CHAPTER 17: At Last La Plage

Melody and I are finally on our visit to Paris Plage. It is now towards the end of the season, so we are in luck and have spread our towels out on blue-cushioned lounges close to the river's edge.

"I have shaved my arms to come today," Melody mentions, darting her tongue out for little licks of her ice cream cone. "Have you ever really looked at the hair on your arms," she asks. Her tone is very serious.

"I pulled one straight and measured it. It was five centimeters long."

I don't comment and try to keep the expression on my face neutral. Not so easy when you're mentally thinking "Good God" and simultaneously converting centimeters to inches. Two inches!

I briefly muse how a little shaving of her legs and perhaps other spots might have been a good idea. Melody indeed is hairier than I would ever have imagined. It isn't noticeable in regular clothes. But, just as she promised, she is wearing a swim suit -- not quite a bikini but some kind of a two piece lame number she said she found at the flea market.

It is a little worse for wear in unfortunate areas and a bit see through here and there, but all-in-all, it could have been a disaster and it isn't. The gold threads in it shimmer in the sunlight.  She is the glitter queen of the Seine today.

To Melody's disappointment, I drew the line on this one and showed up for the outing in shorts and a t-shirt instead of a swim suit. But it's okay. She's excited to be here.

After all my trepidation, this is pleasant. The sun begins to relax my shoulders, ease the tension in my neck, make me remember why we came. We've taken off our shoes and the sand is warm and crunchy under our feet. If you lie back and close your eyes, it's possible to daydream you're in Cannes.

Melody sits up, arches her back and raises both arms, forming a graceful curve. She lifts one leg and points her foot in a perfect ballerina arch. And she begins to hum softly.

I am reminded that beneath the rough exterior she is quite beautiful.

CHAPTER 16: Thinking of the Color White

When Leo Tolstoy and his brother were children, they created a club with an odd and near impossible rite-of-passage. In order to become a member, one had to stand in a corner for 30 minutes and not think of anything white.

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"Were you ever married," I ask Melody.

"Non-non-non," she answers. "I never found a man I thought I could live with for more than a few months. Why a marriage? It only makes leaving more difficult. I didn't want a husband. I knew I didn't want children. I live content with my choices. Too much bother! Too much trouble!"

She blinks her eyes rapidly and makes an emphatic sweep of her hand in the air.

Ping. I realize there probably is no daughter named Natasha who has run off to Morocco. There evidently is no daughter at all. But why the story? Maybe it is just a story, somewhat like the Preacher's preaching. It just comes out.

She goes on. "Men are too hard to be with ALL the time. We must have a place of our own to get away from their demands."

I hear Virginia Wolfe cheering.

"They want you to do things for them. They want a woman to be like a slave to them and they don't even know it, oui? It is an assumed entitlement. Little Napoleons, all. They think that being born with complicated equipment gives them a right to everything, to always being the number one. We are complicated also, my friend. It is just not so obvious."

I had naively expected a simple yes or no.

"What happens?" she asks rhetorically. "What's this, where's that. Do you have any money? Is there anything to eat? Where's my comb? Oh boo hoo. Do they think we are their mamas, put here to take care of them like they are wee school children? Yes. Yes they do. I had a boyfriend once. He wanted me to iron a shirt for him. Iron a shirt? Now how was I to do that? We were sleeping under a tin-roofed shed behind a fromagerie with no buzz (the word

I've noticed she uses to mean electricity) no toilet, no water, no nothing. Iron a shirt? Ha."

"You iron your own shirt, I yelled at him. Find an iron. Find a plug for the buzz. You do it. It-is-not-my-problem."

"Ah. Did that feel good when I spoke those words," she says, stopping to

catch her breath. "Iron a shirt," she mutters indignantly, then snaps out of it, smiles at me and slyly winks.

I often wonder why I am so drawn to the fringe of society's wounded. Melody, the Preacher, Henry, Popeye, Priscilla. Is it to heal my own wounds? Does it really heal them or does it open them again, pick at the raw edges, make them begin to bleed. Just a bit. Just enough to cause pain. Everyone has wounds. We must be very gentle with each other.

The Preacher is shouting louder now. People are warning me to stay away from him. Even Bernie wants to keep his distance from him, a good sign to do the same. My Bernie always has exceptional instincts about people and I have learned to trust him.

When Bernie and I left the building yesterday, the Preacher was waiting outside. I realize he's unraveling too rapidly for my safety. I need to put some distance between us. Perhaps I've become too familiar with him and being comfortable with me has made him lose the facade of being cautiously polite.

It makes me sad. It generates a guilt that even I am betraying him just like everyone else. And just when he most needs help.

I'm beginning to feel a lack of respect from him, which makes me nervous. He is a tall, muscular and powerful man who believes he in on a mission from God. Now he even shouts at me.

One morning I made the mistake of saying, "Good morning" to him as I approached. It unleashed an endless and heated tirade on his part, ordering me to always say "God bless you" instead. Bernie immediately put his large body between us, a low rumble vibrating from his chest.

The Preacher's need to talk about God overpowers everything. He talks to himself. He hears what he is convinced is God's voice speaking directly to him, telling him what to do. I do understand that all the pieces are in place for potential disaster.

Yet I continue to feel what can only be described as a strong sense of his being -- an unspoken, unacknowledged and to me unacceptable intimacy, as if we knew each other before, long ago. Before Paris, before his God overwhelmed him, before all of it.

I have a strange sense that he too has that awareness of me on an unexplainable level. Perhaps the Preacher sees my wounds as easily as I do his.