Fiction: He Went to Paris

[Inspired by ‘He Went to Paris" by Jimmy Buffet]

Little did I realize that getting lost and walking into a small one-window bar on the outskirts of town would change my life. My wife and I were on vacation in the Virgin Islands. She wanted to relax at the hotel while I explored the island. After refusing to ask for directions while being lost I stumbled into the bar.
Only one other person was at the bar. He was a very old fellow, had to be at least a hundred years old judging by the way he looked. He sat there, oblivious to the world drinking his green label. As I sat down and said “hello” to him I stumbled when he turned his head and I saw an eye-patch. One of his eyes was missing. It must have been a fishing accident, I thought, as I nodded to the bartender and ordered my beer.
I sat there looking at both of them. The bartender just standing there smiling, the old man sitting there staring off into space. The pause lasted about ten seconds before the bartender just shook his head and went to the back room to watch TV. He could see both of us through the door and watched in case we need more drinks.
I turned my body towards the old man and held out my hand:
“Name’s Jim, but my friends call me Jimmy”
He looked up, saw the extended hand and shook it with his frail hands.
“I’m here on vacation with my wife.”
A half-smile broke on his face as he looked into the bartenders mirror.
“She’s at the hotel. I just stumbled into here and figured just relax and have a drink before trying to find my way back.”
“Kim.”
“I’m sorry?”
“Kim. That was the name of my wife. Been gone close to forty years now.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
He sat there just staring, lost in recollections of times past, looking himself in the mirror across the bar. “How long have you been married?”
“Three years.”
“And a trip to the islands?”
“Vacation”
“To get away for awhile? To forget about the nine-to-five days?”
“In a way, yes.”
“A lot of people come here to get away. They stay for maybe a week or two and then go back to what they were trying to get away from.”
“Maybe they just needed a break and not really trying to escape permanently?”
“I suppose.”
“How long have you been here?”
“Close to forty years.”
It was then I realized it was roughly the same time his wife been gone. I sat there uncomfortable for a few seconds. He sensed it.
“You can ask”
“Escaping?”
“In a sense, I suppose. After a while it no longer seems like escaping. I live here now. My wife is gone, my son is gone and it’s just me now.”
“Your son?”
“Same name as you. Jim.”
“May I ask?”
He pulled out his wallet and took out an old black and white photo, creases filled some spaces with the edges worn out. The photo was a headshot of a young man in a military uniform.
“This when he joined the Royal Navy. He made the rank of lieutenant. Two weeks later he died. I’ve been carrying this picture with me ever since.”
“And your wife? Kim?”
“The War also.”
“Can I buy you a drink?”
“Sure. Green Label.”
“Bartender, two green labels.”
He took his drink and without any prompting began his life story.
“I just graduated from college and was working at the bank for a few years. After two years or so just got bored of it. You know what I mean?”
“Yeah, tell me about it”
“ I sold everything I had. My family thought I was crazy! I was off to save the world, though!”
“But?”
“Ended up in Paris.”
“Not a bad place to end up, though?”
“No. Not at all. Not a bad place at all. But when you have all these questions to what’s life all about, meaning of life, those sorts of questions – Paris is not the best place to be.”
“I see what you mean.”
“I stayed there for four or five years. Time goes by fast there. You wine and dine all the time. Your ambitions to why you’re really there go away and you just enjoy the place.”
“So why did you leave?”
“Still had those questions of mine. After staying in Paris that long it got to really bother me that I still didn’t know any of the answers.”
“Where did you move to?”
“Good ol’ England. Lived in London for awhile. Got a job playing piano at Fire House. That was the name of the place, Fire House Bar and Grill. I worked every Thursday, Friday, and Saturday night. All night, playing that piano.”
“What did you play?”
“Anything they wanted! I knew about half the songs by heart, it would be the same ten songs each week. The rest I had look up in the book of mine.”
“How long did you do that for?”
“Almost a year.”
“Why’d you quit?”
“Got married and moved to the country.”
“Good reason.”
“I think so. I still remember the exact date I first saw her. Summer time. July 17th. It was a Saturday night. She just finished her performance at the theatre. An actress she was. Not one of those big Hollywood actors at the time. This was back in the day when people would rather go to the theatre then see those silent-movies. She wasn’t the main actress or anything, but she had an important part. Her show ran every Friday and Saturday evening. On that day she came in to Fire House, with the rest of her theatre friends.”
“Love at first sight?”
“Oh God no! I hated her! Her and her friends were always interrupting my playing. Suggesting songs I didn’t have the music too, on purpose. They kept on requesting this one song ‘The Entertainer’ by Chopin. I must have played that song a half-dozen times that first night!”
“What happened, then?”
“She came back the next Thursday. She wanted to apologize for the way her and her friends acted the week before and found out when I played next.”
“Any Chopin requests?”
“Not that night. She came up to me earlier in the night, during my first break, to apologize. She introduced herself as Kim. We talked during the ten minutes I had for break. She mentioned she knew how to play the piano a bit. So I invited her on stage and we did a duet. ‘A bit!’ I had to keep up with her!”
“Sounds like you had some competition.”
“Nah. She was good at piano, very good; but acting was her passion. She stayed there the whole night until I finished work.”
“Did you ever see one of her shows?”
“You bet I did. A week later. Nearly got fired because of it. I sent a message to my manager that I was sick and couldn’t play that night. They found a replacement while I went to the theatre.”
