Josephine Wins Again (1)
A Story of Love and Death | Part 1
Josephine just wants to drink wine, eat cheese, and enjoy a little romance. Somehow, she always succeeds, despite the scams, evictions, violent attacks, and untimely deaths befalling the people around her.
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August 26
A mystery woman sits on a couch at the far end of the packed row house, smoking a hookah with one hand and drinking from a bottle of wine with the other. She crosses her legs in a way that suggests this is her party and we have come to celebrate her legs.
But it’s McFly’s party, and he will not leave me alone.
Thanks for coming, man, he yells in my ear over the Ragnarök of house music. He leans in close and spills beer on my shoe. You give any more thought to my offer?
Yeah, I found a place with a buddy of mine.
I’m a buddy of yours, aren’t I?
Uuuhhhh….sure. It’s just closer to downtown. I can walk to work.
You know, we party like this every night. McFly burps a fetid burp. He gestures at the fold-up table laden with every species of liquor and the baby pools of ice underneath with their beer can flotillas. He says, We’ve got fog lights and lasers coming, and I’ve got someone building a DJ booth. We’re going to start charging for the parties and then we’ll be able to fix up all the houses. You know I own them all, the two next door on either side.
I gotta take a piss, I say.
Go outside, McFly says. And use the bushes. Save the toilet for the girls.
What are you drinking? I ask the mystery woman.
Riesling, the woman says, in a breathy accent. It is all we drink.
It’s where she’s from, the man sitting next to her says in a decidedly Pennsylvania accent. He aims a finger at her head and says, Frayance. See vou play.
How did you meet? I ask.
We live together, the woman says. In the house together.
We’re roomies, the man says. She just moved here.
Oh, me too, I say.
We talk about Riesling, then nothing, then France, and more nothing. The conversation drifts away from the roommate and he sucks the hookah, swilling from a fresh bottle of wine, and glowering at the filthy carpet.
McFly comes up behind me and starts rubbing my shoulders. Dude, he slurs right in my ear. Thanks for coming, man.
A woman in line for the bathroom starts to cry. The mystery woman goes to comfort her. She vanishes into the crowd.
Who is that? I ask McFly.
Who?
That woman I was just talking to. We had a thing going.
McFly’s head droops back into the couch cushions. The greasy hairs of his head push away his fedora. It topples to the beer splattered dance floor and is trampled.
Hey. He taps my arm. You should live here, man.
The party dies down to the drunken core. I sit on the front stoop, passing around a joint with some stragglers. The mystery girl and her roommate come out of the narrow alley separating the two houses and go into the house next door.
Hey, that guy stole my rum, I say, thinking fast. I’m going to go get it back.
The front door is—crazily—unlocked. My fugitives are not in the kitchen.
You should abort, the coward in me says. You’re committing a B and E.
You’ve already committed it, the drunk in me says. Might as well go on.
I tiptoe upstairs and knock lightly on the first door I come to. Nothing. I move down the hall and knock on the next door. The door opens a crack at my touch. Through the crack I see the roommate sitting naked on his bed, hands on his knees, hunched forward, eyes closed. He doesn’t move. I sneak away.
The last door lies at the far end of a dark hallway. It is my last chance now. I knock. The mystery woman opens the door.
My words spill out. Something about rum—stupid. The mystery girl smiles and says something about Americans caring so much about their booze. She leads me down to the kitchen and hands me a bottle of rum from the top of the fridge. I hold it, thinking a moment.
You know this house has a roof deck, I say. Would you like to drink some rum on the deck with me?
Well, I cannot drink just rum, she says.
I open the fridge and grab a bottle of Mountain Dew.
Now I am the thief, I say. Shall we?
We make our way up to the roof deck and sit on a pair of beat-up Adirondacks facing the skyline. We pour the rum and the stale Mountain Dew into plastic cups and sip.
Oh, this is terrible, I say.
We talk nothing. Finally, I learn her name.
Josephine. What a pretty name, I say.
In France, it is very common, Josephine says. She lights a cigarette and lets it dangle. Because Napoleon’s wife is named that.
Your English is impressive.
Everyone always says that, Josephine says. And no one ever means it.
I mean it.
Still. It is like saying nothing.
Well, it’s better than my French.
Still that says nothing. You all talk a lot of nothing.
How about a confession, then?
Yes. Confess to me.
