris
Buy Link to Fall of Poppies
An Excerpt from A Certain Age
About the Author
Also by Beatriz Williams
Credits
Copyright
About the Publisher
An American Airman in Paris
Paris. Mid-April 1920
HE CAME TO HARRY’S TO DRINK, NOT TO FIND A WOMAN, BUT sometimes the one just naturally leads to the other, doesn’t it? Sometimes you haven’t got a choice.
Besides, you’re in Paris! You’re in Paris, in a smoky establishment not far from the Opéra, surrounded by souls in a similar state of reckless desperation, and who can resist that fug of inevitability? Sex hangs in the air, thick and musky, and it tastes like Scotch whisky. Nearly irresistible.
Octavian lights another cigarette, gestures for another drink, and considers the array of bottles on the wall before him, for example. Plenty of choice there, right? Except that there isn’t. It’s all an illusion. A fellow’s got to drink something, or he’ll die. You can choose what to drink, but you can’t choose whether to drink.
All right. Maybe you can, if you try hard enough. If you care hard enough. Octavian has always believed in choice. Hasn’t self-control been the guiding principle of his life? Until this moment, on this particular night, he’s resisted that barbaric impulse to copulate, in the manner of his broken-down compatriots, with whatever lady happens to look fairest in the hazy glow of a quarter liter of decent Scotch whisky and a half dozen smokes. In fact, Octavian’s abstinence has made him a legend. A religious idol, almost, except for that inconvenient absence of outward religion. J.C., his friends started calling him, way back in the middle of a Paris leave two years ago, and it stuck.
Now, J.C.,
says Jack Marmot, plopping sloppily on the stool next door, just tell me what you think of that bird over there, talking to Dashwood. A real doll, ain’t she?
Octavian squints between the bodies until he finds Dashwood, and then the woman furled up next to him, lush and sleek-skinned, holding a slender Gauloises in one hand and a highball in the other. Her lips are dark, her hair is short and curling. Underneath a sheer black dress, her breasts are enchantingly visible.
He returns his attention to his drink and tips it back between his lips. Sure. A real doll.
Jack leans close. Do me a favor, J.C. I want to see this before I die. Why don’t you just drag your handsome mug over there and relieve Dashwood of his responsibilities? He don’t deserve a doll like that.
He’s welcome to her.
Aw, what is it with you, J.C.? You don’t like girls?
I like girls, all right. Just not that kind of girl.
You gotta girl back home, J.C.?
Nope.
Jack finishes his drink and signals the bartender. On account of I got to talking to an old buddy of yours, name of Peterson—
He’s not a buddy of mine.
Says he knows you, though.
Octavian pulls out the packet of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and fiddles the dwindling contents. I guess we know each other.
Anyway, Peterson says you got a girl back home, pretty girl. You kept her picture in your wallet. In your pocket, every time you went up on patrol.
He said that, did he?
Yep. True or false?
I guess that’s true.
The bartender arrives. Refills the glasses, without a word. Jack waits in drunken patience, mesmerized by the delicate flow of whisky against the black waistcoat of its source. When every drop is safely delivered, and Jack has clinked the careful edge of his glass with the edge of Octavian’s glass, he returns to the subject of the photograph in Octavian’s wallet. Because who doesn’t want to hear more about someone’s girl back home?
So? What’s the story? What happened to her?
Nothing happened to her, that I know of.
"All right. So what happened to you, J.C.?"
Octavian doesn’t reply to that. What a question!—What happened to you?—as if it’s not obvious what’s happened to him. What’s happened to all of them. Why it’s impossible to return to an unspoiled America, to an unspoiled girl. Why they are smoking and drinking and fornicating in Paris, instead of returning home to nice clean lives and nice clean wives.
He shrugs instead. Shrugs and lifts his drink, examining the bottom of the glass, as if expecting to find some kind of message. The cigarette burns implacably between the first two fingers of his right hand.
But Jack, it seems, will not be denied. You still got that snap?
he asks, reaching in his pocket for his own identically smashed packet of pungent French cigarettes.
This time, Octavian decides to answer him. Why not? The existence of that photograph doesn’t make a difference anymore. But at some point between the instant of opening his mouth and the instant of making voice, the smoke parts to his left and a woman inserts herself in the crack, very close, smelling of perfume and muscular Turkish tobacco, the scent of Paris. And gin. And something else, beneath it all: something salty and perspiring that sends the hot blood rushing where it shouldn’t. She places a hand on the back of his neck—an interesting choice, and more pleasurable than Octavian expects—and bends right next to his