“How did you get caught?”
“A regular at the bar was there and recognized me. Would’ve been nothing, people meet other people all the time at social functions. A week later, at the bar, he asked how I liked the play. My manager was within earshot and before I could answer he asked what day it was.”
“What happened?”
“He took a day’s wages off. It was worth every shilling, though.”
“You said you moved to the country. Why did she want to give up the city life?”
“She didn’t. She did it for me. I still had all those questions, you know. We got married in the city, in her family’s church. Our Lady of the Lake. She wanted the same father who baptized her to perform the ceremony. Father Norman Tyler was his name. She invited all her theatre friends, while I had all my Fire House friends. After that we moved to the country.”
“How was the country life?”
“Relaxing. Jim was born the following year. Now with a family to worry about those concerns of mine had to wait. My journals and notes I put away in the attic.”
“For a rainy day?”
“For another time. You can’t try to figure out what life’s all about when you’re too busy living it. It takes all the fun away. Kim and Jim were my life now. She taught him how to walk, I taught him how to run. She taught him how to read, I taught him how to read between the lines.”
“Book smart and street smart.”
“Yep. We home-schooled him until his fourth year. By the time he graduated Senior Secondary he was second in his class. It was right after graduation when he joined the Navy. We tried to talk him out of it, being a war and all, but he was committed. Stubborn he was! Takes after his ol’ man. He made up his mind and that what he was going to do. We said our goodbyes and waved as he walked on the bus. That was the last time we ever saw him”
“I’m sorry to hear that.”
“He wrote us letters. Told what he was seeing, what it was like. He included this picture in one of them. Kim put it right on mantel for all to see how proud she was of him. She made sure to respond to every letter as soon as she finished reading his. She didn’t want any delay.”
“How did you find out?”
“That he was killed?”
“Yeah.”
“Telegram. I wished to God I would have been the one who answered the door. Kim answered the door and a few seconds later all I heard was screaming. I ran to the door and found her on the floor; she was holding the telegram so tightly I almost had to rip it out of her hands in order to read it. But I already knew before I read it, before I saw her. I knew as soon as I heard her scream that Jim was dead. It was one of those moments where you pray to God you’re wrong, but you knew he was dead.”
“I can’t imagine”
“Do you have kids?”
“No. Not yet.”
“Then you truly can’t imagine. Some day you will though.”
“Yeah…”
“That night she packed.”
“Packed?”
“She needed to go back to London, to her church. She didn’t care about anything other then reaching that church. I tried telling her it wasn’t safe. London just got started being bombed, we heard on the radio. It was happening for past two weeks. ‘Lady of the Lake might not even be there,’ I told her to no avail. Nothing would stop her, she had to go.”
“Did you go with her?”
“Of course! Two days later we reached London. Half of the city was in ruins. We heard the bombs going off in the distance. Some of them were so close you could see the bombs falling in the sky before they hit. Homeless children all huddled together trying to find food. I never imaged London being in a war-zone, but there we were.”
“Was her church still standing?”
“For the most part. A week earlier a bomb hit the south side of it and blew a hole in the side, but the pews and sanctuary were still there. Father Tyler was still there as he was every day. At first sight of us he knew why we were there. We prayed together, and then…”
“…then?”
“I woke up in a makeshift hospital. The church was a direct hit. They said I was lucky to be alive, with only breaking two arms, my leg and losing an eye. I asked where Kim was. The nurse went away to get the doctor. It was the second time in my life I hoped I was wrong. The doctor came back and told me Kim didn’t make it. Neither did Father Tyler. I didn’t feel like I should be alive. I didn’t care about the broken legs or arms, or even losing an eye. I didn’t care about those at all. For the next week all I did was cry myself to sleep. Every time I woke up I realized I was alive and my wife and son were dead. There was no reason to live when your life is shattered like that.”
I sat there not saying a word. I did not want to interrupt him anymore.
“For two months I lived in that hospital. I saw people come into the hospital in body bags. I saw relatives on their first reactions to their loved ones. Some were dead, some were still alive. Others, you’d hope they die soon for their sake. They were in so much pain that nothing the doctors could do for them could relieve it. I sat there watching all this from my bed. My arms and leg healed, but my spirit was still broken. With one eye I saw the evil of the world and wondered more about those questions of mine.
“I went back home when I was all healed up. As I walked back into the house all the memories came flooding back. The first time I took Kim there; the day Jim arrived; playing with Jim on the floor; helping him with his homework; and finally Kim and I saying goodbye to him. I collapsed to my knees right in the doorway.
“There were too many memories there. I needed to leave. I saw the evil of the world, I lived through it. I needed to know the answers to life’s questions. I put the picture of Jim in my wallet, put pictures of Kim and some her belonging I wanted to keep in a suitcase and climbed to the attic for my journals. Only packed two pairs of clothes. In a sense I didn’t care what happened to me from then on.
“I hopped the next freighter out of England. I didn’t care where it was going. Two months later I found myself here. Been here ever since.”
He sat there, finished his drink, and got up to leave. I had to find something out.
“Did you ever answer your questions to life?”
He stood there, looking at me with a smile, “I’ve been on this Earth for eighty-six years and I’m still searching, son”
He turn his back to leave and was about to turn the doorknob when I asked, as an afterthought, “Was it worth it?”
I never saw him again, but his words forever remain with me. “Jimmy, some of it’s magic, some of it’s tragic. But I had a good life all the way.”