You know this was a pretext, I say. I hold up the rum. This isn’t mine. I don’t even drink rum.
She smiles. You were pretending it was yours to talk to me.
It was a really stupid plan.
No. It was a good plan. See. It worked.
But now you think I’m a liar.
Non. I know you are a liar.
A liar and a fool.
No. Just a liar. But it’s okay. I am a liar too.
What do you lie about? Ah. You’re not really French.
Obviously, that is not a lie.
Then what is?
Just. We are all liars.
It’s true. We are all lying about nothing all of the time.
Josephine exhales and flicks her cigarette over the edge of the deck. She smiles at me. I lean over to kiss her. She leans to meet my lips. We fold our bodies into one another and we kiss as gracefully as we can around the Adirondacks. We fall to the floor and she presses on top of me.
The deck hatch opens. McFly pops his greasy head up wearing his trampled fedora. Josephine and I snap apart, sitting casually, no big deal. McFly gurgles something and then disappears. Josephine leads me down to her room. We spend the night in each other’s arms.
Josephine is beautiful. I mean beautiful. Dark hair, dark eyes, eyes you can drown in, twin suicide lagoons of drunken night swimmers. A face, sharp, refined, elegant, with a knowing smile perched upon the lips, a smile tied to my own face, provoking my own lips to twitch up in mimicry, and who knows how long we stay this way, each with our own ill-defined contented thoughts, smiling upon one another like two suns sharing life and warmth and nourishment.
August 27
I happily stride through the house in a towel on my way to shower. Josephine advises me to use the one on the third floor because the second-floor shower doesn’t work. I greet her roommates as I pass.
In the daylight, it’s clear that five hundred dollars per month is way too much to be charging Josephine for the room she has in the area of the city this house is in.
I return from my sputtering, lukewarm shower and squat over my phone. I text McFly furiously, Hey what’s the deal with Josephine’s rent? You should be paying her to live here.
It’s a fair rent for the area, he texts back.
When you offered me a room here it was two fifty.
That was a friendship discount. Anyway, Dave sets the prices.
I toss the phone away and move into a sunbeam on the balcony to drip dry. I ask Josephine, Do you know someone named Dave?
Josephine looks up from the book she’s reading on the mattress that serves as her bed. She says, Be careful there the…banister?
Yep. Banister, railing.
It is not firm on that side. You will fall.
Ah. Good to know. So, do you know a Dave here?
Dave is McFly’s business partner. He owns the buildings.
McFly told me he owned the buildings. He told me this used to be a halfway home, and he bought it for cheap, which I believe.
No, he told me he just manage them.
That’s so weird. Something is fishy here.
We had a house meeting last week. I have never heard people talk so much. But there was wine so. Josephine shrugs. They asked a lot of things. To fix the shower, as you know. And the faucets. Most do not work.
The faucets don’t work?
Non.
That’s a big deal.
Yes, but some of them do work, so we have water. And he needs to add alarms for the smoke and the fires.
There are no smoke alarms here?
Non.
How many people live here?
Josephine scrunches up her face in mock concentration. It’s like, twenty, I think? There are always someone coming and going.
September 4
I pace the sidewalk in front of Josephine’s workplace, a building not quite a skyscraper in center city. The company she works for is French, and I can never tell from her explanations exactly what they do—imports, maybe?
She exits and we kiss. It’s natural and easy, our heads bobbing forward, lips suctioning together like docking starships, coordinated, flawless, awards and medals all around, really excellent job, chaps.
We walk to the bar swinging our held hands, or with my hand steering on her slender waist.
How many millions did you make today? I ask.
Not very many, Josephine says. It is an internship, and so they do not pay.
That’s criminal. What do you do in there?
Well. When my boss is not there, mostly I watch MTV.
And when she is there?
Josephine shrugs.
I give her arm a pinch and say, I like your space jacket. You going to space? Going to free the Martians? Gonna go on a little space adventure?
You think I go to space in this?
I’m just teasing. You look amazing.
We find a dive on Pine Street and slide into a cracked-leather booth.
Oh good, Josephine says. She points to a dirty American flag drooping from the cigarette-stained drop ceiling. I almost forgot what country I was in. It’s such a good thing you have flags everywhere so I can always remember I am in America.
What, you don’t have flags everywhere in France? I ask.
No. We are not as proud, I guess. Is it a word? Woatershod? Wetashed?
Watershed?
Yes.
