I don't know, CAN you?

I discovered a writing group here in Paris, held in English at the revered and aforementioned Shakespeare & Co. The group has been good motivation to write, although my long story needs so much work that I think that maybe I will just give up and go to law school after all.

NO! Faith, good soldier. The war has not been lost yet.

Besides motivation, the writing group also provides merry company. (Get it? Shakespeare & ...) Sorry, terrible. The French are obsessed with bad puns and it's rubbing off. I went with them to a lesbian bar called Les Jacasses last night - easily the best bar in Paris so far. I learned, first by watching and then by asking, how to actually ask for something politely in French. "Est-ce que je peux...?" is how one would say, basically, "May I..." But I have just been saying, "Je peux?"

I think we all know that the little words are sometimes the hardest to learn. So, it turns out that I have been going around Paris just making simple, declarative sentences, but using the tone of voice of a question. "I can have glass of water?" "I can use chair?" "I can use toilet?"

This mixup has added new importance to the constant refrains of my grammatically-correct family. "Mommy, can I have some water?" "I don't know, can you?" Blah, blah, blah. But I see now that she was right. Adam and Meyer have this endearing way of saying things like, "Kelly, may you get the toaster down for me?" Or, "Kelly, may you clean up my mess?" Something about it makes it seem that even though they're asking me to do something for them, that somehow they're affording me a great honor. I haven't corrected them as I think they may find it useful later in the never-ending lifelong battle to get what it is you want.

So that's a short entry, but I'm offering, in place of the usual blog, a piece of microfiction I wrote on the metro. Microfiction is defined as very very very small fiction. You can read story?

What the Cars Missed: A True Story

On the way to the Belleville stop, past the church with the mass in Creole, I pass a woman selling corn which she roasts over coals set up in a shopping cart. Necessity must be so proud of her daughter! The corn costs 2 Euro. 13 Francs. 2 dollars and seventy-point-something cents.

On the metro, I am lost in my book. I only glance up to check the outside stops against the inside maps. Even when I know where I’m going, I am the type to keep careful track of my passage.

A man boards at Madeleine Concord. He is laden with a backpack, a sleeping pad, and other accoutrements of travel. Travel, but not poverty. His sleeping bag swings and almost hits me in the face. When the door closes, he spreads his arms wide against it, rests his head on the glass, and sobs.

He is so sad that I want to reach out and touch his arm, ask if he’s okay, but of course I don’t. I just steal furtive glances at him and force my eyes to rest elsewhere – on my book, on the map. I see a tear poised on the tip of his nose, but I don't have time to see it fall without staring, which is rude.

At La Tour-Maubourg, he gets off.

I notice the other passengers now, fellow witnesses. There is a group of nuns. I can’t discern their ethnicity. They look South American but they’re not speaking Spanish. They wear blue habits and bright green sashes and chatter rapidly.

The man beside me is handsome. He is reading a book in French, and he has shoes with sparkles on them. We both get off at Ecole Militaire but I lose sight of him in an upscale food shop. The kind where a sandwich costs 13 euro. (85 Francs. 17 dollars and fifty cents.)

On the return trip I am tired. I get out again at Belleville and watch a man sprint down the walkway that runs through the middle of the Blvd. de la Villete. Another man chases him, and at first I think they’re just having fun, but then the first man trips. I see his reflection in a parked car as he falls forward. The second man catches him, and I understand now that they’re not playing. The first man pleads, in high, frantic tones, as if for his very life.

It occurs to me, as I keep walking, worried for the pleading man but knowing that I’m completely unequipped to do anything about it, that I haven’t driven a car or ridden in a car for months now. And I don’t miss it. Not at all. And I think: maybe this is why so many middle-class Americans are so ignorant. They just never use public transportation.

I walk home, marking each cross street along the way. Once I’m in bed, I open up my book again to read myself to sleep. My book is in English. It’s thick and very informative. It is a new, highly celebrated, history of Paris.