Can you say it to mean… Josephine waves her hand in a circle to aid her thinking. She bobs her head and smiles at the ceiling. It is like a very important event.
Yes. Why? Did you have a watershed? Is this a watershed? I sweep my hand to indicate the bar, the rough-looking character slumped over his whiskey, me, and the experience as a whole.
No. I am going to a conference tomorrow for work.
And it’s a watershed.
No… I want to be able to explain myself. It is very frustrating when you are right about something, but you cannot explain your idea because of language. There is a trade agreement between the US and Europe. I think it’s bad. You dip your chickens in arsenic. I don’t think you should be able to sell your chickens in Europe.
Why not? Arsenic improves the taste. It’s good for the body.
Our chickens are better.
I don’t doubt it. You know what would be a watershed, is you moving out of that horrible apartment. I hate the idea of you living there.
My friend from France just visited, and he thought my neighborhood has great potential. Plus, it has the balcony so I can smoke.
You’re too funny. What are you up to this week?
I have a friend who’s coming tomorrow. She’s staying until Tuesday.
You are very popular.
Not really. In fact, I only have two friends.
I was thinking you’re here a month and already people are hanging out at your place.
I know. I’m probably cursed or something. I try to escape them by coming all the way here, but they keep pursuing me.
Have you been showing them around?
Yes, well, mostly I’m pretending that I know the city like my pocket? Not sure that’s an expression here, but you’ll get the idea. And that I now have a great sense of direction.
We say, like the back of my hand. Pretty sure you know more about Philly than I do at this point.
I used to know a bus stop, but now you do too, so I’m not so sure about that.
We pay and walk to Josephine’s bus stop. Two cops drag an old man down the street while he sobs like a baby and tries to hit them with his cane.
I want to go! The old man yells. Let me go!
It’s okay, one of the cops feels the need to explain to us. He’s a regular.
Do you have that in France? I ask Josephine.
Drunk old men? she says. Oui.
I think he’s homeless.
We have that too. But not so many. You have a lot of homeless here. Josephine puts a hand on my chest and says, I have to tell you. Your buses here are terrible.
Yes, I agree. The buses here are terrible.
They never come. There is no sign that they are coming. They should tell you when they are coming.
We should probably set up camp here. This bench will be the kitchen. And that telephone pole will be the bathroom.
Oh, good. That’s what I need most.
We ride the bus to Josephine’s terrifying neighborhood and walk a block to her place. We don’t get robbed, shot, or stabbed, so that’s good. Some of the roommates have moved out of the house by now. Some new ones have moved in.
You see? Josephine points to some Christmas lights sadly bunched around the back door. Isn’t it nice? My roommate asked me to put them up because I am tall.
Very nice, I say.
I have not been cleaning. We are supposed to clean but I do not.
Have you even paid rent yet?
No.
We go up to her room. Someone has put a sticker on the door reading, The French Room.
The girl before me was French too, Josephine says. She goes inside and fishes a cigarette out of her purse.
I rub her shoulders, and she leans into me, luxuriating in the touch. I ask, Are you going to smoke that now?
I am seriously…reconsidering.
We kiss and fall onto the bed.
Josephine throws on a robe and goes out onto the balcony. I lie in bed and watch. She leans against the cement railing. Her robe hangs teasingly open. She holds the wine in one hand, dangling, and a cigarette in the other, head tossed to the side.
I jerk awake to a scratching. My heart pounds. It comes again, a scratching. My eyes adjust to the dark and I see my backpack jerking strangely. I gently push away Josephine’s arm and sit up, but the motion wakes her. She sits up and watches me. I lean forward and smack the backpack. A mouse leaps out and into the air, and runs, squealing, behind the dresser.
Putain! Josephine breathes.
I smack the bag again, but no more mice jump out. Swearing, I carry the bag downstairs and shake out the mouse turds. Back in bed I lie awake. My ears strain. I hear the mice scurry and scratch. I do not sleep the rest of the night.
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Dialogue written internalized like this, together with your style, creates an image in my mind of some guy permanently trying to sink deeper into his own jacket as the world buzzes by. I'm fascinated how your writing pulled this image out of me.
"We are all lying about nothing all of the time." Between tangible burps and stealth mice turd attacks, there's plenty to want to lie about. Your art style reminds me a bit of Observer, video game (2017) but reads smoother, less jagged. I may have dated Josephine, probably mistaken.